A WARHAMMER NOVEL

ZAVANT

Gordon Rennie

(A Flandrel & Undead Scan v1.0)

This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl-Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering World’s Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever near, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

INTRODUCTION

Being a short discourse on the considerable and regrettable misconceptions and falsehoods attending to the deeds and reputation of the subject of this biography, as ruminated on by your humble author.

In any serious discussion concerning the study of the lore of the heretical and forbidden, no true student of the field can ever fail at some point to mention the work of Zavant Konniger, the famed and self-styled “sage-detective” of Altdorf. While there are many—particularly amongst the clergy of the Church of Sigmar and the members of the Altdorf Colleges of Magic—that would strongly challenge some of Konniger’s most contentious findings and theories, there can be no disagreement that texts such as Principia Chaotica: A Treatise on the Dark Powers and Out of Araby: A Most Hazardous Field Investigation of the Tomb Cities of Khemri are still amongst the most exhaustive and authoritative accounts we have of the ways and natures of some of mankind’s greatest and most terrible foes.

Considering the amount of knowledge amassed by Konniger and the debt all later opponents of the hidden and malefic owe to his researches, it is frustrating indeed that so little is known about the man himself. Certainly, his name is still remembered the length and breadth of the Old World, but all too often the details of the recollections of the man and his deeds are confused and fragmentary. Indeed, in several backward provinces of the Empire and beyond, it is popularly believed that tales of the legendary sage-detective and his adventures are wholly fictitious!

Regretfully, the work of other supposed chroniclers of Konniger’s life and times have muddied the waters for any subsequent serious scholarly investigation of the man and his deeds, and when undertaking such a momentous task, one must first work hard to separate fact from fiction. Almost certainly, the stories of Konniger’s confrontation with fiends such as Mannfred von Carstein or his apprehension of “Springheeled Jacques”, the fabled (and utterly fictitious, as my researches have proven) ghostly killer from the back-alleys of Gisoreux, can be safely labelled as tavern tales fit only to be believed by foolish drunkards.

But what then are we to make of other tales of Konniger and his exploits? Did he truly, as he himself claims in his written account of the expedition, travel to and explore the dark mysteries of the tomb cities of the Land of the Dead?

Or what of his records of his explorations of the Under-Empire? Even today, prominent figures in this rarefied field of study of ours still hotly contest the existence of the depraved rat-things known in certain quarters as “skaven”. What then are we to make of the map fragments—apparently drawn and annotated in Konniger’s own distinctive hand—showing what purports to be an extensive and completely unknown labyrinth of tunnels and underways honeycombing the earth beneath our beloved Empire? Could Konniger have entered and at least partially, mapped such a place, which he termed the “Under-Empire”, a name which has now come into common currency amongst those of us involved in such arcane matters? Some scholars dismiss Konniger’s Under-Empire theory as further proof that he did indeed succumb to a form of creeping madness in his latter years, brought on—as several of his many critics, notably those within the Holy Church would attest—by his ill-advised and heretical dabbling in the ways of the Dark Powers. Perhaps, though, such objections are born out of fear and of a state of wilful ignorance in defiance of the uncomfortable and unwelcome fact that this world and our place in it may be far less secure than we would ever wish them to be.

On a lighter note, it is also my happy duty as biographer to dispel some of the common misconceptions about Konniger, not merely those such as scurrilous falsehoods detailed in The Private Life of the Great Sage-Detective of Altdorf, As Recounted by his Faithful Manservant and Companion (a tawdry Moot-published pamphlet; the less said about it, the better) but also those partial truths which somehow seem to have become part of the Konniger legend. For example, it is sometimes popularly believed that Konniger travelled for some time in the company of that most fearsome of dwarf slayers, Gotrek Gurnisson. My wise and astute readers will, of course, immediately recognise that such legends have confused Konniger with the person of Felix Jaeger, a minor poet of the same era who is known to have served as the trollslayer’s companion for quite some time. It should be known, however, that in my continuing researches for this work, I have lately turned up intriguing information that suggests that Konniger may indeed have once crossed paths with the illustrious trollslayer and his human companion.

Alas, the truth of this possible encounter awaits full verification, and I beg my readers’ patience and indulgence in the hope that the details of this intriguing and hitherto unknown incident may form part of the narrative of one of the later volumes of this work.

With so many truths, half-truths, lies and foolish legends concerning Konniger in circulation, it can be bewildering to know exactly what to truly believe. Madman or genius? Heretic or the greatest mind of his age? Foolish amateur dilettante or noble and foremost opponent of the enemies of the mankind?

The truth, good reader, is to be found herein…

—from Konniger, the Enigma of Altdorf, by Dominik van Graal (Nuln University Press, in the Year of Lord Sigmar, 2604).

PART ONE

Buried Secrets, or

The Affair of the Araby Exhibit

Author’s note: Notoriously, any attempt to place Konniger’s case histories in chronological order can be problematic in the extreme, and, indeed, any well-intentioned endeavours to do so have already defeated the best attempts of several previous biographers. However, aided by information recently brought to light by the opening of an until-now classified section of the Church Archives and a few precious pages of Konniger’s own notes that have come into my possession, I now feel confident in assessing that the following case takes place between the already well-known and justly celebrated events of The Case of the Tsarina’s Pearls and the equally intriguing incidents surrounding The Puzzle of the Norscan Pirate. Those readers interested in Konniger’s ever-troubled relationship with his former brethren of the Church of Sigmar will, I am sure, find much here to further enlighten them.

“Zavant Konniger. I have urgent business with Zavant Konniger. Inform your master that I wish to see him immediately!”

Vido the halfling stepped back hurriedly as the silk-robed priest swept uninvited into the hallway, trailing tendrils of cold Altdorf river mist in his wake. It was late—from outside, Vido could hear a lone night-watchman calling the midnight hour—but unexpected visitors were not a rarity at the home of Zavant Konniger, Altdorf’s famous resident sage and mystic.

Still, in all his years of service, Vido could not remember an emissary of the Grand Theogonist ever come calling. Noticing the visitor’s obvious ill ease, Vido barely suppressed a gleeful smirk.

Matters must be serious indeed if the Cult of Sigmar had need to call upon the services of one of their most troublesome intellectual adversaries!

Vido bowed extravagantly, playing out the scene for all he was worth. “And your name, sir? How would you wish yourself announced to Herr Konniger?”

“Scribe-Magister von Heltz of the Church Archives,” the impatient priest snapped. “And be quick about it, halfling. I am here on urgent Church business.”

Leaving the priest alone in the hallway, Vido climbed the stairs towards his master’s study, smiling to himself. The only decoration back in the hallway was a particularly lewd Tilean pastoral landscape scene of satyrs and nymphs at play, and the haughty priest couldn’t help but notice it. The master had placed it there specifically to throw visitors off their guard, and Vido could only imagine the servant of Sigmar’s discomfort at being confronted with such a blatant display of typical Tilean decadence.

Vido knocked respectfully on the dark wood of the heavy study door, knowing that the inhabitant within would have already heard his footfalls on the stairs. In his time, the halfling had been one of the most light-footed cutpurses in the business, but he knew that very little escaped the notice of his master.

“Enter!” came the reply from within. Vido opened the door nervously, aware that his master disliked being disturbed at such a late hour. The sage spent most evenings in his study, poring over his research and compiling what he had often claimed would be his life’s work. “Chaos Theory,” Konniger called it. An academic examination and exploration of the many manifestations of the dread Powers of Chaos.

“A lot of nasty stuff best left well alone,” was what Vido called it and he still shuddered whenever he recalled the illustrations in some of the books that Konniger would forgetfully leave lying open on his desk. Still, Vido consoled himself, if the master was working then at least that meant he probably hadn’t been adding that damned powder into his pipe again…

Even to the halfling’s inhuman eyes, the study was dimly lit, and he wondered how the master could work in such conditions. The figure behind the desk looked up, the light from the single candle in the room reflecting a dull red glow in his eyes.

The pipe, thought Vido. The old devil’s definitely been at the pipe again. He’ll bring the Witch Hunters down upon us one day, and no excuses about intellectual ennui and consciousness expansion will save either of us from the stake.

“Yes?” enquired the voice of Zavant Konniger, as dry and dusty as the ancient worm-eaten volumes piled up on the desk in front of him.

“A visitor, master. A Herr von Heltz from the Church Archives. He demands an urgent audience with you.” Konniger’s eyebrows rose in question, and Vido knew his words had achieved their desired effect. After so many years in the service of the legendary Zavant Konniger, it was a selfish pleasure to have at least once caught the great sage by surprise. “We are honoured indeed, to receive such august company. Tell me, Vido: what are your impressions of our mysterious midnight caller?”

Vido hesitated, pudgy hands clasping and unclasping, feeling the expectant gaze of his master boring into him. Deduction and observation are the greatest tools we possess, Konniger had so often tried to teach him. All the facts are there to be deduced, if only your eyes and wits are sharp enough to catch them. His master was, as ever, testing him. Vido may have been a one-time alley thief and son of a lowly brewer from the Moot, but he had picked up a trick or two in his time with the famous sage-detective of Altdorf.

“He’s a priest of Sigmar, all right, although I’d wager my old dad’s horse and cart that he’s never preached a sermon in his life. Too young to have properly earned that scholarly rank of his by any honest means, and he’s no warrior-priest neither. Those hands are too soft to have ever swung a warhammer in battle. Von Heltz is a nob’s name. Most likely he’s the youngest idiot son of minor Empire aristocracy, sidelined into a career in the Church where his family hoped he could do the least amount of harm.”

Zavant smiled, nodding in satisfaction. “Exactly! A messenger boy, sent by his superiors to beg for help from that infamous old heretic Konniger. Show him in, Vido. Let the messenger boy be brought before us!”

Vido grinned. Oh yes, the master was going to enjoy this night’s adventure…

Vido scurried off and returned with the priest. The halfling servant had played out this piece of theatre countless times before with his master, but Vido had to admit that for anyone encountering Konniger for the first time, the great sage-detective made a powerful first impression.

He sat behind his desk, not yet deigning to notice their presence. He was a tall man, with a wiry physique that hinted at a life that had included a great deal more than scholarly pursuits and bookworm academia. Although he had never dared ask, Vido guessed his master to be somewhere in his late middle years. (Vido himself was almost twice as old but somehow always managed to feel very much the junior member of their partnership.)

Konniger’s hair, grey and thinning, was tied back in a style favoured more by Norse barbarians than one-time Professors Emeritus of Altdorf University, and the sage’s impressively cerebral forehead and great beak of a nose often reminded his companion of the elf warhawks in the aviary of the Imperial Zoo. And then, of course, there were the eyes. They blazed with a fierce intelligence, seeming to strip away all irrelevancies in their constant search for truth.

Vido coughed politely and Konniger raised his eyes on cue, seeming to notice them for the first time. “Ah, my dear Magister von Heltz. So sorry to keep you waiting, but I was distracted by a most embarrassing lapse of memory while compiling my current treatise on the reign of Magnus the Pious. Of course, as a librarian of the Church Archives, I’m sure you could furnish me with the right answer. Magnus’ famous Declaration of Nuln… was it issued in 2306 or 2307?”

“What? Well, yes… I—I think that would be right,” the priest stammered, clearly not having a clue what the sage was talking about.

Behind him, Vido stared intently at the cuticles of his hairy and horn-nailed toes, not daring to look up in case he burst out laughing at the awkward expression on the priest’s face. His master did enjoy his little games of intellectual one-upmanship, especially with his former brethren of the Church of Sigmar.

“Of course! How could I have been so forgetful!” Konniger smiled, pretending to scratch a correction on the manuscript in front of him. “Where would we be without the learned wisdom of the keepers of the Holy Archives? No doubt we could chatter on like this all night about the Blessed Magnus, but my servant tells me you are here on urgent and official business.”

At the mention of his mission, von Heltz regained some of his former aristocratic composure. He allowed his robes to fall open, revealing the chain of office round his neck. He casually toyed with it while he spoke, making sure that the gold warhammer sigil gleamed in the reflected candlelight. “Indeed, yes, Herr Konniger. I regret to say that there has been an… incident… tonight at the Church Archives. The Chief-Archivist himself has sent me to summon your assistance—”

Konniger lent forward suddenly in his chair and raised his hand for silence, abruptly cutting off the priest. “An incident?” he inquired sharply. “What kind of incident?”

Von Heltz hesitated, afraid to give away more than he intended under the stern gaze of the mighty sage. “A break-in at the Archives and the suspected theft of items from the Araby Collection.”

Vido noticed a subtle change in Konniger’s expression, and knew that his master’s recent request to view the same collection of Araby artefacts had been summarily turned down by the Chief-Archivist. Still, Konniger said nothing and allowed von Heltz to continue.

“Several deaths are also involved. As a loyal servant of Sigmar and former member of the priesthood, it is hoped that you would wish to do everything in your power to aid the Church. His Eminence the Chief-Archivist has also made it known that in return for your help, certain of the more, um, restricted tomes within his care would be made available to you for research purposes. Naturally, the Church would appreciate your well-known reputation for tact and a swift resolution in dealing with such delicate matters.”

Oh yes, thought Vido. It wouldn’t do for word to leak out that the Church had lost one of the treasures of the Bretonnian crusades. Especially since they were a goodwill gift to mark the recently-renewed alliance between Emperor Karl-Franz and King Louen Leoncouer. Still, he had to admit that they had used the right bait. If there was one thing that would capture Konniger’s attention it was old books and their nasty contents.

Konniger was already on his feet and heading out the door. He reached out without looking to grasp the cloak that he knew Vido would be holding out ready for him. “Say no more, my dear von Heltz. As a faithful servant of Sigmar, I am yours to command! I assume you have a carriage waiting. You can brief me on the rest of the details on the way to the archives.”

Vido sighed to himself as he struggled to keep up with his master’s long-legged stride down the stairs. He’d been looking forward to the late supper of beef and ale hotpot that was still waiting for him in the kitchen, and now he was on his way out in the middle of the night to who-knows-where, with Sigmar-knows-what waiting for them when they got there.

I should have listened to my old dad, thought Vido to himself, not for the first time. I should have stayed at home at the Moot and learned the brewing business, instead of running off to Altdorf to become a thief. At least then I wouldn’t have got mixed up with mad sage-mystics and all their strange business…

Trailing along grumpily in Konniger’s wake, Vido followed him through the maze of corridors and chambers that made up the ancient Hall of Archives, buried deep beneath the headquarters of the Church of Sigmar that itself made up one whole district of the city. The former thief had robbed too many churches in his time to ever feel comfortable on holy ground, and the eerie silence of this sepulchral warren only added to his uneasiness. From up ahead, the voices of Konniger and von Heltz echoed back down the corridor.

“The break-in was discovered only hours ago. The cathedral guard immediately sealed off all the gates, but it is assumed that the culprit is no longer within the church precincts.”

Konniger gave an unsurprised grunt. It was an open secret that the walls and crypts of the church were riddled with more secret passages than anyone had yet managed to map. The fact that so many previous holders of the office of Grand Theogonist had seen fit to create so many escape routes from the place spoke volumes more about Church politics than you could ever learn from any of the official histories, Konniger had once said.

Vido cast a speculative eye on the heavily barred and padlocked doors that lined the corridor on either side of him. Row upon row of them, stretching back as far as the eye could see… and behind each one, vaults crammed full of the treasures and relics of the Church. There was a lot of old junk—mouldy old books, the mildewed bones of saints and heroes, the blessed bedpan of Heimdal the Nineteenth or whatever—but there were real treasures in there too, he knew. The booty of two thousand years of holy wars and empire-building. So much of it that they hadn’t even got round to properly cataloguing it all yet.

Criminal, it is, Vido grumbled to himself. All this loot lying down here and going to waste. Why, if I wasn’t a reformed character these days…

Konniger’s voice shook him out of his reverie, reminding him who it was that had brought about that reformation.

“Vido! Your attention, please. We have matters to attend to other than your keen interest in the safekeeping of the contents of Sigmar’s vaults.”

“Master?” Vido looked up, meeting Konniger’s knowing look. Sometimes he almost believed that Konniger could read minds. Probably another side-effect of that damned powder, he swore silently to himself. He saw that they had reached the corridor’s end, and stood at the entrance to the large and well-lit chamber beyond. Bookshelves lined the walls, dusty and still incomplete inventories of the contents of those sealed vaults. More such books were piled up on the writing desks in the centre of the room, where scribes worked during the day to identify and classify the Church’s many treasures. One whole area of the chamber was stacked with boxes and packing crates, and Vido saw the definite gleam of gold amongst the debris.

It was only with some difficulty that he managed to turn his gaze towards the group of figures waiting to meet them . Vido saw the different coloured cloaks and cowls of whole hierarchies of different ranks of priesthood. He saw the shine of the polished weapons and armour of at least a dozen members of the cathedral guard. But it was the figure in the centre of the group that caught Vido’s attention, the solemn dark-robed figure whose lined and ancient face suggested that he might be almost as old and desiccated as many of the items kept under his care.

“Ah, Herr Konniger. So good to have you amongst us once again,” the Chief-Archivist said in a voice that suggested anything but. “I am pleased to see you respond so quickly to our request, but I am surprised that you have seen fit to involve another in the Church’s affairs.”

The Chief-Archivist’s gaze swept briefly over Vido with a look of what the halfling could only describe as withering contempt. At almost three and a half feet, Vido stood tall for one of his race, but at that moment he felt about as big as one of the grotesque homunculus creatures that Konniger kept preserved in brine-filled jars in a cupboard in his study.

Vido felt Konniger’s hand rest reassuringly on his shoulder as the sage stepped forward to meet the first challenge of the night. “My manservant, Vido. In his time in my service, I have found him to be of much help to me in investigations such as this. His presence here is one of the conditions by which I have agreed to come here tonight.”

Konniger and the Chief-Archivist locked eyes across the room. Vido remembered the stories about these two old intellectual adversaries, how the Chief-Archivist had once attempted to have Konniger burned at the stake on charges of heresy against the faith of Sigmar. The Chief-Archivist was first to break his gaze, turning away and making a gesture of obvious dismissal towards Vido, dispelling the halfling’s existence from his mind.

“As you will, Konniger. I had forgotten just how insistently stubborn you could be. I pray to Sigmar that you will bring these same qualities to bear on the matter in hand.”

“As do I, Herr Chief-Archivist,” Konniger said, nodding respectfully at his old rival. Now that both had made their point, they could proceed with their business together. “Your envoy provided me with some of the details on the journey here. I have been led to believe that two guards have been found slain, that it is suspected but as yet unconfirmed that items may have been stolen and that Brother Wollen, a novice-scribe here in the Archives, is missing and believed to be the culprit. Now, in any murder, I’ve always found it best to deal with the cadavers first…”

He had seen dead bodies before but death by strangulation always made Vido feel somewhat queasy. Call it an old thieves’ superstition, but the livid faces of the two dead guards, their eyes bulging out their sockets and their swollen tongues protruding from their slack mouths, was a sight he’d rather not spend too long contemplating.

There but for the grace of Ranald go I, the wiry little halfling decided, staring at the ugly black-and-purple ligature marks on the throats of both corpses and remembering the feel of the hangman’s noose round his own throat, that day atop the public gallows in Kaiser’s Platz. When, just seconds before the trapdoor opened, Vido first heard the voice of Zavant Konniger as the sage came striding up the steps of the gallows platform, bellowing at the hangman to stop and waving an Imperial decree of stay of execution in his hands.

“Pay attention, Vido. You’re not listening to a word I’m saying. How many times have I told you? Logical deduction and proper note taking are the principal cornerstones of any fieldwork investigation. Read back the last few observations I’ve just dictated to you!”

Vido scrabbled at the parchment in his hands, trying to make sense of the scratched quill marks written in that damnable shorthand code the sage had devised and insisted on teaching to his companion. They were in one of the empty vault rooms off the main corridor, now serving as a makeshift mortuary. The bodies of the two dead guards were laid out on trestle tables, with Konniger inquisitively poking and prodding at them.

“Lividity and estimated body temperature consistent with calculated time of theft…” Vido mumbled. “The two deceased only guards on duty in the lower archive chambers at this time… conclude that they were killed by assailants as a necessary, if cold-blooded, precaution against alarm being raised during commission of the main crime. Unfortunate that both cadavers have been removed from where they were found… possible loss of vital forensic evidence due to bumbling ignorance of uneducated amateurs.”

“And?” barked the ever-impatient Konniger.

“And that’s all you’ve said so far, so that’s all I’ve written!” his manservant protested. Konniger shot him a deadly glare. Vido began to suspect that they taught these kind of stares to young initiates at the divinity college located in the building above. “Sigmar’s Withering Stare”, they probably called it. The first weapon in the magical arsenal of any aspiring young priest.

“So, what are your conclusions?” Konniger pressed. “I’ve given you a head start, but the rest of the evidence is right in front of you. What would you say about the particular cause of death?”

“That they were strangled?” Vido offered, already mentally cringing in readiness for the intellectual onslaught he knew was about to come.

Konniger made a sound of impatient disgust at the back of his throat, a sound that back home in his study would usually act as a forewarning that some heavy object was about to be hurled in fury across the room. “Sigmar save us from halflings and half-wits, which mostly amounts to the same thing! I can see that they were strangled. Even those ham-fisted butchers at the College of Surgeons could see that they were strangled. Look at the pattern of ligature marks. Look at the way the wounds cut into the flesh of the throat. Look especially at the way the larynx and Adam’s apple have been crushed. Look at all this and now tell me about the particular cause of death!”

Overcoming his vague nausea, Vido leaned over the nearest corpse. He looked up into the expectant face of his master. “They’ve both been expertly garrotted?”

Konniger smiled, pleased to see that all those lessons in logical deduction had not been entirely wasted. “Exactly. Two garrotted guards—and garrotted in a most distinctive manner, I must point out; and the theft of an artefact from far-distant Araby. Come, Vido. Let’s go in search of the last few pieces of the puzzle, and see if our suspicions are correct.”

Vido scurried after Konniger as he strode imperiously out of the vault room. Pieces of the puzzle… see if our suspicions are correct, Vido repeated to himself, used to dwelling in the shadow of intellectual inferiority that his master seemed to cast on everyone around him. Typical. He may know what he’s talking about, but I’m as much in the dark now as when we arrived.

In the main archive chamber outside, the Chief-Archivist and his guards and assistants waited to hear Konniger’s findings. “Herr Chief-Archivist!” Konniger’s voice echoed shockingly loud in the high-vaulted room. “It is vital that I see the inventory of items that your missing scribe was working on at the time of his disappearance!”

The old priest bristled visibly in indignation at the tone of Konniger’s request, and behind him one of his younger acolytes gasped in disbelief. Clearly, the Chief-Archivist was not in the habit of taking orders from anyone below the rank of Grand Theogonist. He paused, allowing the last echoes of this insult to the dignity of his office to fade away, before choosing to reply in a voice that struggled to retain its authority. “Von Heltz. The inventory, if you please.”

Konniger almost snatched the leather-bound volume from the hands of the Chief-Archivist’s envoy, rapidly flicking through it and running one long thin finger down the list of illuminated entries, muttering to himself the whole time. “Sealed sarcophagi… no. Golden skull throne… no. Selection of silver death masks… no. Golden falcon statuette? Certainly not…”

Standing beside him, Vido shifted uncomfortably, well aware that his master’s behaviour could appear more than a little eccentric sometimes, and wondering how much tonight’s performance would add to Konniger’s reputation as the resident mad mystic of Altdorf.

“One large and unadorned clay jar, wax-sealed with imprint of unidentified pagan hieroglyph… ha! I knew it!”

Konniger slammed the book shut with a flourish of triumph, brandishing it at the Chief-Archivist. “Sigmar’s oath, man! Didn’t you recognise it? Didn’t any of you know what had unwittingly been passed into your care? Here we are in what is reputably one of the greatest repositories of learning in the known world, and only a lowly novice-scribe recognised this artefact for what it truly is!”

The Chief-Archivist drew himself up to his full height, glowering at Konniger with an air of haughty indignation. “My calling is the acquisition of knowledge concerning the greatness and glory of Sigmar, the Empire and the deeds of those who would faithfully serve them both. I leave the understanding of the heathen affairs of the savages of Araby to the likes of fools and novices.”

“Ah yes,” Konniger said as if thinking aloud, looking contemplatively around at the collection of unpacked Araby exhibits that filled the other half of the chamber. “Our missing novice, and the only piece of the puzzle still unaccounted for. What became of Brother Wollen, I wonder.”

Every eye in the room followed Konniger as he strode amongst the exhibits, his hands distractedly touching the many gold and bejewelled surfaces all around him as he continued his reasoning. “Quite the budding Araby scholar, I seem to remember. He corresponded with me on several occasions, seeking advice on a few points of particularly obscure Araby history.” Vido looked away, noticing the Chief-Archivist flinch at this remark; obviously correspondence with the theologically-suspect Konniger was not encouraged amongst young and impressionable initiates. “I was pleased to provide him with a few pointers in the right direction, but I became concerned with the darker tone that his researches were taking. I wrote to him with my concerns, but heard nothing more. I thought nothing of it at the time—I correspond with a large number of my fellow scholars on a variety of topics—but, alas, had I acted on my concerns, everything that has happened here might have been prevented.”

As he spoke, Konniger bent down to inspect the flagstones of the floor, nodding in confirmation at something he had found there, waving one arm at his manservant. “Vido, your eyes are sharper than mine. Your opinion, if you please, on these marks here.”

Vido greatly doubted this—Konniger’s senses were unusually sharp for a human—but hurried forward to take his place alongside his master. He bent down to study the spot indicated by Konniger, seeing the trail of two faint lines marked out in the dust of the floor. Vido had been involved in enough shady deeds in his time to recognise them instantly.

“Drag marks,” he confirmed, looking up at Konniger. “There’s been a body dragged across this floor, and not too long ago either.”

Konniger nodded in appreciation at Vido and started slowly pacing along the floor, following the trail of the near-invisible drag marks. Almost unwillingly, the Chief-Archivist and his guards and assistants followed after him, drawn into the spell of the mystery that Konniger was now unravelling before them.

“So what are we to suppose? That Brother Wollen, a young initiate scholar and certainly no expert assassin, succeeded in overpowering and garrotting two veteran guards? That he then stole one of the valuable Araby artefacts stored here and made his escape through one of the many secret tunnels that infest these vaults?”

“You have a better theory, Herr Konniger?” the Chief-Archivist sneered. “The facts speak for themselves. You were invited here tonight—against my strongest counsels, I might add—to aid the Church in the capture of this culprit and the recovery of whatever he has stolen, not to restate what is already clear to everyone here!”

Konniger never looked up from the flagstones as he followed the trail of marks through the labyrinth of unpacked artefacts and still-unopened crates, never allowing his concentration to waver as he replied to his old rival’s criticisms. “Let the facts speak for themselves, you say? Very well, then that is what we shall do. If Wollen didn’t kill the two guards—and I can tell you now for a fact that he did not—then someone else did; the same unknown accomplices whom Wollen, with his knowledge of Church secrets, was able to smuggle into the building through the network of tunnels.” Konniger stopped, pausing either to check that he had not lost the trail or to ensure that his audience was still hanging on his every word.

Then he was moving again, quicker this time as he neared both the end of the trail of marks on the floor and the end of his argument. “I have no doubt that you have already checked the inventory and found that the most valuable and easily portable items can still all be accounted for. It will take days to go through the rest of the items on the list, but I tell you now for a fact that you will find only one item missing: Large and unadorned clay jar, one, wax-sealed with imprint of unidentified pagan hieroglyph. A mundane item of apparently little value, especially compared to the many other riches on offer here. So the facts leave us with three unanswered questions: why was only this one particular item stolen; who were Wollen’s accomplices; and where is Brother Wollen now?”

Konniger had come to a dead stop, standing before the gleaming shape of a large golden sarcophagus standing upright against the far wall of the archive chamber. Adorned in the usual elaborate style of the tomb treasures of Araby, its golden glow seemed to light up that whole area. Konniger stared at it in contemplation, the death-mask features of some long-dead Araby king carved into its hinged lid eerily returning his stare.

“Vido, would you join me here for a second and tell me what you see.”

Vido shuffled nervously forward to join his master. He didn’t mind being this close to so much loot, but he had heard all manner of unpleasant tales about these Araby sarcophagi and the horrible things they sometimes contained.

“Your apprehension is understandable,” Konniger commented, again uncannily picking up on Vido’s thoughts, “but you’ve nothing to worry about in this case. Dead or undead, whatever was originally laid to rest in here would have long ago been put to the torch by our noble Bretonnian allies when they liberated it during the crusades. Properly sealed again, it would have made an amusing decorative piece for the baronial hall of some Bretonnian lord. Now, your appraisal, if you please.”

Vido ran his hands speculatively over the inlaid surface of the sarcophagus lid. The old thief in him admired the fine work on the goldleafing and mentally estimated what such an item might fetch on the open market, while the newly-found detective in him searched for the clue here that Konniger had evidently already found and was perhaps trying to lead him to…

“Sealed!” Vido shouted, suddenly realising what his master had been hinting at. “The seal on the lid has been broken, but when you read from the inventory earlier, all the sarcophagi were listed as having their seals still intact!”

“Exactly,” Konniger commented as he swung open the hinged lid. Vido barely managed to get out of the way of the stiff-armed corpse that fell out of the open sarcophagus. Konniger bent down, casually turning it over to reveal the body of a young man dressed in a plain novice’s habit, his hair tonsured in the severe style of an initiate of the Church of Sigmar. The corpse’s face was bloated and livid, the garrotte wire that had killed him still buried deep within his throat. Konniger looked up calmly, taking in the horrified expressions on the faces of the Chief-Archivist and his entourage.

“Now, I’ve never actually met the young man in question, so would any of you gentlemen care to confirm that this is indeed the mortal remains of the missing Brother Wollen?”

“That wasn’t even nearly funny,” Vido complained, taking another long gulp from Konniger’s hip flask, hoping that the strong Bretonnian brandy would help wash away the memory of the swollen-faced corpse lurching towards him out of the sarcophagus. “And you still haven’t explained what this is all about.”

Konniger sat beside him in the richly upholstered interior of the coach, looking out of the window as they galloped at breakneck speed through the dark and empty streets of predawn Altdorf. Everything had happened so fast since the discovery of Brother Wollen’s body and Vido—even with the benefit of his master’s fine taste in spirits—was still struggling to catch up with the subsequent chain of events.

He remembered the look on the face of the Chief-Archivist, the old man still too shocked to object as Konniger took command of the situation and requisitioned his personal coach and a retinue of cathedral guards. He remembered the race through the corridors of the Archives and the sight of the coach waiting for them in the courtyard above, with Konniger barking one single command, “The river-docks, and quickly!” to the liveried coachman. And now they were almost there, the chill river mists outside growing thicker as they neared the wharves. From outside Vido could also hear the clatter of horses’ hooves on the slick cobblestones, a retinue of guard cavalry riding alongside the coach.

“Araby,” Konniger said by way of a reply, still gazing out into the misty gloom. Vido thought he could see the first blush of dawn light through the fog. “As I said before, everything in this affair connects back to Araby. I should have realised the growing danger when that young fool Wollen first wrote to me asking my help in identifying one particular Araby hieroglyph.” As he spoke, his finger traced quick strokes through the condensation on the rough glass window of the coach. Vido leaned across the seat, seeing nothing but a meaningless jumble of intersecting lines and squiggles.

“I feigned ignorance, advising him to drop the matter and pursue other, more promising subjects of research. Had I thought about it more closely, I would have realised that he had already guessed its meaning and was merely seeking confirmation of his secret discovery.” Konniger abruptly wiped his hand across the window, erasing all trace of the symbol he had described there.

“That symbol, was it the same as the one on the seal of the missing clay jar?” Vido ventured.

“Indeed,” Konniger replied. “One of the most potent symbols of Araby magic, put there centuries ago to contain the spirit of the desert daemon imprisoned within the jar.”

Vido coughed, spluttering up a mouthful of brandy. Ancient Araby magic… Imprisoned desert daemons… What had the master got them into this time?

“I first knew for sure what we were dealing with when I saw the garrotte wounds on the throats of those dead guards,” Konniger continued evenly. “Only one group I know kills in that distinctive style, and only one thing would have brought them this far north from their desert lairs.”

Vido took another healthy swig from the hip flask, knowing that whatever Konniger was going to say next, it definitely wasn’t going to be to the halfling’s liking.

“I assume you’ve never heard of the Cult of Ishmail, Vido? Few outside of Araby have. They worshipped the foul gods of Chaos, and daemons walked freely amongst them in human form. Their power was finally broken centuries before the Bretonnian crusades when a combined army of Araby tribes laid siege to their mountain fortress.

“The fortress finally fell, with a cabal of sorcerers defeating the cult’s daemonic masters. These creatures could not be destroyed, but were instead imprisoned in magical vessels, which were then carefully hidden the length and breadth of Araby. But remnants of the cult still survive to this day, dedicated to finding these magical prisons and releasing the daemons contained within.”

Vido hesitated, trying to take all this in. “So the clay jar in the archives was one of these, um, things, stolen by some Bretonnian knight during the crusades and eventually ending up here without anyone ever knowing what it really was?”

Konniger looked at him expectantly, waiting for his manservant to progress to the next logical link in the chain of events. Realisation suddenly dawned in the halfling’s eyes.

“Wollen! Wollen must have recognised it and got word to these maniacs about what he had discovered and where it could be found. But Ranald’s eye, why would he have done that?”

Konniger sat back in his seat, rubbing his eyes in weariness and accepting the proffered hip flask from Vido. “For gold, most likely. He seemed an ambitious sort, and wouldn’t have been content as a mere novice-scribe.

“No, he dreamed of life as a great sage and scholar, but scholars need books and expensive libraries, and the freedom to be able to continue their work without worrying about where the next purse of gold crowns is coming from. After providing the Ishmailis with details of one of the secret routes into the archives, he probably thought it was just going to be a straightforward robbery. I imagine, when he saw the guards being garrotted, he belatedly began to realise what his own fate was going to be.”

Konniger drained the last of the contents of the flask, absent-mindedly tucking it away within one of the many inside pockets of his voluminous Kislev-style cloak. “Alas, as he found to his cost, those who would sup with the servants of Chaos should bring a long spoon to the feast.”

Vido was still puzzling over that last comment—“Konnigerisms” he called them—when he heard the loud rumble of the coach wheels trundling across thick wooden planks. A bridge, he realised. We’re crossing the river. Then that must mean we’re almost at the—

“The docks!” he said suddenly. “You haven’t explained why we’re going to the docks!”

Konniger smiled before replying. “You know I study with great interest the comings and goings of the river traffic along the Reik. In a place such as Altdorf, it often pays to know just who or what is entering or leaving the city. Why, just two days ago, I noted the arrival of an Araby merchant caravel and thought it strange that such an exotic vessel—a rare sight even in the port of Marienburg—should be found this far upriver.”

“Then the thieves—” interrupted Vido.

“Are already safely back aboard with their stolen cargo and preparing their flight from the city,” Konniger nodded. “The river gates guarding the harbour are closed during the hours of darkness. They have had to wait until first light to make their escape.”

Vido glanced out of the window, noting the look on the face of the startled watchman at the entrance to the harbour as a full squad of cavalry and a coach bearing the coat of arms of the Church of Sigmar thundered past him. Beyond, Vido could see the harbour itself, with rows of river barges sitting waiting at the loading quays, and the telltale smoke stack of one of the new river steamers firing up its boilers in readiness of an early morning departure.

And there, silhouetted against the rising sun, he saw the outline of an unfamiliar-looking vessel which was even now slipping away from its moorings and heading towards the open river gates…

Vido suddenly panicked as he felt the coach door swing open before him, threatening to send him spilling out of the compartment. At the same time he felt Konniger grab him by the scruff of the neck, safely pulling him back in just as the sage himself leaned fully out of the open door and called out to the figure riding at the head of cavalry group. “Herr Captain. The river gates! Secure the river gates and close up the mouth of the harbour!”

The soldier raised a mailed fist in acknowledgement, already leading his men towards the gatehouse containing the mechanism that opened and shut the river gates. Two of his men had died at the hands of the thief-assassins, and Vido didn’t doubt the man’s determination to stop the killers’ getaway.

“Will that be enough to stop the ship escaping?” Vido asked in trepidation, noticing that Konniger was still standing at the open door of the speeding coach and hadn’t yet relinquished his grip on his manservant’s cloak collar.

“I doubt it. It will take several minutes to wind the river gates shut again, and by that time the Araby ship will have left the harbour.”

Oh no, here it comes, thought Vido, feeling Konniger’s grip tighten on his collar and shutting his eyes in anticipation of what he knew was going to happen next.

“We’ve got to get aboard the ship and slow it down,” Konniger said, as if he were announcing a sojourn to the nearest alehouse.

And then they were falling, tumbling out of the speeding coach as it rattled along the quayside. Vido kept his eyes tightly shut, thinking of the many sharp and hard-edged objects that usually littered every harbour he’d ever seen, and then the breath was knocked out of him as they landed on top of a large pile of grain sacks. Whether Konniger had known it had been there or not before jumping was something the halfling would never learn, because they were already on their feet and running up one of the wooden jetties. Ahead, Vido could see the even now sleep-dulled crew of a river barge loading barrels into the hold of their vessel and, just beyond, the sleek shape of the Araby vessel, sliding into view.

“Faster!” Konniger yelled, redoubling his pace and actually picking up his manservant and bodily carrying him down the jetty.

The crew of the river barge visibly gawped at the apparition that suddenly appeared before them—the Empire’s most distinguished scholar-sage, with his cloak spread out behind him, halfling hanging from his arm, charging out of the morning mist and leaping aboard their ship. Konniger didn’t break stride, running across the deck, snatching a boathook out of the hands of a dumbfounded bargeman and using it to pole-vault straight over the other side of the vessel.

He landed sure-footedly on the deck of the caravel as it eased past the moored barge, the shock sending Vido tumbling from his master’s shoulders. Vido rolled, absorbing the impact of the fall with the natural agility of a born cat burglar. Vido jumped to his feet, alert to everything around him and drawing the two cutpurse daggers that he habitually kept hidden inside his doublet.

Old habits die hard, he thought grimly, and now’s where we see whether nearly breaking my neck twice in the last half-minute has been worth the effort.

The question of whether or not they had landed on the right vessel soon became an academic point, Vido thought, as just about every Araby crewman in sight charged at them in attack. Konniger expertly swung the boathook as if it was a quarterstaff, using the strange but effective fighting style that he claimed to have learned from a travelling wise man from legendary Cathay. Vido didn’t know anything about that, but he did know that Konniger could break heads with the best of them when he wanted to. The weapon in Konniger’s hand was a blur of motion, parrying sword blows, jabbing into vulnerable nerve points or connecting hard with turban-covered skulls. The crew of the Araby vessel retreated, leaving three of their number lying unmoving on the deck at Konniger’s feet.

Lurking forgotten on the sidelines of the battle—a skill he’d spent years perfecting—Vido saw a dark figure hanging from the rigging above Konniger’s head. Its face was hidden by the same kind of dark veil worn by many of the crew and Vido saw the razor-edged glint of the garrotte wire in its hands as it leaned out above its intended victim. Two blinks later and the assassin tumbled from the rigging, one of Vido’s finely-balanced throwing knives buried hilt-deep in its throat.

“What are you doing, you Moot-born cretin?” was the bellowed response from Konniger. “I’m doing the fighting. You’re supposed to be doing something to slow down this damned boat!”

Vido cursed, noting that Konniger’s shout had alerted just about everyone else aboard ship to his presence. One of the crew turned and ran towards him. Vido couldn’t help but notice the writhing mass of tentacle tattoos that covered most of the Chaos cultist’s body, but on the whole his main attention was fixed on the bloodthirsty look on the man’s face and the heavy scimitar blade in his hand. Vido ducked, avoiding the swinging scimitar, and rolled between the cultist’s legs, stabbing upward with his one remaining knife as he did so. A loud but satisfying scream told him that his assailant could look forward to a new career as a harem guard at the court of one of those fabulously wealthy Araby sultans he had heard tales about.

Now what? Vido asked himself, rolling clear of the falling body of the cultist and finding himself at the pointy-shaped front end of the ship. I’m a halfling. I come from a race with a long and proud tradition of staying well away from wide open stretches of water, so what do I know about boats? He paused for a second, kicking over a barrel into the path of another group of cultists running up the deck towards him.

Think about it, Vido, came a voice in his head that sounded worryingly like Konniger’s, as he watched the cultists either fall over the obstacle or slip in the spreading pool of oil and pitch that came sloshing out of the barrel as it rolled along the deck. Boats have big sail things to make them go when it’s windy and those oar things for when it’s not. So what do they have to make them stop?

One of the cultists leaped over the spreading pool of oil and came at Vido with a garrotte wire wrapped round his lists. Vido neatly sidestepped, tripping his attacker with an outstretched hairy foot. The cultist fell forward, smacking face first into a rope-wound capstan wheel at the side of the deck and setting it into rapid motion. Vido heard the ominous splash of something heavy falling off the front of the ship, followed closely by the scream of the cultist as he became entangled in the unwinding rope and was catapulted over the side of the ship.

“Bravo, Vido!” came a bellow from Konniger. “Even if they manage to weigh anchor again, it’ll be too late to escape from the harbour!”

Although clueless about what Konniger was talking about, Vido was distracted enough by his master’s unexpected praise to almost miss the flaming missile that buried itself into the deck a few feet away from him. An arrow, he realised. One of those gung-ho cathedral guard types on the shore was aiming for the sail and trying to set it on fire. As Vido watched, the burning arrowhead set light to a pool of spilled pitch and oil, instantly creating a flickering trail of fire that sped along the length of the deck heading straight back towards—

“Master! Look out!” Vido screamed, throwing himself forward over the trail of flame just as it reached the stack of barrels where he had been standing. He rolled through the circle of cultists surrounding his master and cannonballed straight into him, knocking Konniger’s feet away from under him.

“Vido, what in Morr’s name do you think—” was as far as the outraged sage managed to get before the ship’s prow erupted into a roaring ball of fire. Vido pinned Konniger to the deck as a wave of flame heat washed over them. One of the Araby cultists, wreathed head to foot in flames, stumbled past, screaming and blindly clawing at the burning air around him. Searing gobbets of oil and pitch rained down all around them, setting alight the rest of the ship or landing hissing and spluttering in the waters of the harbour.

Vido felt the deck lurch beneath him as the shattered front end of the ship sank into the water. Well, at least the water will put the fire out, he consoled himself, before a loud splintering sound announced that the burning mast and sail were about to collapse on top of them.

Vido grabbed Konniger, dragging him across the deck towards the side of the ship. Konniger shrugged him off, pointing towards the open hatch of the cargo hold. “The daemon jar! It’s somewhere down there! We must recover it! We must ensure that it is returned to a proper place of safekeeping. Somewhere where the Ishmailis can never again find it!”

Vido stared in disbelief at his master, noting that Konniger was oblivious to the fact that his own cloak had been set alight by the falling hail of burning oil. Vido glanced at the entrance to the cargo hold, tongues of flame already leaping from the open hatch, and then at the burning mast looming over them.

Quickly calculating the odds between two different ways to certain death and the chance of continued living, Vido made his move, taking firm hold of his master and pushing him hard over the side of the ship. Vido hit the water a heartbeat later, showered in a cloud of firefly-like embers sent up as the burning mast and rigging collapsed and crashed through the decking of the ship.

Swallowing his first mouthful of harbour water, Vido remembered an important fact that his subconscious had been carefully blocking out until now.

Halflings can’t swim!

“Bleeauuugh!” Vido leaned over the side of the rowboat, vomiting up another stomachful of foul-tasting water and vowing to take issue the next time he heard some drunken riverboatman singing one of those alehouse songs about the clean clear waters of the rolling River Reik.

For his part, Konniger sat at the stern of the boat the cathedral guard had launched to rescue them, staring gloomily at the burning wreck of the caravel as it finally sank below the surface. “Maybe all is not lost,” he said, speaking for the first time since the two of them had been pulled out of the water. “The harbour mouth isn’t so deep. Maybe the wreck could be raised and the contents of its hold still be recovered.”

One of the oarsmen on the boat looked up, shaking his head in disagreement.

“Not very likely this time of year, sir. Spring thaw’s got the river swollen to bursting, and them strong undercurrents come right under the gates and into the harbour and sweep away anything lying on the bottom. Whatever you were after, the river’s got it now, and old Father Reik don’t give up anything he’s got until he’s carried it right past Marienburg and out to sea.

“No, sir, neither you nor anyone else will be finding that cargo again.”

Vido looked up, hacking up the last of the river water and catching the look of sudden realisation in Konniger’s eyes. “‘A proper place of safekeeping’ you said,” the halfling murmured.

“Somewhere the cult can never again find it,” echoed Konniger. And the oarsmen continued rowing towards the shore, wondering why their two battered, burned and half-drowned passengers were both suddenly bellowing together with laughter.

PART TWO

Red Moon Over Altdorf, or

The Case of the Morrsliebnacht Murders

Author’s Note. Readers, perhaps excited by the rumours that circulated when it became generally known that the author was commencing work on this tome you now have before you, may be expecting at this point to learn something of the details of the ever-mysterious Case of the Emperor’s Envoy. Regretfully, it has not been possible to provide any kind of published account of this incident. The documentary evidence needed is still under lock and key within the Imperial Archives, and it would seem that the full truth of the affair is still deemed too sensitive for public airing, even now, more than a century after the event. Indeed, certain parties have made it known to the author that it would not be in the best interests of his health and continued well being if he were to make public any of the inconclusive and fragmentary knowledge he has managed to gather regarding this case.

So, alas, good readers, it seems that for now The Case of the Emperor’s Envoy must take its place alongside those other lost Konniger cases about which much is speculated, but little is truly known. Like The Affair of the Tilean Rat-Idol and The Mystery of the Albion Monolith perhaps it is a tale which the world is not yet ready to hear.

In compensation, I offer instead the following case notes, which I believe will provide some interesting and, in light of the recent thinly-veiled threats made against the author’s person, timely information on the much-debated details of Konniger’s involvement with the Imperial security services at various points throughout his career.

Chronologically, I have been able to place this case as occurring between the grim events of The Legacy of the Last Heir of Drakwald Keep and the more whimsical proceedings of The Adventure of the Poisoned Halfling Chef.

Blades, cruel and sharp, scratching on worn stone. Wan and sickly moonlight—Morrslight—ebbs down through a thin veil of clouds, casting shifting shadow patterns on the flag-stoned street. Faint chimes ripple from the wind-stirred charms that superstitious fools hang in the doorways of their homes to ward off evil on the nights when Morrslieb waxes full.

The killer stretches, enjoying the exquisite sensation of the magic-born light playing across its body. It shivers in delight, drawing new strength from the unholy radiation shining down upon it, and raises its head, inhuman eyes altering to receive the invisible spectrum of secrets revealed only under the cold radiance of its heavenly patron.

From its rooftop perch, it casts its magic-altered sight over the city below. The killer is old, ancient as its human cattle prey would reckon such things, and it has gazed out upon this scene many, many times before. Revealed under the light of Morrslieb, it sees the many different incantations it has known of this one city. Images and scenes blur and overlap. Tower-shapes rise and fall across the shifting time spectrum as the killer’s gaze takes it back through centuries of growth and destruction.

A blink, and it sees the city in flames as rival claimants to a vacant throne tear an empire apart in civil war. And it is there too, running in true form amongst the rioting crowds that fill the streets. It moves freely amongst them, just another horror in a night full of them, snapping its jaws in hunger and pulling down victim after screaming victim. Raising its bloody snout from the throat of its latest kill, it lets out a howl of exhilaration to the red bright moon overhead.

A second blink, and it sees the city as a necropolis, cloaked in a pall of fear and despair as plague stalks the streets and decimates its population. Few lights burn in the darkness—even the Imperial palace lies dark and mostly deserted—and those that still live cower in their homes, waiting for the plague spectre to finally pass over the city. But the killer has no fear of mere disease and it prowls the empty streets unafraid, knowing that on this night none will dare venture out in answer to the screams of their neighbours.

The killer looks again, dimly glimpsing the very first incarnation of the city through the shades of all the others that came after. It sees a sunlit village on the banks of a wide fast-flowing river. It watches as the village’s inhabitants run to greet a party of warriors returning from the woods. The killer’s gaze is drawn to the tall figure at the head of the hunting party, a proud barbarian chieftain with hair like the sun, wielding a great dwarf warhammer. The killer was much younger then, its mystic senses far cruder and undisciplined, but even so it could perceive the invisible nimbus of light surrounding the barbarian. The killer growled to itself, unsettled by the sight of this bright being, and slunk back off into the comforting darkness of the forest. Time and time again, in the many centuries to come, it would make sure that the children of the tribe of Sigmar would pay for the shameful fear it felt for the first time that day.

It shakes its heavy head, dispelling such visions, and alters its gaze to a different spectrum. Now it sees the fatelines of thousands of human lives interconnecting across the face of the city, forming bright and confused patterns of colour and providence. Many such lines interconnect with itself, and one already fading line leads back to the torn, bleeding thing lying somewhere in the alleys below. The killer studies the pattern of lines than fan out from it, sensing the short and shallow lives of several soon-to-be victims who wait unsuspecting at the end of each one. Several of the fatelines lead promisingly towards the imposing shape of the Imperial palace—the killer had always considered aristocratic blood to be a rare savoury treat—but one other intriguing possibility leads off on a tangent towards the city’s academic quarter, a rambling maze of bookshops, libraries and dusty old sage-dens clustered around the University.

The killer studies this new fateline, its snout twitching in anticipation at the rich scent of the life at the other end. Its mouth fills with hot juices, its jaws dripping with drool as it considers the complexities—and promises—of this new challenge. This new hunt that has suddenly been revealed. A new hunt, but on familiar territory. Altdorf was a very old hunting ground, one it visited every century or so, but which never ceased to offer something new.

The killer raises its snout and howls, offering up a prayer of thanks to its patron moon Morrslieb, second moon of the Old World.

Red moon.

Killer’s moon.

Chaos moon.

Zavant Konniger awoke with a start. There was the taste of something thick and unpleasant in his mouth, and he reached for the glass of red wine he kept by his bedside, cursing when he found it empty. Mixed with certain herbs, the Reiklander wine made an effective sleeping draught, keeping at bay the dreams which often haunted him on nights such as this, nights when the Chaos moon waxed strong. He sat up, the chill night air cooling the sweat that covered his face and glanced out of the window, noticing with a sense of vague irritation that his ever-superstitious manservant had hung one of those moon-warding charms from the top of the open window. Morrslieb itself hung high in the sky, casting its baleful influence over the city below and filling Konniger’s bedchamber with a strangely limpid, translucent light. Konniger’s eyes ached in reaction to the otherworldly light. There was no mirror in the room, but he knew that if he could witness his own reflection he would see a dull but unmistakable red glow in his eyes. He had made the study and opposition of Chaos his life’s work, but on nights such as this he keenly felt the side-effects of the minute doses of warp-stuff which he had imbibed over the years in order to better understand the workings of his enemy.

Konniger gazed through the open window at the city beyond, his mind chasing the stray phantom memory of whatever premonition had awoken him from his sleep. He closed his eyes in concentration, seeing flashing teeth ripping into soft flesh and razor claws sparking off stone cobbles, but when he opened them again there was only the shimmering red disc of Morrslieb mocking him in the sky above. Something, he thought to himself. Something is abroad out there and stalking my city.

He reached for the rope-pull at the side of his bed, throwing off the covers and grabbing the robes lying nearby. After a moment, from far downstairs, he could hear his servant’s footsteps and muttering voice coming up the stairs in answer to the ringing bell. Konniger paused to smile to himself. For someone who was once reputedly the stealthiest cutpurse in the Empire, the halfling could make quite a racket when he wanted to broadcast his unhappiness at being roused in the middle of the night.

Vido opened the door, the light from the candle in his hand intensifying the ache in the sage-detective’s eyes and causing him to flinch in discomfort. “You rang?” Vido grumbled, in his best disgruntled servant tone.

“I fear our services will soon be called upon before the night is out, Vido. Give my courtier robes a dust down and put on that servant’s livery suit that I know you hate wearing so much. Both of us must look our best when the messenger from the Imperial palace arrives.”

Vido was unhappy. He was unhappy at being up and about at such an early hour. He was even more unhappy at finding himself in a stinking back alley that only a few hours before had apparently been used as a convenient stopover point by every late night reveller on their way home from an evening of over-indulgence at the nearby Street of a Thousand Taverns. He would normally have been deeply unhappy that he hadn’t eaten yet, but the sight of the mutilated corpse lying at the far end of the alley had since made all immediate thought of food a queasy and unappealing prospect. He was truly unhappy at being surrounded by so many members of the City Watch. A cordon of them, cudgels at the ready, were keeping at bay the restless mob that went part in parcel with any unusual event on the streets of the Empire’s capital city. Most of all, he was especially unhappy at the wretched servant’s uniform that Konniger had insisted he wear for the occasion, and for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning he tugged uncomfortably at the stiff collar which constantly chafed against his neck. Zavant Konniger, deep in conversation with the dark-cloaked figure kneeling over the corpse, certainly gave no indication of noticing his servant’s unhappiness.

“They do say, Herr Konniger, that one can sometimes discern the identity of a killer by staring into the eyes of the cadaver. The last thing the victim saw—the face of their killer—is imprinted forever on the retina of their eyes.” The witch hunter looked up expectantly from where he knelt over the corpse, waiting to gauge Konniger’s reaction.

Konniger met the gaunt witch hunter’s gaze, confidently meeting the casual challenge. “Indeed. I have heard similar notions. As I have also heard the theory that a system could be devised to identify criminals from the patterns and marks on the skin of their fingertips, with every criminal unwittingly leaving their own invisible but identifiable signature at the scene of each crime. If only such fanciful notions were true, Herr van Sandt, then perhaps both our duties would be far less taxing. Not that your observation would have much bearing in this particular case, since the killer has seen fit to remove not only most of the victim’s face, but also both of his eyes.”

Vido had seen witch hunters do various unusual things in his time. He had seen them foaming at the mouth in a blaze of righteous anti-heretical fury. He had seen them flay the skin off their own backs in a zealous display of the joys of purification and self-chastisement. He had seen them weep and gnash their teeth in woeful despair as one heretic after another confessed their guilt. Once he had even seen one witch hunter show a rare flash of mercy and allow a heretic to be garrotted at the stake before the flames even reached them. But this one here, this Marius van Sandt, Imperial-appointed witch hunter and blessed of Sigmar, actually did something that Vido had never seen one of his kind do before. He smiled. Not the thin-lipped smile of secret pleasure that often flickered across a witch hunter’s face during the torture of suspected evildoers, but a genuine smile of amusement, one that spread all the way to his dark glittering eyes.

The witch hunter stepped forward, taking care, Vido noted, to keep his trailing cloak clear of the pool of congealed blood around the corpse, and extended a handshake to Konniger. “A pleasure to finally meet you, Herr Konniger. Your name and work is familiar even to an uncultured fanatic such as myself. In particular, I have found your notes on Gottlieb the Stern’s Treatis Necris and the theories you advanced in your own Principia Chaotica to be of much use to me in my own work.”

Konniger smiled—Vido knew that intellectual flattery was one of his master’s main weaknesses—and gave a nod of pleased acknowledgement as he took van Sandt’s proffered handshake. “You give me too much credit, Herr van Sandt. As Leonardo da Mirigliano was reputed to have said, ‘If I have seen further than others, it is only because I have stood upon the shoulders of giants’.”

The witch hunter had been here since before they arrived, apparently summoned to the crime scene by the same palace decree that had roused Konniger and Vido out of their beds so early this morning.

Witch hunters were rare in Altdorf, Vido knew. The Church of Sigmar had its headquarters here, and, while the often overzealous heretic hunters were free to ply their business in many of the more distant rural provinces of the Empire, here in the capital the Church preferred to deal with such matters itself. That someone within the Imperial palace had seen fit to allow a witch hunter to operate on the streets of Altdorf was unusual enough, but it was the presence of an even more ominous figure in the alley that troubled Vido the most. He still remembered the shock of recognition that ran through him as he and Konniger had arrived at the scene under escort and had caught their first glimpse of the grey-garbed figure waiting for them at the entrance to the alley.

Steiner! he had thought, with a thrill of fear. Ranald’s teeth, whatever business we’ve got ourselves mixed up in now, things must be serious indeed if someone has seen fit to let the Emperor’s pet hunting hound off its leash!

Officially, Vaul Steiner was merely the Emperor’s personal bodyguard. Unofficially, and in an open secret known by everyone in Altdorf, he was the Emperor’s personal assassin, one of the most feared killers in the Empire and a man who had sworn his loyalty wholly and completely to the Imperial House. Steiner’s skills with sword, dagger and crossbow were legendary, and Vido and the rest of Altdorf had seen him out-fence and out-shoot every challenger at the public games held every year in the Kaiserplatz to celebrate the Emperor’s birthday. However, Vido had also heard the stories of the many other skills Steiner exhibited, in the torture chambers beneath the palace, where it was rumoured that he could keep a suspect alive and in agony for weeks if necessary—until they would gladly implicate their own children in a plot against the Emperor if it would mean that Steiner would grant them a quick death.

Right on cue, Vido heard the soft scrape of the Imperial assassin’s hunting boots on the cobblestones behind him. In his worn boots, plain and threadbare clothes and patched cloak, the Imperial assassin looked every inch the forest huntsman he once was as he swept along the alley towards Konniger and the witch hunter. Vido instinctively shrunk against the rough brickwork of one of the alley walls, meriting no more than a casual glance from the assassin as he passed by. Looking into Steiner’s cold grey eyes for a second, Vido remembered what the members of his old thieves’ fraternity used to whisper about the sinister Reiklander: He never forgets a face, Steiner. One look, and he’s got you measured up and marked away in his mind for the rest of your days.

The assassin stopped short before the two figures bent down over the corpse, neither of them apparently noticing him. He shifted uneasily and loudly cleared his throat to catch their attention. “Good sirs,” he growled, in a voice akin to those of the wolves he once hunted in the wild forests of the Reikland. “If you have finished your inspection of the cadaver, I have a carriage waiting to take you to the palace. His Excellency the Lord Chamberlain awaits your findings with much impatience.”

It was dark in the Chamberlain’s personal staterooms. The thick drapes were closed, as was often the tradition on the days surrounding Morrsliebnacht, when the Chaos moon was visible in the day sky and even the sunlight had a pale and unhealthy quality to it. The only light came from the lit fireplace, before which sat the hunched figure of the Chamberlain. Konniger and van Sandt sat facing him and they could both sense the grey shadowy presence of Steiner standing silently but no doubt alertly close by. The Chamberlain leaned forward, pouring himself a glass of the familiar sickly sweet mulled wine which Konniger remembered so well.

Konniger looked at the gnarled and withered hand holding the wine goblet. The Iron Graf, they called him, he thought. Old and weak he may be now, but there was still a soul forged in iron within that failing body.

Graf Otto von Bitternach, Lord Chamberlain to both Emperor Karl-Franz and his father Emperor Luitpold before him, settled into his great leather-padded-chair and sipped loudly at the goblet of wine in his shaking hands. He was a small wizened man, his sunken eyes rheumy with age, with only a few wisps of white hair left on his bald, liver-spotted head, but Konniger wasn’t fooled. He had heard that the wily old spymaster and diplomat sometimes affected an air of senility these days, but the Iron Graf’s position at the heart of Imperial politics was as secure now as it had been for the past half century. If Vaul Steiner was the Emperor’s favourite hunting hound, then the Graf was the packmaster who had bred and trained him for the role.

“You have examined the corpse, no doubt?” Graf Otto rasped, looking at Konniger. “What are your conclusions?”

Konniger set down his wine glass and composed himself before answering. “Foul play has been committed, certainly. But it was not a robbery-turned-murder. The victim had wealth—we found letters of credit on him identifying him as a grain merchant from Marienburg—but his killer left a full purse of gold behind him. And Altdorf’s footpads and cut-purses may be an occasionally bloodthirsty lot, but I have yet to meet one who would make a habit of ripping out his victims’ throats with his bare teeth.”

“Surely it is the work of some wild animal, then? Some beast loose within the city walls?”

Konniger paused, sensing that he was being tested. “Animals kill for food. Whatever killed this poor unfortunate did so only for its own savage pleasure. The fleshier parts of the corpse were untouched and the fact that the killer removed the victim’s face—stripped it clean away from the bone, indeed—suggests a greater and more malign intelligence than some simple hungry forest predator is at work here. I assume, of course, that there have been other victims previous to this one?”

Konniger’s sudden question was directed at Graf Otto, but it was the until-now silent figure of the witch hunter who answered. “Six in the past four nights. Despite our best efforts to keep the connections between all these killings a secret, there are already rumours of a daemon creature loose in the city.”

“But it will not have escaped the Graf’s notice that the period of these killings coincides exactly with the current time of Morrsliebnacht?”

Graf Otto nodded to himself, tutting in approval at Konniger’s observation. “Ha! What a disappointment you have been to me, Zavant. I groom you for great things, only to see you join the priesthood. And then, to add insult to injury, after you finally come to your senses and leave those holy fools to their prayer-mumbling, you take up the life of a hermit and busy yourself with the dry scribblings of heretics and lunatics! If your life stands for anything, it is the waste of a fine mind. The only reason I have stayed alive this long is because I still hold out some hope that you will finally see sense and once again take up your rightful place in the service of the Empire.”

As if to emphasise his point, the Graf’s body was suddenly wracked by a series of coughing spasms. Konniger stepped forward to attend to his former mentor, but the ancient spy-master waved him away with a gesture of irritation, reaching for his glass and slurping thirstily from it. Noisily clearing his throat, he continued: “Morrslieb, yes. We have long known of the correlation between the phases of the Chaos moon and the ebb and flow of the strength of the Dark Powers.”

At this, Graf Otto’s fingers briefly made the sign of the hammer of Sigmar. Despite his professed scorn for the priesthood of the cult of Sigmar, Konniger observed, the pragmatic old realpolitiker still instinctively made the traditional ward of protection gesture when speaking of the Ruinous Powers. “As its brother Mannslieb influences the tides, so too does its darker twin exert its own effect, but on the minds of men rather than the rise and fall of the oceans.”

“Indeed,” Konniger agreed, feeling the Graf’s expectant gaze upon him. “Any City Watchman can tell stories of ‘Morrslieb Madness’: of the lawlessness and fits of violent dementia that appears to seize many of our citizens at the time of Morrsliebnacht. But my own studies tell me that there is more to the effects of the Chaos moon than a mere increase in offences against public order. When the Red Moon lies high in the night sky, many unnatural things emerge from the shadows to bask in its unholy radiance, and I fear that something far more malefic than some moon-crazed madman has come to Altdorf.”

Graf Otto sank back into his chair, gesturing towards the witch hunter. “That is what Herr van Sandt thought, when he first came to me. For months now he has been following the ravages of some unnatural predator—a were-beast, he believed—across the northern reaches of the Empire. The trail led steadily south, and it is his belief that the creature is now in Altdorf. I have granted Herr van Sandt dispensation to operate here in the capital, but it is his suggestion that you too join the hunt. After all, when pursuing a creature of Chaos in a tangled and unfamiliar city, who better to call upon than the renowned Zavant Konniger, sage-detective and tireless chronicler of the many vile ways of the servants of evil?”

Konniger looked directly at the witch hunter, his mind still reeling at what he had just been told. “A were-beast? A lycanthrope? I thought them all centuries extinct within the borders of the Empire. Gottlieb the Stern claimed to have wiped out the last nest of them during his Great Cleansing of Sylvania in 2158.”

The witch hunter nodded grimly. “Aye, and so I thought also. But I have seen the evidence for myself and I have to say, the signs are unmistakable.”

He paused, meeting Konniger’s steady gaze. “It would seem that for once Stern was as fallible as the rest of us humble servants of Sigmar.”

Konniger lowered his head in thought, then looked towards his mentor. “And we are to hunt down and destroy this killer, this were-beast?”

“Hunt down, yes. Destroy, no,” the Graf rasped, indicating Steiner, who had glided silently out of the shadows at his master’s summons. “Steiner will be joining you in the hunt. You will be my bloodhounds, Zavant, seeking out the quarry and running it to ground. But Steiner knows everything there is to know about the killing of both men and beasts. This creature—this man-beast—will not be such a new challenge for a hunter of his abilities.”

In the glow of the light from the fireplace, Konniger could see the look in the eyes of his old mentor. Graf Otto had faithfully served his beloved Empire for half a century and in that time this frail old man had signed thousands of death warrants, overseen the torture of countless suspects, and ordered the assassination of hundreds of enemies of the Emperor. And Konniger knew, too, that on every one of those occasions, this venerable hero of the Empire had had the same look in his eyes as he had now—the cold determination that comes with the brutal and calculated exercise of power.

“Understand this, Zavant. This is no mere murder hunt I am setting you on. All my life, I have served the Empire, and the Empire stands for Order. This city is the heart of the Empire, but now a daemon-beast—a creature of darkness—stalks its streets under the light of the Red Moon. The Chaos moon is in the ascendancy, and our citizens are afraid. They see Chaos winning out over Order, and perhaps they begin to question the laws and traditions—the foundations of that Order which bind the Empire together. If such seeds of doubt take root here in the Imperial capital then they will soon spread, and the Empire of Sigmar—the Empire that has now endured for over twenty-five centuries—will be fatally weakened. This I will not allow to happen.”

The old man reached out his bony hand, grasping Konniger tightly by the wrist and pulling him close. “Find this daemon, Zavant, and quickly. Find it, and dispel the shadow of fear that hangs over Altdorf.”

Officially, Vido had never been inside the Imperial palace before. Unofficially, in his former capacity as one of the most celebrated thieves in Altdorf, he had been here any number of times, and was well acquainted with the layout of the huge and imposing fortress. The seat of Imperial power always held rich pickings for any thief daring enough to test their wits against the Palace Guard, and, in moments dedicated more to pleasure than business, Vido had also made numerous night-time excursions to the bedchambers of a certain halfling scullery maid who had once worked in the palace kitchens…

He sighed, wishing he was back there now rather than waiting here in a draughty antechamber with the imposing shapes of two of his old adversaries of the Palace Guard glowering suspiciously down at him. It was with a great sense of relief that he saw the doors to the room beyond suddenly swing open, the guards stiffening to attention as the cloaked figures of Konniger and the witch hunter swept out of the room, followed by the silent shadow-form of Vaul Steiner. Vido instinctively shrank away from the Imperial assassin and then hurried down the corridor in pursuit of his master, who was deep in conversation with the witch hunter.

“Your thoughts, Herr Konniger?” van Sandt asked.

“Tonight is the night of true Morrsliebnacht, when the Red Moon’s cycle reaches its peak and the power of Chaos will be in full ascendancy,” Konniger noted. “If the old tales are true, then the were-beast’s bloodlust will be almost uncontrollable. It must kill tonight, repeatedly, and in ways as savage and as shocking as possible.”

“Agreed,” the witch hunter said. “I have ordered all City Watchmen and members of the Palace Guard on duty tonight. It is to our advantage that few honest citizens will dare venture out on Morrsliebnacht. There may be more armed guards than citizens on the streets of Altdorf tonight. With any luck, a show of strength may deter the creature from seeking out further victims.”

“Perhaps,” the sage-detective said. “But I would much rather catch and destroy it than merely frighten it off.”

Van Sandt paused, looking speculatively at Konniger. “You have another plan, Herr Konniger?”

“Not so much a plan,” Konniger answered. “But I have always found it a wise precaution to try and learn something of the true nature of the enemy. Make your arrangements for the guard patrols. I shall join you later for our night vigil.”

“Where are you going, Herr Konniger?” Vido heard the witch hunter call out after them, as he hurried down the corridor after his master.

“Where else would one go to learn the secrets of the servants of Chaos?” Konniger said. “Where else, but to the madhouse?”

Somewhere in the dark, the killer snarled to itself in pleasure. It stretched, chafing against the confines of the body in which it hid. Soon the Red Moon would rise as night fell over the city. Soon it would be free again. The prey had been found and the bait taken. Soon it would feed.

Soon.

Insanity seemed to be a peculiarly human phenomenon, thought Vido, as he followed his master along the dark stone passageways of the asylum. It was almost unknown amongst his own race, although there were many back home in the Moot who would have judged Vido himself mad after he left the family brewing business—helping himself to a generous advance on his inheritance from his father’s cash box—and ran off to seek his fortune on the streets of Altdorf. Vido shivered. No matter how dull and sedate the pace of life in the rural backwaters of the Moot, it was surely preferable to the atmosphere inside the Altdorf city asylum on Morrsliebnacht.

The passageways echoed with the screams, moans and gibbering cries of the insane. A filthy and emaciated hand suddenly reached out through the bars of a nearby cell and clutched desperately at the hem of Vido’s cloak. “Help me, help me!” croaked the dark shape on the other side of the bars, in a voice clearly struggling to remember the proper sounds of human speech. “Everything is dark here, and I cannot see the night sky. Take this back outside with you, I beg you, and let me gaze upon the face of the moon once more!”

With a lurch of revulsion, Vido looked down and saw the grisly object staring up at him from the palm of the madman’s bloody and outstretched hand. Vido recoiled in horror, almost falling under the feet of Klebb the jailer. Snarling in anger, the asylum keeper thrust his burning torch through the bars of the cell. There was a scream of pain, and the outstretched hand disappeared from sight, the madman retreating into a dark corner whimper. Crying from the one eye he had still left.

“My apologies, good sirs,” the giant figure of the madhouse jailer growled, pulling Vido roughly to his feet. “It’s the same every Morrsliebnacht. We keep the worst ones locked up down here where there are no windows, but somehow they still know when it is the time of the Red Moon.”

“And the Bretonnian?” Konniger asked, stepping aside as they reached the locked door at the very end of the passageway. “How do the phases of the Red Moon affect him?”

Klebb made an ugly grunting noise at the back of his throat—Vido suspected there was some orc blood somewhere in the brutal jailer’s ancestry—and drew open the bolts of the door. “Him? He just sits quiet in his cell and writes. All the time, since the day he got here. We don’t give him no paper, not since one of the priests saw what he was working on, but that don’t stop him writing.”

The jailer heaved the door open and stepped aside, allowing Konniger and Vido to enter into the cell beyond and see for themselves what he had meant. Vido stifled a cry of disbelief. The rough stone surfaces of the cell—the floor, the walls, even parts of the ceiling—were covered in scratched writing, every flowing word and character stroke painstakingly etched into the stonework. The author of this demented text sat crouched on the floor in the middle of the room. Using a small metal fork, worn away to nothing more than a fine sliver, he was putting the finishing touches to his latest couplet.

The prisoner worked by the dim light of a solitary candle, his long blond hair hanging lankly over his face, hiding his features, but Vido did not need to see his aristocratic profile to know who he was. Valois de Simone, the infamous “Mad Poet of Moussillon”, now confined here at His Imperial Majesty’s Pleasure after the church authorities deemed his last collection of works to be Chaos-inspired heresy. Konniger had defended the young poet at his trial, and Vido knew that it was only because of his master’s intervention that the crazed genius had been sentenced to the madhouse rather than the stake.

“Herr Konniger? I trust you are well?” The poet spoke without looking up, his refined Bretonnian accent smoothly rounding off the rough sounds of the guttural Reikspiel of the Empire.

“I prefer not to receive callers when I am working, but I am always willing to make an exception in your case. I take it you have come to consult with me about le loup garou, the were-beast?”

Vido and Konniger exchanged glances. Madmen and poets were all the same to the pragmatic halfling, but Vido knew that Konniger considered the Bretonnian to be truly special, his madness and his genius combining with his morbidly poetic imagination to give him many strange insights into the workings of the Ruinous Powers. “Un savant fou” was how Konniger had once referred to the poet, although Vido, who prided himself on not knowing a word of Bretonnian, had no idea what his master meant.

“You have something to tell me, de Valois?” the sage-detective asked, knowing that the mad poet’s answers were always, at best, vague and elliptical.

“Of les loups garoux? What would a simple poet know of such things? Go ask a witch hunter, if you would hear tales of such horrors. But it is Morrsliebnacht, is it not? I have been writing a poem about the two moons. Have you ever thought about them, Herr Konniger? Mannslieb and Morrslieb, chasing each other forever round the heavens, neither one sure which is the prey and which the pursuer. It is a curious relationship, is it not?”

The poet muttered something to himself, seemingly distracted by whatever it was he was scratching into the stonework of the floor. Konniger waited patiently, knowing there was more to come. “Which of the two moons interests you the most, Valois?”

“Oh, most definitely Morrslieb,” the poet answered. “It is the darkest and most mysterious of the two. One face—its dark side—remains forever hidden from us. But even its more visible face is ever changing, different every Morrsliebnacht. Perhaps it only has one face, its dark face, and all the others are but masks to conceal this fact from us? An interesting thought, is it not, Herr Konniger?”

Konniger waited, but soon even Vido sensed that the interview was over. The sage-detective bowed politely, although if the madman noticed, he did not acknowledge the gesture. “My thanks, de Valois. As ever, it has been an enlightening experience. Is there anything I may do for you in return?”

“They allow me no paper, but fresh writing tools would be much appreciated,” the poet called out as his visitors left. “My last quill is almost worn away to nothing, and I fear I will have to start using my fingernails before very much longer!”

“Enlightening…” Vido muttered once they were safely out of the cell, Klebb securely locking the door behind them. “How could you find anything ‘enlightening’ in the drivel said by that madman?”

Konniger smiled, clearly anticipating such a reaction. “On the contrary, my dear Vido, there is much method to the man’s madness, if you have the proper sense to listen to what he is trying to tell you. And poor insane de Valois was very much trying to tell me something—to warn me, even, in his own misguided way. Indeed, he has only confirmed certain suspicions I have had since the very beginning of this aft—”

He broke off suddenly, sensing something that Vido could not. (Even after all these years, it still irritated Vido that his master—a mere human, for Ranald’s sake!—had sharper senses than he, a halfling thief of no little skill.) A split-second later, Vido heard it too: men in armour, descending the dungeon stairs towards them. A half-minute later, and they met two out-of-breath members of the Palace Guard at the foot of the narrow stairs.

“Herr Konniger!” puffed one of them, a ruddy-raced Reiklander sergeant. “A message from the witch hunter, Herr van Sandt. You must come at once. The creature has struck already tonight!”

* * *

Konigplatz was the very heart of Altdorf, the great open square where spectacles of all kinds—military parades, official proclamations, feast day fairs, the weekly public executions—were held. Normally, it would be full of life even at this late hour, but tonight it was deserted save for the ring of guardsmen and city militia which had now sealed it off from the rest of the city. Vido could hear the guardsmen shouting to each other through the thick river mists that cloaked the city, and see their lanterns bobbing as they spread out in search of the killer which had no doubt long ago left the scene of its latest savage crime.

Vido turned back to the scene behind him, breathing hard through his mouth to avoid the thick smell of blood that pervaded the air. Before him towered the imposing statue of Magnus the Pious, saviour of the Empire who more than five centuries ago had turned back the tide of Chaos that had threatened to engulf the Old World. The statue of Emperor Magnus I stood in its rightful place at the top of the square, its arms held out in a protective blessing. Only now the figure was smeared from head to foot in blood, its arms and open hands hung with human offal, making it seem as though the statue was making its own obscene offering to the citizens of Altdorf. At the foot of the statue’s plinth lay a tangle of dismembered bodies, over which crouched Vido’s master and the figure of the witch hunter.

“Three of our own—three dead militiamen of the City Watch—and the defilement of a memorial to one of the Empire’s greatest heroes here in the very heart of the city,” van Sandt said, holding his cloak to his face to avoid the smell of human butchery. “The creature could not have made its point more clearly!”

“It is mocking us,” Konniger agreed grimly. “And Graf Otto was right. Its purpose is something far greater than simple bloody slaughter. Where is our huntsman, Steiner?”

“Checking on the patrols in the vicinity of the palace. I have sent word—”

The witch hunter was silenced by the sound of alarmed shouting coming from somewhere across the other side of the square. A panicked guardsman came running towards them out of the misty gloom. “It’s struck again! Two more dead in Luitpold Strasse… and they’re both still warm!”

Van Sandt drew his sword and turned to Konniger. “The creature must still be close. Come, Herr Konniger, we have no time to waste! We’ll cut around through Dietrich Alley and Rasenplatz. If we hurry we may yet come upon it unawares!” The witch hunter followed the guardsman back into the chill mists, calling for Konniger to follow him.

Vido looked in confusion at his master, who had conjured parchment and quill from somewhere inside his voluminous robes and was frantically scribbling something down. “We aren’t going with him?”

“I am—but you’re not,” Konniger said, pressing the folded note into Vido’s hand. “Find Steiner and make sure he reads this. If he’s coming from the palace then you’ll probably be able to catch him at the Ostlander Bridge. And hurry, Vido—I am delivering my life into your hands!”

Vido stared at the folded note, a feeling of uneasy realisation growing within him. When he looked up a scant second later, his master had already disappeared into the gloom after the witch hunter.

“Van Sandt!” Konniger started visibly as the witch hunter suddenly loomed up before him from out of the murk. The witch hunter’s cloak was torn, and the sage-detective saw blood seeping between van Sandt’s fingers where they clutched at the wound on his arm.

“I saw it, Konniger!” van Sandt gasped, indicating with his sword blade-towards a nearby narrow alley. “It came out of the darkness at me and then disappeared down there!”

“Where are the guardsmen?” Konniger asked, noting the oppressive silence all around them. They were in the heart of the most populous city in the Old World, and yet it was as if the rest of the inhabitants had simply melted away into the darkness and the mists.

“I lost them in this damnable mist. But then I sensed something nearby, something stalking me. You don’t spend a lifetime hunting the servants of Evil without being able to know when one is close by, Konniger! It came at me—perhaps I struck it with my sword, I don’t know—but it fled down this alley. Come, we can only be seconds behind it!”

Van Sandt ran down the alley, the sage-detective just a few steps behind. Konniger knew the area. The Reikerbahn: a maze-like sinkhole of cheap beer halls and bordellos, beggars’ hovels and thieves’ dens clustered behind the main waterfront area of the docks, but the mist was at its worst this close to the river. Now even Konniger, whose knowledge of the tumbledown back alleys and hidden byways of the city was near unparalleled, quickly lost his bearings in this mist-choked warren. But the witch hunter ran unerringly on, following the invisible trail of the creature he had now tracked across half the Empire.

It was only when the mud and human filth of the back alleys of the Reikerbahn gave way to ancient worn cobblestones that Konniger realised just where they were surely heading. The Necropolis, the abandoned Old City cemetery which lay on the far side of the Reikerbahn. The history of the Old World was full of tales of the ravages of necromancers, vampire counts and armies of the undead, and it was little surprise that in every human city, the areas surrounding cemeteries were naturally shunned by all but the poorest and most desperate.

Or creatures of Chaos, thought Konniger, who would find the perfect lairs in such places. Close to their prey, but where few would willingly venture to seek them out.

The two men made their way through the broken and unguarded gates. The place had been abandoned centuries ago, and there was nothing left here to interest graverobbers or bodysnatchers. The necropolis had been built on a rise overlooking the Reikerbahn, and was mercifully above the reach of the river-mists. Up here, the night sky could be clearly seen and the Red Moon dominated the heavens, casting its strange light down upon an eerie and lifeless landscape of tumbled gravestones, empty looted tombs and tangles of thick thorny undergrowth. Ahead of them loomed the dark shape of some large pillared sepulchre at the centre of the necropolis. As they drew nearer, van Sandt paused, pointing his sword blade towards it.

“The tomb of Gottlieb the Stern, Konniger!” the witch hunter breathed. “It was his wish that his spirit be laid to rest here, watching over the citizens of the Empire in death just as he had watched over them in life. That is where the fiend has made its lair, defiling it just as it did the statue of Magnus the Pious. It is close now, waiting for us there!”

“Indeed…” Konniger murmured. “Perhaps far closer than we realise. I must say, your knowledge of the alleyways and older parts of the city continually surprises me, Herr van Sandt. I thought Graf Otto said that you were a stranger to Altdorf?”

“Then the Graf must have been mistaken,” came the witch hunter’s cold reply. “Although admittedly it has been some time—many years, in fact—since I was last here.”

The witch hunter turned, until he and Konniger faced each other amidst the desolation of the crumbling tombs.

“Ah, that is what I thought,” Konniger nodded, as if to himself. “I am still curious, though: the two warm corpses in Luitpold Strasse—how did you manage to kill them when you were still with me in Konigplatz at the time?”

The thing which called itself Marius van Sandt smiled, its lips stretching too wide across its face and displaying the rows of extra teeth now pushing through its bloody gums. “Of course, I had killed them hours before. It is a simple spell to keep the blood warm in their veins, and only a slightly more taxing one to keep them hidden from sight until their ‘discovery’ suited my purpose. One picks up many such tricks when one has lived as long as I have.”

Keep it talking, Konniger thought, trying to push the idea from the front of his mind. Don’t let it know what you are thinking. Who knows how far its supernatural senses may extend? “And the real van Sandt?” he asked casually, his level voice giving no hint of the turmoil of his thoughts.

“Months dead,” the were-beast grinned, its voice coarsening as its face stretched to accommodate the new shape of its emerging wolf snout. “I allowed him to think that it was he who was actually the hunter and I the hunted, but I grew weary of the game and brought it to an abrupt end in the Drakwald. He was a dull opponent, if truth be told, but it amused me for a while to assume his form and pretend to pursue myself until I could find some worthier prey.”

Konniger gave a mock bow of his head, surreptitiously reaching into the folds of his robes. “Then I suppose I should be honoured. Am I to assume that, as with poor van Sandt, you intend to consume not only my flesh but also my identity?”

“But of course,” the wolf-thing snarled, drooling in pleasure. “Few doors are barred to the famous Zavant Konniger. Perhaps tomorrow I shall visit the palace to pay my respects to my old mentor, Graf Otto. Or maybe even the Emperor himself will grant me a private audience to hear the truth of how I hunted down and destroyed the daemon-creature which was stalking his city!”

Konniger had been bracing himself for the moment of full transformation. He hadn’t quite known what to expect—a drawn-out metamorphosis as man-shape altered into that of wolf, or a bloody and savage rebirth as the beast within burst out of its human prison—but the moment, when it came, was shocking in its suddenness. Van Sandt stepped forward, his outline momentarily blurring and then there was only the wolf-thing, leaping hungrily towards Konniger as the witch hunter’s now-empty cloak and vestments fell to the ground behind it. Konniger was almost fatally caught by surprise.

Almost, but not quite.

Powdered silver was a vital component in many spell workings—the wolf-thing was not the only one who knew a few spell tricks—and Konniger habitually carried a small pouch of the stuff with him. He had used it before to cast wards of protection, but this was the first time he had used it as a weapon directly against evil, drawing open the pouch and throwing its contents full into the were-beast’s eyes.

The effect was instantaneous. The creature howled in agony, clawing bloody lumps out of its own face as the silver burned like acid into its magic-altered flesh.

Konniger turned and ran, gratified that the tales of were-beasts’ vulnerability to silver had not been wrong, but knowing that he had at best only bought himself a few more seconds’ time.

Where are you, Vido? he wondered desperately, praying that his servant’s wits had not deserted him on this of all nights.

He could hear the creature’s snarls of rage right behind him, and the scrape of its claws as it launched itself at his unprotected back. Reaching out to anchor himself against a nearby gravestone, Konniger pivoted and lashed out with one leg, aiming a blow at the creature in that strange but highly effective fighting style he had learned years before from a travelling sage from Cathay. The blow connected solidly with the creature’s midsection and would have crippled any normal opponent. The wolf-thing barely noticed, striking out with its claws and savagely back-handing him across the face.

Konniger flew through the air, connecting heavily against the stump of a broken grave marker. The salty taste of his own blood filled his mouth; the sharp pain of something broken inside him flared up from within his ribcage; his vision swam and he knew he was close to blacking out. He looked up, the bright disc of the Red Moon swelling to fill up the night sky above him. Its unnatural light bathed the scene, seeming to slow down time itself as Konniger struggled to fight off unconsciousness.

As the wolf-thing prowled the last few steps towards him.

And as the gaunt figure of Vaul Steiner glided out of the shadows, red moonlight reflecting brightly off the silver-bladed throwing dagger held ready in his hand.

The dagger flew through the air, burying itself into the wolf-thing’s chest, piercing its heart. The Chaos creature fell without a sound, a life that could be measured in millennia ignominiously snuffed out in the blink of an eye.

“Master!” Konniger heard Vido’s voice. He felt his servant’s hands upon him, raising him up, and dimly saw the torchlights of what seemed to be most of the city militia closing in from all sides of the cemetery.

“A dangerous game you played, Herr Konniger,” the Imperial assassin noted, planting his foot on the chest of the wolf-thing and pushing the dagger hilt-deep, further into its heart. “And too much of a near thing, at the end. When you sent your servant to me with that message, how did you know the were-beast would seek to lure you here?”

“A… a hunch, nothing more,” Konniger managed to struggle out, gratefully accepting the brandy flask which Vido pressed into his hand. “Call it a moment of prescience, inspired by the words of a madman.” Konniger shared a significant glance with his manservant. Vido knew—and strongly disapproved—of some of the more extreme methods his master employed to divine the ways of the servants of Chaos, but if he could guess at the true source of Konniger’s prescient insight, then the halfling wisely kept his silence.

Helped by his servant, Konniger struggled to his feet and looked down at the remains of the wolf-thing. Its jaws were set in a final snarl and its golden yellow eyes were open, its dying gaze fixed forever on its unholy patron moon overhead. Konniger leaned forward to look into those eyes, remembering the conversation between himself and the thing that had been van Sandt when they first met.

How old was it, truly, he wondered? What sights had those eyes witnessed over the path of so many centuries? What would he give, to be able to know even just a few of the memories stored behind those eyes? But if the answer lay in those dead eyes, then he did not find it, seeing only the twin, dim reflections of the Red Moon staring mockingly back at him.

He turned his back on the remains of the wolf-thing and walked away without looking back. Vido walked beside him, offering his shoulder as support for his injured master to lean on. Overhead, dark clouds flitted across the night sky, eclipsing the fading light of the now waning Red Moon.

PART THREE

The Politics of Shadow, or

The Case of the Tilean Widow

Author’s Note. We enter now one of those frustrating periods in Konniger’s life when documentary evidence on his deeds and even whereabouts seems disappointingly thin on the ground. Following the conclusion of the events of The Case of the Morrsliebnacht Murders, it is known that he spent some time recuperating from his injuries and, when he had sufficiently recovered, travelling outside the environs of his usual Altdorf haunts.

I have established with some considerable degree of certainty that it was during this period that he again visited Bretonnia, where he became involved in the events of The Case of the Moussillon Bard, A Scandal in Gisoreux and The Affair of the Purloined Banner. It was presumably at some point during this time that Konniger engaged in that famous battle of wits at the court of King Louen with his Bretonnian arch-rival and counterpart, the dandyish Flaubert de Maupassant, a meeting which the Bretonnian satirist and playwright Marcel Volpaire would later dramatise to great comic effect in his masterful Les Deux Erudites. Volpaire’s tale may however be apocryphal, since other sources place Konniger in Marienburg during that same period, although his successful but highly controversial solution to The Mystery of the Alderman’s Twin must surely have been the event that precipitated his final return to Altdorf. There he indulged himself in a period of scholarly research and uncharacteristic inactivity, before becoming involved in the events you are about to read of.

On a hopefully relevant side note, it has recently been brought to your humble scribe’s attention that there exists a little-known and privately published pamphlet entitled Portrait of My Undying Lady, author sadly unknown, which purports to be an account of an incident in the early life of the now-renowned Tilean artist Giovanni Gottio. Interested readers are invited to track down a copy of this text and decide for themselves what, if indeed any, significance it has to the personages and events of The Case of the Tilean Widow.

One

Vassily Romanenko Drakhov, Bane of the Dark, Slayer of Wurdolaki, greatest vampire hunter in all the Old World, took another long swig from his hide-leather canteen flask, savouring the strong, peppery taste of his own urine mixed and flavoured with the finest Kislevite vodka. He swilled the fiery brew around the inside of his mouth for a second, relishing the sensation as it washed away the thick, cloying taste of his present surroundings. As a young warrior fighting on the barren Kislev steppes, he had learned the initial skills of his unique craft in battles against the beastman packs and Chaos warbands. In that cold and terrible place he had also learned the importance of maintaining purity of body and spirit.

On the edges of the Northern Wastes, nothing wholesome grew or flourished and the very air carried the foul taint of corruption. The invisible and deadly spoor of Chaos seeped into everything—a canteen flask filled with water taken from an even apparently untainted stream or drinking hole contained enough madness and death to wipe out a good-sized township. Those few foolish or hardy souls that dared brave the Wastes quickly learned the brutally harsh survival techniques necessary to live and fight in such a place. There could be no living off the land; the only rations and drinking water they had were what they carried with them. When food ran out, they ate their pack horses and the steeds of their own casualties—for casualties there most surely always were—and when drinking water ran out they drank both the blood of their mounts and the water of their own bodies, flavouring this diet of horse blood and urine with strong, clear vodka to make it more palatable.

“Piss-drinkers” was the term of derision that the inhabitants of the Empire and even the southern and more civilised parts of Kislev often used to describe their savage and backwards cousins who inhabited the most northern reaches of the Old World. Amongst the fierce bands of warriors who patrolled and defended the far borders against the deprivations of the followers of Chaos, the insult had—perversely—become a term of pride. The name had become a badge of courage worn by those who travelled deep into the Northern Wastes, beyond the lines of lonely, ancient dolmen stones that marked the limits of what was considered sane and normal, into the beginnings of the territory of the Realm of Chaos. Brave, hardened men who had seen more of the true and terrible face of the Dark Powers than any of the rest of the quivering, ignorant mass of humanity.

It had been many years since Drakhov had last crossed over into those borderlands—beastman hunting and troll slaying was definitely a young man’s job, he thought to himself with a grim smile—but the taste of the contents of his canteen flask was a welcome reminder of those days. A habit which he would not relinquish, no matter how much it revolted the sensibilities of the soft, southern inhabitants of the so-called “civilised” nations of the Old World.

Drakhov wiped his lips clean with one scarred, ointment-smeared forearm, replacing the clay stopper and returning the canteen to its place amongst the clutter of tools and other belongings that hung from the pattern of belts that ran across his hunched, hairy shoulders and criss-crossed over his heavy torso. Then, picking up his axe, the many telltale notches of battle evident on the rim of its silver blade, he continued on, deeper into the stinking darkness of the sewer passage.

The atmosphere in these tunnels was thick and oppressive, the air hot and foetid, and rivulets of sweat ran freely down Drakhov’s ointment-covered body, mixing with the filth splashed up from the muck he was wading through and the noxious stuff that dripped down on him from the low ceiling. At the same time, he chewed thoughtfully on a wad of raw garlic, the juice dribbling down his chin onto the matted mess of his filth-encrusted beard.

Even here, in the reeking sewers of Altdorf, the Old World’s greatest and most populous city, the stench that emanated from Drakhov was enough to make the slime weep from the tunnel walls.

The ointment—a thick, pungent garlic paste mixed with witchbane and other magical herbs known to repel servants of the Dark—was a secret mixture of Drakhov’s own devising, added to and perfected over many years of wurdolak-hunting. Others of his unique and strange profession, other liche-thing hunters, other vampire slayers, had their own methods and means of protection. On those rare occasions when two or more wurdolak hunters would meet to pool their forces against a nest of the creatures, they would talk long into the night celebrating their victory against the Dark, spending hours comparing and discussing the different ways of dealing with the various kinds of wurdolaki. Some swore that you needed a different mix of protective unguent for each kind of vampire, but Drakhov had never felt the need. His own formula had served him well enough over the years.

To the rest of humanity, the wurdolak—the vampire or nosferatu, as they were known beyond the borders of Kislev—were all one of a kind, all the same nightmare lords of the undead, but Drakhov and those of his profession knew that there were several distinct species, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, their own tell-tale traits and differing natures. And there were as many different kinds of vampire slayers as there were species of creature they hunted. In his travels, Drakhov had encountered many such brother wurdolak slayers: Bretonnian Grail Knights whose belief in the nobility of their Lady-blessed cause was even more impervious than the shining plate-armour they all seemed to wear; rough and rugged Empire woodsmen who viewed the creatures they hunted as being no different from the savage forest wolves that preyed on their cattle stocks. Then there were the wild-eyed religious fanatics following the dictates of their fierce warrior gods, or the silent, grim-faced ones who could often be spied weeping over the faded icon images of women and children or any other similar kind of pathetic keepsake evidence of their wurdolak-slaughtered loved ones.

Drakhov was none of these things. He did what he did because he hated and opposed the Dark with all his being. He had first fought it out in the far Northern Wastes, where it wore the forms of twisted, unspeakable monstrosity and called itself Chaos, and now he fought it still here in the so-called civilised lands of the south, hunting down and destroying the leech-thing servants of the Dark wherever they were to be found.

And he had been pursuing this particular wurdolak for months, following its trail from city to city, following the corpse-spoor that such creatures always left in their wake. It was one of the hell-bitch species of wurdolak, and those were often the most cunning and dangerous of all to deal with, Drakhov knew. Unlike the other kinds, the Lahmian hell-bitches often moved freely amongst human-kind. All the better, Drakhov supposed, to carry out their endless plots and plans. Not for them an eternity spent skulking in the remote and shadow-haunted parts of the Old World, far from the light of human civilisation, like many other wurdolaki that could no longer pass for anything that might once have been even remotely human. Not for them, either, the chosen unlife existence of their Sylvanian cousins, dwelling aloof in their tumble-walled, moss-eaten castles, surrounded by the faded majesty of ancient and long-vanquished glories and lording it over a ravaged countryside inhabited only by terrified serfs.

Oh yes, they were cunning, those hell-bitches, and this one was the equal of any of her scheming sisterhood. Drakhov had found and almost caught her twice in this last half-year, the first time in Tilea and then again in Bretonnia. She had almost succeeded in turning the tables on him that second time in Moussillon, drawing him into a trap. She had already departed that ghoul-damned ruin of a city by the time he found her lair, but her servants had not. He found a brood of her paramours—wretched and pathetic mixed human and wurdolak things wholly in the thrall of their daemonic mistress—and Drakhov had taken great and savage pleasure in bringing their existence to an end by fire, wooden stake and silver blade.

He was not surprised that the trail should have led here, to the capital of the Empire. So many plots and conspiracies both began and terminated at the heart of the Old World’s most powerful nation. Here the creature could don its false human face and hide amongst the teeming throng of the inhabitants of the Imperial capital, where so many strangers and travellers could come and go without comment or suspicion. The only surprise was that the creature should make its lair down here, amidst the filth and darkness of the city sewers. If it thought that such an uncharacteristic ruse would throw Drakhov off the scent, then it was to be sadly disappointed, the vampire slayer thought to himself with a bloodthirsty smile.

He held up the glass globe-jar that hung from a thong at his wrist, studying the behaviour of the creature imprisoned inside. The tiny homunculus thing spat at him and angrily scratched at the glass barrier with claws like needle points. It was aged for a homunculus—almost two years old—and Drakhov knew that soon he would have to return home to buy a replacement from the Baba Yaga steppe witches who created such things. Drakhov cared for the creature and fed it daily with a few drips of his own blood, yet knew better than to ever feel any affection for the vile little thing. To him, it was merely another tool to aid him in his war against the wurdolaki, although often a highly useful one.

Drakhov studied its behaviour, noting its increasingly agitated movements and the way it beat the shorn stumps of its clipped, leathery bat-wings against the interior of its glass prison. Thin screeches of alarm emerged from the air holes in the jar’s heavy clay lid. It was part of the Dark, this thing, and now it sensed the presence close by of another Dark-born creature. Its reactions of panic and nervous anger were those of any small predator when confronted with another of its kind far greater and more dangerous than itself.

As if in confirmation, Drakhov began to feel the tell-tale itching, burning sensation from his old vampire fighting wounds, the scars of which criss-crossed his heavily muscled body, mixing with the protective glyphs and wards that were branded and tattooed into his skin. Popular legend had it that wounds inflicted by the undead never truly healed, and that old scars would open up and bleed afresh whenever their bearer encountered another member of the undead.

Many vampire hunters, Drakhov amongst them, knew such legends to be at least partially true. It was another old and useful trick: after battle, the vampire hunter rubbed a special alchemist’s mixture of powdered silver and certain rare herbs into their open, still-bleeding wounds. So treated, the wounds, even when healed, would give extra, advance warning of the nearby presence of the undead. Now Drakhov’s potion-treated wounds awoke with the dull memory of the pain of past horrific battles against the wurdolaki, warning him that danger was close.

“Hell-bitch! Bastard devil spawn!” he growled into the darkness in the fierce, guttural tongue of his homeland, brandishing the shining silver blade of his two-handed battle-axe. “Whore of Nagash, step out here and see what your old pal Vassily Romanenko has got for you!”

Drakhov’s senses, sharpened to a preternatural level by his days in the Northern Wastes and the subsequent years of hunting the inhumanly stealthy wurdolaki, detected a slight shuffling movement in the tunnel ahead of him. A pair of glowing red eyes appeared in the darkness, glaring balefully out of the gloom at him. And then, beside them, another pair of red eyes blinked into existence. And another set. And then another.

There was a low, hungry growl from the darkness ahead of him, followed quickly by an answering growl from the tunnel behind him. With a sudden, sick realisation, Drakhov knew that he had made the greatest, and almost certainly the final, mistake of his vampire hunting career.

He spun round, his axe blade already arcing through the air to meet the first of the creatures now leaping at his unprotected back. The blow cut the creature in half, the momentum of the swing carrying on to bury the axe blade inches deep in the masonry of the tunnel wall. The second creature leapt forward as Drakhov struggled to pull his blade free from the crumbling brickwork. Cursing in anger, he used the only other weapon at hand, smashing the glass globe-jar into this second attacker’s face. The thin, dying scream of the homunculus creature inside was lost amidst the shrieks of pain from the attacker as the thick shards of glass bit into its eyes and face.

His axe blade freed again, Drakhov swung out wildly, landing a fortunate blow and crushing the skull of a third enemy. They were ghulaki, he saw. Wasted, pale-skinned ghoul-things; the eaters of the dead, who too often would come creeping forth from their carrion dens and graveyard burrows to serve the bidding of their wurdolak masters. There were many of them here in the tunnel with him, too many. He had been lured here, he realised now. Into this stinking, dark place so much like their charnel pit lairs, into narrow, low-ceilinged tunnels where he would not be able to wield his long-hafted axe to its full, deadly effect.

Roaring in defiance, filling the tunnels with the echoes of fierce Kislevite battle-cries, Drakhov set about his attackers, determined to make these foul creatures pay the full price of his death in their own flesh and blood.

A clawed hand reached out for his face, taking away one of his cheeks and gouging deep, bloody furrows in the side of his neck. Drakhov swung the axe blade, and the hand’s owner retreated yowling into the darkness, nursing its now handless stump.

Drakhov felt the impact of a lithe, putrid-skinned body landing on his back, long-taloned fingers reaching round his shoulders in search of his face and throat. He slammed the full weight of his body backwards into the wall of the tunnel, feeling the brittle bones of the creature snap and break under the impact, even as it tore into him with its teeth, chewing through the thick cords of muscle at the back of his neck. Hissing in agony, Drakhov shunted his head backwards in a sudden and brutal head-butting movement, shattering the bones of the ghoul-thing’s vermin-like face and cracking the back of its skull against the stonework.

Its body went limp, but Drakhov was off-balance now, pinned against the wall, and the other creatures moved quickly to take advantage of his sudden vulnerability.

Teeth like needles bit into the wrist of his weapon arm, opening up the veins and chewing through the tendons. Drakhov’s battle-axe landed with a splash in the sewer water, slipping from the fingers of his suddenly nerveless hand. Something that must have been sharp, taloned fingers but felt like a fire-heated lance blade punched through into his abdomen, gutting him. Drakhov felt his lifeblood pour out of him in a warm gush and then his legs failed him and he tumbled into the waters of the sewer tunnel.

The ghoul pack descended on him, yelping in keen, agitated bloodlust. Sharp teeth and claws tore and worried at him, each bite and slash taking away its own gory souvenir from the vampire hunter’s body. Then, abruptly, after long and agonised seconds, the pack scattered, retreating away from their victim, angrily hissing and snarling at each other and emitting short, sharp barks of nervous excitement.

Something else was coming out of the tunnel towards Drakhov. The ghoul pack retreated further, cowering in abeyance before their undead master.

With a monumental effort of his ebbing strength, Drakhov raised his head from water stained red with his own blood. With his one remaining eye, he dimly saw the wurdolak creature—hunched and feral, savage and bestial, a true lord of the carrion eaters—loom over him. With one hand it reached out towards him. Long dagger fingers took hold of his head and twisted it round with a brutal wrenching motion. Drakhov felt something snap in his neck and his vision started to fade.

In his last few seconds of life, the vampire slayer saw the face of his killer lower itself towards his, its mouth stretching open impossibly wide to display rows of needle-sharp bone fangs and a twitching, razor-edged tongue made to scrape flesh clean off the bone.

Two vampires, was his last conscious thought, as the hot, stifling, grave-mouth stink of the creature’s breath washed over him. There are two of the creatures loose here in Altdorf. In tracking one, I have instead found another.

After that, there was only the sound of splintering bone, and then blessed darkness.

Two

Vido hurried in surprise to the seldom-used back door at the rear of the scullery, moving in response to the sharp, urgent knock of only a few moments ago. He drew back the heavy, iron bolt that secured the door, pausing to grasp the hilt of the unsheathed dagger concealed inside his cloak and casting a brief glance to check that the heavy wooden cudgel still hung in its usual place within easy reaching distance of the doorway. Vido knew that Konniger had put in place certain other, and far more exotic, means to protect his residence from unwelcome visitors, but, at the end of the day, his more down to earth halfling servant preferred to put his faith in good Nuln-forged steel and stout Reikland oak than any invisible, magical defences.

He opened the door, instantly allowing in the chill Altdorf night air, making him wish for the comfort of his well-heated pantry room again. The alleyway outside was seemingly deserted, but the one-time thief turned manservant retained the natural caution and suspicion of his former profession, and his keen halfling eyes warily scanned the night-time gloom and shadowed recesses of the other doorways which lined the narrow, cobbled alley. Altdorf’s academic quarter was hardly the most dangerous or forbidding area of the Imperial capital, and the City Watchmen who patrolled its streets rarely had to deal with anything more troublesome than a few drunken student rabbles, but Vido knew that his master’s profession and line of arcane study necessitated that they always take the utmost caution in so many different things.

Satisfied that the alleyway was truly empty and that there was no sign of danger, Vido looked down to see the small, rag-tied bundle lying on the worn flagstone step of the doorway. He had instantly recognised the now familiar knock, and so was not surprised to see the item lying there, even if the day, and, indeed, the week of its delivery was not in keeping with the usual schedule.

Reaching down to retrieve the bundle, noting that it bore the familiar red-scrawled “K” emblem to denote its intended recipient, he glanced once more along the alleyway, not at all surprised that as usual there was no sign of whoever had delivered it. Each second week of the month, it was the same; the telltale knock at the door and the package left on the doorstep.

No matter how quick he was to respond, Vido had never seen or heard anything of the presumed messenger other than their announcement knock on the door. As an expert footpad himself, Vido knew that whoever it was, they certainly knew their business when it came to moving speedily and stealthily, and being able to get out of sight fast. If the messages were coming from the source Vido suspected they were, then the less he knew about the whole business the happier he would be.

Tucking the rag bundle inside his cloak, he closed and locked the door and then hurried his way upstairs to deliver tonight’s surprise delivery to his master.

“Another package? So soon after the previous week’s one?”

Konniger peered down at Vido from over the edge of his book-piled desk, looming over him—at least that’s how it seemed from where the diminutive halfling was standing—like one of the forbidding, scowling-faced gargoyles that decorated the battlements and towers of the great Temple of Sigmar that occupied one full side of the Konigplatz.

“It came just the same way as all the others,” replied Vido, feeling as always that he was under some kind of vague suspicion. “I know that it’s not the right day, but as far as I can see, there’s no reason to suppose that it isn’t from—”

Vido broke off, glancing significantly over towards the ornate chess set sitting on a nearby and rare book-free table. “From your, ah, usual opponent.” He looked away quickly, unwilling to meet Konniger’s stern gaze.

Konniger leaned back in his chair, studying the item laid out on the desk before him. He had unwrapped the rag bundle, revealing, as usual, a small, cork-sealed glass vial containing a rolled-up scrap of parchment. Konniger continued to stare at the vial, drumming his long, tapered fingers on the wood of the desk as he did so.

Vido recognised this as a sign that his master was irritated. The great sage-detective was a creature of habit, and hated being disturbed from his studies. Vido knew that this unexpected delivery was an unwelcome intrusion into Konniger’s regular schedule.

“Hmmm. Well then, let us see what our friend has to say for himself this night.” Konniger picked up and uncorked the bottle with one swift, deft hand movement—if he wasn’t already the greatest academic mind of his age, Vido had always thought that his master had the makings of a world-class pickpocket and cut-purse—and unrolled the parchment that came tumbling out into his open palm. Vido found himself straining forward to try to see the crabbed script, even though he knew it would be written in one of those incomprehensible cipher codes that Konniger and his many correspondents were always so fond of using.

Konniger frowned to himself as he read whatever was written there. Vido watched as he ran one ink-stained finger carefully along the line of cipher letters, checking that his initial translation had been correct, and mumbling to himself as he did so.

“What? Emperor’s Panther Knight four to Grand Theogonist six? Ridiculous… In fact, quite preposterous!”

He abruptly stood up, crossing the room in a few strides towards the chessboard table. He hovered hawk-like over it, studying the game-in-progress layout of the pieces set out upon it.

Vido craned forward to see. The chess set was the finest he had ever seen: a board made of rare and expensive Southlands mahogany the pieces carved from equally exotic ivory and obsidian. Worked across the surface of the board was a map of the Old World, perfect in so many details, stretching from the Northern Wastes to the coast of Araby in the south, and from the Great Western Ocean to the World’s Edge Mountains in the east. Inlaid across this world in miniature was a gold leaf inscribed grid of squares, over which marched the chess pieces of the two opposing armies. Finely carved, mounted Imperial knight pieces led lines of infantry pawns—Nuln artillerymen and Hochland sharpshooters, Reikland halberdiers and Stirland archers—into battle, while bringing up the rear came the vital game-winning pieces of the elector counts, the grand theogonist and the emperor himself, mounted on his war griffon.

The pieces were splayed out across the board, with several minor pieces now missing, taken as the game progressed through gambit and counter-gambit. Konniger’s game against his nameless opponent had been going on for months now, with no end in sight. Each time it was the same: his opponent’s latest instructions arrived each month in the same mysterious way, and Konniger would move his rival’s pieces accordingly. The sage-detective would ponder his response for a week or two, then Vido would be despatched to deliver Konniger’s counter-move instructions to his faceless opponent. That this involved dropping a cipher-written note, along with a few copper coins, into the bowl of a blind beggar who daily staked out his place on the corner of Luitpoldt Strasse and the Volker Weg did not in any way strike Vido as being unusual or especially curious. When you worked in the service of Zavant Konniger, you quickly became used to being perpetually surrounded by riddles and mysteries.

Yes, each time previously the procedure had been the same, but tonight the procedure had clearly changed.

“It’s as I thought,” muttered Konniger, making the required change to the position of one of his opponent’s game pieces. “Folly. Sheer folly! Emperor’s Panther Knight four to Grand Theogonist six puts his Knight into immediate jeopardy and opens up a clear path through to his Emperor. In two moves, perhaps even just one if I employ any of the Luccini gambits, I’ll have him in checkmate. Ridiculous, isn’t it, Vido? A blatant tactical error, and clearly out of keeping with my opponent’s high standard of play to date. What, then, are we to make of it?”

Vido knew his cue when he heard it. He paused before responding, trying to clear his mind and think deductively as his master had taught him. “Perhaps then it isn’t the same person sending you the instructions? Perhaps your opponent has changed, and it is someone trying to fool you into thinking you are still dealing with the same person. Or perhaps…”

Konniger’s eyes flickered, his head nodding imperceptibly as he encouraged his manservant to continue on in his current line of reasoning.

“Or perhaps it’s because this mistake isn’t a mistake at all!” Vido blurted out excitedly. “Your opponent is someone who takes care to conceal just about everything about himself. He wraps himself up in secrets and misdirection. If he wanted to send you a message, if he wanted to let you know something, he wouldn’t do it in any kind of normal way. He wouldn’t send anything that might seem like a message to anyone else not involved in your game!”

Konniger smiled, obviously pleased with Vido’s thinking. “Exactly. A mistake that isn’t a mistake, hiding a message that only its recipient would know to be a message at all. You’re making progress, Vido. A few more years with me and I’ll finally have overcome that thick crust of Moot-born idiocy that’s the heritage of the halfling race and actually be on the way to turning you into something resembling a student of deductive reasoning! Now quick, go bring me my cloak and boots.”

“We’re going out somewhere?” asked Vido with a sinking heart as he watched Konniger hastily tidy away the parchment scrolls on his desk and place a vellum marker into the worn cloth pages of the book he had been working from.

“Regretfully, my notes on the fifth and sixth chapters of Marco the Malicious’ Considerations will have to be put aside for now. That old Tilean fraud has waited three centuries for someone to properly demolish his idiotic philosophical arguments, so I assume then that he can wait a day or two more yet.”

Vido saw the lively glint in Konniger’s eyes, and recognised all the familiar signs of his master’s growing intellectual excitement. It had been some time since Konniger’s quite unique skills had been tested in any real way, and, while Konniger claimed to prefer to devote his time to the scholarly study of dusty, worm-eaten tomes and scrolls, Vido knew that his master was rarely more energised and enthused than when his mental abilities were engaged by the intellectual puzzles of the many supernatural and criminal mysteries that so often came their way.

“Yes, we’re going out, Vido. We’ve received a message, but what exactly was its meaning? I believe its urgency is clear in the blatancy of the mistake my opponent chose to make in our game, and in the unexpected break in the pattern of our arrangements. What does this urgency mean? What is my opponent trying to say to me? What could be more urgent and to the point than, ‘Come quickly. I need your help’ perhaps?”

Konniger took the cloak Vido handed to him and wrapped it around himself with a theatrical flourish, another tell-tale sign that the sage-detective was starting to greatly warm to the prospect of throwing himself headlong into another mystery.

“Come, Vido. Let us go see if we cannot track down my nameless opponent and hear for ourselves what he has to say.”

The hour was now fairly late—several hours after sundown in the summer months—but the streets of central Altdorf were still full of life. It had been a market day today, and the main streets and wide avenues thronged with the leftover dregs from the event. The taverns and alehouses were full too, drunken patrons spilling raucously out into the streets, and Vido had no doubt that inside many of them the locals would be more than happy to entertain the countryside yokels who had tarried too long after the end of market day, their purses stuffed with the copper and silver coin profits of the day’s proceedings. No doubt the idiot bumpkins were having a splendid time in the company of their new, big city friends. However, come dawn, when the city gates were re-opened, it would be a very different story, as the survivors of the night’s revelries emerged to make their lonely way home to distant towns and villages, the contents of their now empty purses freely dispersed amongst the city’s hostelry owners, footpads, street girls, cutpurses, card sharks, conmen and other fraudsters.

Some would never leave at all; their beaten and stripped bodies would eventually be found lying in some stinking alley by the City Watch, or hauled out of the river by some passing boatman. Others, possibly no less lucky, would awaken, dazed and hung-over, in some unfamiliar barrack room or flophouse to discover that one of their new-found “friends” of the previous night had in fact been a professional recruiter and that they had been tricked into signing up for the Imperial army. Or, even worse, any of the mercenary free companies that roamed the territories of the Empire in search of employment and fresh recruits. For these unfortunates, press-ganged into the ranks of these bands of cut-throat mercenaries, the chances of ever seeing their homes and loved ones again were scarcely better than those of their compatriots who ended up lying dead in an alley or floating face-down in the waters of the River Reik.

“Altdorf, seat of Imperial majesty, city of excitement and adventure,” Konniger sardonically murmured to himself as he made his way through the city streets, dispassionately observing the panoramic landscape of human greed and vice occurring all around him.

Zavant cleaved an imperious course through the milling crowds like one of those legendary dwarf steam-driven sea fortress-vessels which Vido had once seen a picture of in one of his master’s books. Passers-by moved quickly out of his way, either because they recognised him, or merely because they somehow sensed the aura of importance about him. The occasional passing City Watch patrol nodded in acknowledgement or doffed their caps to him in quiet respect. Konniger’s services were frequently called upon by Altdorf’s law enforcement guardians, and while his methods and brusque manner frequently brought him into conflict with the senior Watch commanders, he was popular with the ordinary Watchman on the street, many of whom regarded him with almost superstitious awe.

Vido scurried along in his master’s wake, nimbly dodging a path through the barging bodies and heavy-booted feet of the surrounding crush. The good citizens of Altdorf might clear a path for their city’s renowned sage-detective, but his diminutive halfling manservant was quite another matter. Despite the difficulty, Vido kept pace with Konniger, continuing his self-appointed task of watching out for his master’s back. His practiced thief’s eye picked out the usual, familiar figures of cutpurses and footpads loitering at all the usual, familiar places, but he knew that there would be no danger from that particular quarter. Altdorf’s criminal fraternity knew Konniger better than almost any of the city’s other residents, and knew far better than to ever try to rob or waylay him. Nevertheless, there was something here that alerted his thief’s natural intuition, and he hurried forward to Konniger’s side.

“Master—” he began.

“Yes, I know,” said Konniger, cutting him off, “but well spotted anyway. Half a dozen of them, perhaps more. They’ve been following us since we left home. They’re working in relay teams, mixing and matching between teams so we don’t begin to recognise the same pairs of faces in the crowd around us. They’re quick, I’ll grant them that. And clever, too.”

But not clever enough, thought Vido. Not clever enough to escape Konniger’s acute notice. Did anything every truly escape the man’s attention, Vido wondered?

“A guard to make sure we don’t change our minds, or a secret escort providing us with safe conduct to wherever we’re going?” Vido asked.

“A combination of both possibilities, I think,” agreed Konniger, apparently completely untroubled by this latest development. “It would seem that our mystery opponent is anxious indeed to see us this night.”

They were across the Ostlander Bridge now, turning off the Volker Weg and heading down towards the riverside docks. Towards the Reikerbahn… With a heavy sinking feeling of growing dread, Vido realised that his suspicions about their ultimate destination were now proving to be increasingly likely.

Leaving the main thoroughfares of the city and entering the Reikerbahn was like stepping from one world into another. Here, there was none of the hustle and bustle of the busy, well-lit and Watch-patrolled main streets; here, there was just mist-filled gloomy silence, broken only by the passage of figures moving furtively through the winding alleyways on purposes best left unquestioned. Vido’s feet splashed through puddles of water and mud but he managed to avoid the worst spots of putrid, open-lying filth that made up the ground surface of the Reikerbahn. Any cobbled streets here had been ripped up long ago to provide missile ammunition for the riots that met the City Watch’s occasional attempts to clean out this nest of crime and sin. All around them he heard the sounds of human life at its most miserable and wretched—sobs and quiet, pitiful cries; mad, drunken laughter, abruptly cut off; urgent, fevered whispering from behind locked doors and shuttered windows—and he sensed too the feeling of many hidden eyes watching them from secret vantage points. Vido doubted whether even Konniger’s seeming inviolability extended here into the heart of the rat’s nest of the Reikerbahn. The whole area teemed with gangs of murderous footpads and the vilest kinds of rogues who would slit their own mother’s throat for the price of a pot of ale, but no one tried to bar their way or in any way impede them.

As that lurching feeling of dread grew ever stronger inside him, Vido realised that, clearly, they were expected and that someone had issued orders that they were to be allowed to pass by unharmed.

Several more turns through the confusing maze of dark, winding streets—Vido suspected that Konniger must have pilfered his unfailing sense of direction from a dwarf tunnel runner—and they arrived at what the halfling had now long suspected was to be the destination of tonight’s journey. Officially, it was Gablenz Strasse, although Vido sincerely doubted whether there was anyone in the entire city who actually called it that. Everyone, for as long as could be remembered, knew it by one name and one name only: Auftagskillers Strasse. Street of the Assassins.

It was a narrow, unwelcoming-looking cul-de-sac, lined with several low-roofed, abandoned buildings that bore the marks of ancient fire damage. The seemed empty and abandoned, although Vido knew plenty to suggest otherwise. The only visible sign of life in the street was a lit lamp hanging outside a ramshackle, decrepit townhouse building that slumped drunkenly against its fire-gutted neighbour. At any moment it looked as if it was about to tumble in a torrent of crumbling rubble down into the street itself. It took a second—and probably a third—glance to realise that this ruin was in fact an alehouse of sorts, and that, even more incredibly, it was apparently open for business. The dismal light from the solitary lamp flickered sullenly amidst the gloom, weakly illuminating the alehouse’s faded and peeling name banner.

“The Averlander’s Rest,” it said, although Vido winced at the thought of what would happen to any country bumpkin Averlander who actually made the doubtlessly fatal mistake of wandering through its doors in search of such promised rest and succour. Like the street itself, the alehouse had another unofficial but far more appropriate name familiar to generations of Altdorfers past and present.

They called it the Murder Hole, and it was known throughout the length and breadth of the Empire and beyond as a place where those wishing to purchase assurance of the deaths of others could come and find what they were looking for.

Vido hesitated at the entrance to the Street of Assassins. He has never been in the Murder Hole, but, from his time in the Altdorf thieves’ guild he knew all about the place’s evil reputation, about the things that went on in there, and the even worse things that were rumoured to take shape in some of its darker and more private back rooms.

No, he had never wanted then to pass through the doors of the place, and even less desire to do so now.

He visibly started as he felt something grip his shoulder, and looked up in surprise to see Konniger standing beside him, a reassuring hand placed on his shoulder. A rare smile of something approximating genuine human warmth momentarily creased the sage-detective’s features.

“When I sat down to do battle earlier this evening with Marco the Malicious, who would have imagined that a few short hours later we would both be standing here, about to enter one of the most wicked houses in all the Empire?”

Konniger paused, and then added with a further smile, “Have faith, Vido. No harm will come to us tonight. After all, we’re here at someone’s invitation, remember?”

Three

“Vesper Klasst, I believe he’s expecting us.”

Two words forming one name. Spoken aloud, the combined effect of those two words, of that one name, could hardly have been more marked had Konniger instead chosen to detonate one of the Imperial Gunnery School’s fearsome new explosive cannon-fire devices here inside the Murder Hole. From his position at the bar in the ill-lit interior of the alehouse, Vido heard the commotion from behind where he and Konniger stood. There was the scraping of chairs on stone as the tavern’s ill-kempt and vile-looking patrons leaped up from wherever they were sitting in response to Konniger’s mentioning of that name. Vido heard the soft slither of knife blades being drawn from leather sheaths, and from somewhere in the upper tier balcony gallery above them came the unmistakable harsh metallic click of a crossbow mechanism being cocked to fire.

Konniger’s hearing was acute, Vido knew. If Vido had heard this, then his master would have too. Despite this, the gentleman sage gave no indication of the mortal peril they were now in, and instead continued to wait patiently for the ruffian barman’s reply.

“There’s no one here by that name,” the man said slowly and deliberately through clenched teeth, glaring at Konniger. “You’re a fool to come in here, whoever you are, and an even bigger fool to even think about using that name out loud.”

“Then perhaps I haven’t made myself clear,” replied Konniger archly. “I wish to see Vesper Klasst. You know the man I’m speaking of? The worst villain in all the Empire? The lowest, basest kind of gallows-scum who laughably styles himself as the so-called ‘Emperor of the Altdorf underworld’? A jumped-up, back-alley purse-snatcher possessed with ridiculous delusions of grandeur?”

The alehouse keeper snarled in fury, and reached for whatever kind of weapon he kept handy on a shelf just below the bar-top. They would never find out what he had down there—a cudgel, probably, or perhaps even a loaded crossbow or gunpowder pistol—because it was at that moment that Konniger reached across the bar and sharply tapped the barkeep at a certain point on the side of his neck. The effect was instantaneous: the man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped to the floor as if felled by an invisible poleaxe.

Vido spun round, pulling out his dagger as they turned to face the anger of the Murder Hole’s patrons. There were an even dozen and a half of them he reckoned, all armed, the worst kind of cutthroat and Altdorf underworld scum. He reckoned he could probably put the point of his throwing dagger into the eye, throat or heart of one of them, and maybe have time to draw and hurl another dagger before they got to him. Konniger would probably also give a good account of himself. His master customarily eschewed the use of weapons, but those unarmed fighting tricks that he had learned from a travelling wise man from Cathay meant that he was capable of dealing out more than a few surprises, as the Murder Hole barkeep had just found out.

Nevertheless, the odds were heavily against them. Even before he had run off to Altdorf to take up a life of thievery, Vido’s family back home in the Moot had often warned that he would come to a bad end—either swinging from the end of a gallows’ rope or stabbed to death in some back-alley brawl—and Vido was now forced to agree that they had apparently been right all along. He spin-flipped the dagger in his hand, throwing it up and smartly catching it by its blade point as he prepared to send it hurling hilt-deep into the body of one of the oncoming rogues. He drew his arm back, ready to throw.

“Hold!”

The angry, urgent shout made everything freeze in its tracks. There was a long, almost endless, moment of hesitation and then the Murder Hole patrons simply retreated and faded away into the murky gloom of the room. Vido’s throwing arm still seemed frozen in place, the blade held there still quivering in hungry anticipation, eager to fly into the unprotected back of one of those retreating figures. Again Vido felt his master’s reassuring grip on his shoulder, the touch relaxing the muscles of his arm, allowing him to at last lower his throwing arm. He breathed out for what seemed like the first time in an age, and realised then that the quivering of his throwing blade had been caused by a nervous trembling that gripped his entire body.

“Stoutly played, Vido, but all that was mere theatrics designed to impress and intimidate us. Now that these tedious preliminaries are over, perhaps we can now get down to the night’s real business.”

Vido followed Konniger’s gaze, seeing three men standing behind the bar, framed in an open doorway that Vido would have sworn had not been there last time he had looked. Two of them held lit firebrands, the flickering flames revealing behind them a set of worn stone steps heading down into darkness. They scanned the room with wary, dangerous eyes, and Vido recognised them for what they were: true denizens of this Street of Assassins. He recognised their companion too, and knew then why the other patrons of the place had been so quick to obey his shouted command. This third man grinned at Konniger and Vido, showing a mouthful of broken, rotted teeth, and stepped aside, mock-bowing to them as he gestured the way into the darkness below.

“This way, gentlemen. Herr Klasst is waiting for you.”

“Blindfolds, Zavant? No, I wouldn’t wish insult you with such a cheap ploy, especially since we both know that, even blindfolded, you would almost certainly have been able to memorize the route between the Murder Hole and my humble lair here. Besides, we’re old friends, aren’t we, and friends often show each other such small favours, do they not?”

They were in some low-ceilinged, underground chamber, the walls of which were piled high with boxes, barrels and cases of different sorts. From the experience of his past life as a professional thief, Vido judged the place to be a storage point for loot and contraband in transit between any of Klasst’s many criminal enterprises. To get here, they had traversed various secretive paths both through and beneath the Reikerbahn, arriving at last at what was obviously merely a conveniently anonymous rendezvous point for this meeting rather than the Altdorf crimelord’s true hideout.

Their guides on this journey had been Reichel Scholke and his two assassin escorts. Vido knew Scholke of old. Knew him, and rightfully feared him. It was Scholke who clipped off the fingers of cutpurses and pickpockets who operated without licence from Klasst; Scholke who took his blade to the faces of the street-girls who tried to deny Klasst his cut of their nightly earnings; Scholke who threw powdered lime into the eyes of the merchants and storekeepers who complained that the protection money sums they had to pay to Klasst’s collection agents were too high. Scholke was Klasst’s lieutenant and chief enforcer, the public face of the crimelord’s manifold illegal schemes and operations, and a figure of considerable fear and dread among Altdorf’s criminal fraternity.

Still, Vido did not fear Scholke as much as he would have once. After all, he had seen Vaul Steiner in action, and, compared to the deadly and unwavering abilities of His Imperial Majesty’s personal assassin, Klasst’s lieutenant was little more than a common street thug.

Scholke stood facing them, standing behind his master and grinning nastily at them, again displaying his mouthful of rotted teeth. Legend had it that Scholke carried a pair of rusty, blood-crusted pliers with him, to even up the balance whenever some poor unfortunate’s perfect, tooth-filled smile reminded him too much of his own failings in that department. Vido didn’t know the truth of that legend but, like many others, took care to keep his mouth closed and his teeth hidden now that he was in Scholke’s company.

Konniger stood beside Vido, radiating assurance and confidence, and still apparently not at all intimidated by their surroundings. If you had been to some of the places that Konniger claimed to have visited—walked the sand-buried streets of the desert-drowned cities of the Land of the Dead or stood on the slopes of the World’s Edge Mountains and stared out at the vast and dismal Dark-claimed wastelands beyond—then Vido imagined that the underground hideout of a common-or-garden crimelord, even one of Vesper Klasst’s fearsome reputation, must pale somewhat in comparison.

There were others in the room, more bodyguards, lieutenants and lackeys, but Konniger had eyes only for Klasst himself. Drawing himself to his full, imposing height, Konniger glared haughtily down at the surprisingly slight figure sitting at the makeshift casket-desk in front of him.

In truth, Altdorf’s much-feared emperor of all things illicit and illegal was something of a disappointment in the flesh, an opinion which Vido wisely kept to himself at that moment. Like Konniger, it was difficult to determine how old the crimelord was, although Vido would hazard a guess that he was much the same age as his master, being somewhere in what humans would term their middle years.

Klasst’s clothes were a surprising mixture of the opulent and the threadbare. Small and balding, he might have passed for just another modestly successful merchant trader or some minor, provincial nobleman from an aristocratic clan whose fortunes had gone to seed, had it not been for the look of sharp, cold intelligence in the set of his face. It was his eyes in particular which gave the impression of the harsh and clinically ruthless mind lurking beyond that otherwise disingenuous exterior appearance. He had the same eyes, the same piercing gaze that Konniger had, Vido realised. Or would have, he amended himself, had his master’s formidable mental processes ever been untroubled by any matters relating to conscience, morality and basic human decency.

Konniger looked unswervingly into those eyes now, locking gazes with the man who was in so many ways his matching equal and yet at the same time his mirror-image opposite.

“Friends?” he spat angrily. “Did I miss something, Vesper? Did the Chaos Moon fall from the sky and unleash a new age of Dark-spawned evil upon the world? Did the World’s Edge Mountains crumble to dust and leave the lands of mankind defenceless against the legions of greenskin savages that lie in wait behind them? I’m sure that some such event must have occurred, for surely the world itself would have to come to an end before I would ever acknowledge such as you as a friend.”

The crimelord laughed: a dry, unpleasantly bitter sound. “Zavant, always so proud, even back in the days when we might truly have been friends, before our lives took such different paths. Have you ever wondered why you profess to hate me so much?”

“I hate you because of what you are, Vesper,” answered Konniger, clearly and coldly, “because of what you have chosen to be. I hate you because you deliberately choose to use your Sigmar-given gifts and intellect for your own petty, ill-starred ambitions. You talk of our lives taking different paths as if what we do in life is a matter of fate rather than free will. I do not agree. There is good and there is evil, Vesper, and we have both of us chosen our differing sides in that equation.”

The crimelord smiled again, but it was the kind of smile that served merely to hide a snarl, and his eyes flashed with bright, cold fury at what Konniger had said.

“Good and evil, you say? Take a look around you, Zavant. We are no longer in that old fool von Lattmann’s draughty study, arguing over the finer points of all those worthless philosophies. Oh, I know that you do indeed hate me, but only because you cannot admit to yourself that we are so alike, you and I. I freely admit to seeing much of you within myself, but you dare not turn that famously acute vision inwards, into your own soul, for fear of what you may find. What are you afraid of, Zavant? That the face you see there may not wholly resemble your own?”

A silence settled in the chamber. Vido and the other bystanders shifted uneasily, unnerved by the clash of intellects being played out before them.

Klasst settled back into his chair, his fingers forming self-satisfied steeple shapes. Clearly, he felt that he had landed a direct hit on his opponent’s sensibilities. He paused, savouring the moment, before continuing.

“We play our games together, do we not? How many chess games have we played together over the years, and how many have ended in stalemate? Most, I think. We play other games across the larger game board of the city, and there, I’ll grant you, you have had your successes against me. Many times I’ve been on the verge of bringing our grand game to an end by removing you as an opponent.”

He broke off, gesturing at the grinning figure of the assassin standing behind him. “Scholke here has always been keen on the idea of doing away with you once and for all. He does not understand why I never sanctioned him to do so. I’ll admit that, at times, the idea has been tempting, Zavant, but do you know why I have never acted upon it?”

“I’ll assume that it has little to do with mercy, or friendship for old times’ sake,” replied Konniger, in a withering tone. His response only provoked a further smile of malicious pleasure from Klasst.

“You assume correctly. No, my dear Zavant, it is because I always knew that one day I might actually need your help.”

“And that day is now, I suppose,” said Konniger, stiffly. “There is little in this world that would give me more satisfaction than the knowledge of your destruction, and an end to the evil that you bring to this city. Why then should I give you this aid that you now require?”

Klasst leaned forward, all trace of wry, wicked amusement now gone from him. He looked deadly earnest, his voice taking on a low, frighteningly stern tone, and at this moment Vido could indeed see much of Konniger in the crimelord’s aspect and demeanour.

“Because I am under attack,” Klasst whispered harshly, “from an enemy that even I fear and cannot fight alone. Because for once we fight on the same side, you and I, against an evil far greater than anything even you could ever accuse me of being capable of.”

Now it was Konniger’s turn to laugh dismissively. “You disappoint me, Vesper. I know that you have suffered recent losses amongst the ranks of your organisation, but do you really expect me to intervene in some petty alley war squabble with one of your criminal rivals?”

Klasst, however, refused to be provoked. “The time for game playing is over, Zavant. You know that I can more than adequately look after my own affairs in such matters, just as we both know that you would not have come here tonight if you truly believed that the reason for my asking you was as trivial a matter as that.”

He paused, waiting for Konniger’s expected retort. When none was forthcoming, the crimelord looked at his old opponent for a moment, seeking to gauge an insight into the thoughts going on behind the sage-detective’s carefully neutral expression. “I see that you still have your doubts,” Klasst decided at last. “No doubt you require proof of what I have told you. Very well—”

Klasst rose from his seat, and gestured towards one of his unseen minions at the back of the chamber. In response to his command, there was the sound of heavy bolts being drawn open. A current of shockingly chill air rushed into the chamber as a door was pulled open, the icy current carrying with it the distinct and ominous scent of spoiled and rotten meat.

“Show them,” ordered the crimelord.

The rough-hewn stone walls of the chamber sparkled with diamond beads of ice. Konniger’s frozen breath billowed out in small, condensed clouds as he bent over to inspect the bodies.

There were seven of them, stripped naked and laid out on crude wooden pallets, each of them blanketed with a thin patina of frost. Vido recognised two of them from his days in the thieves’ guild and knew them to be villains and gallows-scum of long standing. He might perhaps have recognised several more, but three of the corpses had little left in the way of recognisable faces. The flesh of all seven was torn and ravaged in terrible ways, not cut or crushed by any man-made weapon but instead seemingly slashed and ripped apart by something far more sinister. Konniger tutted in disapproval when he saw that the head of each body had been neatly severed, and that makeshift wooden stakes had been hammered into the chests of each cadaver.

“Inflicted post-mortem, I assume?” he asked Klasst, who nodded in reluctant acknowledgement.

“It was the only way I could get my men to handle the corpses in order to bring them here. They fear they already know the nature of the enemy that is striking at my organisation and they required—certain assurances, shall we say?—that these lifeless bodies would be of no further danger.”

Konniger continued his inspection of the corpses as he carried on with his conversation with Klasst. Their exchanges now were exact and to the point, all trace of the enmity between them forgotten as they busied themselves with the task at hand.

“How many other deaths have there been before these?”

“It began a week ago,” answered Klasst. “Five of my men slaughtered in an attack on one of my smuggling operations at the docks. Another six men two nights later at a gambling den just off the Ostmark Parade. There was plenty of coin there for the taking, but the killer left all of it lying there along with the bodies of my men. Three more two nights hence—one of Scholke’s lieutenants and two of his associates, dangerous and wary men all three of them, not easily surprised by any ordinary killer—just across the street from the Murder Hole, and then these seven some time before dawn yesterday.”

Konniger digested all this without emotion, never once looking up from his work. “It would have been better for the purposes of my examinations to have left these ones intact at the scene where they were found. Still, you did well to have them preserved in this manner for my inspection. The minor conjuring spell that has been used here to alter the temperature should not unduly interfere with some of the more unusual divining procedures that I may need to employ. I assume, of course, that you have kept the bloodied clothing and any other such items belonging to the deceased ready for my attention, should I wish to examine them?”

Klasst nodded in assent, a quiet smile of satisfaction on his face. “Then you are agreeing to help me, old friend?”

Konniger predictably declined any direct reply to the crimelord’s question. “I must return to my residence. There are certain items and materials I require before I can—”

“Tell me what you need,” asked Klasst, eagerly. “Whatever it is, I assure you that I can provide it and have it here with you within the hour.”

“Very well,” agreed Konniger. “Vido here will provide you with the full list of the items I require.”

They waited outside as Konniger conducted his examination of the cadavers. Occasionally, there would come a curt, shouted summons which would bring Vido scurrying into the room to help his master. Mostly, this involved detailed note taking of everything Konniger said as he poked around amongst the ravaged flesh of the seven bodies. Once Vido was required to heat up a small glass tube of clear liquid over an ingenious fire-making device of dwarf manufacture while Konniger carefully scraped some dried flakes of a noxious-looking, black slime substance from out of one of the corpse’s wounds. This substance, when added to the contents of the heated glass tube, transformed the clear liquid into a clouded, reddish-black mixture and filled the room with a near unbearable stench. Konniger merely murmured to himself in private satisfaction, whatever hypothesis he had formulated now having obviously been proven correct.

There were other rituals and tests to be conducted, some of them far more esoteric than these simple alchemical procedures, and these Konniger carried out behind closed doors. So Vido mostly sat outside, feeling distinctly uncomfortable in the company of Vesper Klasst and his crimelord court of rogues, thieves, spies and assassins.

Occasionally, messengers would come and go, delivering cryptic notes or urgent, whispered communications to the lord of the Altdorf underworld. Whatever these messages were, they did not seem to concern the murderous events that had brought him and Konniger here, and Vido assumed them to be part of the crimelord’s normal, nightly routine. For it was while the ordinary, honest, Sigmar-fearing citizens of the Imperial capital slept that Klasst and his minions went about their illicit business, and Klasst styled himself not merely as emperor of the city’s underworld, but also ruler of the Altdorf night.

Or so it had seemed up until now, thought Vido, for now it seemed that there was another rival claimant to the title.

Wisely, Vido kept such thoughts to himself. Whatever the details of Klasst’s business affairs were, Vido wanted no part of any of it, and he made a studied show of finding something—anything—else to engage his attention whenever one of these messengers was delivering word to Klasst.

Klasst had scarcely given Vido a second glance since the moment he and Konniger had been ushered into the crimelord’s presence, and most of Klasst’s men showed a similar, complete disinterest in the halfling’s existence, a fact for which Vido was heartily glad of. Humans rarely showed much interest in his kind, he knew. Halflings seemed to exist at some point beneath the attention level of many of their larger, clumsier human cousins, who often considered them to be at best amusing and hapless child-like halfwits and, at worst, some annoying type of over-sized, two-legged vermin. Many halflings played up to the former role, and Vido had too, on more than one occasion; being considered harmless or even near-invisible was too much of a gift for any thief worthy of the name to easily pass up on.

Still, Vido fidgeted uncomfortably, knowing that there was at least one other person here in this villains’ den who was still aware of his presence.

Scholke sat directly across the room from Vido, obviously bored and frustrated as he played the razor-keen blade of his dagger across the surface of an upturned barrel. He grinned nastily across at the halfling as he carefully carved long, neat lines into the wood.

“Well, well, look who’s come back to us? Little Vido! I thought you’d forgotten your old Reikerbahn mates, Vido. We thought that you were maybe too good to mix with the likes of us these days, now that you’re with the Herr High-And-Mighty Konniger.”

Vido said nothing, but looked Scholke straight in the eye. Like the other men here, the assassin was bored and restless, afraid of the unknown enemy that seemed to be stalking Klasst’s organisation and keen to take out his frustrations on any target at hand. Klasst’s other henchmen started to stir with interest, sniggering from the sidelines in enjoyment at Scholke’s swaggering performance. Vido knew how this single-act playlet went; he had seen it performed many times before. Usually it ended with someone lying bleeding to death on the dirty, unswept floor of whatever thieves’ den tavern or gambling house it was which had served as an impromptu venue for this familiar old drama.

He surreptitiously reached into his jerkin to check that his throwing dagger, and the two others like it, was still there within easy grasp, even if he doubted that the odds against him here were any more favourable than they had been back in the Murder Hole. Taking his eyes off his tormentor for a moment, he risked a quick glance over at Klasst, checking to see what the crimelord’s reactions would be. Klasst feigned disinterest, choosing instead to devote his attention to a code-written inventory list that had been delivered to him some minutes ago.

If Vido was looking for help from that unlikely quarter, then, unsurprisingly, it seemed that none would be immediately forthcoming. Klasst had made it clear that Konniger’s person was inviolable tonight; the question now was, did the crimelord’s protective blessings extend to Konniger’s halfling manservant?

From the mood of tense unrest in the room, and the growing smile on Scholke’s face, Vido guessed he would have his answer soon enough.

“I remember when you weren’t such a bigwig, little Vido,” continued the assassin, starting to put on a show for his watching men. “Part of Hergabo Kleinbratten’s mob from down on Albrecht Strasse, weren’t you? Yes, he spoke very highly of you, did old Hergabo. Well, anyway, he did, right up until someone bashed his stupid, Moot-born brains in with a boot-hook one dark and foggy night.”

Scholke’s grin grew broader and nastier, and Vido remembered the bloodied mess that had been his old thief mentor when they found him lying in the street the next morning. He hadn’t been a bad sort, old Hergabo, even if he had been positively dwarf-like when it came to dividing up the loot, and Vido had genuinely mourned the old rogue’s death. Now he had yet another reason to hate and fear Scholke.

He continued to stare down the assassin, aware all the time that Scholke’s men were on the move, two of them moving in a supposedly haphazard, casual way round the room to his left and right, outflanking him on each side. All the time, Scholke kept talking, trying to keep Vido distracted as if he was some young runtling just arrived from the Moot, wet behind the ears and with fresh cow-dung still between his toes.

“Yes, that’s when you came to work for us, wasn’t it? A good, hard-working thief you were. A good little earner for the organisation. But then you had that run-in with the City Watch, didn’t you? We all reckoned you were a goner, off to dance the hangman’s jig at the weekly hangings in the Konigplatz. And next thing we know there’s some nonsense talk about an Imperial pardon signed by old Karl-Franz himself, and then, right enough, there you are giving all your old Reikerbahn mates the cold shoulder and swanking around town as manservant to his nibs, Herr High-And-Mighty Konniger.”

As he spoke, Scholke was idly spinning his dagger, cunningly flipping it from finger to finger, but Vido knew better than to allow himself to be distracted by the ploy. He kept a careful watch on Scholke’s eyes—they would give the split-second warning of the assassin’s intentions—and on the men still casually edging round the walls of the room, disappearing now into the dangerous areas on the periphery of his vision.

Whatever was going to happen, it was probably only a matter of seconds away now.

“Yes, when you left, we lost a nice little source of regular income there,” continued Scholke, “but you never did ask permission to leave the organisation or offer to buy out the rest of your contract with us, did you? That means you tried to cheat us, Vido. You owe us a debt, and you know that Herr Klasst always collects in the end on any unpaid debts still owed to him.”

Forget the other two, thought Vido. One clear, easy throw, putting the blade right into his throat. For old Hergabo, if nothing else.

“If your thugs are quite finished their tomfoolery with my manservant, Vesper, then I’ve finished my examination and am ready to share my findings with you.”

Konniger stood in the doorway, wiping his blood-stained hands on a linen cloth and staring in challenge at the scene in the room before him.

Scholke looked, disappointed, towards his master, who brought his henchman’s fun to an end with a curt and dismissive gesture. The crimelord had been watching the last few moments with vague interest, a hint of ugly enjoyment glittering in his dark eyes. Whether he would have called his pet killer to heel before the final denouement was now a question that would never be answered.

“And what have you discovered?” asked Klasst, blunt and to the point. He was all business again, showing no appetite for the intellectual sparring with Konniger of earlier in the evening.

“There are some puzzling aspects to the evidence, but I can confirm that your enemy is indeed that which you fear it to be.” Here Konniger deliberately raised his voice, no doubt momentarily enjoying the effect his chilling words had on Klasst’s men. The darkest, hidden horrors of the world held far considerably greater terror in the minds of superstitious back-alley rogues than they did for gentleman sage-detectives who had made a lifetime’s study of such things. “You and your organisation are under attack from the forces of the undead. The killer is the very worst of that kind: a vampire, possibly of a variety I have never encountered before. There are others with it too, foul undead minions or accomplices that it has summoned to assist it in its task.”

“Then you know how to deal with such creatures?” asked Klasst, eagerly.

Konniger finished wiping his hands and threw the cloth into the doorway behind him. “The precautions you took with the cadavers were more than adequate, but I am finished with them now, and I suggest that you have the remains cremated as soon as possible. You must do the same with the bodies of the other victims, if you have not already done so. I also strongly suggest you seek out the help of a priest of Morr for advice on the proper funerary rites.”

Konniger looked up sharply, staring Klasst straight in the eye. “Your men may be the worst kind of villains, Vesper, but even they deserve better than to have their souls held in thrall for all eternity to the powers of darkness.”

“Zavant…” The tone in the crimelord’s voice was half-threatening, half-pleading. It was the tone of a powerful man unused to asking for favours, and loathe to do so now from one who he must surely consider to be his worst enemy.

“Yes, Vesper, I will help you,” relented Konniger, at last. “Not because I care in the least about the fates of you and your army of cutthroats, but because I cannot permit such foulness to continue to exist here in Altdorf. You and the vampire may share certain traits, Vesper, both shadow-dwelling predators feeding on the lifeblood of humanity, both ruling through fear and violence, but at least you are not yet so irredeemably damned as those foul servants of evil. I warn you, though, that once this business is concluded, there will still one day have to be a final reckoning between us. As to the business at hand now, though, I can lend aid and advice to an extent, but there are certain people I can summon here, people who have much experience in dealing with such—”

“No outsiders,” warned Klasst. “No damned witch-hunters and boy wonder Templars or Knights Panther, Zavant. We deal with this on our own.”

“Very well. As you wish.” Konniger folded his hands into the sleeves of his vestments, and calmly moved towards the passageway door leading out of the underground chamber. “Good luck in your endeavours, Vesper. I would consider praying for you, but I do not believe you deserve Sigmar’s blessings, nor do I think my prayers would in any way alter the outcome of your battle. Come, Vido, our work here is done.”

One of Klasst’s men moved to block the way out the door, but before he could do anything, there was a commotion in the passageway outside. Vido heard hurried footsteps, and the sound of alarmed shouting. Blades were hurriedly drawn from scabbards, and Vido even saw one of Klasst’s bodyguards ready a blunderbuss rifle and level its gaping, fully loaded barrel mouth at the doorway. To his surprise, Vido also found himself being hauled back by Konniger, the sage-detective deliberately interposing his own body between his servant and whatever was on the other side of the door.

The door burst open and a man, his face bloodied, his eyes wide with shock and disbelieving horror, came stumbling in. “Herr Klasst, they’ve struck again!” he panted, delivering his fear-garbled message to his employer. “There’s been another one, over at the counting house on Talabec Platz. Ranald’s eye, you’ve never heard such screams, and it’s still going on!”

Klasst looked sharply over at Konniger, who nodded in silent understanding.

“Gather what men you can, Vesper, and let us go without delay. Quickly, there isn’t a moment to lose.”

Four

They moved swiftly and urgently through the secret back-ways of the city. Vido knew something of these hidden highways from his days in the thieves’ guild, but he had never guessed before that they could have grown to be so extensive. With a shudder, he recalled the time he accompanied Konniger in the sage-detective’s explorations of the subterranean tunnels and chambers of the so-called “Under-Empire”, but Klasst’s achievement was in many ways even more impressive than that. The vile rat-things carved the routes between their lairs in the bowels of the earth, away from the sight of men, but the secret roads traversed by the Altdorf crimelord and his servants were in plain sight and yet somehow invisible and unknown to all.

They travelled through streets and wynds where all eyes were carefully averted, passed through locked and guarded gates whose watchmen looked the other way as they did so. Several times, their route took them through various hovel-like dwellings amongst the Reikerbahn, the wretched inhabitants of these houses barely sparing them a second glance and giving the impression that it was an everyday occurrence for them to see large parties of armed strangers pass through the middle of their homes. At one point, their journey took them into a dreamhouse den, the air of the place thick with the cloying, sickly reek of dreamweed smoke. The floor was lined with a carpet of supine, weed-incapacitated forms, and Klasst and his men marched brusquely through them, stepping heavily on limbs and unconscious bodies, making no attempt to conceal their contempt for those who undoubtedly contributed heavily to the crimelord’s share of the profits from the always burgeoning dreamweed business. Dreamweed-dazed eyes stupidly stared at them as they passed through the dank, stinking cellars of the building. If any of these people were actually aware of them, thought Vido, they would probably be unable to distinguish the travellers from any of the other phantom figures that passed through the shifting haze of their waking weed-dreams.

Their journey through the dreamhouse den brought them out at a seemingly little-used river jetty, where they boarded rowing skips for the journey across yet another riverway. Altdorf stood on a series of islands straddling the meeting place of the waters of the Talabec and Reik rivers, and it was difficult to traverse the city from one point to another without crossing water at least once. River traffic was forbidden during the hours of night, and all travellers had to pass over the city’s many wooden and stone bridges, all of which were guarded by at least one Watch patrol.

Despite the ban on night-time river traffic, there was no challenge to Klasst’s convoy of rafts as they speedily cut their way across this slow-flowing portion of the river. One of Klasst’s men stood at the prow of the lead raft, holding a lit lantern aloft, the light taking on a weird red sheen from the coloured glass it was filtered through. Vido guessed that the colour of the lantern light was a coded means of communication to all nearby, warning them of the identity of the raft’s distinguished and much-feared passenger. Whatever the truth, there were no alarmed shouts in challenge to the men on the rafts, even though it was a rare fogless night on the river, and they were passing within clear sight of at least two Watch-guarded bridges.

They docked at the other side of the river at another small wharf that Vido had never seen before, scrambling ashore to be met by a waiting group of more of Klasst’s armed thugs. More and more men had joined them on the course of their journey, appearing as if from nowhere in small bands of twos and threes to silently fall into step with Klasst and his bodyguards, and there were now over two dozen of them travelling in the crimelord’s vanguard. Vido saw crossbows, handbows and more blackpowder weapons, and somewhere amongst the throng he glimpsed a figure wearing the distinctive coloured robes of one of the Colleges of Magic. Klasst, it seemed, had had the presence of mind to summon one of his pet sorcerers.

They gathered on the small jetty, an ancient, barred, rust-encrusted gate blocking the way before them. One of Klasst’s men produced a large ring from which hung keys of many different sizes and sorts and unlocked the gate, which yielded with a protesting, rusted-metal groan. Vido caught one tantalizing glimpse of the heavy key ring, and the former thief in him couldn’t help but wonder how many hidden treasures and dark secrets hung there.

There was an underground passageway beyond the gate, which led straight in the direction of the nearby Talabec Platz merchants’ quarter, and Vido’s sensitive halfling nose detected enough of a malodorous hint emanating from the open passageway to suggest that it connected at some close point with the city’s sewer-ways.

Surrounded by his bodyguards, Klasst looked sharply at Konniger as the group entered the tunnel. “Now we will soon have an end to this business, Zavant, and you will see what happens to those who try to cross Vesper Klasst.”

“I pray you are right, Vesper,” replied Konniger stiffly, “if only because it will mean a more than welcome end to our temporary alliance.”

They moved swiftly along the tunnel, Klasst sending several of his thugs on ahead to scout the way. Many of those here were seasoned thieves and assassins, Vido knew, skilled at moving with stealth and subtlety. Still, there was only so much stealth that a large group of heavily armed men could achieve while splashing their way along a narrow, waterlogged, echo-filled underground tunnel, and Vido winced at the amount of noise they were making. Besides the noise, there was something else that troubled him: a faint, sickly carrion scent lurking below the traditional sewer stink that now lay heavy in the air of the tunnel.

Vido glanced around him, checking to see if anyone else sensed what he could. The faces of Klasst’s bodyguards were tight with tension, eyes and ears straining to pick up any hint of danger in the darkness ahead while ignoring any more subtle clues that their lesser senses may have picked up. The crimelord himself delicately held a posy bag to his nose and mouth, the perfumed scent from the herbs inside masking the stench in the tunnel.

Only Konniger seemed to have picked up the odour too. He sniffed at the air suspiciously with his long, beak-like nose, and then cast Vido a troubled glance. “Take care,” he whispered urgently. “Whatever happens, stay close by me.”

Konniger reached into his robes, producing a flintbox and stubby, yellow tallow wax candle from amongst the seemingly endless number of accoutrements and items which he habitually carried with him. He quickly struck a flame from the flintbox and lit the candle’s tapered wick. The stuttering, tiny light it threw off was meagre in comparison to the lanterns and firebrand torches held by several of Klasst’s men, but Vido suspected that the candle’s purpose was for something other than mere illumination.

As he watched, Konniger threw a pinch of a glittering dust into the fragile flame. The result was instantaneous: the flame angrily flared up and then began twisting and shifting in a way completely independent of the air currents blowing through the tunnel. Hypnotised, Vido watched as the flickering flame changed hue several times, running through a bewildering panoply of colours. The thugs around them shifted uneasily, clearly unhappy at being in the presence of anything that might be called witchcraft. Vido, who knew his master’s strange ways, could have told them otherwise, but doubted that they would be able to tell the difference between mere witchcraft tricks and some of the far more arcane methods employed by Konniger.

“Master…” he breathed, only to be cut short by Konniger holding one long, tapering finger to his lips in commanding silence. The same finger then pointed slowly towards the candle flame. Vido obediently looked, and for a moment could not believe what he saw.

The candle burned with a clear black flame, throwing off -impossibly and yet somehow undeniably—a black light radiance that stood out brilliantly against the lesser, surrounding darkness of the tunnel.

Those around them gawped in surprise. Konniger alone seemed to know what this meant and made a soft grunt of annoyance that Vido recognised from experience as meaning that his master had just had his worst fears confirmed.

“Vesper, we’re walking into an ambush! Look at the flame! The black radiance indicates that one of the greater orders of the undead—almost certainly a vampire of significant power—is close by! Look at the flame!” he insisted again, reaching out to grasp Klasst’s arm. “Call your men back. It’s a trap, man! It’s—”

Klasst was cut off by the sound of a scream from further up the tunnel, a sound followed seconds later by an abrupt tearing sound and then the splash of something heavy—a body, Vido realised, in sick fear—falling into the water-filled gutters of the tunnel.

Alerted by Konniger’s warning, Klasst and his men had a few extra precious seconds to react before their attackers struck. Vido had to give Klasst credit for the quality and skill of his cadre of bodyguards. They were drawn not merely from the finest cut-throat scum that the back-alleys of Altdorf had to offer, but also from the pick of the best mercenary bands and warrior castes in the whole of the Old World.

Under the circumstances, then, it was greatly to their credit that any of them actually managed to survive the battle for quite as long as they did.

Having swiftly dealt with the scouts that Klasst had sent ahead up the tunnel, the ghoul things swept down the passage towards the rest of the group. Riflemen and handgunners stepped forward, and suddenly the tunnel was filled by the crashing roar of gunfire and the stinging reek of flintlock-ignited blackpowder, followed moments later by the screaming howls of pain from the ghouls as musket-fired lead balls tore into leprous, grave-rotted flesh and shattered gnarled, inhuman-shaped bones.

The surviving ghouls trampled over their own dead and injured, slashing at them with tooth and claw, in their eagerness to get at the humans. Klasst’s gunners pulled back to reload, giving way to their comrades armed with other missile weapons. Vido saw a crossbowman who must surely have been a marksman in some Elector Count’s army before seeking better-paid employment in the service of Vesper Klasst step forward and calmly put a crossbow quarrel straight through the eye of a shrieking ghoul, felling it in its tracks. He stepped back to reload his weapon, just as another creature leaped at him, only to be spitted on the sword point of a big giant of a Middenheimer who had all the makings of a one-time champion duellist.

After that, the rest of the ghoul pack descended on the first line of bodyguards. It was then, in close combat, in the narrow, near-lightless confines of the stone tunnel, that the battle descended into chaos and the true killing began. Crossbowmen and riflemen had no time to reload or little chance of a good, clear shot at an enemy target amongst the confused press of bodies. Swordsmen and axemen had little room to swing their weapons.

Here, tooth and claw were at their most effective, and only one set of combatants had those.

“Back!” shouted Klasst, over the sound of his men’s screams as ghoul fangs and claws tore at throats and gouged into vulnerable flesh. His remaining bodyguards needed little urging, a rearguard of them instantly forming protectively around their master as they retreated back up the passage and away from the slaughter of their comrades. Konniger and Vido were caught up in the press, Konniger reaching out to grab hold of Vido’s cloak collar to prevent his servant-companion from being trampled underfoot in the panicked rush of bodies pushing away from the combat further up the passage.

Amidst the noise and confusion, Konniger somehow kept hold of the still-burning candle, and Vido saw that the black flame was burning even brighter now, its weird, otherworldly luminescence wildly pulsating in warning.

Forewarned again, Konniger and Vido were almost, but not quite, prepared for what happened next, as the vampire burst out through the stone brickwork wall of the tunnel.

Vido had never seen a vampire—indeed, had never, ever wanted to see such a being—but he had heard much about them. Vampires were the lords of the night; cruel and aristocratic, dwelling in remote, bat-haunted, ruined citadels on the outer fringes of the Empire, where they brooded on past glories of their ancient and glorious lineage.

The creature that crouched for a moment before them in the tunnel was like nothing from the gloomy, gothic-romantic imaginings of some doom-haunted Bretonnian poet. It crouched there, savage and monstrous, drooling a bloody black ichor from a face that was alternately part rat and part pig. It flexed its body, shaking off the remains of shattered stonework, and Vido saw evidence of inhumanely powerful muscles shifting and flexing beneath its skin. He saw too the multitude of vermin and maggots crawling amongst the coarse, filth-encrusted fur that covered its naked form. Its arms—impossibly long and corded with lean muscle—ended in extended, cruel finger talons that stupidly reminded Vido of the Empire folklore legends of the Struwwelpeter, the scissor-fingered daemon spectre who snipped off the thumbs of misbehaving children.

The creature snarled, a sound that came from somewhere dark and primal, but, despite its bestial appearance, there was a gleam of frightening intelligence in its large, blood-glowing eyes, and beneath the shifting mask of its feral features, you could see the last few fitful remnants of something still almost recognisably human. The creature’s ghoul-thing servants had once been human too: vile degenerates who had been curse-altered by their blasphemous eating of human flesh. They had fallen far, transformed into wretched carrion-hunter things, but their master’s fall had been greater still. Vido could only guess at just how ancient this creature was, and what gods it must have offended or taboos it must have transgressed to have become the foul thing that stood before them now.

All this Vido saw or thought in the blink of an eye following the creature’s eruption out of the wall. The moments following that were filled only with blood and the sounds of human terror.

The vampire beast leaped forward, casually scooping away the face of the nearest bodyguard who tried to block its way. Before the man could scream, it had snapped first the sword and then the spine of the fellow next to him. Klasst’s pet sorcerer opened his mouth to hurriedly chant the words of a spell, but all that emerged was a gurgled choke as the creature, with one savage sweep of its claws, stole away his voice along with much of the rest of his throat.

It was right amongst them now, killing and tearing with every slash of its claws and lunging wrench of its fanged jaws. Vido hurled a dagger at it, a well-aimed throw that struck the thing’s chest dead centre over its heart but bounced uselessly off its impervious, iron-hard skin.

Konniger was reaching into his robes for something—some esoteric device or item that might have more effect on the creature than sharpened Nuln steel—as the creature bore down on him. Vido knew how fast his master’s reactions were, but, compared to the speed of the vampire’s movements, Konniger seemed to be moving in some kind of fugue state. The creature lashed out, sending the sage-detective smashing into the side of the wall. Vido saw Konniger’s blood splash against the rough stonework, but as he rushed to his master’s aid he was felled by the weight of another falling body. The body had no head—presumably it had been sheared away by the vampire’s terrifyingly lethal claw-hands—but it still lifelessly thrashed and shook as the soul within it fought against the inevitable moment of departure from its now useless physical shell.

Vido felt panic well up within him as the corpse’s mindless death-spasms pushed him facedown into the mud and water of the passage floor. He struggled for breath, trying to prevent himself from drowning in the shallow stream of sewer slurry as he tried to wriggle out from beneath the pinning weight of the corpse. Even if he succeeded, he knew that he would still be trapped in an underground sewer tunnel with an apparently invincible vampire lord, and he suspected that, one way or another, he was only moments away from death.

With a final, desperate heave, he succeeded in wriggling out from beneath the dead weight of the now motionless corpse. Oblivious to all else happening around him, of men screaming and dying, of the presence just a few feet away of the vampire, Vido staggered over towards the fallen figure of his master, hauling his head out of the water, saving him from a similar drowning fate to which himself had nearly succumbed.

It was then, as he struggled to drag Konniger away to some foolishly unlikely point of safety, that he noticed the change in the candle flame.

Konniger’s black light candle was lying forgotten in a pool of slime nearby, its unearthly black flame still somehow burning. Now, even as Vido watched, he saw the flame once again begin to shift and alter. It divided, another second flame growing out of the first, the two of them angrily twisting round each other.

Two black flames, each warning of the nearby presence of a vampire.

Konniger groaned, starting to awaken after being knocked unconscious. “Master,” Vido whispered, pointing to the candle’s dual flame. “Look!” Rationally, Vido realised that there was little Konniger could do under the present circumstances, injured as he was and still half-unconscious. Vido raised his voice, trying to alert the others still there in the tunnel, but his feeble warning efforts were lost amidst the bloody chaos and confusion all around them.

It did not matter anyway. Those who were still alive would understand soon enough what he was trying to warn them of.

The creature had reached Klasst. Clearly the crimelord had been its intended target all along. He faced the creature alone, his bodyguards either dead or run off. Swiftly, Klasst reached into a hidden pocket and pulled out a small black-powder weapon. It was a duelling pistol, Vido realised; rare and expensive, hand-crafted by the finest dwarf gunsmiths and reputedly extremely lethal at close ranges such as this. Klasst pressed the blunt, wide-barrelled mouth of the weapon into the flesh of the creature’s face, and pulled the delicate, wrought-silver firing trigger.

The sound of the weapon’s firing was curiously muffled, but the creature’s bellowing roar of pain rang out terrifyingly loud in the confines of the tunnel. It managed to turn its face away just at the moment of firing, but it did not escape unscathed. The creature may have been immune to normal bladed weapons, but, ancient as it was, it had not realised its vulnerability to these new and terrible black-powder inventions.

Part of the creature’s face was blown away, strips of blackened skin hanging in shredded tatters from the exposed, yellowed bone of its skull. The wound would have killed or incapacitated any mortal creature, but it merely delayed and further angered the vampire. The creature savagely backhanded the crimelord, its talons gashing his face to the bone. Klasst cried out, dropping the now spent pistol and clutching at his ruined face. The vampire snarled in furious triumph and lunged forward at its prey’s exposed throat.

Klasst’s last, desperate gambit had not killed the creature, but he had delayed it by a second or two, and it was that delay which was now to save his life.

The first vampire had announced its presence in a characteristically savage and brutal manner, coming out of a stone wall to instantly begin slaying and butchering all around it. The second creature’s arrival too was to be characteristic of its kind; it came seemingly out of nowhere, rushing along the tunnel cloaked in darkness and moving with an effortless, ancient grace, making a sound barely more audible than the whisper of a night breeze brushing over the crests of an endless sea of desert dunes.

The beast vampire reacted, perhaps sensing the approach of another rival member of its kind. Fast as it was, it could never be fast enough. It reeled back, allowing Klasst to fall from its grasp, as the second creature slammed into it. There was a blur of motion, and suddenly the beast staggered back further, blood gouting from fresh wounds torn in its chest and flanks. It roared in fury, a summons answered seconds later by the watery splash of ghoul feet scampering towards it from up the tunnel.

The living blur that had been the second vampire came to rest, the shadows around it folding away for a few moments to reveal something of its true form. It was female, and Vido saw a face of dark and terrible beauty distended horribly across the features of a monster. It turned its head towards the advancing ghoul pack, its blood-rouged lips stretching wide into a ferocious, smiling snarl. It opened its mouth, sending the pack scattering in panic with one shrill hiss. Whatever hold the beast creature had over them, it was now broken; however much they had feared their original master, they feared this new vampire more.

The beast creature roused itself, its supernatural powers healing its injuries with terrifying speed. Already, the flow of blood from its wounds had been staunched, and now the ragged, torn edges of the wounds in its flesh were starting to close and knit together. It looked at its she-thing opponent, hatred burning bright in its feral, luminous eyes. It opened its mouth, and spoke.

The sounds that emerged were clearly and shockingly words, although, even if they were not formed in the rough, bestial throat of the vampire creature, they would still have sounded strange and unfamiliar. They belonged, Vido suspected, to a tongue not spoken by any living being these last few thousand years.

The she-thing vampire hissed in anger, baring its fangs in contempt. “Strigoi beast!” it spat. “Do not dare to think yourself worthy enough to use the ancient tongue of my homeland. Your kind are as vermin beneath our feet. Had I these millennia to live again, I would see to it that you and your entire polluted bloodline were wiped free from the face of this world.”

The beast vampire snarled more words, each of them sounding like an ugly and twisted parody of human speech. The she-thing hissed again, replying in the same strange tongue, but, coming from its mouth, the words sounded antique and powerful, like mystic incantations. Just hearing them somehow brought to Vido’s mind the image of vast and primal sandstone buildings and edifices rearing up out of the sands of some far-off and ancient desert land.

Then the she-thing vampire turned its head, looking for the first time directly at the few survivors of the beast creature’s ambush, favouring them with a single cruel and arrogant glance.

“Little mortals,” it hissed, mockingly. “You would do well to leave now. Go quickly, and do not so much as dare glance behind you. The death of one of our kind—even one such as this foul creature—is not a sight that mortal eyes are privileged enough to witness.”

Vido swayed in confusion, torn between the frightening, impelling tone in the vampire’s voice and yet drawn in by the alluring blood call of the creature’s gaze. That gaze held the promise of many things: life eternal and the forbidden, final ecstasy of the vampire’s kiss; secrets from beyond the veil of death and the lost, hidden glories of a mighty civilisation that had fallen before the first primitive wooden stockade settlements had even been built by the forest tribe ancestors of the founders of the Empire. Seeing those eyes, glimpsing just a hint of the dark promises flickering within them, Vido understood at last part of the terrible allure that the vampire cast over its victim.

“Leave!” hissed the she-thing again, this time with enough command to break the spell of its mesmerising presence, and seconds later Vido found himself scrambling madly through the darkness and filth of the tunnel, somehow half-pulling, half-carrying, half-dragging a dazed Konniger after him. The sage-detective’s face was a mask of blood, and he was rambling incoherently to himself, suffering from a combination of concussion and blood loss from the wound to his head. Klasst and a mere three of his retinue—a bloodied but otherwise unharmed Scholke amongst them, Vido was disappointed to see—scrambled after them. The six of them were the only survivors of an ambush that had lasted less than a minute but claimed the lives of almost two dozen men. The beast creature roared in anger as it saw its prey escaping, but there was a weak, pitiful tone to the sound, like the fearful snarl of a predator cornered by a larger and greater foe.

They kept running. After that, they heard only the screams and howls of the unimaginable struggle now taking place in the darkness of the tunnel behind them.

Vido stayed close by his master’s side, fearing at any second that Konniger would succumb to the effects of the head injury he had suffered. “Its face,” mumbled Konniger to himself, almost incoherently, as he ran. “I’ve seen it before, but where? Yes, of course… the Remas frescoes… da Venzo’s work on the ceiling of the Temple of Shallya…”

Hearing this, Vido feared the worst: that Konniger was more seriously injured that he looked, his mind permanently disordered by that blow to the head.

After all, the halfling reasoned, how else could his master possibly believe that the she-monster creature they had just encountered in any way resembled the great da Venzo’s famous representation of the blessed and holy Goddess of Mercy?

Five

Somehow they made it back to Konniger’s residence; somehow, their bewildered, panic-filled flight through the dawn streets of the city passed by generally unnoticed. Perhaps the jaded citizens of the Imperial capital were used to the sight of a group of wild-eyed, blood-stained and filth-covered figures running pell-mell through the streets, or perhaps it was merely that those few hardy souls still up and about their dubious business at such an hour may have recognised at least one of the figures as being Vesper Klasst, and then thought better of asking too many potentially risky questions.

Konniger passed out twice on the journey, and Vido had to bodily drag his master’s unconscious form over the threshold of the house, from where it had been unceremoniously dumped by one of Klasst’s men. The sage-detective was suffering from shock and blood loss, but Vido knew that it would be no use summoning a physician to attend to him. Konniger and Altdorf’s resident practitioners of the healing arts shared a mutual loathing; those that he had not publicly dismissed as quacks and charlatans he considered to be mere fools and incompetants. Even if any of them could now be bribed or persuaded to attend to the sage-detective, Konniger himself had long ago issued stern instructions to Vido: “Never let any of those saw-bone butchers near me, even if, Sigmar help me, I’m lying in my deathbed and already halfway through Morr’s Gate.”

So it was that Vido attended Konniger himself, putting him to bed and treating his injuries in accordance with the directions of the carefully-chosen medical guides that Konniger kept at hand for just such an eventuality. It was not the first time that Vido had had to see to his master’s physical well being. He was a quick learner, and reckoned himself something of a fair amateur physician by now. Indeed, Konniger had once remarked that the halfling was probably a more able physician than a great many of the learned members of the College of Surgeons, although Vido took this more as yet another example of Konniger’s scathing opinion of Altdorf’s physicians than as any real vote of confidence in his own skills in the healing arts.

Nevertheless, he coped as best he could. Cleaning and stitching Konniger’s head wound and then applying a poultice to it. Mixing up remedies and sleeping draughts using the contents of Konniger’s extensive herbal and alchemical larders. Carefully following the guidelines in the medical volumes, many of the formulae written there amended or annotated in Konniger’s own hand.

On the first day, Konniger mostly slept. By the second day, his formidable recuperative powers were already on display, and he was sitting up in bed and issuing orders and instructions. Vido knew the routine here. Each day at least a dozen or more messages arrived at Konniger’s residence, delivered by messengers as varied as official Imperial couriers and common street urchins, and containing not just replies to Konniger’s regular and prodigious stream of correspondence with a wide range of acquaintances all over the Old World, but also reports, missives, communiqués and encryptions of all kinds.

Konniger’s main currencies were knowledge and information, and nowhere was this more true than in the troubles he took to study and learn the daily goings-on in Altdorf itself. Each day brought a veritable landslide of information to Konniger’s door. Copies of the City Watch reports; accounts and tax revenue figures from the city’s counting houses and mercantile exchanges; customs house tallies and harbourmaster lists; courthouse verdicts and judgements from the Imperial assizes; idle palace gossip and criminal underworld rumours and whispers. These were mostly delivered through the army of street urchins that Konniger used as unofficial messengers and spies—the “Altdorf Irregulars”, Konniger had once referred to them in one of his lighter moments—and Vido emptied a full coffer of copper and silver coins to pay for their services on that one day.

On the second day, Konniger rested in bed, reading the reports as they arrived and scribbling off secretive replies and requests for further information. Incapacitated as he was, Konniger assimilated all the information that came to him, and from it he drew a mental picture of the ever-changing face of the busy Imperial capital. There were messages too from Vesper Klasst, delivered by a series of increasingly sinister-looking characters.

Konniger replied to the first of these, a brief written answer scribbled, Vido noticed, with the greatest of disdain. After that, when more despatches from the crimelord arrived, Konniger told Vido in no uncertain terms that he was too unwell to continue any further correspondence with Klasst, and that his messengers were to be turned away at the door, their messages undelivered.

On the third day, the sage-detective rose again, his return to rude health announced by the bellowing shouts from upstairs as he called to Vido to fetch his cloak and boots.

“We’re going out today?” queried Vido, looking in astonishment at the man who, only two days ago, had been lying unconscious and feverish, rambling incoherently to himself and maybe even partway on the one-way journey into the realm of Morr.

“Summon a coach, Vido, and instruct a messenger to send word ahead to this address, informing those there of our imminent arrival,” said Konniger, carefully putting on a skullcap to cover the mark of his head-wound as he handed Vido a small, wax-sealed parchment roll.

Vido studied the address written there. “Reikhoch Prachtstrasse? What business do we have there?”

“We’re making a house-call.” answered Konniger. “Now go find my best brocaded garnache and cloak. The one with the silver embroidery, I think. When calling upon nobility, Vido, it always pays to look one’s best.”

Reikhoch Prachtstrasse one of the finest addresses in the city, was typically quiet, even at a time when the rest of the city was going about its noisy, quarrelsome business. Situated on a steep, cliff-top hill overlooking the banks of the Reik and affording fine views across the city and the countryside beyond, it was home to the elite of Altdorf. Here, elector counts kept their Altdorf residences for those times when the affairs of empire called them away from their provincial seats of power to the Imperial capital, and here too the nouveau riche merchant classes and old, genteel Altdorf aristocracy found themselves uneasy neighbours, one jealous of the other’s noble titles and venerable lineage and the other casting secret, envious eyes at their upstart neighbours’ flamboyant wealth and money-making enterprise and vigour.

Vido stepped down from the couch, suspiciously sniffing the air around them. He knew the Reikhoch of old—there had always been rich pickings amongst the villas and townhouses here for a skilled and enterprising thief—but he had never liked the place. It was too quiet, too… clean, not at all like the rest of the noisy, rambling, rambunctious city stretched out below. Still, it was a nice view, Vido admitted, looking out across the city at the lofty battlements and towers of the Emperor’s residence on the opposite bank of the Reik. No doubt some of the inhabitants of the Reikhoch liked to gaze out upon the same scene and imagine that they were looking across at the Imperial palace as near-equals rather than mere ordinary subjects; these two promontory peaks dominating each side of the river and lording it from on high over the rest of the city.

A sharp cough from Konniger called Vido back to the business at hand. “Reminiscing over old times, Vido? If you want to case these fine residences with a view to making a possible resumption of your former career, you’ll have to do it in your time, I fear. Come, we have business here, remember.”

Suitably chastened, Vido hurried on to join his master. They were standing in front of a tall townhouse built in an audacious over-regal style popular a half-century or so ago during the flamboyant if ruinous reign of Emperor Dieter IV. The townhouse was in one of the less grander parts of the Reikhoch, situated near the area’s venerable and now disused cemetery. Once a residence in such close proximity to the last resting places of so many famous aristocratic heroes of the Empire might have been considered a positive boon, but ever since the Wars of the Vampire Counts, when the undead overlords of Sylvania had called forth the dead from their graves to fight in their armies, the Empire’s inhabitants had developed a quiet dread of graveyards and cemeteries. So it was that the house was in one of the more decayed, less popular parts of the suburb, assuming a term as squalid as “decayed” could ever be applied to an area as prestigious as the Reikhoch.

Adding to the place’s air of polite abandonment, the house’s windows were closed and shuttered, although this was possibly nothing unusual in the Reikhoch, which had more than its fair share of reclusive and eccentric old aristocrat families. The door into the front of the building was firmly shut, and there was an air of distinct neglect about the place.

“This is the same address I sent that message to?” asked Vido, doubtfully.

“The very same,” replied Konniger. “The townhouse residence of the von Tallen family, who have long ago returned to whatever unimportant and Sigmar-forsaken corner of the Ostermark it was that originally gave rise to them. Having fallen upon hard times, the von Tallens have been forced to make their former residence available for rent, which is why we now find it home to the elusive and mysterious Lady Contessa Eleanora Daria di Argentisso, formerly of Tilea but now resident here in Altdorf these past two weeks.”

“Perhaps not for very much longer,” commented Vido, pointing towards the scene in the courtyard at the side of the building, where they saw a pair of large, shaggy-maned Stirland carthorses standing tethered to a wagon.

A group of dark-robed figures worked in eerie, unsettling silence loading a series of heavy crates and boxes onto the rear of the wagon. Two more strange figures in dark, monklike robes stood in the shadows of the leeway of the building, directing the others’ labour with an occasional silent gesture.

“Then it would seem that we don’t now have a moment to lose,” said Konniger, as he strode up to the two figures, cheerily humming the tune of a notoriously scandalous riverman’s song. The pair apparently in charge of the operation turned slowly at his approach, and Vido saw two sallow, pale faces staring sullenly out at Konniger from beneath cloaked hoods, each of them regarding Vido’s master with a deadening and dispassionate lack of curiosity.

“Is this the residence of the Contessa di Argentisso?” asked Konniger. “My name is Zavant Konniger. I sent word this morning seeking an audience with her ladyship. Perhaps—”

“The mistress is indisposed,” said one.

“She does not wish to be disturbed,” said the other, equally dispassionately, its voice as drained of all semblance of human emotion as the face from which that voice came.

“How regrettable,” said Konniger, in a pleasant, matter of fact tone. “Is there no way that she could be persuaded to see me? The matter I have come here to consult her on is one of quite considerable urgency.”

The two men glanced slowly at each other. There was a pause before either answered. Perhaps too long a pause, and both Konniger and Vido received the impression that the pair weren’t so much pausing out of uncertainty or to consider what their answer should be, but rather as if they were both waiting to receive mysterious, unspoken instructions from some hidden, unseen third party.

“The mistress is indisposed,” repeated the first again.

“She regrets that she is not able to grant your request,” said his companion, “but she is leaving this city soon, and must attend to certain important matters before her departure.”

“Of course. I understand,” said Konniger, bowing in polite farewell. “Please convey my disappointment to the Contessa but tell her that she has my best wishes for her homeward journey. In these dark days, the roads and caravan routes can be dangerous indeed, but I thank the Lord Sigmar that here in the Empire we have many brave, holy warriors to protect innocent travellers from the servants of evil.”

Konniger paused, behaving as if a thought had just occurred to him. “I am, in my own small and humble way, not without some influence in certain circles. If the Contessa wishes, I could possibly arrange for her and her servants to be escorted on their journey by an Imperial witch hunter or perhaps even a company of Templars or Knights Panther. Perhaps I could even arrange for these holy warriors to visit the Contessa here today, before her departure from our city. To discuss the arrangements for her safe escort,” he added with a knowing smile.

At that, Konniger bowed again and turned and walked off. He had taken maybe five steps—one more than he had anticipated—before he was interrupted by the voice of the first of the Tilean noblewoman’s servants.

“Wait,” it called out, a note of authoritative command creeping into its dead voice. Or, rather, into the voice of whoever was speaking through it.

“You are the sage,” added the other. “The one called Konniger. We have heard of you.”

“Very well, wise man,” continued the first. “We accept your invitation. Expect us to visit you tonight at your residence.” It smiled, and the effect of a smile on those slack, dead-faced features was truly chilling. “We look forward to meeting you properly this time, sage.”

Konniger bowed again, deeper and more sincere this time, and walked away, watched by the sullen group of figures standing round the crate-laden coach. Vido risked a quick glimpse into the open doors of the cellar, seeing only more heavy wooden crates, before the cellar doors were suddenly slammed closed.

“A brief meeting,” Vido ventured as he rejoined Konniger in climbing back up into the waiting carriage. “This Tilean countess has a strange choice of household servants, but why are we so interested in her?”

“The Contessa Eleanora Daria di Argentisso,” said Konniger, savouring every nuance of the sing-song inflection of the typically Tilean-sounding words. “Widow, it would seem, of the famed Count di Argentisso of Scozzese, a small independent city-state allied to Pavona. A fascinating man, the Count of Argentisso. He travelled widely to Araby and beyond, opening up new and highly lucrative trade routes into the hitherto unknown territories of the Southlands. He was also the only man trusted by both sides in the Fifth Remas-Luccini War and succeeded in brokering a peace settlement, bringing to an end almost three centuries of unremitting hostility between the two great trading rivals.”

Konniger looked out of the window, watching the grand townhouses and spacious-gardened villas give way to a more ramshackle and crowded architecture as they left the Reikhoch eyrie and descended once more into the familiar stew of the city’s main streets. Beside him, Vido fidgeted in ill-concealed boredom. All too often, asking his master a seemingly simple question led off into some rambling discourse or lecture on the finer points of the history, culture and politics of yet another far-distant and—from Vido’s point of view, at least—completely dull and obscure region or people.

Konniger glanced back at him, reading the unspoken and impatient question in his manservant’s eyes. “What does any of this have to do with us or with the events of the past few days? Let me tell you, Vido. The Count di Argentisso died almost two hundred years ago, the victim of an outbreak of the Red Pox, and his line died out with him.” Konniger paused, savouring the look of distraught alarm on his halfling manservant’s face, before continuing.

“There are dark forces in this world, Vido. They play games amongst themselves, and see humanity as little more than pawns to be used in the secret wars they wage against each other. Some of them move more or less freely amongst us, and wear human faces and assume purloined human names and titles when it is convenient for them to do so, but we must never make the mistake of thinking that there is still any trace of humanity left in their Dark-damned souls. We saw the terrible, inhuman face of one of them two nights ago and tonight we shall see the human-looking face now worn by the same creature.

“Afterwards, with Sigmar’s blessings and protection shielding us from harm, we shall be able to judge for ourselves which of these two faces, the monstrous or the human, is the creature’s true self.”

He paused, gazing out of the carriage window again, lost deep in thought. “Inform the coachman to make greater haste. We must return with speed to our residence, Vido. There is much to be done before we are ready tonight to receive our distinguished visitor.”

Konniger sat alone in his study that night, working by the light of a solitary candle. Vido was gone, unhappily despatched on a late night but vital errand, and the sage-detective as ever savoured the solitude and peace necessary for his studies.

He had abandoned his previous work—the notes on Marco the Malicious’ spurious philosophical considerations—and now they too would join the ill-kept library of scattered research notes, half-finished treatises and incomplete scholarly projects that filled most of the floor above to near overflowing.

Konniger had no doubt that this immense collection of tantalisingly incomplete material would provide future generations of academics, bibliographers and biographers with a veritable lifetime of work, but to him it merely represented his greatest and most secret frustration. He had faced death many times and was not afraid of it, but a man could only live so long, and there were still so many books to be read and dissected. Still so much to be explored and understood. Still so many secrets and arcane riddles to be uncovered and solved. He had striven to do what he could with his life to turn back the darkness of evil and ignorance and shine the cold light of truth on the things that lay hidden in those shadows, but how much good could one man do in one brief, mortal lifetime? And what would happen—who was there to take up the torch and continue his work—once he was gone?

As if summoned by this gloomy train of thought, a chill night breeze sifted through the room, even though Konniger knew that the windows were securely closed. He deliberately waited a few moments, pausing to finish the sentence he was writing. When he looked up, she was there in the room with him.

She was sitting opposite him, reclining comfortably in the plushly-upholstered divan seat that he had carefully placed there earlier this evening. She sat watching him, a slow smile playing across her crimson lips, her dark eyes as deep and tempting as a moonlit desert oasis. She wore a plunging scarlet and sable velvet brocade gown, and looked somehow timeless, as if she had just stepped living out of a portrait of a cruel and proud goddess-queen of some long-ago vanquished and forgotten civilisation. Even though he had left the holy Church of Sigmar years ago, Konniger was still a practising celibate whose only mistress was the pursuit of knowledge. Nevertheless, watching her sitting there, seeing the way she draped her long, languid form across the divan, studying the way the soft candlelight played across her pale, bloodless skin, even he understood something of the forbidden stirrings that such creatures excited in their prey.

“I assume I have the pleasure of addressing the Contessa Eleanora Daria di Argentisso?” asked Konniger, his voice calm and even.

She smiled. “That is one name which it suits me to use on occasion, but merely one amongst many.”

“So I gather,” replied Konniger, indicating the piles of yellowed manuscripts and worn-covered books on his desk. “Please excuse the shoddy and hurried nature of my research, but, as you can understand, I had little time to prepare for our meeting here tonight.”

He sifted through the scholarly debris, quickly finding what he was looking for: a piece of parchment covered in his own scribbled notes from his night’s work. Scanning his eye down the list, he began to read.

“Ah yes, the first recorded instance I have found of you dates from the time of the Crusades, although I suspect you make appearances throughout history long before that. You were the creature the Arabians called ‘the Terror by Night’, were you not? The phantom succubus that crept into camps and fortresses at night and killed crusader and Araby knight alike?”

He looked up. She said nothing, but her quiet smile told him to continue. “Four hundred years later, you appear as the Lady Leonore, the infamous, so-called ‘Vampire Mistress of Moussillon’. The keeps and glades of Bretonnia must have been a favourite hunting ground of yours, for I believe that you are also clearly the poet Volpaire’s inspiration for the beguiling daemon-seductress in his epic poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”

“Then perhaps you and I have much in common, Herr Konniger,” she answered, playfully. “After all, were you yourself not transformed into a work of fiction in a recent play-work by Volpaire’s great grandson? I was not fortunate enough to see a performance of it the last time I was visiting Gisoreux, although I understand it is very popular. Perhaps I shall be more lucky on my return journey home,” she smiled.

Konniger ignored the clear, amused mockery in her voice. “And there are others… Katrina the Bloody… the Countess Karmilla… Mirkalla von Leicheberg… Eleanor la Voisine… Need I go on?”

She was still smiling, her dark eyes keenly trained on Konniger. “So many different names, sometimes even I forget them. But tell me, sage, if you are so wise, do you then know my true name?”

Konniger looked straight at her. “You are the Lady Khemalla of Lahmia. You were born, I expect, some several thousand years ago in the place we now call the Land of the Dead. You are the Nuncio envoy of the arch-fiend Neferata, Queen of Mysteries, ruler of the Lahmian Sisterhood and mistress of the Silver Pinnacle. You have roamed this world for these many centuries in her service, killing and conspiring as suits your whim and the bidding of your vile queen.”

The vampire’s smile grew wider, and wider still, revealing the subtle points of fang-sharp teeth. Konniger suspected that he had provoked her too far too soon, that she was on the verge of showing her true monstrous form, and he wondered how many short seconds of life he might now have left. Instead, she laughed.

“Clever little mortal. I’ve killed more of your kind than I can remember for daring to know even a few pieces of the secrets that you seem to command with such ease. Tell me, how did you divine such information?”

Konniger gestured at the book and scroll-laden shelves all around him. “I make it my business to know such things, my lady. Much of your past history is documented fact, even if the clues and evidence is spread thinly across half a hundred different, rare sources. Of course, my task in assembling the evidence was made that much easier, since I recognised you after our encounter three nights ago in the sewer tunnel.”

“How?” There was a veiled tone of surprise in the question. Konniger sensed that the creature sitting opposite him was relishing their conversation, as, perversely, was he himself. He imagined that, for a being as long-lived as this thing, any hint of novelty or the chance to experience any new or forgotten human emotion might come as a welcome respite to the secret ennui of the long millennia of shadowy, undead existence.

In response to her question, Konniger unrolled a scroll of parchment lying on his desk, holding it out for her to see. She lent forward to inspect it, but Konniger suspected that she had already guessed what would be inscribed upon it.

“Ah, of course. The great da Venzio’s famous and magnificent ceiling paintings at that temple in Remas. A good copy, too, I imagine. Drawn in your own hand, I assume? I have never seen the original work myself, you understand—there are certain… restrictions preventing me from entering a temple consecrated to the goddess of healing and mercy—but those that have seen it tell me that da Venzio skilfully captured much of my likeness for his portrait of the fair goddess.”

Here she broke off, a short, malicious laugh escaping from her perfect crimson lips. “Of course, you can never know how much pleasure I still derive even now from the thought of all those pious fools gathering there every day in their temple, offering up their idiot prayers to the blessed and merciful Shallya, never realising whose face it truly is that gazes down at them from the gilded ceiling high above their heads!”

“Then you knew da Venzio?” inquired Konniger.

“For a time,” she answered guardedly. “I helped him in his work, so I suppose you could consider me to have been his patron of sorts. I have known many great artists in my time. Perhaps you could even say that I have developed a taste for art—and perhaps also for artists—over the centuries.”

Another smile, another teasing, malicious inference. Konniger ignored it all, and continued on with his line of questioning, all too aware of just how unique and dangerous this meeting was.

“The other creature that attacked my associates and I in the tunnels that night, what happened to it?”

She grinned, openly baring her fangs for the first time. The inference of the gesture was obvious. “It has been dealt with. It and others like it shall not return here again to trouble the crimelord.”

“Would it be impertinent of me to ask what your purpose here truly was?”

He saw a flash of angry surprise in her eyes, quickly masked by the veil of amused boredom that she had assumed for this encounter. “Beware, little mortal,” she purred, an underlying tone of warning now creeping into her voice, “I have already told you more than is perhaps wise for either of us. Still, you interest me, and it has been too long since I met any mortal who has done that. I believe the last mortal I enjoyed such stimulating conversation with was the great Leonardo da Miragliano.”

“Your ladyship does me too much honour,” answered Konniger at the comparison between himself and the legendary Tilean scientific and artistic genius, while all the time carefully watching every move his guest made. He had to keep her talking, for the moment was surely near now. She was on her feet now, moving over to inspect the chessboard on a nearby table. Although Konniger would have sworn that he had not taken his eyes off her, he had not seen her rise up from the divan seat. One moment she was still resting upon it, a blink of an eye later and she was standing beside the chessboard table. So fast, he thought to himself, wondering how much of a foolishly ambitious and dangerous error he might have made in thinking he could ever pull off this gambit.

Konniger continued watching her as she spoke, his eyes flickering—casually, he hoped—between her, the hour clock candle on the stand by his desk and the small lead-lined casket box that lay to one side of his desk, half-concealed, and not at all by accident, by a pile of strewn papers. His hand itched to move closer to the casket and what lay within it, but he dare do nothing to alert her to his true intent. So he sat and listened to her speak, keeping one eye on her and another on the hour clock candle as it slowly but surely burned down towards the appointed, fateful moment.

She picked up one of the chess pieces—the Emperor, Konniger saw—toying with it as she spoke. “We play games, my kind. We play games and we wage war amongst ourselves, secret and eternal wars to determine the ongoing balance of the power in politics of the shadows.”

Konniger kept his face carefully neutral, but her words sent shockwaves through him. Games, it says. Am I, too, being toyed with here?

Am I another unwitting player in one of its cruel games, he asked himself? First the casual mention of Leonardo da Miragliano, and now what sounded worryingly like an almost direct echo of the words he had said to Vido that very morning.

Can it read minds, he wondered? Does it already know my plans here tonight?

Konniger remained composed as he continued to listen to the words of the Lady Khemalla, but he felt the first trickles of sweaty fear work their way down the flesh of his back.

“This city is one such battlefield, one of the gaming boards where we have chosen to wage our secret struggles. Although he does not realise it, the crimelord is merely a pawn in this great game. That Strigoi animal you saw was merely an assassin in the service of—”

She broke off suddenly, smiling secretly to herself, before continuing. “I have told you much, perhaps too much, but there are yet some secrets not fit to be heard by mortal ears. Suffice to say, there are those amongst my kind who sought to seize control of the crimelord’s empire and install their own pawn in his place. Their reasons for this I cannot reveal to you, save that this was but a small part of a far greater design, a design which is counter to the purposes of She whom I serve—and I warn you now, little mortal, that you would do well never to speak her name aloud again—and so I was sent here to ensure that matters were more clearly resolved to my Sisterhood’s satisfaction.”

“An… acquaintance of mine recently told me that for once he and I were fighting together on the same side, against an evil far greater than anything I could ever think him capable of,” mused Konniger. She instantly understood his meaning.

“And do you think that is true here too? The politics of the night often throws up unlikely allies and strange bedfellows. Sometimes it is far better to ally your fate with that of the devil you know…”

“Than the devil you don’t?” finished Konniger, with a questioning gesture. “Personally, I much prefer to have as little to do as possible with devils of any sort.”

When he put his hands back down on the desk, one of them was now resting on the lead casket. It was warm to the touch, as he knew it would be. He allowed himself to relax a little. The moment was close now, but he did not believe that the creature here in the room knew or even suspected what he had in store for it. If it had, he wisely judged, it would almost certainly have torn his throat out by now. The important thing, he realised was to keep it talking and thus distracted.

“Then your work here is indeed at an end, I assume, and yet you have surely endangered yourself in delaying your departure from Altdorf. I wonder, should I be worried or flattered by your decision to make your delay on my behalf?”

His question elicited another sly smile from her. “Oh, I still intend to leave tonight, but I admit that your invitation intrigued me. Also, although you may not know it, you and I have crossed paths before. How then could I not resist the opportunity to meet face to face the great Zavant Konniger, the famous gentleman-sage of Altdorf and solver of arcane mysteries and puzzles!”

More mockery in her voice. Konniger ignored it, sparing a quick glance at the hour clock candle. Only a minute or two more, and the trap would be sprung.

“I wasn’t aware that our paths had crossed before. The scandal in Gisoreux, perhaps? Or was it earlier than that? The affair of the Stirland vampire? The mystery of the dwarf engineer’s thumb? The case of the Verezzo naval treaty? There are several cases which I supposedly settled to the satisfaction of all concerned, but where I was convinced that there was some other malign presence, unseen and undetected, manipulating events from off-stage.”

A tight-lipped crimson smile was her only answer.

From outside, Konniger heard the faint but distinct clatter of metal on stone, the sound of some clumsy fool in armour slipping on rain-slicked cobbles, possibly dropping his weapon into the bargain. If he had heard it, then he assumed that his guest had too. Quickly, hopefully before she could assimilate and identify the sound, he pressed on with their conversation, all too aware that time was quickly running out.

“If we have crossed paths before, albeit from a distance, then which was I? Opponent or pawn?”

“A little of both, perhaps,” she answered, “although probably more of the former than the latter. For a mortal, you make a fine opponent, Herr Konniger. I imagine that, when suitably broken in and converted to the cause of the Sisterhood, you would make an even finer thrall.” She moved closer, the points of her incisors showing through the curling snarl of her smiling lips. “Think about it, Zavant. Human life is too short. Your death, the absence of a mind such as yours, would be eternity’s loss. Join us, serve us well, and we have it in our power to offer you the gift of eternal life.”

“Is that why you came here tonight?” he sneered in reply. “To enlist me? To turn me into one of your mindless servant creatures? You speak of eternal life, but I see only eternal damnation and slavery. Hardly a tempting offer, even compared to the oblivion of the grave.”

There was noise from outside, a rough Altdorf-accented voice shouting out in alarm and then, seconds later, in pain. A few seconds more and its rising scream was abruptly cut off, and then came the sounds of more shouts of alarm from somewhere close by in the surrounding dark of the city streets. Klasst and his men were there, as summoned by Vido, but clearly the Lady Khemalla had not come alone either. Her servants were out there too, and now the battle had begun.

Now it was her time to sneer. “An ambush, Herr Konniger? I expected better of you. What was your thinking, I wonder? That vampires are at their most dangerous when cornered in their lair? Better then to lure me to territory of your own choosing, where I would more vulnerable than in my residence on the Reikhoch? Such obvious thinking, Herr Konniger.”

He watched, frozen, as her features started to shift and change, transforming into those of the terrible reaver thing that had despatched the beast creature vampire with such apparent ease three nights ago in the sewer tunnels. “Such a pity, but now you really do disappoint me,” she said, her voice a low, angry hiss.

She came at him, swiftly and suddenly. He threw himself backwards, turning his face away, throwing one arm up to shield his eyes, the other hand finding and releasing the hidden catch on the lid of the casket.

The darkened room was suddenly filled with a blazing, unearthly light. Even with his eyes shut, with his arm shielding his eyes, sharp, bright fingers of light stabbed through his eyelids, and he felt a brilliant, dazzling heat seer the skin of his face and hands, even though the box was turned away from him, the worst effects of its terrible radiance directed towards the vampire creature.

“Leonardo’s sunbox” it was called; just one of the many wondrous inventions devised or dreamed of by the Tilean genius. Scholars and engineers had long thought it lost, another of the great inventor’s creations which had probably existed only as a meticulous design on a long-lost parchment or some scribbled idea in one of the great inventor’s now priceless notebooks. Konniger had the only known working model of it, and even then it had taken him several years, a small fortune and all his personal ingenuity to restore it to anything resembling proper working order. It was built around a clockwork mechanism, full of a complex series of cunningly placed moving lenses and prisms, each designed to trap and amplify beams of light. At the heart of the device, at least in Leonardo’s original design, was an Elvish sunstone, the soft golden glow given off by the magical stone magnified by the lens arrangement to produce something akin to natural sunlight.

Perpetual, mechanically-created sunlight had been the great inventor’s intention. Konniger’s intentions were quite different. By altering the arrangement of lenses, by using prisms of a different size to those of Leonardo’s original design, he had radically changed the nature of the device. And, most significant of all, instead of an elvish sunstone, Konniger had placed at the centre of the mechanism a harshly glowing piece of the rare and forbidden substance known as warpstone.

Leonardo’s intent had been to capture sunlight in a box. What Konniger had done instead, in a deliberate perversion of the device’s intended function, was to imprison a piece of the sun itself inside the lead-lined box. And, as even the most ignorant Empire peasant knew, the light of the sun was deadly to vampires such as this, who hid during the day.

In tests Konniger had conducted using small animals, the box’s effects had been gratifyingly impressive. When exposed to its searing light, fur had ignited and skin had quickly withered and blackened into charred leather. Against a creature of the undead, whose unnatural substance burned when touched by the lightest kiss of sunlight, the results were sudden and quite spectacular.

Konniger heard a piercing, shrieking scream, followed by the loud, rushing whoosh of air of something large exploding into flames. There were more sounds—more shrieking, enraged screams and the blind smashing of objects and furniture—and then came the breaking of glass and wood as the burning, possibly dying, vampire hurled itself out through the shuttered windows. The device burned itself out in seconds—its unique, priceless mechanism reduced to smouldering, molten slag—and it took a few moments for Konniger’s light-smeared vision to return to him.

When it did, he saw the wreckage of his study. Bookshelves and table stands smashed and overturned; the precious books and papers on his desk now just so much ash waste from the intense heat and bleaching, pure-white light that had come spilling out of the casket. Several parchment scraps were still alight, and Konniger saw a trail of some other burning, bubbling substance—most likely burnt-away gobbets of vampire flesh, he realised, with a shudder—leading across the floor towards the shattered remains of the windows.

From outside came shouts and screams, and the sounds of combat. The trap was now sprung.

Konniger rushed out of the doorway, moving quickly down the stairway and almost colliding headlong with Vido, who was pelting up the same stairs, his dagger held at the ready.

“Master! I was coming to see if you were harmed. The creature, it’s outside! It’s escaping, and it’s already killed several of Klasst’s men!”

“Quickly then,” commanded Konniger. “We must join the hunt and go after it.”

Vido hesitated, looking uncertainly up the stairs towards the study. The growing smell of burning drifted out through the open door of the room, and the thin crackle of flames could also be heard. “But, master… I think your study’s on fire!”

“No matter,” said Konniger, grabbing his manservant and hustling him back down the stairs. “Books and manuscripts can always be replaced, but the opportunity to rid the world once and for all of a notorious, ageless servant of darkness comes but all too rarely.”

And, with that, they were gone, rushing out into the night to join the deadly pursuit.

Six

The first things they saw were the bodies. Three of them, mangled and torn, one of them with its head ripped clean off. There was another one a few yards further down the street, pulverised into the brickwork of a solid stone wall. The Lady Khemalla had abandoned the aristocratic, arrogantly mocking human facade that Konniger had witnessed just moments ago in his study. Now all that remained was the vicious beast thing that had lurked all along beneath that beguiling, icy beauty.

The corpses all wore armour, and Konniger saw they were not the usual run of common thug employed by Vesper Klasst. These had been professional sell-swords, veteran mercenaries for hire. Clearly, Klasst was thirsty for blood after the injuries that had been done to him and his organisation, and the crimelord had spared no expense in assembling a small army of men to replace the recent losses amongst his own ranks.

From all around came shouts and cries as the hunt spread out into the surrounding streets. The City Watch would be here soon, called out in force no doubt, and Konniger suspected that Klasst would have to empty a few more coffers of gold coins to buy away any official close scrutiny of tonight’s events. Even a man such as Klasst operated under covert licence from those in power, and that licence did not extend to loosing bands of armed mercenaries or shrieking undead horrors upon the streets of the Imperial capital.

“Zavant!” Konniger turned at the shout of his name from a nearby side-street.

It was Klasst, accompanied by a mob of anxious-looking, armour-clad mercenary bodyguards. One half of the crimelord’s face was swathed in thick, blood-stained bandages, and Konniger saw that the pupils of Klasst’s eyes were fixed and dilated. Powdered southlands lotus, thought Konniger, with possibly a little dreamweed mixed in for extra potency. The pain from the wounds to Klasst’s face must be considerable, Konniger knew. The crimelord could afford the very best in magical healing, but the process required patience and rest, two things that the crimelord had little time for at present.

Although the creature that had injured him and killed so many of his men was now dead, killed by the Lahmian Sisterhood’s own vampire assassin, Klasst had to re-establish his authority over his shaken organisation. He was supposed to be the undisputed ruler of his own crime empire, after all, so he had to mount a strong show of force against the servants of darkness who had dared try to use him as a prize or pawn in their own private feuds. Wounds inflicted by the undead were notoriously painful and difficult to heal properly, but the crimelord had chosen to risk permanent disfigurement, seeking to fight off the attendant, constant pain with drugs, so great was his desire to see this challenge to his authority rooted out and destroyed.

Vengeful bloodlust and a mind dulled by pain and potent narcotic, thought Konniger; it was not a good combination in someone who was supposed to be leading the hunt for one of the most dangerous and cunning kind of supernatural beings in the entire Old World, when caution and sound judgement were needed at a premium.

“Fine work, Zavant! I don’t know what you did to that bitch-thing, but it came through that window like a living fireball!” Klasst’s voice was thick and slurred, heavy with the effects of the pain-relieving narcotic substances now flowing through his bloodstream. “Ranald’s eye, half of its flesh was burned away, and yet it was still alive and screaming! It had its servants waiting close by. They cut through the first line of my men, but we took a toll of them in return. I’ve got men combing every street in this quarter. It won’t get away from us now.”

“Perhaps, Vesper, but the sooner we bring this matter to a conclusion, the better for us all,” answered Konniger, reaching into his robes for something. He took out a small, cloth-wrapped bundle, carefully unwrapping it to reveal a needle-like object tied on the end of a length of thin cord. Vido watched as Konniger gingerly took up one end of the cord, the sage-detective careful never to bring his skin into contact with the needle’s fine point. Looking closely, Vido saw that the surface of the needle was finely coated in a dried, crystalline substance.

“Sorcery, Zavant? I thought you always claimed to be above such parlour tricks?” Even now, the crimelord could not resist continuing the old enmity between himself and Konniger.

“Sometimes needs must, Vesper. Do you wish me to track down the creature so that you and your men can destroy it, or do you wish it to escape and return later to take its vengeance on us all, as it most surely will if we fail to put an end to it tonight?”

Some of the fire went out of the crimelord’s eyes and he stepped away, indicting for Konniger to proceed. They watched as the sage held the cord delicately between two fingers. Instead of hanging loosely from the cord’s other end, the needle rose, seemingly of its own volition, and hung there suspended perpendicular to the cord before slowly starting to spin round in the air, twitching from side to side as if seeking something. Vido had seen Norscan navigators perform a similar trick with a metal needle device. A “magnetic compass” Konniger had called such devices, assuring Vido that there was a perfectly natural, non-magical explanation for the phenomenon, but how then did this seeming marvel work, and what was its real purpose, wondered Vido?

“A sliver of ghoul bone—though bone material taken from any undead creature will do, although the effectiveness may vary from case to case—coated with the venom of an Araby tomb scarab,” explained Konniger as he watched the spinning, twisting needle. “Of course, great care must be taken when applying the venom or handling the needle afterwards, since, as far as I can determine, the venom never loses its potency, and the merest contact of it with unprotected skin will result in almost immediate death.”

If Konniger noticed that Vido and almost everyone else nearby took an instinctive step away from the twisting bone-needle, he gave no indication. Instead, he continued to closely study the needle’s mystic contortions. “In conjunction, the two materials combine to make a most useful means of detecting the presence of the undead. With a little patience and skill, it is possible to… Ah yes, here we are now,” he said, as the needle ceased moving and instead pointed steadily in one fixed direction. Konniger slowly moved the hand from which the needle hung, only to see the needle swing slowly round again to fix on its original bearing.

“The Volker Weg!” exclaimed Klasst. “It’s probably heading for its lair in the Reikhoch. Well, it’ll be in for a surprise before it gets to the Ostlander Bridge. I’ve got Scholke and a full line of men waiting for it down that way, and this time we’re more than ready for its tricks!” With an excited, unpleasant-sounding laugh he ran off, high on lotus powder and dreamweed—and the anticipation of imminent victory.

Konniger and Vido chased after the crimelord and his bodyguards. Once picked up, the vampire’s trail was not difficult to follow.

At the top of the Volker Weg, near the junction with the Street of a Thousand Taverns, they found two drunken revellers who must have had the misfortune to be on their home when they ran into the fleeing vampire and her servants. Both revellers had had their throats slashed to the bone. Most likely, they had both been dead before they hit the ground. Possibly too, they had been lucky enough to be too drunk to even understand what was happening to them.

Further down the street, a tavern girl lay screaming over the butchered remains of her chosen customer for the night, an off-duty watchman. Instead of finding him cosily amongst the sheets of her bed, the next day’s dawn would find him lying on a slab in the temple-mortuary of the house of Morr. And from the look of the girl, Vido thought as they ran past, seeing the mad, vacant stare of horror on her blood-splattered face, she herself would soon be on her way to the city asylum, a fate he wished on no one, not even his worst enemy.

A hundred yards further down the street, and they came upon the next of Klasst’s men. A mercenary lay dead in the middle of the street, one of the packs of wild dogs that roamed the city streets lapping eagerly at the spreading pool of blood as it drained away between the cracks in the cobbles. One of the vampire’s black-robed servants was nearby, pinned to the front door of an apothecary shop. It was still alive, making a sickening mewling noise as it weakly tried to pluck at the haft of the spear impaled through its chest. One of Klasst’s bodyguards—a veteran Greatsword turned mercenary captain—decapitated it with one swing of his blade as they ran past. The head bounced off down the steeply sloping hill of the Volker Weg, sending the dog pack chasing after it in a cacophony of excited barks and yelps.

They ran on, following the trail of butchery and the sound of screams as the city awoke to the realisation of the terror now abroad amongst it.

At the bottom of the great street, at the junction where the main thoroughfare of the Volker Weg crossed the Reik at the Ostlander Bridge and intersected with the waterfront bawdy houses of Luitpoldt Strasse, the hunters finally caught up with their quarry.

The quayside area by the riverfront was a confused tumble of combat and close-range killing. There were more lifeless mercenary bodies lying broken and bleeding on the cobbled ground—each death would have to be compensated for, and the final bill that Klasst would have to pay for the night’s work would be high indeed—but mixed amongst the human dead were several more of the vampire noblewoman’s black-garbed servants.

It may have been the vampire’s intent to flee across the Ostlander Bridge, possibly hoping to lose its pursuers amongst the rogues’ nest maze of the Reikerbahn, but that option was now lost to it. The bridge swarmed with activity: what looked like an entire company of the City Watch accompanied by armoured horsemen of the Reiksguard, the Emperor’s own household troops, were marching swiftly across the broad-spanned bridge to join the battle on the near bank. Already outnumbered, the vampire and her retinue would stand no chance against these new odds.

Hurrying along and doing his best to keep up with the longer-limbed humans—halflings may be swifter and more agile than their larger cousins, but they are poorly-formed for the purposes of an enduring, all-out sprint—Vido caught a few and, frankly to him, terrifying details of the battle that he was now rushing headlong into. He saw three spearmen stabbing the points of their weapons into the squirming body of one of the vampire’s gaunt-faced human servants, pressing down hard on the stout wooden hafts of the polearms to pin the thing to the ground while an axeman took swing with his weapon at the creature’s neck.

He saw one of Klasst’s men stagger screaming away from the outer fringes of the battle, the doomed man’s hands trying in vain to staunch the jetting spray of blood from his vampire-torn throat.

He saw another of the vampire woman’s servants—this one itself a vampire, but of a lesser sort than its mistress—flail a path wildly through the crowd of combatants. Someone had thrown a pitcher of lit tar or oil upon it, and it was ablaze from head to foot, screaming horribly and lashing out blindly at anything around it. A pack of swordsmen pursued it, hacking their blades into it, herding it towards the water’s edge. They drove the creature over the edge of the quay, where it plunged into the chill night waters of the Reik. Incredibly, the water seemed to do it as much, if not even greater, damage than the fire, and the creature howled in agony as its undead flesh dissolved away into the suddenly bubbling, broiling water.

“Running water,” Vido heard Konniger murmur to himself. “It is of the bloodline that is vulnerable to running water. Does it share the same bloodline as its mistress, I wonder?”

And then they were in amongst the battle proper, surrounded on all sides by desperate, struggling forms. Another one of the lesser vampire creatures ran roaring at them, its fangs and hands stained red with the blood of its night’s kills. Its body was peppered with crossbow quarrels, and Vido saw small gouts of bright, unnatural-coloured flame spurting from several of the points where the deadly wooden shafts were buried into its body, and suddenly Vido realised what Klasst had meant when he had spoken of he and his men being ready this time for the vampire’s tricks. At least some of the crossbow bolts unleashed at the vampire woman and her thralls had silver-tipped points, and now the bolts’ silver heads were reacting against the creature’s unnatural substance, burning deep into its flesh. But however severe the injuries to the creature, none of them were apparently yet fatal, and now, maddened by pain from its silver-poisoned wounds, it bore down enraged on Vido and Konniger.

Vido hurled a dagger, feeling a surge of relief as he saw its blade take the creature through the throat, that relief quickly turning to despair as the thing kept coming relentlessly on at them. Konniger stepped out in front of it, striking it hard in the chest with his bare fist. The vampire staggered back, staring at the gentleman sage in hate-brimming disbelief. At first, Vido thought that his master had stopped the creature in its tracks with some manner of special blow from his mysterious repertoire of Cathay unarmed combat tricks. It was not until the creature burst howling into flames, consumed from within by mystic fire, that Vido saw the wooden, silver-tipped stake which had been concealed in Konniger’s hand and which was now protruding from the vampire’s heart.

Konniger contemptuously kicked the burning thing aside. It tumbled to the ground, bursting apart into greasy, charcoal ashes and releasing from within itself a vaporous, stinking cloud of black mist which dissipated away into the night air. Vido queasily blanched in horror at this sequence of unnatural, horrific events, but Konniger took it all in his stride, brushing the ashen dust from his cloak as he strode through the battle in search of greater prey.

He quickly found it.

She was over by the quayside, savaging a bloody swathe through any of the human warriors foolish or slow enough to get caught in her way. Her garments and most of her skin were gone, burnt away by the furious radiance of the sunbox, and her face and body were a charred ruin. Only in the way she moved—graceful and lightning-quick, merciless and completely assured—did she in any way resemble the being which Konniger had entertained in his study earlier that night.

The sage moved swiftly towards her, dodging the swiping claws of one of her vampire followers, fending off the attempted crushing grapple of one of her human slave-things. She was through Klasst’s last line of defence now, leaving behind her a half dozen more corpses that just seconds earlier had been living men. Konniger ran after her, pausing to scoop up an unfired handbow from the dead hand of yet another one of Klasst’s men. Whatever the supposedly victorious outcome of this night’s events, the crimelord’s organisation would be a long time recovering from the losses it had sustained in these last few bloody days.

She was on the bridge now, probably moving purely on instinct but trapping herself there between the human forces on either side of the river. And running water was probably deadly to her, Konniger knew. She was trapped and isolated, with nowhere left to flee.

He stopped running, and levelled the handbow. He generally detested the use of weapons and was, at best, an indifferent marksman, but Sigmar’s favour must have been with him that night. The shot caught her in the back, high up on her left shoulder, and, grossly weakened and injured as she was, the impact made her stagger and almost fall. She turned with a snarl, grasping the half of the wooden quarrel and plucking it contemptuously from out of her body. It had not been one of the silver-tipped quarrels, and Konniger knew that the wound would not unduly trouble her.

His shot had, however, achieved its purpose. It had captured her attention.

“Konniger,” she hissed, seeing him standing there some ten yards behind her. Uninjured, she could probably cover the distance between them effortlessly in a second or two. Konniger wondered how fast she could make it in her present weakened state, and how much warning time he would have to react to what would surely be a fatally-intended assault.

“My lady,” he nodded to her, surprised at the genuine tone of polite respect in his voice. “We seem to have reached something of an impasse in our dealings. I regret that we were not able to continue our earlier and more pleasant conversation for any greater length of time.”

“As do I.” she hissed. Her face was a hideous, blackened mask, most of her hair gone and patches of skull bone showing through the places where her scalp had been burned away. Her lips too were gone, fire-flayed away, revealing the sharp, strong fang-teeth that lay hidden behind them. Only her eyes were recognisably the same, and they stared at Konniger in something approaching grudging, wary respect. “Perhaps we shall be able to continue at some later and mutually agreeable time. Perhaps, though, the outcome then will differ from the one we have reached here.”

“I regret, my lady, that I do not think that will prove possible,” said Konniger, raising the reloaded handbow.

From behind her, before he could take aim and fire, came the fast clatter of hooves, one of the mounted knights on the other end of the bridge had broken ranks from amongst the troops there and was even now galloping across the bridge towards the Lady Khemalla. His sword was drawn, and he was shouting out some inaudible but no doubt worthy noble battle-cry. Probably some hot-headed Panther young-blood, Konniger judged, keen to earn his spurs in combat against a creature of darkness. Even in her current injured state, she would probably kill the young knight. Him, and the first one or two of his comrades who charged after him to avenge his heroic death. But she could not kill them all, Konniger knew, and eventually she too would fall.

The Lady Khemalla had apparently reached the same conclusion. She turned away from the charging knight and faced Konniger, grinning a savage, lipless smile at him. “We’ll meet again, Konniger, and then I think there shall be a reckoning between us.”

And then she was gone, leaping in the blink of an eye over the wall of the bridge and into the surging, fast-flowing waters of this segment of the river.

Konniger rushed over to the stone parapet, leaning over to stare into the river below. The waters there heaved and broiled, just as they had done earlier when they claimed the substance of her vampire servant, but of the Lady Khemalla herself, there was no sign.

They would dredge the riverbed, he would see to it, but he already knew that there would be nothing there to be found. The older the vampire, the less remained of it when it was destroyed, and if she was as ancient as the evidence suggested, then the swift-moving waters of the Reik would leave little trace of her. All that remained would be dust, and even that would be swept away by the river’s current. Thousands of years of undead existence had ended, and all that was left of her would most likely end up mixed in with the silt deposits anywhere all along the hundred league length of the River Reik between here and Marienburg.

For a brief moment, Konniger considered the possibility that she might have survived the effect of the river waters on her unnatural flesh. After all, the sunbox would have almost certainly destroyed one of her minions, and since she survived that, could she not also have…

No, it was impossible. She—no, it, he reminded himself—was dead, of that there could be no lingering doubt. He spared the surging river current one last glance and then turned and walked back towards the near shore, ignoring the growing clamour around him as the troops of the Reiksguard and City Watch moved across to quell the last few struggles of the still-continuing battle there.

Even before the battle was over, Klasst and his surviving army of mercenaries and rogues were already starting to slip away, abandoning the fighting and its bloody aftermath to Altdorf’s forces of law and order, and vanishing into the welcoming shadows of surrounding alleys and backcourts, from where they could disappear unobtrusively to any other point in the city. Vido was with them too, but he had a purpose other than simple flight.

He was looking for something. He found it in a short, dismal alleyway just off the bottom of the Volker Weg.

It was Scholke. The crimelord’s chief henchman had been injured early in the battle—partially disembowelled by the blade of a falchion sword clumsily if effectively wielded by one of the black-cloaked servant things—but had managed to crawl away to here to escape further harm. Now he had been abandoned and forgotten by his employer and his comrades in their rush to escape the attentions of the City Watch. For now, they probably thought that he was lying back there amongst the many other corpses that lay strewn along the quayside. Later, when they were back safe in their dens and able to take stock of the situation, they might realise their mistake, but Vido was in no hurry to tip them off too early.

“Who is it?” Scholke called out in fear as he lay there in a pool of his own blood, hands buried in his own flesh as he sought to prevent his innards from spilling out. “A kid? Come here, boy. I need you to carry a message and go fetch me some help. There’ll be gold in it for you if you serve me well, and a world of trouble for you and your family if you don’t, that much I can promise you.”

He was already half-dead, Vido realised, his vision dimmed by pain and blood loss. In the darkness of the alley, he had mistaken the diminutive figure standing before him for that of a child. Vido was in no hurry to disabuse him of this notion.

Vido remembered what Scholke had said to him once before, about how Klasst always collected in the end on any unpaid debts still owed to him. Well, Vido reckoned that he had an unpaid debt owed to him, and now was the right time to collect on it. Unhurriedly, he drew his dagger and moved in on the helpless figure lying at the end of the alleyway.

He thought of his old mentor Hergabo lying there stiff and cold with his brains bashed in. After that, what came next was easy.

Konniger found the halfling a few minutes later, sitting on a pile of barrels on the quayside beside a moored line of river barges, whistling to himself as he wiped clean the blade of his dagger on a ripped shred of a dead man’s cloak. Konniger, exhausted by the night’s events and still secretly troubled by the head wound he had suffered only a few days ago, was in no mood to wonder why his manservant seemed in such ebullient spirits on a night when dozens must have died in terrible, pitiful ways.

“We’re done here now, yes?” asked Vido.

Konniger looked around them, seeing the corpses of Klasst’s men, the scattered, burning remnants of at least one of Khemalla’s vampire minions and the motionless forms of her more mortal servants. The City Watch were taking no chances, however, and Konniger saw groups of them gathered round the black-cloaked corpses, pummelling and hacking at them with their weapons until there was little left of them but blood-soaked black rags.

There would be much to do tomorrow: written notes to make, more than a few loose ends to be sorted out, the lair in the Reikhoch to investigate, probably a summons to the Imperial palace to give a truthful account of everything that had happened here. Or, at least, a version of the truth which would satisfy the palace officials.

Yes, there would be much to do, but, as he had already reminded himself, all of it could wait until tomorrow.

“Yes, we’re finished here. Let us go home, Vido, or at least to as much of a home as that fire in my study may have spared us.”

“Did we do well on this one, then?” asked Vido, with uncharacteristic brashness. Konniger considered the question. His alliance with Klasst was thankfully over, but being thrown into such close proximity with his old adversary had given rise to several troubling questions. For too long, Konniger had allowed the crimelord too much free rein. He countered Klasst’s worst schemes and deprivations as and when he could, but there were always so many other problems and events elsewhere calling for his attention.

Now, he decided, that unsatisfactory situation would come to an end. “Once this business is concluded, there will still have to be a final reckoning between us one day,” he had told Klasst.

So be it. That time would come, Konniger decided. But, like the aftermath of all else that had happened here tonight, it would have to wait for another day.

“Yes, we did well,” he finally relented. “We survived to live on to see at least another day, and there are many who would judge that enough to be satisfied with. We also drove a great evil out of the city, although in doing so we have allowed, at least for now, a lesser evil to survive to flourish anew. But, most importantly, we know that, after tonight, the world will mercifully be troubled by at least one less servant of darkness.”

Or perhaps even two, thought Vido, casting a casual glance towards the mouth of a certain alleyway as they strode on up the Volker Weg towards home.

Epilogue

The first of the scrolls arrived several months later.

It was delivered by a standard Imperial messenger, who reported that it had been delivered to him by another messenger. Who this other messenger was, he was unhappily unable to provide any details of, and the trail seemed to end there.

The scroll itself was of the finest vellum, tied with a silk, crimson ribbon and marked with a strikingly distinctive black wax seal. The crest upon the seal was that of a crowned desert serpent entwined round the long, thin blade of an elegant, archaic-looking dagger.

Konniger declined to break open the seal and read whatever message the scroll might contain.

Thereafter, the scrolls arrived at an intermittent rate of one every several months. Konniger refused to open or read any of them, and so they sat piled up on a shelf in his study, the pile growing as each new, unread scroll was added to it.

Occasionally, Vido would catch Konniger brooding over them. He would see him sitting at his desk, deep in thought, holding one of the still-sealed scrolls and turning it end over end between his long fingers. Afterwards, Vido would find the unopened scroll lying in some dusty corner of the room, where Konniger had presumably finally thrown it in angry disgust.

Each time Vido would put the discarded scroll back with the others. Not one time did his more inquisitive halfling instincts get the better of him as to what message the scrolls might contain, although once he held one of the scrolls close to his face and took a cautious sniff at it. He fancied he could detect the faint scent of some distant, hot and arid clime, and, beneath that, the even fainter scent of something else: a sickly sweet corruption, like the scent of rotted desert orchids.

But that would be impossible, he told himself, and after that he tried not to think about the scrolls and what they might contain.

It didn’t matter, of course. Even if there was nothing written inside any of them, even if all of them were blank, both he and Konniger already knew the real message that each of them had to impart:

I have survived. I have eternity to practise my patience, but there shall come a time when we shall surely face each other again.

PART FOUR

The Horror at Alt Krantzstein, or

The Case of the Twisted Man

Author’s note. “When a man is tired of Altdorf, he is tired of life.” So wrote that great chronicler of Altdorf life, Herr Zammal von Anselm, more than half a century before Konniger’s birth, although the now famous remark is often mistakenly attributed to Konniger himself. An understandable mistake, perhaps, given that the great and majestic Imperial capital and its renowned gentleman sage-detective inhabitant seem to go so splendidly hand-in-hand in our imaginations.

Certainly, we know something of Konniger’s sojourns elsewhere: his involvement with courtly intrigues in royal Gisoreux; his Tilean adventures and interventions in the vendetta-disputes of feuding merchant princes; the investigations and field expeditions that took him to places as far afield as Kislev in the cold north to the deserts and oases of Araby in the far south. But, still, it was always to Altdorf that he would finally return, and when we think of Zavant Konniger, we think too of dark, mist-shrouded Altdorf streets, and the unravelling of strange mysteries and the unmasking of hidden enemies there at the very centre of Imperial power.

For those impatient readers who complain that I concentrate too much on Konniger’s Altdorf adventures and not enough on those cases which took him to the more remote and less civilised corners of the Empire, I now offer up my researches into The Case of the Twisted Man. There are, no doubt, other readers who would point out that Konniger’s investigations—as reconstructed by your humble author—do not accurately reflect the real face of the foes of mankind and the servants of darkness, at least as they are known by those more ordinary of the Emperor’s subjects. The Empire remains a dark and dangerous place, its forest depths home to many savage and bestial creatures and inhuman horrors. This was even more true in Konniger’s day. And so where, you may ask, are the details of Konniger’s entanglements with foes less genteel and erudite than well-mannered were-beasts and noble, aristocratic creatures of the undead? Alas, my researches have yet to turn up any incidents of orc slaying and dragon fighting, but those readers in search of a darker, bolder kind of tale will, I hope, find much to please them here.

One

The young novice, a ward of the Church almost since the moment of his birth, knocked loudly at the door again, anxious about the consequences if he failed to rouse the occupant in time for matin prayers. The room was occupied by a distinguished and senior member of the cathedral’s scriptorium, who would merely receive a few questioning glances and askance looks at morning repast should he fail to appear for the customary devotions. For the novice who failed to rouse him, however, any chastisement would be far more severe.

He knocked again, with a note of frantic urgency. “Honoured brother,” he hissed into the woodwork of the bolted door, “the matins bell has sounded. It is time to rise for morning prayer!”

“What’s this? Who is making such a Sigmar-damned cacophony at this blessed early hour?”

The voice was thin and withered—no more than a weak, scratchy whisper—but to the young novice it sounded like the final knell of doom itself. With a rush of anticipatory dread, he turned round. There in the passageway behind him loomed old Comnenus, the temple-monastery’s chief lector-priest, terror of several generations of holy brethren of the Church of Sigmar, including, it was rumoured, the Grand Theogonist himself when he was merely a young novice priest. No one was quite sure how old Comnenus was—“older than Lord Sigmar himself” was one popular if rather blasphemous view—but none doubted his devotion to the service of Sigmar, no matter how the infirmities of age might have affected his abilities.

“It’s Brother Vallus, revered Comnenus. I have been sent to summon him to attend matins, but he is not answering my knocks!”

The old priest made a noise of angry indignation at the back of his throat. His eyes were milky and clouded with cataracts, but he did not need vision to find his way around the cathedral-fortress where he had dwelled for decades. Without hesitation, he strode up to the closed door where the boy stood, and banged sternly on it with the end of the gnarled wooden cudgel which he used as a walking stick and, occasionally, as a means of painfully reminding young novices of the solemnity and importance of their duties.

“Brother Vallus!” he shouted, all trace of aged weakness now gone from his voice. “It is past the matins hour. We are not in some remote, Sigmar-forsaken outpost in Nordland or Ostermark. This is the great cathedral of Altdorf, the very seat of the Holy Church, and here we observe the proper marks of devotion to the Lord Sigmar!”

There were more doors opening now, as other priestly brethren emerged to see the source of the disturbance that was echoing through the stone halls and passages of the scriptorium dormitory. Comnenus continued hammering on the door for a minute more, then paused and sniffed the air suspiciously as his blind man’s keen senses detected an odour from within. Whatever it was, it caused him to look sharply at the boy.

“Go quickly, and fetch the brother smith,” commanded Comnenus, gripping the boy’s shoulder in stern urgency. “Tell him to bring any tools he needs to break down a door.”

By the time the smith had been summoned, a crowd of nervous, agitated priests and novices had gathered. The blacksmith set about the noisy business of breaking down the door. A big, hirsute Middenheimer, he had once been an Ulric-worshipping mercenary who had broken men’s skulls for gold before he had seen the light and devoted his energies to hammering horseshoes in the service of Sigmar. A few stout blows with a hammer and chisel and it was done. Priests and scribes crowded round the open doorway to behold the scene within the room…

And then retreated in horrified dismay at the sight that greeted them. Many of them retched or held the collars of their habits to their faces to stifle the overpowering stench that wafted out of the small, stone-walled room.

Only Comnenus did not react, even though the smell must have been almost overpowering to his more developed senses. He stood resolutely in the doorway, needing no eyes to know what the others must have seen. The very air was filled with it: the stench of death. And of evil-doing.

“Summon the scriptorium high priest,” he commanded.

The high priest came, took note of what had transpired, then summoned the Cathedral Guard… who summoned the cathedral’s master-of-arms…who notified the offices of the Grand Theogonist. The word passed up through the multitudinous layers of Church officialdom, leaping from office to office and scribe hall to scribe hall, until, at some late point in the process, someone with sufficient authority made the necessary decision and ordered that word be sent to be the most obvious person of all.

“Has the cadaver been moved or disturbed?” asked Zavant Konniger with trademark curtness. Standing in the doorway, he had taken in the scene beyond with a single, dispassionate glance.

“Not… not to my knowledge,” the high priest answered hesitatingly. A thin, nervous man, it was common knowledge that he owed his prestigious rank as head of the scriptorium at the main cathedral of Sigmar more to his family’s political connections than to any real abilities of his own. Another idiot younger son of some ancient and honourable aristocratic clan, Konniger sighed; the Church was full of such men, especially here at its centre of power in Altdorf. With the barest nod of polite acknowledgement to the priest, Konniger knelt down to begin his inspection of the corpse. He knew that the figure of the venerable old Comnenus standing silently nearby was the true source of authority in the place.

Blanching slightly, Vido moved forward to join his master, bringing the box of instruments and materials that the sage-detective might need in his work.

It was as if some great hand had picked up the corpse and twisted it, remaking its form, altering and reshaping the body as if it were nothing more than a child’s wax doll.

The body was that of a human male in his late middle years: the unfortunate Brother Vallus, Vido guessed. His back was arched at an impossible angle that must have agonisingly wrenched and broken every bone in his spine. His limbs were stiffened and wracked in equally improbable positions, his death-frozen hands clawing at the air in a pose of unmistakable and perpetual agony. His priestly vestments were ripped apart, claw wounds striping the flesh of his face and torso. Bloody marks on the corpse’s head showed where parts of its hair and scalp had been torn away.

The dead man’s face was a frozen mask of pain and fear, his glassy-eyed gaze fixed eternally on some great and unknowing terror. His jaw was dislocated, and his mouth hung open inhumanly wide to reveal the gruesome mess within. Vido had seen a mouth with its tongue ripped out once before; it was not a sight that he relished seeing again.

The room—a typical scribe’s cell—had been wrecked, its few modest furnishings smashed. There were clear signs that a violent and bloody struggle had taken place: blood splashes on the walls; more of the strange claw marks gouged into the surface of the wood flooring, all mixed with a crushed and trampled carpet of ripped parchment pages, smashed glass and earthenware jars and bottles, and the spilled powdered and herbal contents of the broken containers.

Konniger conducted his examination without any preamble or show of human emotion. Occasionally, he would murmur something inaudible or direct Vido to hand him certain instruments to aid him in his work. At one point, he used a curious lens device to inspect the torn flesh of the corpse’s fingertips and the marks scored into its skin, as well as the flooring; at another he lent forward to sniff cautiously at the corpse’s face, and poked about amongst the bloody gruel inside its mouth. Occasionally, he asked the head of the scriptorium a few pointed questions.

“Whatever transpired here must have caused considerable noise. Did no one hear any sounds coming from this chamber last night, or think to investigate them?”

The priest shifted uncertainly, casting awkward glances towards Comnenus. “Ah, Brother Vallus was… that is, he…”

“The good brother was a follower of those parts of the holy faith which are sometimes termed the flagellant orders,” explained Comnenus, electing to reply in the hesitant high priest’s stead. “We are no strangers here to the ways of our brethren who follow the strictures of the flagellant creed, so, if there were any…”

Here the old priest hesitated, clearly searching for the proper, discreet words. “If there were any alarming sounds issuing from Brother Vallus’ cell, they might not be considered so unusual for one of our flagellant brethren.”

“He had friends here in the scriptorium? Brethren he might talk to or share confidences with?”

Again, it was left to Comnenus to answer the sage’s question.

“He was like many of the flagellant calling, solitary and blessedly removed from the low gossips of the scriptorium. The quality of his work was such that he was permitted to work in his room rather than the main scriptorium hall. He spent most of his time in his cell, even eating his meals here. His every energy was devoted to his work, and to the greater glory of Sigmar. It is my understanding that it has been a matter of years since he has even set foot outside the cathedral walls.”

Konniger gave a soft grunt of understanding and then caught the unanswered question in the eyes of his manservant.

“Flagellants are holy brethren who mortify and chastise their own flesh for the greater glory of Lord Sigmar, and to drive out from their bodies all temptations of earthly sin. If the unfortunate Brother Vallus was in the habit of regularly beating or whipping himself here in the privacy of his quarters—and these many healed-over marks and lesions on his skin suggest that this was indeed the case—then it would certainly explain why no one came running to investigate any cries of pain or sounds of violence that may have come from this room last night.”

“A true and holy path, the calling of the flagellant,” intoned Comnenus, sounding for all the world as if he was quoting verbatim from some stern volume of Church doctrine. “By their pain and suffering shall their devotions be known to all, and verily shall they be elevated to sit at the right hand of Lord Sigmar.”

“Indeed so. Wise words indeed, venerable Comnenus,” said Konniger diplomatically, bowing his head in deference to the old priest.

Vido stared in further horror at the mutilated corpse on the floor. Mortify your own flesh? Whipping and beating yourself? What kind of madness was this? As long as he lived—and, as a halfling, that could be some quite considerable time yet, more than the average lifetime of a human—he doubted that he would ever truly understand the ways of mankind.

Konniger looked around the room, taking in again the spartan details of the scribe’s cell: the bare, thick stone walls; the smashed furnishings; the locked door that had been broken open to gain egress; the tiny, latch-shuttered window that allowed only a thin trickle of light into the dismal place. There was something else in the room too, the remnants of the heavy reek that had so repelled Brother Vallus’ would-be rescuers when they had first broken down the door.

“A room locked from the inside, but containing only a corpse. Signs of a violent struggle, but no sign of any attacker, and no apparent way for them to escape after brutally killing Brother Vallus. It is a mystery, is it not, Vido? Perhaps a mystery worthy of one of those blood-drenched plays from the quill of the great Detlef Sierck himself!”

“It is nothing less than devilment!” shouted Comnenus, angrily waving his stick as if to ward off the evil spirits that he believed were at work here. “The servants of the Dark Powers are everywhere. It is only by our steadfast devotion to the Lord Sigmar that we shall have the courage and strength to seek them out and drive them back into the abyss!”

The old priest’s words stirred up an excited, nervous hubbub of talk amongst the other scribes crowded at the doorway and gathered in the passageway beyond. “Brethren! Brethren, there is nothing to fear,” called the high priest, to little effect. “Herr Konniger was once our brother within the Holy Church. We all know of him and his reputation. If anyone can find Brother Vallus’ attacker, it shall surely be him. Even as I speak, the Guard are scouring the cathedral. With Sigmar’s blessing, I feel sure that the culprit will be found within the hour.”

“Oh, sooner than that, brother high priest,” mused Konniger, standing up and carefully brushing away the detritus from the hem of his robes. “In fact, I can confidently state that the killer is even now in the room among us.”

There were gasps of disbelief and horror, and a further hubbub of nervous, thrilled chatter from those gathered outside. Vido suspected that the gruesome discovery of the dead scribe and its still unfolding aftermath was the most exciting event that the scriptorium and its inhabitants had witnessed in quite some time. Even Vido had been startled by Konniger’s claim, but he recognised the trademark touch of his master’s often not-so-secret taste for melodramatic showmanship.

“Herr Konniger! Surely you cannot believe that any of our holy brethren are—” began the master of the scriptorium, only to be abruptly silenced by Konniger’s upheld hand.

“Brother Vallus was the instrument of his own destruction,” said Konniger, calmly and matter-of-factly. “I suspected that he had taken his own life almost as soon as I first laid eyes on his body. What I have discovered since then has only confirmed beyond dispute my initial theory.”

“Nonsense!” thundered old Comnenus. “Death by one’s own hand is a crime against the word of Sigmar! No holy brother would damn himself in such a way. Yes, I remember you when you were a young novice, Konniger. Impious and impatient, that is how I recall you. Too eager to challenge that which other, greater minds of the past have set down as proven fact and established doctrine. I thought then that you had the makings of damnable heresy in you, and I have heard much since then to convince me my judgement was correct.”

Konniger smiled to himself. “I remember you too, venerable Comnenus, with your quick mind and temper, and with your cudgel ever at the ready. You taught me much back then, even if you did not know it, and even if a lot of what I learned may not have been to your intent or liking. Still, I thank you for all that you taught me, wise Comnenus, and I thank you again for your patience now as I endeavour to show the fruits of the wisdom you tried so dutifully to bully and beat into me.”

He knelt down beside the corpse, reaching over to touch one of its clawing, death-frozen hands. The high priest and those few others present in the room moved nervously forward to watch. Comnenus remained where he was, his expression stern and disdainful as Konniger began the explanation of his findings.

“Observe how ripped and torn the flesh is on the cadaver’s fingertips. Do you not see how closely those fingers match the marks torn into the flooring and his own skin? Look more closely at these fingertips. Do you not see the splinters of wood driven into the flesh, and the skin and blood beneath his torn fingernails?” Konniger reached out, gently plucking something away from one of the fingers, holding it up for his audience to see.

“And look here. A hair, is it not? There are others also, all of them torn by Brother Vallus from his own head as the agonies and madness of his own self-administered demise overtook him. He must have torn at his own vestments and flesh, bitten off and consumed his own tongue, and clawed deep furrows into this solid wooden floor, consumed by a most unbearable torment.”

“Sigmar’s holy bond!” breathed the high priest, staring at the corpse with renewed horror. “What evil spell or curse would impel a man to inflict such tortures upon himself?”

“The brother had an interest in herbalism, did he not?” asked Konniger, indicating the debris scattered on the floor around the corpse. “Certainly, the evidence here would indicate so. See there—the broken lid of an apothecary case, the scattered remains of various, easily-identifiable herbal substances and remedies, torn parchment scraps of what clearly looks like a herbalist’s inventory book. Yes, definitely an amateur herbalist, I think. And, now that I dwell on it, I seem to recall once reading a mildly interesting treatise by one Brother Vallus on the lesser-known restorative effects of Tilean belladonna.”

“So what relevance does any of this have to the manner of his death?” asked Comnenus, his withered voice thick with scorn.

“What indeed?” replied Konniger, clearly relishing this battle-debate with one of his former priest-instructors. “I know that the years have robbed you of your sight—though not your boundless faith and devotion, honoured Comnenus—so trust me when I recount to you now the symptoms I see upon the body of Brother Vallus. The stretching and distorting of the facial muscles is highly distinctive, as is the wrenching and distortion of the bones and muscles. Poor Scribe-brother Vallus suffered such agony in his final moments, such unimaginable and involuntary violent spasms, that he snapped his own spine and, as near as I can tell, dislocated or wrenched apart near every joint in his body. What does that suggest to you?”

Silence and the deepening of his perpetual scowl were the only responses forthcoming from the old priest. After a pause, Konniger continued.

“Nothing? Very well, then what of the highly distinctive odour that you yourself were first to detect before the door was even opened? ‘The stench of evil’, I believe you termed it, and, truthfully you were not much mistaken. Church doctrine and ecclesiastical history is your field of study, wise Comnenus, and I know of no man more learned in such matters than your venerable self, but there are other important areas of knowledge.”

“There can be no greater and better kind of wisdom and learning than that which increases our understanding and appreciation of the Lord Sigmar and his deeds,” barked Comnenus, an answer which elicited a smile from Konniger.

“You do not disappoint me, good Comnenus. You are as true to those words now as you were when I first heard you utter them those many years ago. Still, had you any knowledge of herbalism, alchemy or even poison lore, you would have perhaps recognised that odour for what it truly was.”

“And what is that?” asked the high priest, casting a nervous glance towards Comnenus.

“Borgio’s Brew,” answered Konniger unhesitatingly. “A uniquely Tilean addition to herbal lore. A mixture of hemlock, belladonna and certain rarer and more exotic herbal materials. Combined, they create a most potent and terrible poison, one which any competent herbalist would be able to synthesise. The poison induces the most horrid agonies in its unfortunate victims, causing the extreme physical dislocations which we see here in the body of Brother Vallus. As the venom seeps through the substance of the victim’s flesh, it is expelled back outwards in the form of a foul-smelling black sweat that forms on the victim’s skin, and which quickly evaporates into the surrounding air as the body begins to cool after the point of death.”

“And that is the source of the foul vapour we could smell?”

“It is, sir,” accorded Konniger. “The odour is unmistakable, and I can still discern it emanating faintly from the body.”

“If what you say is true, Konniger, then our brother is truly damned,” said the blind scholar, “for self-murder is intolerable in the eyes of the Church. Why, then, would Vallus do such a thing? And also, if he did indeed seek his own death, why did he choose such a painful and protracted method of self-extinction?”

Konniger bowed his head in a quiet salute of respect to his old tutor and tormentor. “It pleases me to know that age has not also robbed you and the Holy Church of your fine powers of reasoning, Comnenus. What you have so acutely expressed is indeed the real mystery here, is it not? Let us see if we cannot now resolve it without further delay.”

He looked up towards the stolid figure of the Cathedral Guard master-at-arms. “Master-at-arms, I will need your assistance in moving and stripping the body. And perhaps,” he added, nodding towards the open door and the crowded passageway beyond, “the door now can be closed and the holy brethren outside reminded of whatever important duties they must doubtless have waiting for them elsewhere.”

Konniger waited while the gaggle of priests and novices outside were chased away by a trio of guardsmen. With the door closed and guarded, the only people who remained in the cell were Konniger, Vido, the high priest, Comnenus and the master-at-arms. The big, ex-mercenary barely reacted as Konniger handed him a pair of linen gloves for handling the body. “There may be some poisonous residue left on the corpse’s skin,” explained Konniger, as he carefully put on an identical pair of gloves, “so we must take care not to touch the skin directly. As an additional precaution, we shall have to wash our hands in a bowl of hot water infused with cloves afterwards.”

Working in tense silence together, they expertly stripped and turned the body. At once, everyone in the room with the exception of blind Comnenus immediately saw something odd upon the skin of the corpse.

“Those patterns or marks, what are they?” asked the high priest, leaning forward in repulsed fascination. Getting as close as he dared to the apparently still-toxic substance of the body, he pointed at the strange marks now evident upon the skin of Vallus’ torso. “Some kind of flagellant scarring?”

“That is what I thought at first,” admitted Konniger, carefully running his glove-protected fingers over the ridged, hexagonal-shaped clusters of marks across the corpse’s shoulders and sides. “But see how oddly regular and precise they are. In fact, one might almost consider them to be—”

“Scales!” Vido blurted out in horrified dismay. “Ranald’s eye, his skin is hardening and breaking up into something like lizard scales!”

“Something else here too,” grunted the master-at-arms, indicating the naked corpse’s uncovered back. “Big blisters or welts of some sort. Could they be another effect of the poison you talked of?”

Konniger shook his head. “Not as far as I’m aware.”

The sage-detective studied the five distinct, angry red swellings running down the dead man’s spine. Gingerly, he touched one of them, and felt something soft and unpleasantly malleable moving beneath the jelly-like skin of the swelling.

“Your dagger, sir,” he asked the Cathedral Guard, careful to keep the tone of his voice free of the dry, sick fear which now gripped him.

He took hold of the proffered weapon, wielding it like a surgeon’s tool as he adeptly sliced two criss-crossing incisions into the surface of the swelling. A clear, oily liquid—most distinctly not human blood - seeped out from the cuts made by the sharpened edge of the blade. Konniger eased the dagger’s point into the centre of the large, blister-like swelling where the two incisions crossed. With a quick, flicking twist of the dagger blade, he peeled open the petals of the wound he had made.

An eye, baleful and awful, stared up at him from the flesh of the dead man’s back. Suddenly, it blinked, a thin membrane of skin flicking across its wet, slimy surface. Then, slowly, with a vile, wet, sucking sound, it rolled round in its orbit, looking in turn at each of the horrified observers in the room.

There were shouts and cries of disbelief and revulsion from Vido and the others. Even Konniger felt the dagger drop from his nerveless fingers as he instinctively backed away in appalled disgust. It was the high priest, pale-faced with fear, who was the first to speak the dreaded word on the minds of everyone in the room: “Chaos!” he hissed in terror. “Here in the very cathedral of Sigmar, the foul mark of the Dark Powers!”

“Did I not say?” roared Comnenus, waving his cudgel in stern admonishment. “Did I not warn you? There is devilment afoot! The servants of the Dark are amongst us!”

Vido had scrambled back with the others to get as far away as possible from the vile proof of Comnenus’ thundering words. As servant and companion to Zavant Konniger, the halfling had often seen glimpses of the many faces of the Dark Powers of Chaos, but here it was lying before him in its most visible and terrifying form.

Mutation. The mere word struck terror into the heart of any inhabitant of the Old World; the thought that the secret taint of Chaos might somehow enter their bodies and blossom forth from their own flesh in the most horrible ways imaginable.

Vido continued to stare at the body, unable to look away from the horror growing under the dead scribe’s skin. The eye sat there, pulsing in its fleshy cradle. While they watched, the queasy observers could see further signs of wriggling and agitated movement from beneath the surface of the other pustular swellings that dotted the corpse’s back.

Even Konniger, who had perhaps seen more of the ways of Chaos than any man still living or yet still sane, was visibly unnerved by what he had uncovered within the dead man’s body. He stared at the mobile eye, apparently unaware that he was voicing his chain of thought aloud.

“Yes, of course… the contagion of Chaos… what else would drive a servant of the Church to take his own life? The secret shame, the terror… they must have been unbearable to a member of the priesthood. Undoubtedly, he must have felt that he was being punished for some imagined sin or transgression… he mortifies his own flesh night after night, trying to drive the evil out of himself, but it is all in vain. Finally, he realises his own damnation and decides to take his own life… but how? He has some skill as a herbalist and knows how to administer many substances and elixirs which will extinguish human life quickly and painlessly. Why then does he choose the most painful and protracted means available to him? Because he is also a flagellant, of course… because, in his madness, he believes that he is being punished for his sins, and that the only way to redeem himself and drive the Chaos taint out from his flesh is to die in the most agonising manner possible… yes, it all makes sense, but there is still one vital question that we do not yet know the answer to—”

“It must all be destroyed!” thundered Comnenus, his words shaking Konniger out of his horrified reverie. “The body, everything in this room, all of it is contaminated with the malefic touch of the Dark Powers. The room itself must be cleansed by fire and purified with prayer and exorcism, and all of us must also undergo ritual purification if we are to be cleansed of any similar contagion.”

“No!” objected Konniger. “The contagion must be tracked back to its original source. There may be clues here, evidence that will let us discover where—”

But it was too late; the master-at-arms was already herding everyone out of the room, summoning more guardsmen to seal the room and escort Konniger and the others to a place where they would undergo the laborious and unpleasant process of being cleansed, body and soul, of any taint of Chaos infection. In his time with Konniger, Vido had witnessed the aftermath of several similar outbreaks of the corruption that was Chaos, and was now familiar enough with the procedure. The contents of the room would be put to the torch, and even the remnants of the ashes would be sealed in some safe container before being buried deep in the earth. The room itself would be exorcised and purified, its very stones scrubbed clean with holy water which in this case might be blessed by the Grand Theogonist himself. The room would be sealed shut and left unused for years, possibly for ever, such was the dread and fear that the threat of Chaos commanded in the minds of the Empire’s inhabitants.

No, Vido was not looking forward to the ritual processes of fasting and bodily purification he knew he would shortly be required to undergo, but he knew also that greater issues were at stake here than his own personal comfort.

“Master, this matter is not yet over, is it?” he asked Konniger as they were escorted away through the maze of passages and stairwells that made up much of the interior of the cathedral. Acolytes and Church servants scurried hurriedly out of the way ahead of the procession, and there were hushed, nervous whispers and fearful, peering eyes from behind many half-opened doors. Clearly, some version of the happenings in Brother Vallus’ cell had preceded them in their journey through the cathedral. The news of the mysterious death of a brother priest was a thrilling scandal for all the cathedral to share, but the presence within these holy walls of anything Chaos-tainted was an abomination too awful to be considered.

“No, Vido, it is not yet over,” answered Konniger, seemingly oblivious to the invisible yet almost palpable aura of fear now spreading through the holy Church of Sigmar. “Despite what the general laity and many of the learned members of the Church may think—”, the note of scorn in Konniger’s voice was plainly evident in his use of the word “learned” when talking of his former brethren in the Church, “I have found little evidence that the corruption of Chaos is spread in the manner of a curse or spell, or that it is anything as simple as an outward, physical manifestation of some inner, private sin or wrongdoing. It is something more akin to a poison or disease, Vido. There are means of spreading such a poison, and it is possible that the wretched Brother Vallus’ mutations were caused by his coming into recent contact with just such a source of contamination.”

“But how, master? If he was a kind of bookworm recluse who rarely ventured out of his room, how could he have come into contact with such a source of contamination?” asked Vido.

“Good questions, and well asked, Vido,” replied Konniger, his mind doubtlessly already formulating possible solutions and theorems. “These are the matters we must now endeavour to answer.”

Two

Arek van Dahl stood on the slope of the low hill behind the small hamlet, looking out over the scene below and savouring the aftermath of his warband’s handiwork. The breeze from the far distant Sea of Claws carried up the smoke from the burning dwellings below, and his Chaos-heightened senses savoured the smoky scent of roasted human flesh and freshly-spilled blood. From the fields beyond the hamlet—Arek had never troubled to learn the name of the place before deciding to wipe it off the face of the Empire—came the strangely human-sounding screams of terrified animals as Arek’s beastmen ran lustfully amok amongst the hamlet’s surviving cattle herds. Arek smiled to himself; when he and his warband departed, the human survivors of the attack would come creeping back out of the woods to rebuild their burned homes, replant their ruined crops and recapture their scattered herd animals. If they had any sense, thought Arek, they would slaughter any surviving animals they found, otherwise there would be some monstrous surprises awaiting them come next lambing and calving season.

Still, it was not his way to concern himself with the troubles of these human peasants, whose paltry, short lives were scarcely any less wretched and unimportant than the cattle beasts they tended. Once, perhaps, the well-being of such insignificant human chattel might have concerned him, when he was a young and proud Knight Panther dedicated to the defence of the Empire and its inhabitants. But that was more than a century ago, before he had been illuminated into the Dark and had swore his soul to service of the Gods of Chaos.

Arek stood and watched Vorr, his chief beastman hetman, struggle laboriously up the hill towards him. The creature’s two cloven-hoofed feet were not made for climbing up steep, slippery inclines, and Arek’s enjoyment of his servant’s discomfort was only heightened by the fact that the beastman was also laden with battered, mismatched strips of rusting metal armour stripped from a dozen or more long-dead battle-kills. There was fresh blood on the blade of the heavy, crudely-cast scimitar that the beastman carried, and more fresh blood stained the mangy fur of the area around the creature’s powerful, dog-like horned snout and jaws. It had killed during the raid, and fed recently.

The beastman finally arrived and stood before him, bowing its heavy, horned head not in salute—Arek cared little whether his warband followers respected him, just as long as they feared him—but in discomfort against the harsh, unseasonable sunlight that shone on this late autumn day. Beastmen disliked natural sunlight, Arek knew, and Vorr’s natural habitat was the sunless depths below the thick, light-shielding tree canopy of the Forest of Shadows. This was where he had first found the beastman and his tribe-brothers, binding them to his service and leading them to this randomly-chosen massacre site in the haphazard trail of destruction they had wreaked across the face of the Empire’s northern reaches these last two years.

“The earth of the fields has been despoiled? The well has been polluted? You have sought out any hidden grain stores and seen that they too have been properly tainted?”

Each of Arek’s questions was met with a grunt and a nod of the beastman’s savage head. “Then you have done well,” relented Arek, praising the towering, bloody-jawed beastman as if it were some kind of faithful mastiff or hunting hound. “Gather your tribe brothers and make ready to be gone from this place. The gods are pleased, and our glorious work here is done.”

Arek cast his gaze out across the landscape of this remote portion of the province of Ostland. It was a fine, clear day and far to the east he even thought he could see the glint of silvery sunlight reflecting off the waters of the River Talabec. If he followed the course of the river, he would soon come to far more tempting prizes than the small villages and hamlets that had been his warband’s targets for the last two years—larger settlements, towns and finally the great city of Talabheim itself. But, of course, there would also be organised militias and Imperial soldiery. Arek had not survived a century or so of near continuous raiding in the lands of men by ever allowing himself to be drawn into battle against any superior and more numerous foe.

By the time any vengeful pursuit force arrived at this place, he and his warband would be long gone, disappearing once more into the sheltering bowers of the dense forests which covered much of the face of the Empire. Still, he smiled, even after they had gone, their presence would continue to be felt in the months and even years to come, as the sinister Chaos gifts that they had left behind in the wells, soil, granaries and even in the bellies of the herd beasts began to make themselves known.

Vorr shuffled uneasily, making a low grunting sound. Arek turned in response to the figure seated on the misshapen steed behind him. “Our valiant captain of the guard wishes to know our next destination,” he called out mockingly. “What shall we tell him?”

Sorren the Foresworn shifted awkwardly in his saddle, careful to keep his hands and face out of direct sunlight. While Arek had remained relatively physically unchanged by his service to the Ruinous Powers—the only outward sign being a further deepening of the look of arrogant cruelty to the cast of his refined, aristocratic features—the hunchbacked sorcerer had not been so fortunate. A thick, black woollen, all-enveloping cloak protected his Chaos-altered form from the worst effects of exposure to sunlight, while a metal-beaded mask screened off the garment’s deep cowled hood, hiding his face from view. The voice that emerged from behind the beaded barrier—bloated and rasping, heavy with the promise of mutated horror—hinted much of the abomination lurking within.

“I have already cast the bone runes. To go west, of course, would be folly. That is the way we have come, and they will already be searching for us there. The omens are good to the north and east. The bone runes speak of many vulnerable villages and farmsteads and few military patrols, but I now sense something else, something which the runes do not speak of.”

Arek felt it too. A strange beckoning at the back of his mind, a subtle but distinct mental calling to him from afar. He had experienced this sensation only twice before in his time of servitude to the Lords of Chaos, and recognised it for what it was.

A summons. A rallying call for the champions and followers of the Powers of Chaos to assemble at the will of some greater daemonic being. Its call was irresistible; its urgency undeniable.

The warlord turned his head in the direction of the soundless call. “South!” he ordered, the beastman turning to follow the direction of his pointing finger. “We go south, into the Drakwald Forest.”

The daemon-thing brooded in the darkness of the place that was for it part prison, part refuge. It cursed the foolishness of its servants beyond the confines of its prison, already aware which one of them had acted too precipitously, spreading its Chaos gifts too far, too soon. Now there was danger too: a human whose mind burned with a brilliant and frightening fury, a human coming from afar, following the journey made by one of those gift vessels, even now tracking it back to its secret source.

It was troubling indeed, especially so close to the imminent time of blessed rebirth, but the daemon-thing was wise and cunning, and not without means to protect itself. It had sent out the mystic call, and already it could sense its puppet-followers—several warbands of vile, feral beastman creatures—making their way through the dark forests in answer to its summons. Poor servants they might be, the lowest of the ranks of the legions of Chaos, but they were still capable of accomplishing the task required of them. They would intercept and kill this human before he even reached its sanctuary-prison, the daemon was sure.

Afterwards, when it was free from its prison, when it had emerged to claim the full mantle of daemonhood, it would be able to dispense with the services of such serf-creatures.

The possibility that the human might survive its traps buzzed through the daemon-thing’s nebulous mind. It paused for a moment, contemplating the thought, then dismissed it.

Even if its servants in the forest failed, it gloated, even if the human somehow survived to his journey’s end… Well, this place was the daemon’s home, and it had its secret servants ready within these walls. If the human came here expecting to find a place of blessed sanctuary from the Chaos warbands who were even now converging on it from all sides, then he would soon—but, crucially, too late—realise the fatal enormity of his error.

Three

“Beastmen, sir! There amongst the trees!”

The scout came riding back down the track from the front of the column, waving his lance pennant in urgent alarm. Already Gustav could hear and dimly see the dark shapes of bestial creatures crashing through the dense foliage of the woodlands on either side of the road.

“Ambush! Guard your flanks!” he called, as a wave of crude, bronze- and flint-headed spears flew out from the tree-line. Gustav spurred his charger forward, galloping into the fray and raising his shield. Instantly, he felt an impart as a spear that could well have impaled him through the chest struck the warbird-painted metal shield and was instead deflected harmlessly away.

Elsewhere, others of his company were not so fortunate. Gustav watched with dismay as one of his men—Halder, an experienced veteran of many hard-fought campaigns—was struck by a beastman missile, the heavy spearhead tearing through the thick, protective material of his leather jerkin and mail hauberk and slashing a deep wound across his side. Halder cried out and slumped in his saddle, somehow managing to keep hold of his mount’s reins. The wound was not necessarily fatal, but Gustav feared the worst: wounds from beastman weapons frequently led to terrible and often fatal infections. He had seen too many good men’s lives carried away by whatever vile poison or ordure the Chaos creatures smeared on the blades of their primitive weapons.

There was another human-voiced scream from nearby, and, seconds later, a riderless horse galloped past. Gustav cursed; in the last two days of the long journey from Altdorf, he had lost almost a quarter of his company in similar beastman attacks and ambushes. By Sigmar, a journey through these darker parts of the Drakwald Forest was no walk in the meadows, he thought, but he had never before encountered so many beastman warbands except in the Forest of Shadows itself. The attacks had been relentless in the last day or so, and Gustav and his men had been hard-pressed to fend off the last few of them.

And this one looked to be the fiercest they had encountered so far.

Still, he grimly reminded himself, he had sworn an oath to safely deliver those under his protection to their destination, and neither he nor his men would falter now. The Templar Order of the Red Griffon might not be the most numerous or illustrious of the Empire’s many knightly orders, but they yielded to none in terms of their fealty and bravery in the service of the memory of Lord Sigmar.

There was a barking cacophony of inhuman shrieks and howls from the foliage, and then a mob of beastmen charged out from the trees, running straight for the group of mounted knights and men-at-arms, and the trio of covered wagons at the centre of the protective skirmish formation. “No lances!” shouted the young Templar commander, aware that the limited space on the narrow forest track had already robbed the knights of their greatest assets—manoeuvrability and the devastating terror of the mounted charge. “Swords and hand weapons only! Drive them back into those trees they’re so fond of skulking amongst!”

He ran down the nearest beastman, knowing, as any cavalryman does, that in mounted combat the first blow is the most important, putting everything into a savage downward sword-swing, smashing through the creature’s crude wooden shield and cleaving into its shoulder and chest.

His next blow sliced the top off another beastman’s goat-horned head. His third blow impaled one of the things through the chest, the sword lodging itself firmly inside the creature’s smashed ribcage. Without hesitation, Gustav relinquished hold of the pommel, leaving the precious weapon—a relic of the order—stuck inside the body of the dead creature. He wheeled his mount, and took up the heavy mace that hung from the side of his saddle. The weapon’s flanged metal head was designed to smash through armour plating, although Gustav had found it to have equally satisfactory results on the dense, horned skulls of beastmen these last few days.

Searching for his next opponent, he risked a quick glance around him, seeing how the rest of the battle was going. The fringes of the track were scattered with dead or dying beastmen, but two riderless horses testified to possible losses among his own men. They were weakest on their right flank, but even as he realised he saw three beastmen break through the ragged line of Templars and run unerringly in that strange, shambling gait of theirs straight towards the covered wagon in the middle.

The wagons to the front and rear of it contained only supplies and provisions, but it was this central wagon that carried the cargo that was the purpose of the Templars’ mission here.

Gustav looked round, knowing that if he broke ranks to intercept them it would only open up an equally vulnerable gap in their left flank.

“Go!” shouted his deputy, Waasen, fighting on horseback nearby and immediately understanding his commander’s dilemma. “Voss and I will hold the line here!”

Gustav turned his horse, and charged towards the three beastmen. He kept a tight hold of the reins, sensing his mount’s uneasy fear. Empire warhorses were trained for battle, and were not ordinarily unnerved by inhuman opponents, not even the pungent-smelling greenskins, but the scent of creatures that carried the taint of Chaos in their blood repulsed and terrified the acute senses of most animals.

The beastmen saw him coming, pointing and communicating between themselves in a short series of guttural barks. Two turned to face him, one of them hurling a crude, flint-headed handaxe at him. Gustav deflected it easily with his shield and spurred his charger forward straight towards it, swinging the mace round his head and yelling a battle-cry of Sigmarite devotion. He knew the two beastmen were sacrifices, blocking his way to delay him while their brother abomination went for the main target in the central wagon.

Diversions and sacrifices they may be, but that did not mean that Gustav would take no relish in ending their foul existence.

They came at him from either side. The one on his shield side was the slower and clumsier of the two. Gustav lashed out with his foot and raked the points of his spurs across its face. Blinded, it stumbled and fell to the ground, bleating as it died beneath the iron-shod hooves of Gustav’s mount. The other feinted, and darted forward to try and hamstring or disembowel the charging warhorse with its rusting scimitar. Gustav saw the move coming and struck out with his mace, an unconventional but effective uppercut blow that caught the creature on the underside of its goat-like face, turning its lower jaw into powdered bone and lifting its whole body off the ground with an impart that must have surely shattered its horned skull.

Gustav charged onwards, but the third beastman had already reached its objective. The armed squire who had been driving the wagon was dead—killed by a fearfully accurate and powerful beastman spear pitch—and so there was no one to stop the monster as it eagerly leapt up onto the pillion seat and pulled aside the canvas covering only to tumble backwards again, hands clasped to its neck as its lifeblood gushed out onto the ground from a knife-slash to its throat.

Gustav had witnessed more than enough bloodshed during his time of holy service to Sigmar to recognise expert knife-work when he saw it. He doubted that it was the handiwork of his distinguished bookworm charge, so Gustav guessed that his initial impressions of the man’s halfling manservant were indeed correct. His father had been a magistrate in Wolfenburg, and as a boy he had learned much of human nature from watching his father give judgements at the city’s daily assizes. The Templar was not fooled by the benign appearance of the bookworm’s manservant; he could see through the facade of false innocence to the criminal nature that lurked beneath, a look he was familiar with from the many wretches who had appeared before his father’s bench. However, whatever sins or crimes the halfling might have been guilty of, Gustav was prepared to forgive them all as long as he continued to put his dubious skills to use killing off the followers of Chaos.

Gustav looked round, taking further stock of the situation. There were more dead or dying beastmen in sight than there had been the last time he surveyed the scene, but then he saw a second wave of the creatures burst screaming and roaring from the tree-line to the right. Frantically, he looked round, calculating how many of his remaining men he could pull away from the ongoing battle on the left flank to bolster the line on the right.

Suddenly, the decision was taken out of his hands.

A terrible, high-pitched roar erupted from somewhere amongst the dense foliage far to the left. It sounded for all the world like some maddened creature in rage or agony. The effect on the beastmen was staggering and instantaneous: they broke and ran, fleeing bleating and barking back into the trees, abandoning their dead and injured behind them. A few of the younger and less experienced Templars chased after them on horseback, yelling in excited and vengeful bloodlust as they mercilessly cut down several of the fleeing creatures. Urgent shouts from their more veteran brethren called them to a halt just short of the tree-line. On horseback, in open ground, they had the advantage, but inside the dark tangle of the densely-wooded forest they would be easy prey for any beastmen waiting in ambush. Waasen called them to heel, selecting several to form a small scout force under the command of an older veteran knight.

“Sigmar’s teeth! What was that damned hellish sound?” blasphemed Waasen as he rejoined his commander, forgetting his Templar oath of knightly piety for a moment in the aftermath of the recent madness of battle.

“The command call of a bull ungor, or at least a passable imitation of one, amplified through a hollowed-out bone horn,” said a calm, authoritative voice from behind them. “My knowledge of beastman battle communications isn’t quite all it could be, but, judging from the manner in which they took flight, I imagine it to have been some kind of urgent retreat signal.”

The two Templars turned, staring in disbelief at the figure of Konniger as he climbed down from the rear of the wagon, carefully stepping round the body of the throat-slashed creature lying on the ground.

Waasen spat in disgust, and gestured in loathing at the still-twitching corpse. “You’re trying to say that these things can talk to each other?”

“Why, yes,” replied Zavant Konniger, adopting an expression of polite, puzzled surprise at the Templar’s scornful contempt. “Anselm the Damned wrote a most informative treatise on the subject of beastman tribal groupings during his time of exile in the Northern Wastes. Of course, the tribe he had befriended ate him before he could finish his observations, but his studies showed that—”

“Herr Konniger,” interrupted Gustav, with ill-disguised impatience. “I have injured and dead men to attend to. We’ve still got a long way to go until we reach our destination, and I want to get there before nightfall. Unless, of course, you want to spend the night in the woods with these creatures still on the prowl?”

“Sir!” came a shout from one of the scouts, interrupting any reply that the scholar-bookworm might have made. The man came galloping up, brandishing a gruesome, red-dripping object in his mailed fist. “We found this just inside the woods. It was hanging in plain sight from a tree branch.”

The knight held up the grisly trophy. It was a decapitated beastman head, its long, split-tailed tongue lolling out from between its blood-stained jaws, its two red-pupilled eyes matched by two more Chaos-mutated eyes alongside them. Dual horns twisted and curled around each other to form an unnatural sigil shape. Flies buzzed hungrily around the thing. The smell emanating from the putrescent object spoke of something many days dead, but the fresh blood still dripping from it suggested a far more recent demise.

Gustav looked questioningly at Konniger, who nodded in agreement at the young Templar commander’s unspoken question. “An ungor beastman, one cursed—or favoured, as such creatures would see it—with the body-corrupting mark of its foul gods. It would surely be the leader of this tribal warband, which raises a particularly curious question—”

“Yes. If this creature was already dead when the attack commenced, then who or what sounded the signal for the creatures to retreat?” asked Gustav. Konniger looked at him with new-found respect, impressed at how quickly the Templar commander had grasped the point he was leading to. Konniger accorded the Empire’s knights all due respect in issues of bravery and martial skills, but in matters relating to imaginative free-thinking his respect was less forthcoming, a fact that was even more true amongst the notoriously dogma-bound members of the Templar orders of the Church of Sigmar.

Konniger looked around warily, scanning the shadowy recesses of the thickets and foliage of the surrounding forest. A glance upwards confirmed that the sun was past its zenith and moving steadily downwards towards the horizon. It was still some hours to sunset, but, as the Templar commander had pointed out, they still had some distance to go to their destination, and a forest full of marauding beastmen was no place to be come nightfall.

“You are correct, commander. We should be on our way.” He glanced again at the dark forest, wondering to himself what hidden eyes might be out there observing him at that moment. It was a question to which he secretly half suspected he already knew the answer.

“We should keep faith in the protection of Lord Sigmar, commander,” he added, mysteriously, “for somehow I sense that he or some other higher power may have sent an invisible guardian to watch over us.”

From his perch amongst the treetops, the hunter watched as the wagon and its escort of holy knights moved off along the track. It was still a few hours until sundown and he judged that, if they maintained their present pace, they should be able to reach their destination before nightfall.

That was just as well, he decided. The beastman warband that had attacked them had been successfully driven off—thanks in no small measure to his own secret efforts aiding the knights—but the hunter knew that there were other warbands moving through the woods. From his high perch, he could faintly discern the distant brays and calls of their scouts, and he realised that they would be here soon enough, and in greater numbers than before.

Despite the danger, he allowed himself to relax for a moment. With their cloven hooves and poorly formed hands, beastmen were poor climbers, and he was safe enough hidden in the treetops. He could hear the scattered remnants of the last warband as they crashed through the forest, panicked by the abrupt end of the attack and subsequent discovery of the death of their chieftain.

The hunter smiled, recalling how he had effortlessly stalked and killed the chieftain creature and its small retinue as they oversaw the warband’s ambush of the Templars. The hunter was a woodsman by nature, but it had been a long time since he had hunted and killed beastmen amongst the forests of the Empire. In his own grim and silent way, he was enjoying this reminder of the simpler days of the past: the days before he entered the Emperor’s service, when he had offered his unsurpassed skills to stalk and kill enemies that were often far more dangerous and elusive than these crude, bestial monstrosities. And now he had been despatched on this new service, a mission that would require all the subtle and deadly gifts he possessed. The hunter had accepted the duty without qualm; he served the Emperor and so everything he did, no matter how ruthless or underhand, was ultimately in the Empire’s best interests, was it not?

Expertly judging the coast to be clear, he collected up his few weapons and equipment and began his silent climb back down to the ground. Moving on foot through the forest, he would have to travel quickly to keep pace with the Templars, but this was no real challenge or hardship. As he ran, he touched the bone horn now hanging from his neck, the horn he had taken from the beastman chieftain, which he had used to sound the false retreat call to the creature’s troops.

Who knows, he mused, perhaps I’ll encounter more of the creatures in the course of the journey? He smiled thinly at the thought of a chance to kill again soon.

* * *

The daemon-thing’s servants flocked in clouds around it, feeding off its rotting flesh and whispering to it in their scratchy little voices. Their insect whispers told of the failure of this last warband ambush, and of the humans’ approach to the gates of their master’s prison-sanctuary. The nascent daemon snapped its jaws in annoyance, its long, reptile tongue whipping out to snatch mouthfuls of the flies that buzzed lovingly round its head.

The daemon chewed noisily on the remains of its servants, knowing that, soon enough, their consumed substance would grow and hatch anew from his diseased flesh. It was the way of the plague-gifts that Grandfather Nurgle gave to the world—the endless cycle of blessed, pestilent rebirth from out of glorious, vile corruption. This pleasing thought quickly calmed the creature’s angry mood.

The failure of its servants in the forest did not matter. There were more servants on their way through the dark forests that surrounded its home, and when they arrived the human and his companions would be trapped.

Trapped in a place they did not know, at the mercy of its inhabitants, some of whom had already been corrupted into the daemon’s service, they would stand little chance of survival.

At first, the daemon had feared the arrival of this human whose mind burned with a cold, clear light, and that fear had increased when it learned that the man was guarded by a company of holy warriors of the false god Sigmar.

Now, however, it realised that its fear was unfounded: there was no danger here, only a cunning gift from Grandfather Nurgle. After all, its own full rebirth was imminent, and what had first seemed like an unfortunate and dangerous coincidence was now surely all part of the Grandfather’s slow but sure design.

Rebirth out of festering corruption was the way of the Grandfather, and now the Plague God in his wisdom had sent his servant more raw material—clean and unsullied flesh, purified to the service of the weakling human god Sigmar—to be corrupted and used in his service. This body—and these others lying rotting around it in the darkness—had served its purpose well enough during the long years of secret growth and rebirth, but it would need new, uncorrupted flesh if it was to walk abroad once more in the world beyond the confines of its prison.

Perhaps this human that was approaching would make a suitable new vessel for its daemonic spirit.

Soon, it promised itself, as it waited alone in the foul darkness of its prison.

Soon.

The monastery reared up suddenly into view over the tree-tops, becoming dramatically visible just as the track took a steep turn before it ascended the slope of the rocky promontory from where the monastery fortress looked out across the landscape of the densely-wooded forest plain.

Vido peered cautiously out through a gap in the wagon’s canvas covering, not liking what he saw at all. At first glance, the monastery looked dark and foreboding. At second glance, it looked even more so. It was protected on three sides by the sheer cliff faces of the escarpment it was built upon, and the only means of approach was by the road they were now on, the road which crossed the open space that led up to the gates.

The monastery’s high walls would at one time have been as sturdy and solid as those of any other similar fortress outpost built in the dangerous wildernesses that existed within the Empire’s borders. However, time and neglect had clearly made them crumbling and ramshackle, and in dire need of repair. Lichen and creeping vines scaled up their moss-eaten sides, almost as if the forest itself was trying to pull down the stones and wipe out any trace of the place.

As one would expect, an area of arable land had been cleared around the monastery for growing crops and foodstuffs, and to provide grazing ground for the monastery’s livestock. Vido saw a few desultory and sporadic patches of sickly-looking wheat or corn, but the general air was one of long-term neglect, and the forest seemed to be steadily advancing across the untended fields to reclaim the land for itself. At the edge of the neglected fields there was a small cluster of huts and other buildings, evidence that a small village may once have flourished in the protective shadow of the monastery rock. It would have been home to the settlers who would have come here to work in the monastery’s fields and vineyards, who would in time have turned the dangerous wilderness into a prosperous and fertile area.

The dwellings, like the fields, had obviously been abandoned long ago, and there was a distinct and unsavoury air of neglect and creeping decay about the whole monastery and its surroundings.

“Alt Krantzstein. A strange name for a holy monastery,” ventured Vido, glancing at the figure sitting opposite him in the wagon.

“Indeed,” agreed Konniger. “‘Old Sickstone’. This area of the Empire has long been blighted by outbreaks of pestilence and disease. The monastery was originally built some four hundred years ago after a holy crusade had cleansed the area of the evil that had taken root during the worst of the civil wars of the preceding century. The rock had previously been the centre of a coven dedicated to the adoration of the Malign Powers, and it was thought that founding a holy fortress of Sigmar upon it would serve to purify it of the abominable taint of Chaos, and restore prosperity to the land around it.”

Vido looked out of the wagon again, seeing little sign of purity and prosperity, and wondering to himself just how successful the Church’s grandiose plan had been these last four centuries.

No, he thought again, he definitely did not like this place.

Glancing out of the open rear of the wagon, he saw a sight he liked even less: the sun fast sinking below the horizon and the dark shadows of nightfall stretching out towards them across the roof of the forest. So it was almost—but not quite—with a sense of relief that he greeted the sound of the solid wooden gates closing behind them as the wagons and their Templar escorts rode into the courtyard of the monastery.

Konniger stepped down from the wagon and Vido quickly followed him, glad to be standing on solid, cobbled ground surrounded by stone walls instead of being imprisoned in a rickety, swaying wagon in the middle of woods where beastmen or worse seemed to lurk behind every tree. Giving lie to the popular human image of halflings as pint-sized country bumpkins, Vido hated the countryside with a passion, a feeling only reinforced by his unhappy upbringing amidst the rolling hills and fertile valleys of the Moot. He had ran away from home at the earliest opportunity, heading straight for the bright lights and dark alleys of Altdorf, where he would be quite content to remain for the rest of his days, given the choice. Altdorf was the centre of the universe, and the rest of the Old World—particularly those parts of it that were home to marauding tribes of Chaos beast-creatures—was in comparison a dark, forbidding place little worth bothering about.

Sadly, there were the terms of a certain Imperial pardon to consider, as well as his duty to his master, and so it was that Vido all too often found himself unhappily following Konniger off to some far-flung and uncivilised corner of the Empire.

“Herr Konniger?” asked one of the monks waiting to greet them at the doors to the monastery. It was dark in the courtyard. The looming shape of the building blocked out what little remaining sunlight there was, and two of the monks carried burning torches. The flickering light gave the monks’ faces a strange, unhealthy-looking pallor, a look which Vido would later notice was not altogether dispelled by the daylight.

“I am he,” answered Konniger. “You received my message?”

The lead monk gave a polite curt bow of his head. “I am Brother Himerius, abbot of this place. Your messenger preceded you by only a day. We were surprised to learn of your imminent arrival. We are a small, remote outpost of the one true faith, and we rarely—”

Konniger abruptly cut him off, pointing towards the figures of the mounted knights. Many of them slumped exhausted in their saddles, and several of them bore bloodstained bandages, evidence of their trials on the journey to the monastery. “Brother Himerius, we have travelled far, and the commander and his men have fought bravely and suffered grievous losses to get me here. If you have received my message, then I assume you have made the proper preparations for our arrival. Show us to our quarters, and bring me whatever apothecary materials you have, so that I may properly attend to these men’s wounds. There is much for me to do here, I fear, but I will commence my investigations in the morning.”

The monk’s face tightened in anger, but he was too taken aback to object: one glance was all he needed to gauge the tense mood of the tired and angry Templars.

“Of course. This way,” said the monk, gesturing the way ahead into the monastery building.

Thus did Zavant Konniger make his arrival at the secret-bound monastery of Alt Krantzstein.

Four

Vido was awoken that night by the sound of screams and sobbing. Instantly, he reached for the dagger he had placed beneath the rough, straw-filled sack that was apparently served as a pillow. A quick scan with his sharp, darkness-piercing halfling vision told him that there was no immediate danger to him in the crude, stone-walled monk’s cell that had been clearly hurriedly prepared for his use.

From the passageway outside, from within the very walls of the monastery, came whimperings and sobbings, pierced by the occasional scream or mumbled cry: the sounds of human pain and misery. Vido got up from the filthy straw pallet bed, all miserable and unhappy thoughts of his warm, eiderdown-covered bed back his well-heated bedroom in Altdorf now forgotten. Quickly, he got dressed, checking to make sure that he had at least another throwing dagger on him before slipping, dagger at the ready, out of the cell door and into the passageway beyond.

Vido did not consider himself particularly brave—noble acts of suicidal bravery were, from his pragmatic point of view, strictly the province of other, foolish races such as humans and dwarfs—but he did have a particularly finely-honed sense of self-preservation. He was not willing to sit hiding in his cell and wait for whatever was causing those sounds to come and visit him too.

The sounds were louder out in the passageway. The monastery was a large, rambling building, too large for the few monks who inhabited it, and many of its rooms seemed to have been abandoned or unoccupied for quite some time. However, a few of the chambers at the far end were still occupied, and it was from these that the sounds appeared to be coming. Vido heard more moans and cries, but from behind one of the closer doors, he heard a chillingly familiar sound.

He remembered hearing that sound before, at the daily public floggings in Altdorf’s main Konigplatz Square, a fearful sound that had ricocheted harshly off the stone walls of the imposing public edifices that lined the vast, open space of the square, and flown over the heads of the crowds gathered to witness the bloodthirsty spectacle. It was the sound of a lash cutting into human flesh; a terrible, sharp, wet cracking sound that still made the old thief in Vido wince every time he heard it.

Moving quietly and carefully, he approached the closed door from behind which the sounds were coming. Suddenly he turned quickly, holding up his dagger in wary alert as he sensed something behind him.

Konniger stood at the other end of the passageway. Vido started to open his mouth to speak, but Konniger raised a cautionary finger to his lips, signalling for silence. The sage-detective then silently turned and moved off towards a side-passage, beckoning for his servant to follow him. Vido hesitated a moment, pausing to look nervously towards the source of the whipping and sobbing sounds, and then hurried off in nimble-footed pursuit of his master.

They found themselves in a side-chapel, one of several contained within the vast building. Their journey there had been short but unnerving at least from Vido’s point of view. The monastery was large and rambling, and every passage and stairwell they passed in their journey seemed to echo with more faint but disturbing sounds of human pain.

Standing there in the chapel, Vido watched as Konniger used the flame from the small candle he had been holding to light the room’s brazier lamps. The chapel sprang alive as each lamp flared into life, their flickering light revealing the surprisingly splendid details of the room’s religiously-inspired decor.

“Look, and tell me what you see,” said Konniger, pointing towards the large, stained-glass window arch behind the chapel’s familiar looking hammer sigil-marked altar.

Vido looked, and was even further surprised by what he saw.

The Church of Sigmar was not his chosen faith—he was fairly lax in matters of religious devotion but paid at least nominal lip service to both Esmeralda and Ranald, the patron deities of halflings and thieves, respectively—but he knew well enough what the inside of a normal temple or chapel dedicated to the Empire’s fierce patron warrior god looked like.

Usually, there would be devotional portrayals of the mighty deeds the god had performed while still a mortal man. Images of Sigmar Heldenhammer defeating armies of greenskins or forging alliances with the dwarf lords in the halls of their buried mountain city-fortresses were particular favourites, as was the legendary battle between the man-god and the foul liche-lord Nagash. This last was the centre-piece of many Sigmarite shrines, since this was the fateful moment when the chieftain of the Unberogens smote down the near godlike Great Necromancer. Many Church theologians argued this was the point when the Lord Sigmar transcended his mortal birth and began his path to true divinity.

But Vido saw none of these typical, familiar images. Instead, he saw a stained-glass tableau showing a twin-tailed comet blazing across the heavens, falling to earth and destroying a city in a single, terrible conflagration. Looking closely at the tableau, Vido marvelled at the exquisitely-detailed yet grotesque rendering of the scene. He was impressed by the flames and dark, spewing cloud of daemon things that rose up from the burning crater to fall upon and consume the licentious and impious inhabitants of the doomed city. Vido’s grasp of Empire history was perhaps not all it might have been, but the scenes on the tableau stirred some dim recollection in him of tales of some long-ago historical disaster.

“Yes, this must be the so-called ‘Hammer of Sigmar’ which fell from the heavens to destroy the wicked city of Mordheim, just over five hundred years ago at the end of the Second Millennium, during the terrible time of the Wars of the Many Emperors,” said Konniger, almost as if he could read his manservant’s mind.

“There are many who still believe the disaster to have been the Lord Sigmar’s judgement upon the people of his Empire,” the sage-detective added, staring intently at the images before him, almost as if he were able to see the actual events they portrayed rather than these mere colour-faded representations. “They say that the children of Sigmar had fallen into wicked and sinful ways, and when the Lord Sigmar looked down upon the Empire he had created and saw it riven by disorder and civil war, that the cataclysm was his wrathful punishment upon his sinful children. I have my own theories about the nature of the stellar body which destroyed the City of the Damned, although some would call such theories no less far-fetched than the most baseless and foolish of peasant superstitions. At the time it was widely thought that the event heralded the end of the world, a proposition I would not necessarily disagree with, since the Hammer’s fall set loose many great evils, some of which still fester away and haunt us to this very day.”

“And what about these three lunatics? Where do they fit in?” asked Vido, pointing at the human figures dominating the central window of the stained-glass montage.

Despite the blatant and disrespectful impiety of his manservant’s remark, Konniger almost smiled as he studied the group of figures indicated by Vido. There were indeed three of them, each dressed in humble friars’ robes, each wearing a pious and saintly expression on their face as they stood against the backdrop of the burning city of Mordheim.

Tears of blood wept from the empty eye sockets of the first holy man; blood ran down the neck of the second from the wounds on the sides of his head where his ears had been; the third had his mouth open wide, showing the bloody mess inside where his missing tongue had been. Each friar held his hands before him, palms outwards. Each pair of hands held something, almost as if they were making an offering to Lord Sigmar. Blood sacrifice and offerings were an anathema to the followers of Sigmar, but there was no mistaking the nature of the grisly objects being offered up by the three figures.

The first held his own gouged-out eyes; the second the seared remains of his own ears; the third, the vile, pink obscenity of his own tongue.

“Werner, Dieter and Gunther,” said Konniger solemnly. “Also known variously as the Three Who Are One, or as the Brothers See-No-Sin, Hear-No-Sin and Speak-No-Sin. Holy brethren who had so mortified the flesh of their own bodies, so that they would remain untouched by the great wickedness that saturated the Empire at that time.”

It was with a sudden flash of understanding that Vido grasped what Konniger was driving at.

“The monks here, they’re flagellants, aren’t they? Just like that poor bugger back at the cathedral in Altdorf. That’s the sound we heard tonight, isn’t it? They’re doing Sigmar knows what to themselves in their rooms, and that’s where the screams and moans are coming from.”

Konniger nodded in approval, always pleased when his servant was able to piece together deductions for himself. “The Order of the Holy Three at Alt Krantzstein is one of the oldest of the flagellant orders. At its height, during the anarchy of the Wars of the Many Emperors, I imagine that it must have held many hundreds of devout brethren. Tell me, Vido,” he asked, looking sharply at his manservant, “how many monks would you say you have seen here?”

Vido shrugged. “Difficult to say. A dozen or so, maybe. We’ve only been here a few hours, but the place seems about as popular as a cemetery on Morrsliebnacht. There’s whole areas of the place that don’t seem to have been used in a dwarf’s lifetime.”

“Agreed,” nodded Konniger. “The flagellant orders have been in decline for centuries, since Magnus the Pious’ rebuilding of the Empire some two hundred years ago. Theirs is a curiously apocalyptic creed, and finds less favour with the faithful in safer and more prosperous times. Still, I would expect there to be still at least a hundred or so brethren of the order remaining, when, as best as I can estimate, there are probably no more than two score of them.”

He broke off, pausing in thought, before glancing again at his manservant. “We must take great care, Vido. There are secrets and terrible falsehoods abroad in this place. Not everything or everyone here may be as they seem, and we must choose our allies carefully. Tell me, who here do you think we can trust?”

“Captain Gustav, surely?” suggested Vido.

“Yes, the Templar commander and his men. They know our true purpose here, and we have seen evidence of their bravery and loyalty on the journey here. But who else, I wonder? What of Abbot Himerius?”

“I didn’t think much of him straight off,” judged Vido, falling back on his reliable instinct that the first, bad impression of someone was probably the truest one, “and he certainly didn’t take to us too much.”

“Indeed,” adjured Konniger. “He doesn’t welcome our presence, that much is already clear. He fears that we may uncover something hidden here, but what? Does he fear we will learn what he already knows, or that we will reveal that which he wishes to remain ignorant of?”

At that moment, there was a furtive shuffling sound from the passageway beyond the entrance to the chapel. Konniger and Vido spun round, just in time to witness a dark shape swiftly step back into the deeper shadows of the dimly-lit passageway. “A spy!” exclaimed Konniger, as he rushed off in pursuit of the phantom shape, Vido quickly following behind him. When they reached the passageway, they could hear swift, soft footsteps nearby, but retreating urgently away.

“Which direction?” asked Vido, his sharp hearing confused by the echoing footsteps coming either from the two branches in the passageway before them or from the darkness of the downward spiralling stairwell to their right. Even as he listened, the sound of the footsteps swiftly and eerily faded away, and then was gone.

“What did you see?” asked Konniger.

“I’m not sure. A figure in monk’s robes, I think…” came the answer.

“Anything else? Think, Vido. Was there anything else you discerned about our elusive observer?”

Vido paused to think, concentrating as he used some of the simple but effective memory recall tricks which Konniger had taught him. Now that he put his mind to it, there was something else unusual about the phantom figure, but what was it?

“The footsteps,” decided Vido. “They didn’t sound right. There was a strange, irregular pattern to them, almost as if the person making them had a body that couldn’t move or run in any normal way…”

His voice tailed away for a moment, as he realized the import of what he had just said. He looked fearfully up at Konniger. “Master, I don’t think whatever made those footsteps was entirely human.”

They returned to their rooms, agreeing that further investigations must now wait until morning. Vido lay in his pallet bed, doing his best to get to sleep. He had done what he could to secure the door to the room using various old thieves’ tricks that would alert him if anyone tried to enter while he was asleep, but it did little to make him feel any safer in this miserable and wretched hell-hole of a place. Try as he could, he could not blot out the faint sounds of the mumbling, sobbing prayer voices and moans of pain that drifted through the echoing stone halls of the monastery. After a while, he convinced himself that the sounds must have ceased hours ago and that it was only his overworked imagination which kept them alive in his head. How long could the flagellant madmen that inhabited this holy insane asylum spend punishing and chastising themselves every night?

So he lay there, eventually dozing off into a fitful sleep in which the sounds coming from all around him gradually faded away into one low, droning background constant, like the buzzing of insects. As he drifted asleep, he thought for a moment that he heard another, even fainter sound beneath all the moans and cries. His last conscious thought was that he must now be dreaming and remembering the attacks of those terrible beastman creatures on the way here, for this new sound was that of a bestial, hungry roaring.

And it was coming from somewhere deep within the confines of the monastery itself.

* * *

“Who is it? Who’s there?”

Again, the Templar heard the noise. Again, he moved in pursuit of it, arriving at the end of the passageway just in time to see a flickering, human-shaped shadow disappear down the steps of the narrow, stone stairwell ahead of him. He drew his sword, at the threshold of the darkness, pausing for a moment and looking back along the passageway towards the more well-lit and properly-inhabited parts of this tumbled-down old heap of a place. He knew that Heitz and Kirchner were somewhere nearby, patrolling this level or the one above, and that one good, loud shout would bring them running.

Still, he held off raising the alarm just yet. There was an eerie air to this Sigmar-forsaken place, a sense perhaps that there was something unclean and unnatural lurking here, something just waiting to be disturbed from its uneasy quietude.

Or perhaps he was just on edge, the Templar thought. They all were. It had been a long and hard-fought journey to this miserable pile of stones, and they had lost too many comrades along the way. And it would have been more, but for the efforts tonight of that bookworm scholar they had been sent here to guard. Every man of them had thought Halder a goner. The filth from the beast-thing’s spear had spread with a terrifying speed to infect the wound, but the bookworm had worked some tricks with a few herbs and apothecary remedies, and now it looked like their comrade would live to fight another day in Sigmar’s service. There were one or two others who owed their lives to the scholar’s medicine skills, and the Templar and his brethren were now in the man’s debt.

The Templars’ swords were sworn to the service of the Church of Sigmar, and the orders to accompany the scholar to this place had come from the office of the Grand Theogonist himself, or so Captain Gustav had told them. The scholar was here on vital and potentially dangerous Church matters, they had also been told, and it was their duty to protect him, but now his efforts in tending to their wounded brethren lent an extra determination to their task.

The thought relaxed him. He suspected he was over reacting to the atmosphere inside this dark and gloomy place, and to the strange, discomfiting sounds that echoed round the empty stone halls. We all serve the Lord Sigmar in our own way, thought the Templar, and yet he couldn’t help feeling that he and the blade in his hand were of more worth to Sigmar and the defence of his Holy Church than these mad monks and their crazed devotion to self-inflicted agonies.

He was in one of the lower halls now, still chasing the sound of footsteps from the gloom ahead of him. It was even darker and more eerie down here than in the upper levels, and he stopped to lift a guttering firebrand from a nearby wall sconce. Hurrying on, he caught another glimpse of the figure ahead of him as it slipped along the shadows. A few moments ago, he had convinced himself that he was pursuing some errant monk who was surreptitiously abroad at this late hour on some non-sinister if doubtlessly vow-forbidden task. Now, catching a glimpse of the strangely malformed-looking, shuffle-gaited figure, he wasn’t so sure. He thought of his two brethren above, but rejected the idea of turning back to summon their aid. If he did, his quarry would be long gone by the time he returned down here.

“Stop! In Sigmar’s name, I command you to halt!”

The only response to his bold shout was a quickening in the pace of his quarry’s footsteps. The Templar took off after him, running now, determined to bring this whole, mysterious business to an abrupt and decisive end. From ahead, he heard the rattling of metal on metal, like the sound of keys being turned and clanking bolts being drawn. Then there came the protesting scream of rusty hinges as some heavy and long-immobile door or barrier was hauled open.

The Templar slowed the pace of his advance, nervously testing the familiar weight of his blade as he sensed danger close by. “Stand to,” he called. “Step out where I can see you, or, Sigmar help me, I’ll run you through where you stand!”

The only response from the darkness ahead was silence.

Cautiously, the Templar man-at-arms continued advancing, all too aware of the sudden, dry, bitter taste of apprehension in his mouth. There was a subtle, hot draught of air blowing along the passage towards him now, a shocking contrast to the normal cold chill of the place, carrying with it the faint but discernable reek of something foul and rotting.

He saw stairs directly ahead of him: worn, stone steps leading down into blackness. At their top, a thick, metal-bound wooden door had been drawn open. The scattering of dust from the corroded bolts and locks painting the surface of the flagstones at the top of the stairs suggested that it had been many years since the door had last been opened.

The smell was stronger here, a hot, feral stink wafting up from out of the darkness below. The Templar stood at the top of the stairs, fearful to descend into this new and unknown place. Surely his quarry could not have gone down into those unlit depths? Surely he would have heard the phantom’s strange shuffling footsteps if he had descended down into—

The movement came suddenly from behind him. The Templar felt a strong pair of hands thrust themselves against his back and push hard, propelling him with sickening surprise off the top of the stairs down into the darkness below.

The man tumbled headlong downwards into the blackness, stupidly wondering in what hidden alcove or recess his assailant had been hiding as he felt the bones of his body smash and break against the edges of the stone steps. He landed at the bottom, fracturing his skull in one final, cruel impact on the rough, unworked surface of the stone floor. Fighting off the pain and the sweet, deadly promise of pain-free unconsciousness, he looked up, his vision swimming as he saw the blurred figure at the top of the stairs above—shockingly closer than he thought, even if it seemed that his fall had taken an eternity—start to haul shut the loudly-protesting door.

The Templar felt a searing pain in his head from his broken skull. He felt the blood flowing freely down his face. He felt the stabbing pains in his side and innards where broken ribs pressed into punctured organs, and, terrifyingly, he felt nothing at all from his shattered and useless legs. Grimly, methodically, he began to search around in the darkness for his sword, using what little dim light still emanated from the open doorway above.

His hand closed on the pommel of the weapon, just as the door slammed shut, and darkness, shocking and complete, swallowed him up. For a moment, the only sound that existed in the world was the shallow, laboured breathing from rib-punctured lungs. And then, from out of the darkness around him came the other sounds.

Hungry bestial growls; an eager, monstrous shuffling. The sounds of inhuman monstrosity. Abominations, closing in on him from all sides.

The Templar prepared to meet them, managing to agonisingly haul himself up, determined to die with his sword in his hand and a prayer to Sigmar on his lips.

Safely back in his room, the servant of the Ruinous Powers wept with pain, rivulets of blood running down his sides from the scourge marks on his back. The gibbering, insane thing behind him—that hateful monstrous twin-thing—kept giggling to itself. The harder the monk chastised them both with the leather-bound bundle of nettles and thorn branches, the more it giggled and snickered to itself.

He knew that the master was displeased with them, and he knew that it was his monstrous companion, not he, who had made the mistake. It was he who had prepared the secret plague-gift without the master’s knowledge or permission, and so it was he who had brought this strange investigator from Altdorf to the remote monastery, together with his escort of holy warriors.

The thing behind him giggled even more at the mention of the Templars, and what the two of them had already done to one tonight. The deed had done much to placate the master’s anger, and, just as importantly, it had given the hungry ones below their first taste of human flesh. Judging by the enthusiastic feeding sounds the monk and his grotesque other could hear coming from the other side of the safely locked door, they had greatly enjoyed the unexpected treat.

If the master’s designs went according to plan, they would soon have the opportunity to taste a great deal more.

Yes. Soon, the monk promised himself, flaying away the skin of his back, drawing another vile bout of giggling from the thing there with him.

Soon his torment would be at an end. Just a few more tasks to accomplish, and finally he would be released from his service to find the promised oblivion that was all his damned soul now craved.

Five

Vido shivered, and wrapped his cloak tighter around him. The morning sun was a faint smear in the sky, obscured by the low, vaguely ominous ceiling of dark cloud that seemed to hang perpetually over the monastery.

It was also raining, of course.

Vido shivered again, and thought idly of his homeland, which he had departed long ago and vowed never to return to again. Dull the Moot might be, but at least it was generally warm and sunny, its fertile meadows and rolling, low hills so unlike the rest of the damp, misty and dark, forest-shrouded landscape of these northern environs of the Empire. Nor, he reminded himself with an inward grimace, were marauding packs of foul Chaos beast-creatures or strange, sinister goings-on in ancient, crumbling-stoned monasteries much of a feature of daily life in the Moot.

They were standing in a gulley at the foot of the monastery rock, in an area which Vido had originally taken to be an overgrown and neglected herb or kitchen garden, abandoned, like so much else at Alt Krantzstein, to the vagaries of wild nature. On closer inspection, the curious stones planted sporadically across the ground turned out not to be rocks or pieces of fallen masonry from the walls above, but were in fact ancient and vegetation-covered grave markers. With a shock, Vido had realised that he and his master were standing in the midst of the monastery’s graveyard.

Konniger was down on his hands and knees, scrambling about amongst the gravestones, uncovering and reading names and dates from the time-worn inscriptions. “Pontranius Glantz, librarian of this blessed place, taken by the Black Plague in the Year of the Lord Sigmar 1966. No, that won’t do at all… wait, what’s this? Wilhelm Keitel, holy brother, died of sickness 2478. Much more promising, don’t you think, Vido?”

Vido was barely listening. Idly, he wondered if he was supposed to be writing any of this down. Konniger had a truly prodigious memory, but occasionally he required Vido to make notes of his observations while he went about his inscrutable business. Tense and irritable after a generally sleepless night—halflings seemed to require more sleep than their larger human cousins—Vido’s surly mood was little improved by their present surroundings. He had a traditional Old Worlder’s dread of cemeteries and graveyards, and it was a matter of considerable and troubling frustration to him that so many of Konniger’s adventures and investigations seemed to lead, at some point or another, to such places.

And now here they were again, grubbing about in some ancient, rain-soaked boneyard where Konniger was bound to uncover something which would lead to more gruesome and grisly events. Vido shivered again, although this time it was not the cold which troubled him.

“Brother Robel, called to Sigmar’s side 2482. Ah, now we’re getting somewhere, Vido,” continued Konniger, clearly on the track of something that only he was yet able to discern. He redoubled his efforts, checking gravestone after gravestone, using a metal spatula to clear away dirt, grime and moss to reveal the inscriptions hidden underneath. Vido watched, confused, as he was bombarded with a bewildering array of names, dates, and occasional causes of death.

“Waluth Haller, taken by the pestilence 2483… Brother Kagenack, abbot of this place, died of sickness 2491. We are getting closer, are we not, Vido? Brother Goellecke, resting in blessed repose 2495… Brother Boddenberg, 2488… Brother Weinert, 2500… Brother-Codicier Riedesser, 2495… Brother Sommerfeldt 2495… Novice-Brother Stahlberg, 2497. Striking, is it not, Vido? What then are we to make of all this?”

“That many of them have died of some kind of plague or sickness?” ventured Vido, joining his master at last in his study of the inscriptions.

“That much is obvious,” responded Konniger. “As I have already explained, Alt Krantzstein and the area around it has a long and infamous history of plague and pestilence, and the monastery was founded here to re-sanctify this remote, if blighted, corner of the Empire. No, Vido, look again at the inscriptions, and pay particular attention to the dates upon them.”

Vido was about to bend down and look more closely, but before he could do so he caught sight of the dark-cloaked figure of a monk limping hurriedly down the slippery gulley path towards where he and Konniger stood. At first, Vido presumed that the man was limping as a result of some self-inflicted flagellant injury, but, as he drew closer, he saw that the man was apparently club-footed. His right leg was hidden inside his long cassock but it was clearly twisted in some way and dragged heavily on the ground as the man moved.

The monk stopped before them, and bowed nervously. “Herr Konniger,” he said, breathing heavily after an apparently laboured journey. “Brother Himerius awaits you in the vestry of the library. He is most anxious to discuss the reasons for your mission here, and to offer any assistance that may be in his power to grant.”

Konniger bowed in acknowledgement. “Tell the honourable brother that we are on our way, and that I look forward to enlightening him further.”

The man bowed again and hurried off with the message. Konniger and Vido followed him at a more stately pace. Vido looked questioningly up at Konniger.

“Master? The dates on the gravestones?”

“Indeed,” nodded Konniger. “It is now the year of our Lord Sigmar 2517, and yet the most recent date to be found on any of those stones is 2500, an observation further borne out by the neglected state of the burial area, and the fact that the ground is undisturbed. No fresh graves have evidently been dug there for some number of years.”

Konniger looked at Vido, seeing the look of confusion on his manservant’s face. “I look forward even more to our meeting with the honourable Brother Himerius, Vido. Perhaps he will be able to tell us when and how the Order of the Holy Three came upon the secret of eternal life, since, according to the evidence in this graveyard, not one monk has died here in the last seventeen years. A most remarkable feat,” added Konniger archly, “considering the troublingly high mortality rate amongst the brethren here in the years preceding the turn of the century.”

“These are serious matters, Herr Konniger. You have proof of what you seem to be accusing us of here?”

They were in a small, private scriptorium chamber within the library. Brother Himerius sat facing them at the scribe’s desk. Himerius had a touch of the palsy—Vido had noticed a hint of it the previous night, when the monk had so singularly welcomed them to the monastery—but now the symptoms were quite apparent. Himerius’ hands shook volubly while he talked.

It wasn’t just the effects of palsy, Vido supposed. He had always thought himself a fairly shrewd judge of character, and his time with Konniger had only heightened those skills. There was an extra tremor in the movement of Himerius’ hand, Vido fancied, and a tremor in his voice. It was fear, he thought. Himerius was nervous, and trying to conceal something from them.

With Himerius were two other monks, both of them standing behind him and staring sternly across at Konniger. One was Brother-Codicier Kree, the monastery’s chief librarian. He was a small, withered-looking man, surprisingly young to have risen to such an important position within the Church, but already showing the early signs of advanced age. His head was entirely hairless, and his skin had a curious and unpleasant shrunken and prematurely wrinkled look to it.

Vido had seen this strange patina effect once or twice before, on the skin of fierce Kislev and Norscan mercenaries, whose faces had felt the chill, flesh-shrivelling kiss of frostbite or exposure to the deathly and unforgiving cold of the Old World’s most inhospitable northern latitudes.

Why it should also appear here on the face of a man who had presumably spent most of his life within the cloistered confines of a monastery of the Church of Sigmar was a question which Vido was unable to immediately answer.

The other monk had been introduced to them as Brother Rynok, the monastery’s chief cellarer, responsible for the organisation and supply of the monastery’s kitchen and stores.

Many monasteries had extensive agricultural holdings where they grew their own crops and raised their own cattle in quantities to virtually make them self-sufficient, any excess surplus being sold off and the profit added to the monastery’s own coffers. In this way, many monasteries had amassed considerable wealth, Vido knew, and in such places the brother cellarer was an important and influential figure, controlling the monastery’s finances and much of its daily secular business. It was not unknown for wayward cellarers to be partial to a little light-fingered pilfering or extra-mural use of the monastery’s often considerable surplus assets.

This, however, was evidently not the case at Alt Krantzstein. Rynok was tall and gaunt, his morose expression and sickly pallor doing little to suggest that he enjoyed living off the fat of the land of the monastery’s neglected agricultural holdings. Indeed, many of the monks had a pinched, starved look to them, probably due as much to flagellant-inspired self-starvation as to a shortage of food supplies in the monastery. Vido suspected that, unlike some Sigmarite holy orders, the pious brethren of the Order of the Holy Three were not unduly troubled by the temptations of the sin of gluttony.

Alt Krantzstein. “Old Sickstone,” thought Vido, looking across at the three monks and thinking how much the truth of that strange name seemed to be written across the face and bodies of the inhabitants of this remote and blighted place.

Both Kree and Rynok stared across at Konniger from behind the abbot; Kree with quite blatant hostility, Rynok with morose indifference. Together, the two of them were, Vido decided, a perfect précis of the welcome that he and his master had so far received here at the monastery.

“There was an outbreak of contagion of the Unholy Powers within the very walls of the great cathedral fortress in Altdorf.” said Konniger, looking calmly across the desk at Himerius. “At the command of the Office of the Grand Theogonist, I have been conducting an investigation into the source of the contagion. I am satisfied that I have traced the source back to here, to Alt Krantzstein.”

“And, as I said, these are serious matters you speak of. You have proof of these allegations?” replied Himerius, the tremors in his palsy-shaking hand increasing.

“Of course,” said Konniger, gesturing to Vido. The halfling nervously stepped forward, holding up the sealed casket he was carrying. Konniger took the box from him, and Vido stepped back smartly, glad to be rid of the box and the vile thing it contained.

“The contagion was carried within the body of one Brother Vallus, whom the good Brother Kree here may remember.” Kree scowled in unwelcome surprise at the mention of his name, his frosty and hostile stare intensifying as the sage-detective continued talking. “Vallus was a master scribe at the cathedral, and ventured rarely, if ever, outside its environs. If he did not come into contact with a contagion outside the cathedral, then it seems most likely that the contagion was instead transmitted to him. A likely hypothesis, yes? But the question then is, of course, how was this accomplished?”

Konniger laid the box down on the desk before the abbot and reached into his robes, drawing out a pair of fine calfskin leather gloves, which he then carefully donned.

His audience watched his every move with morbid interest, listening as he talked throughout the whole intricate procedure:

“Checking the scriptorium inventory, I saw that the unfortunate Brother Vallus had been working on a compendium of herbal lore, and had recently been in receipt of a number of books on that subject which were sent to him from this monastery.”

“Brother Kree, is this true?” asked Himerius.

“I seem to remember receiving a request from the cathedral scriptorium,” admitted Kree, glaring icily at Konniger. “It is the policy of the cathedral scribes to make copies of works in their own style rather than accept the copied work of our own scribes, so the required volumes were duly collected and sent to Altdorf via the regular monthly messenger.”

“Quite so,” agreed Konniger, amicably. “The contents of Brother Vallus’ chamber were destroyed as is right in all cases of Chaos contamination, but, through entreaties to the Office of the Grand Theogonist, I was able to briefly search amongst its contents as they were put to the torch. And what I found was this…”

He flipped open the lid of the casket, reached in, and, with his gloved fingers, carefully lifted out a torn page of parchment. The three brethren leaned forward to inspect it. It was illuminated with carefully hand-drawn letters and illustrations of herbs and plant leaves, clearly the work of a patient and talented monkish scribe. One whole edge of the parchment was smeared with a strange residue, dirt perhaps, or something else…

“You recognise it?” he asked Brother Kree. No answer was forthcoming. “No? It’s a page from your monastery’s copy of Root and Herbal Remedies and Toxins of the Ostland and Ostermark Provinces. I have a lesser copy myself, although regretfully not as complete or as finely rendered as this version. From what I have ascertained, this was the text Vallus was working on when he succumbed to the contaminating touch of Chaos.”

Konniger ran a gloved finger down the discoloured margin of the page. “Look at this strange mark on the page. What do you suppose it to be?”

“Dirt, water damage or some kind of ash? You yourself said that you rescued the page from the fire,” ventured Himerius.

“That’s what I thought at first, before I subjected the parchment to certain alchemical procedures.”

“And what did you discover it to be?” asked Himerius, the nervous, testy edge in his voice clearly evident.

“The residue of some kind of unguent containing minute but distinct traces of the substance known as warpstone,” answered Konniger.

The effect of his words was instantaneous. Himerius recoiled as if the parchment in Konniger’s hand had been transformed into a live and poisonous serpent. The two monks behind him similarly backed hurriedly away from Konniger and the object he was holding. Kree mumbled himself in prayer and made the protective sign of the hammer across himself.

“Are you insane, man!” hissed Himerius, staring at Konniger and the parchment in horror. “You brought that accursed stuff here, into a place consecrated to the sacred glory of Lord Sigmar?”

“I have merely brought it back to where I believe it originated from,” answered Konniger calmly. “As to its dreadful effects of physical transmutation, I assure you that you are perfectly safe. Unless, of course, like poor Brother Vallus, you spend considerable time in unwitting contact with the stuff. He must have absorbed it into his body through the skin of his fingertips as he spent long hours studying the book, constantly touching the surface of its pages as he leafed through it to familiarise himself with it before he got down to the arduous business of faithfully copying and transcribing its contents. Of course, since the margins of the pages he was touching had been carefully prepared with an unguent paste containing elements of warpstone, he was never to know that in carrying out his faithful duty to Sigmar he was in fact damning his body and soul with the taint of Chaos.”

“This is monstrous, Konniger,” breathed Himerius. “You stand there and accuse us… accuse this sacred monastery of—”

“Let me tell you what is monstrous, Brother Himerius,” bellowed Konniger, slamming his gloved hand down on the desk, making the startled abbot jump. “The physical mutations I saw on that poor man’s body could indeed be described as monstrous. The agonies he must have endured as he sought to purge himself of the taint through the most painful and protracted death imaginable I would also deem to be monstrous. And the deliberate attempt to pollute the seat of the Holy Church with the corrupted taint of Chaos I would not hesitate to call not merely monstrous, but utterly diabolic in nature.”

Each use of the word “monstrous” was accompanied by another emphatic thump of Konniger’s hand on the surface of the desk. On “diabolic” he swept his hand violently across the desk, sending everything upon it flying down onto the stone floor in a cascade of spilled parchment rolls, pots of pigments and paints and illuminators’ quills and brushes. Himerius leapt up, ashen-faced, and stared at Konniger in fright and disbelief. Kree was still praying and genuflecting while Rynok glared angrily at the sage-detective, half stepping forward as if about to attack him.

Konniger paused for a moment, allowing the tension of the moment to hang there in the air, and then stepped back himself, taking off the now tainted gloves and dropping both them and the parchment into the box, which he flicked shut with a heavy clang. He looked meaningfully at the three holy brethren.

“The source of the contagion lies here, within Alt Krantzstein. This much is beyond dispute. That is why I have been sent here, and that is why Captain Gustav and his company of Templars have been sent to accompany me. There is much amiss here, of that I am certain. The captain and his men have been given certain orders of their own regarding your compliance in this matter. I assure you, gentlemen, that it would be better for all concerned if we conducted the investigation my way rather than theirs.”

“What is it you want to know?” asked Kree, all too aware that, as guardian of the monastery’s library, the finger of suspicion must clearly be pointing directly at him.

“Well, to begin with, you can tell me why there have apparently been no deaths here during these last seventeen years,” asked Konniger, the abrupt change of subject catching the three monks unawares, just as he intended.

“The monastery graveyard,” he prompted. “The last interment there took place at the turn of the century.”

“What are you accusing us of now, Konniger? Selling our souls to the Malign Powers in return for eternal life? Cannibalism, perhaps? You think we have taken to eating the dead?” It was Rynok, the sneering, angry tone in his voice shocking in its intensity. It was Himerius who acted quickly to defuse the situation.

“If you have been to the graveyard, Herr Konniger, then you will no doubt have seen that we lost many good and faithful brethren during a series of disease outbreaks here at Alt Krantzstein in the years prior to the turn of the century. You will also perhaps remember that the winter of 2500 was a particularly harsh one, nowhere more so than here. The ground was frozen solid. It was impossible to dig graves for our departed brethren, and so we instead interred their remains in the crypts beneath the monastery, as had once been the custom of our Order in past centuries, and has since become our custom again.”

Konniger ruminated on this information. “I see. These crypts, I assume that—”

He was interrupted by a clamour from the main library chamber beyond. There were angry shouts and the clash of metal armour. The door burst open and Gustav and two of his Templars entered, faces grim and weapons drawn. Gustav looked directly at Konniger.

“One of my men is missing—Detlef Plievier. He was on watch duty in the upper dormitory levels last night. With your permission, Herr Konniger, I will tear this wretched hole apart from top to bottom, if need be, until I find him.”

The Templar commander was as good as his word. Within half an hour, he and his men had begun to turn the monastery upside down with typical Templar efficiency. The entire population of the monastery had been rounded up—almost two score of holy brethren, according to the private headcount that Vido conducted, a figure which tallied with Konniger’s estimate of the night before—and was sequestered in the refectory hall, kept under watchful guard while three-man groups of Templars conducted a noisy but well organised search of the monastery’s many chambers.

Vido and Konniger worked with Gustav in the search, Himerius and Rynok reluctantly accompanying them. Kree had been permitted to accompany another Templar squad in their search of the library, as he was clearly anxious to ensure that as little harm as possible came to the place and its valuable contents. The sounds of casual destruction echoed through the monastery’s stone stairwells and passages, evidence of the brutally direct methods the Templars were employing in their search. Locked doors were smashed open. Storage rooms were ransacked, their contents pulled apart by angry and impatient Templars. Stone walls were struck with axe blades and warhammers, and wood panels were reduced to splintered ruins in the search for possible hidden boltholes and secret passageways.

The Templars’ search was brutal and swift in its efficiency and thoroughness. The fact that they were themselves holy warriors in the oath-sworn service of the Church of Sigmar did not in any way seem to lessen the levels of destruction they were willing to visit upon the holy structure of the monastery in the course of their search. In matters regarding the recovery of their missing comrade, they were clearly soldiers first and holy brethren second.

“What’s in here?” commanded Gustav, pointing impatiently at a heavy, metal-bound door that blocked the arched passageway ahead of them. The door was secured with a thick, rust-corroded padlock. A Templar man-at-arms experimentally rattled the door and padlock, and found them both to be firmly age-sealed shut.

“Nothing of any import,” answered Rynok. “As you can see for yourself, it hasn’t been opened in years.”

“I won’t ask you again,” said Gustav slowly and deliberately, holding the point of his sword to the cellarer’s throat. “My man is still missing, and I’m fast running out of patience, monk. So tell me now, what’s behind that door?”

“It’s the entrance to the west tower,” interceded Himerius, “but it’s been closed up for years—it was one of the parts of the monastery abandoned during the plague years. It is also a tomb of sorts. My predecessor in the office of abbot of this place was the blessed Radolphus. Yes, Herr Konniger, I see you recognise his holy and venerable name. He was one of those afflicted with the plague and, to spare the monastery from its terrible curse, he and the other afflicted brethren entered the chapel then he ordered the entrance to the tower to be sealed up, and the contagion sealed up with them. A terrible and noble sacrifice, to be sure, but we felt that—”

Impatient with the monk’s tale, Gustav gave the briefest of nods to one of his men, and the abbot’s words were quickly drowned out by the impact of the Templar’s axe-blade against the surface of the door. A few hefty blows, and the job was done. Its lock and hinges smashed, the door leaned drunkenly into the passageway, jammed into the buckled wood of the doorframe. Gustav and one of his men took firm hold of it and pulled, tearing it free of the remains of its frame.

Both men quickly stepped back in surprise.

There was nothing beyond the door. Or, at least, no passageway or chamber, merely the solid barrier of a bricked-up wall.

“You see now?” said Himerius. “The blessed Radolphus’ commands were most specific. It was only through his wisdom and sacrifice that the rest of the monastery was spared from the further ravages of the plague.”

Gustav stepped forward, running a gauntleted hand over the rough surface of the brickwork, his touch dislodging a few loose flakes of stone and crumbling fragments of mortar. It was as the monk said, he reluctantly told himself; the brickwork was solid and clearly many years old. Whatever had happened to Plievier, he wasn’t behind here.

Still he hesitated, disquieted by the existence of the unexpected barrier. “If you want us to knock through that, Herr Captain, we’ll need something heavier,” ventured the axeman Templar, perhaps picking up on his commander’s intent. “We’ll have to fetch Beck or Shindel up here with their warhammers, or at least see what kind of tools they might have in whatever passes for a smithy shop in this dump.”

Gustav turned round, still wondering what the best course of action would be. In the end, the decision was taken out of his hands.

Vido’s keen halfling ears heard the sound first: the urgent clanging of a brass bell from somewhere outside. The others heard it a split-second later. Gustav and his men began sprinting off along the passageway away from the bricked-up doorway, weapons at the ready, just as another Templar came running up a stairwell to meet them, bringing urgent news to the Templar commander.

“The call to arms, Herr Captain! It’s Ehrenburg at the main gate, sir. He’s sighted more of those beast-things, out on the edge of the tree-line. There’s a whole pack of them, maybe a couple of warbands, and they look like they’re massing for an attack!”

Konniger and the others were gone, hurrying off down the passageway after the Templars. Vido paused for a moment, sparing a troubled glance at the stone barrier that had lain concealed behind the locked door. Curious, but without truly knowing why, he laid the side of his head against the chill, stone surface of the wall, pressing an ear against it and listening.

For a moment, he fancied he heard a faint noise from behind it.

For all the world, it sounded like the distant buzzing of flies.

He stepped back, shaking his head in rueful wonder, knowing that he had probably just heard a stray wind current from elsewhere in the monastery, or, and far more likely, the product of his own imagination.

“What are you playing at, Vido?” he impatiently asked himself aloud. “Listening for ghosts and spectres when it sounds like there’s half the legions of Chaos gathering at the gate?” And, with that, he scurried off in pursuit of Konniger and the others.

Six

“How many of them are there do you think, Herr Konniger?”

“Four, perhaps even five different warbands. If you know how to, you can differentiate between them by the tones of their tribal war-cries.”

They were up on the small battlement above the main gate, looking out at the cleared area around the monastery. Beyond that, at the forest’s edge, they could see the shapes of many beastmen and, occasionally, other Chaos things milling about in angry, noisy groups.

Waasen, Gustav’s second-in-command, looked incredulously at the sage-detective. “You can tell that just by listening to those Sigmar-damned farmyard sounds they’re making?”

“Oh, I can tell rather more than that, sergeant,” Konniger replied, pointing at the tree-line. “The ones on the left flank are followers of the Lord of the Blood Throne, while those over there on the far right are servants of the Pleasure God. They’ve been put on opposite flanks to prevent them from instantly attacking each other, but those roars they’re making are them exchanging Chaos battle taunts and death-oaths.”

There was a sudden high-pitched, piercing shriek from the tree-line, the noise weirdly unsettling in its intensity. It sounded at first like a terrified animal bleat, then quickly turned into an all too human-sounding scream. The Templars on the battlement cast nervous glances at each oilier, some of them crossing themselves with the protective blessing of the hammer of Sigmar as the last dying echoes of the scream faded away.

“A ritual blood sacrifice,” murmured Konniger. “They have killed one of their own. Probably one of the lesser bray caste, or possibly even a human turnskin, judging by the sound of those screams. It’s unlikely that they would wish to sacrifice one of their stronger and fiercer gor or ungor warrior caste. The shamans will inspect the creature’s innards—torn from its still-living body preferably—and advise the warband commanders accordingly as to the Chaos Gods’ wishes for the deployment of their servants in the coming battle.”

“How long do you think we have?” asked Gustav, his eyes never leaving the enemy battle-lines now forming up under the distant tree canopy. He had known something of Konniger’s reputation before accompanying him on this mission, of course, but the scholar’s calm resolve and depth of knowledge in so many different fields had proved to be a real revelation. More and more, Gustav found himself turning to this strange sage-detective for aid and advice.

Sigmar forgive me, he smiled grimly to himself, but if anyone had told me ten days ago that I’d be looking to some damned bookworm for advice on battle tactics, I’d probably take the blade of my sword to the lying rogue’s throat…

Konniger considered his answer. “If it were any normal foe we faced, I’d say we had until nightfall. They probably don’t realise just how few missile weapons we have. Any competent commander would want to cross the open ground between the forest edge and these walls under cover of darkness, and a delay until nightfall would give them more time to prepare any siege weapons they might have. At the very least they would be able to fell a few trees and construct a simple battering ram for the gates.”

Gustav looked shrewdly at the older man. “But we do not face any normal, sane foe, do we, Herr Konniger. So how long do we have?”

Konniger’s expression was grave. “With so many rival and mutually hostile warbands brought into proximity with each other, the warband chieftains will not be able to maintain discipline in their battle-lines for very much longer. They must soon loose their troops into battle, or see those troops turn on each other instead. Prepare your men, captain. The enemy will attack at some point within the next hour, I would judge.”

True to Konniger’s word, the beastman horde attacked some thirty minutes later. However, under Konniger’s supervision, the monastery’s defenders had not been lax in that short interval.

The beastmen charged roaring and bleating up the steeply-inclined road towards the monastery gates, across the open ground between the forest and the monastery, trampling over what was left of the monks’ few sparsely-growing crops. At the forefront of the assault raced a line of smaller, stunted-looking beastmen warriors, immediately distinguishable by their lack of horns.

“Bray,” Konniger explained to the defenders. “The smaller, weaker caste of beastmen creatures. They’re used as living shields by their larger, more dominant horned brethren.”

“Open fire!” ordered Gustav, pointing at the oncoming lines of beastmen. “And remember what Herr Konniger said—only put a quarrel into it if it has horns on its head.”

The monastery battlements provided a perfect elevated firing position, and there was little cover in the ground the beastmen were charging across.

Despite his oath of fealty to the Church of Sigmar and the Order of the Red Griffon, Gustav once again inwardly cursed the antiquated Church laws that forbade holy Templar brethren from using anything as low and base as a bow or crossbow. Gustav was enough of a professional soldier, and had fought in enough battles alongside regular Empire troops, to know the worth of missile fire in any military engagement. A sweep of arrows, or, better still, a volley of cannonade or musket fire, would decimate the beastman charge, he knew, but as a Templar commander he was not permitted to arm his brethren with such unworthy or unholy weaponry. All he had were half a dozen men-at-arms—the Order’s non-knightly rank-and-file soldiery—armed with medium crossbows.

Still, he would put them to what use he could. He glanced over towards them, watching as Konniger directed their aim, picking out specific targets for the one or two marksmen, ensuring that they held their fire until the main body of the beastman force was within effective range of the crossbowmen’s weapons.

At his first command, the pitifully small volley of crossbow quarrels flew over the heads of the line of bray skirmishers, finding more satisfying targets amongst the packed mass of horned warriors following closely behind. Even over the tumult of the horde’s bestial battle-cries, Gustav heard roars and bellows of angry pain from amongst the ranks of the larger creatures. As the wave of the battle charge carried on towards the walls of the monastery, he saw three quarrel-struck beastman corpses lying prone and unmoving on the ground, trampled under the hooves of their fellow creatures, left in the wake of the charging horde.

It was scarcely enough to stop the attack in its tracks, Gustav knew, but it was a good start. And, as the pack of Chaos creatures kept on coming, the crossbowmen had already swiftly reloaded and were even now loosing a second volley of steel-barbed bolts at them.

“Herr captain, what do you wish me and the other brethren to do?”

Gustav turned towards the pale-faced, frightened-looking Himerius. Up here on the battlements above the gate, and down in the cloistered courtyard behind them, other brothers of the Order of the Holy Three stood ready alongside their Templar cousins to meet and—Sigmar willing—repel the enemy assault. In his mortal guise, the Lord Sigmar had been a mighty warrior, and the servants of his Church, even those such as monks and priests, were not afraid to take up arms against the enemies of their Lord. Sigmarite priests, wielding mighty and blessed warhammers in honour of Lord Sigmar, often led the armies of the Empire into battle. Gustav had seen whole detachments of flagellant monks in battle and knew just what they were capable of.

Flagellants not only had no fear or pain but sometimes seemed to positively welcome it, filled with a fanatical devotion to their holy cause and with a zealous hatred of the enemies of that cause. Troops such as these, no matter how untrained or unorganised, any competent military commander could make good and effective use of.

The brethren of the Order of the Holy Three were not one of the more bloodthirsty orders of Sigmarite flagellants and were, as far as Gustav knew, untried in battle. If he had hesitated to accept them into his battle-force it was not purely out of doubts about their worth or experience.

Konniger had clearly understood the real reasons behind the Templar captain’s hesitance. But, as he had quietly pointed out to the young commander, if there were, as both of them were now convinced, at least one covert agent of the Unholy Powers within the ranks of the monastery’s holy brethren, it would probably make little difference in the coming battle. Battle-maddened beastmen servants of the Unholy Powers, particularly those belonging to the insane cult of the Blood God, were unlikely to differentiate between one human and another. If the beastmen did overwhelm the battlement defences and make it into the monastery, then all the inhabitants, true holy believer and covert servant of the Dark alike, would surely be indiscriminately put to the sword in the ensuing slaughter.

Whoever the faceless evildoers were within the monastery of Alt Krantzstein, they were just as much at risk as all the others, and so had just as much reason to fight in the monastery’s defence, or so Konniger had reasoned.

Gustav looked around him, seeing the groups of monks—fear and concern on their faces—filling out the worryingly thin ranks of his Templars. The monks held an assortment of weapons: maces, clubs, flails, hammers, wood-chopping axes and any kind of tool or agricultural implement that could be wielded as a makeshift weapon.

“Pray to Sigmar, man,” said Gustav in reply to the abbot’s query. “And get ready to fight for your lives when I give the signal.”

Himerius bowed in nervous understanding, and Gustav glanced away, sharing a significant look with Waasen. The tough old veteran Templar nodded briefly, acknowledging his captain’s unspoken reminder. Waasen and a few other specially-selected, experienced and trustworthy Templars had already been given their orders. They would keep a close watch on Himerius and his brothers during the coming battle; the first hint of betrayal from any of the monks would be dealt with by means of a swift and merciless sword thrust through the traitor’s back.

The beastman line was now within optimum range, scarcely ten yards away from the monastery gates. The crossbowmen had already accounted for another dozen or so twitching, quarrel-struck bodies lying in the main horde’s wake. Now it was the turn of the rest of their comrades to spill beastman blood.

“Now! Let them have it!” shouted Gustav, wondering how, amidst the fear and rush of real battle, all those great and venerable heroes from Empire history were supposed to have come up with all the stirring and inspirational battle cries that the historians and legend-writers speak so assuredly of.

At his command, a fusillade of missiles spilled over the edge of the battlements, striking into the Chaos troops. Templar-hurled spears punched through shields and armour and into the vile, hair-covered flesh beneath. Stone slingshots cracked into beastman skulls, and chunks of masonry and other kinds of suitably weighty missiles rained down upon horned heads with lethal, bone-crushing force. The crossbowmen had been aiming specifically at the gor and ungor warriors in the secondary ranks of the assault formation, but this new missile wave battered indiscriminately into the beastman ranks.

A chorus of terrible human-animal sounds—bleats of pain, dying screams and bestial shouts of outraged anger—rose up from the Chaos horde, but still they came, trampling their own injured under-hoof in their eagerness to reach their objective.

A second later, and they crashed against the monastery gates and the battlement walls.

The walls were not nearly high enough for any defending commander’s liking, but their lowness did allow the defenders atop them to strike directly down at the enemy below. “Lances! Use your lances!” called Gustav, thrusting downwards with his own horse-lance, feeling it sink deep into the body of one of the bestial things milling about below.

Gustav could hear the heavy pounding of beastman blades on the wood of the monastery gates, and realised that the creatures were foregoing the use of anything as rudimentary as a battering ram and were simply trying to hack and chop their way through the gates. From above the Chaos troops’ heads, monks continued to rain chunks of masonry and even what appeared to be broken pieces of statuary down upon the attackers. There had been no time, and probably little in the way of raw materials, to prepare anything as exotic and effective as boiling oil or the terrifying, battle-winning concoction that was dwarf fire-brew, but lines of monks had brought steaming pots and pans full of bubbling water from the big, fire-heated cauldron in the monastery kitchen. Now they were emptying them over the side of the battlements onto the heads of the beastmen, giving immediate rise to high-pitched screams of pain and broiling clouds of flesh-searing steam from below.

Despite the casualties they were suffering, the beastmen continued to push forward, and the violent pounding on the gates seemed only to increase in frenzied volume.

Gustav knew that he had to leave the defence of the gates to others. The segment of the wall that he commanded was under heavy attack, but he had more immediate matters to concern him.

He thrust his lance down into the beastmen again, momentarily feeling it strike something soft and screaming, before the haft in his hands shook under a violent impact. He drew back a shortened, splintered ruin—the weapon had been shivered, its spearhead broken off, probably by a blow from an angry beastman blade. He discarded it without a second thought and instead drew his sword.

The defenders were coming under targeted attack now. A Templar man-at-arms pirouetted backwards and fell off the battlements into the courtyard below, clutching at the beastman spear that had been hurled into his chest. A monk gagged and choked, clawing at the cruel, barb-edged noose that had lassoed him round the throat. He tried to scream as his beastman captor on the ground below hauled hard on the ironvine cord of the snare. The struggling monk disappeared over the edge of the wall, landing on the upraised sword-points of the beastmen gathered there.

The third wave of beastmen were bringing up crude climbing ladders; little more than hastily-felled tree trunks with all the branches and foliage stripped off them. Propped up against the walls and held in place by strong gor-caste creatures, they proved more than adequate for their purpose, and lines of beastmen started to swarm onto the battlement parapet with frightening ease.

Gustav swept away first one, and then the next creature to appear in front of him atop the tree-ladder. The third one—an emaciated bray-caste creature, vile tendril-shapes squirming restlessly beneath its hairless, albino skin—was faster, and Gustav barely parried away its darting sword thrust. His return stroke severed the wrist of the hand that clung to the top of the tree-ladder, and the sword blow went on to rip open its stomach. The creature tumbled screeching back down onto the heads of its fellows.

“Waasen, help me!” called Gustav, taking advantage of the momentary absence of any other beastmen on the tree-ladder to throw his weight against it and attempt to push it away from the top of the wall. Waasen broke off from his own successfully-concluded beastman duel and added his formidable strength to his captain’s. The two of them pushed frantically at the top of the ladder, feeling the obstacle shake as more beastmen started scrambling up it towards them.

With a final wrench, the tree-ladder slid away, taking its living burden with it. They would survive the tumble, but the falling weight of the tree trunk would crush any beastmen below.

Gustav stepped away, hastily surveying the progress of the battle elsewhere. He saw a shambling gor-caste beastman vault over the edge of the parapet and gut one of Himerius’ brethren before a Templar knight—it was young von Glantz, whose father had been captain of the company into which Gustav had first been recruited—despatched it with a single expert sword thrust. The noise from the monastery gates of metal pounding violently on wood were giving way to loud, ominous splintering sounds, and Gustav saw with an anxious glance that volleys of hurled enemy spears and throwing axes had taken a heavy toll of the defenders above the gates.

Waasen saw it too. “I’ll take care of the scum up here. You see to what’s happening down there.”

Gustav clapped his second-in-command on the arm in farewell acknowledgement and vaulted down the stone parapet steps to the courtyard, sprinting across it towards the gates.

“Herr captain!”

It was Konniger; the Altdorf scholar had evidently had the same idea as the Templar commander. “Herr captain,” Konniger repeated, out of breath from his sprint from the battlements down across the cobbled courtyard. “If they’re so keen to see those gates open before them…”

“Then let us not leave them disappointed,” grinned Gustav, immediately seeing the hidden cunning in Konniger’s plan.

“Form up into a shield wall!” bellowed Gustav, running forward and gesturing in command to the Templars standing ready before the gates. “You men there, at my order, open the gates.”

The monks at the gates goggled in disbelief at the knight captain’s order. Himerius appeared from nowhere, arms raised in horrified alarm. Gustav silenced him with a single angry glance.

“Do it! Do it now, or, by Sigmar, we’ll all be dead within the next half hour.”

The monks did as ordered, taking hold of the heavy wooden swing-beam that was all that stood between them and the beastman horde on the other side of the gates. The gates sagged inwards, shaking violently under the frenzied hacking of beastman axes and swords.

“Remember what I said earlier about getting ready to fight for your life, brother abbot?” grinned Gustav in a un-Templar display of gallows humour. “Well, this is the moment I was talking about.”

He brandished his sword in an unmistakable gesture of command, and the monks at the gate hauled free the latch-beam, retreating backwards as the gates burst open under the weight of beastman bodies pushing against them from the other side.

“Stand ready!” he shouted, his words almost lost in the roars and hoots of triumph from the beastmen as they surged forward through the open gates. “Gatemen, be ready to close those gates again on my command. If you fail, we’ll all surely be dead.”

The beastmen pack, comprised mostly of gor-caste warriors, pushed forward, assuming victory was now theirs, and were caught by surprise by the humans’ seeming sudden surrender of the defence of the gates. In their haste to take the monastery and butcher its inhabitants they rushed forward en masse into the courtyard, not thinking to secure the open gates behind them. Gustav waited for several long, agonising seconds, watching as more and more of the vile Chaos creatures flooded in through the gateway. It was a dangerous and critical equation he had to calculate. If he allowed too few of the creatures in, then the ploy might all still be for nothing. Too many, however, and he might just have doomed everyone within the monastery to certain slaughter…

“Close the gates!” he screamed, throwing himself forward at the head of his men and towards the beastmen. “Close them now!”

The Templar shield wall smashed into the disorganised but numerically superior mass of beastmen. It became a test of strength and will: human versus beast-thing; shield against shield; metal against wood; weapon blades rising in the air and chopping down, resurfacing bright with freshly-spilled blood.

This was close-range killing of the most intense kind, with none of the glamour of the stirring, noble tales of great battles from Empire history. Every man in the Templar line had grown up with such stories, and many had taken holy orders as a Templar knight with minds ablaze with the exploits of heroes such as Magnus the Pious in the Great War Against Chaos. As experienced soldiers however, they now knew that all the nobility and valour was always added on later by the poets, bards and storytellers.

The tales of heroism and the grim humour of the aftermath of battle would come later, when they sat round their campfires tending their wounds and toasting the memories of their dead. For now, there was only the terrifying, exhilarating business of close-range killing: smashing shield rims into snarling, bestial faces; thrusting sword blades into stinking, fur-covered bodies; hacking at anything, friend or foe, struggling at their feet on the blood-stained ground.

The gates closed behind the beastman horde, more monks and Templars running in behind the Chaos things to secure the doors and cut off their enemies’ escape. Gustav had allowed the main vanguard of the Chaos force into the courtyard—savage, powerfully-muscled gor and ungor-caste creatures, the cream of the warband troops—but now, with the gates shut and guarded, they were cut off from the rest of the Chaos force still outside the monastery walls. It was a daring, some would say reckless, gambit, there was little doubt about that, but now, as Gustav and his men pressed mercilessly forward into the enemy ranks, he dared to think that they might succeed.

The brutal slaughter continued. Men dropped, dead or injured to the ground, the gaps in the line quickly filled by other Templars or even flagellant monks. Still they pressed forward, every step further drenching the cobbled ground in blood.

The beastman line broke in a sudden rush of wild-eyed, animal panic. Their savage resistance became a retreating stampede. The stampede became a rout, and the rout became a massacre as Templars and monks poured in at them from all sides.

The beastmen broke and ran, pursued by their vengeful, victorious human enemies. Some turned and tried to flee back towards the closed gates, where a line of monks and Templars stood ready to meet them, determined to defend the exit with their very lives. Others fled towards the battlements, seemingly intent, in an ironic reversal of their comrades’ actions on the other side of the walls, on scaling those same walls to escape the monastery.

Wherever they fled, they died in their droves, harried and chased by the men in the courtyard or picked off by the defenders on the battlements.

Outside the walls, the beastman attack was also faltering. The creatures there had heard the loud chorus of dying screams and brays of fear and panic from the beastmen inside the courtyard and had realised that a massacre was taking place on the other side of the walls. Robbed suddenly of their main vanguard, the rest of the mostly lesser-caste beastmen outside the walls also broke and ran, the abattoir sounds from within the monastery courtyard ringing in their ears as they fled back towards the safety of the tree-line, pursued by the occasional well-aimed, deadly shot from the crossbowmen atop the battlements.

The desperate, tightly-maintained struggle in the courtyard had become a wild melee, with packs of men descending on trapped, panicked beastmen. Running into the battle, Vido saw a beastman driven into a corner by a group of monks. It honked in fear, lashing out with its crude, stone-headed axe weapon as the monks poked and prodded at it with pitchforks and hoes. One man advanced too close and fell to the ground, his skull crushed by a single blow, but the beastman’s lunge left an opening for the other monks, and they instantly fell upon the beastman, hacking and stabbing it to death.

Vido saw a wounded Templar in lone combat with another beastman. With his shield arm crippled, the Templar was barely able to block the creature’s powerful sword swings, and his strength was ebbing away fast. Vido hurled a dagger into the creature’s back, causing the beastman to grunt in pain and stagger back. The wound wasn’t enough to kill it, but did distract it long enough for the Templar to plunge his sword into its heart. The man looked up, registering clear surprise at the identity of his saviour, but still nodded to the halfling in respectful thanks.

Konniger was there too, in the thick of the fighting. He wielded a discarded beastman spear as if it was a quarter-staff, spinning and turning it in his hands, striking a flurry of blows which left a series of beastmen opponents lying dead or unconscious on the ground. Vido ran towards him, seeing a hulking gor-caste creature charge towards his master’s unprotected back.

“Master!” yelled Vido, his warning shout drawing the creature’s attention away from Konniger and, in a development which Vido found most unwelcome, instead towards the sage-detective’s halfling manservant.

The beastman snarled in fury, and struck out with its heavy, bronze-headed club. But the creature was clearly discomfited fighting an opponent of Vido’s small stature, and the blow was wildly off-target, the weapon’s spiked head digging into the ground and ploughing up several stone cobbles. Vido danced inside the beastman’s guard, punching his fists repeatedly into the vulnerable, unarmoured portion of its mid-section. He held a dagger in each fist and when he danced back a few seconds later, his hands and forearms were soaked red with the creature’s foul-smelling blood. The beastman brayed in mortal pain and slumped forward, but even before it hit the ground Vido moved in fast again and made sure of its death with an artful double-slash coup-de-grace to its throat.

He stepped away, wary of another attack, but none was forthcoming. Looking around him, he saw Konniger finishing off the last of his opponents with a single spear thrust into the creature’s heart. Elsewhere around the courtyard, the surviving monks and Templars were similarly despatching the rest of the creatures, moving from body to body and dealing each in turn a few swift blows to the head or vitals. The odd bestial scream or bleat of pain, abruptly cut off, testified to the necessity of this final butcher’s task. In minutes, though, the grim work was done.

The battle was over, at least for now.

Arek dismounted from his horse, watching in impassive silence as the routed remnants of the other warbands fled in panic past him into the welcoming darkness of the forest. Beside him, his warband hetman Vorr growled in uneasy anger, picking up the fear-smell given off by the fleeing beastmen.

Arek, Vorr and the rest of the warband had arrived just in time to witness the defeat of their erstwhile Chaos-worshipping comrades. Their failure to capture the monastery did not surprise Arek, even if it gave him no small amount of secret pleasure.

Beastmen, he mused to himself. They have their uses, but they need proper human leadership. And discipline.

“Take as many tribe-brothers as you need and go after them,” he ordered Vorr. “Round them up and kill any leaders amongst them. Then kill exactly half the number that remains. That should ensure that the other half do exactly as commanded when we welcome them into our own ranks.”

Vorr growled in pleasure and shambled off eagerly to do his master’s bidding. Yes, just animals, Arek thought. The secret is to keep them busy. They’re only truly happy when given clear, simple orders which should involve, as often as possible, the chance to kill, torture and destroy.

Arek glanced up, that sense of prescience which he had long ago assumed to be a mark of favour from the Lords of Chaos and which had saved his life so many times in the past once again giving him early warning of close and imminent danger. A group of beastmen were making their way into the cover of the tree-line, but these were not panicked, fleeing wretches, they were larger and more capable-looking. When the attack had failed, the others had broken and run but these ones had retreated in good order, disgusted with the weakness and stupidity of their fellow Chaos creatures. They wore dulled and battle-worn brass armour, and their fur was stained in swirling patterns of red and black, the blood of their victims which had been mixed with strong dyes and pigments.

They were Blood-kin, followers of the Blood God Khorne, and Arek knew that they would not be as easily cowed into submission as the rest.

The leader—a squat, bull-headed bovigor—sniffed the air suspiciously, snorting in dull disgust as it swung its heavy head round towards Arek. Its red eyes narrowed in hatred, and Arek could see its wet, dripping nostrils flare in anger. A low growl started somewhere deep in its thick, muscle-corded throat. The rest of its warband quickly took up their master’s lead in an eerie, mismatched chorus of snarls, yelps and hisses.

Around him, Arek’s own beastmen began to stir, several of them prowling forward, heads sunk low, the fur along their spines rising in warning as they hissed and snarled in challenge at these Khornate interlopers. Arek knew he must do something quickly. He was not afraid of confrontation—blood must be spilled here, that much was clear—but he did not want to lose any more of his followers than he had to. Not when there was still so much to do.

He stepped forward towards the bovigor, drawing his sword and planting it blade-first into the damp, leaf-strewn ground. A challenge to a duel, to be conducted in the manner decreed by the Lords of Chaos. The bovigor unslung its double-bladed axe, swinging it round its head. The challenge had been understood, and accepted.

Without any further ado, the two Chaos champions set about the brief, bloody business of killing each other.

The bovigor charged forward, roaring and swinging its axe. Like so many followers of the Blood God, it depended mostly on sheer ferocity and overpowering savagery to defeat its opponents. Arek was a master swordsman—a veteran practitioner in pain and death—and was fully confident that he could end this duel in seconds, artfully slicing this mindless creature into a bloody heap of stinking offal. But what was needed here was not artistry nor even a swift and shocking resolution. Arek required not only the death of this upstart brute, but also the willing servitude of its followers afterwards.

The servants of the Blood God respected only savagery and blood-hunger, and if that was what the bovigor’s followers required, then that was what Arek would give them.

He allowed the creature to charge at him, allowed it to take a fast but laughably clumsy swing at him with its axe. Allowed the blow to smash into his shield when he could easily have stepped aside and dodged the blow. Allowed the blow to smash through the material of the shield, ripping it off his arm. Allowed the terrific impact of the blow to knock him off his feet, bowling him backwards across the ground.

The bovigor roared in stupid triumph, and its followers howled victoriously. From behind him, amongst the ranks of his own warband, Arek heard the sorcerer Sorren snicker to himself in quiet glee. Sorren had always desired leadership of the warband for himself—Arek expected this, and, indeed would not have trusted the competence of any second-in-command who would have been satisfied with such a position for long—but the sorcerer was fundamentally a weakling and a coward, too afraid of Arek to ever try and kill him himself. Watching another do it, however, would suit his purposes perfectly.

Arek came out of the roll and was instantly on his feet again, sword swinging perfectly up to meet and deflect the bovigor’s fully-anticipated death-blow. They traded blows for a few seconds, the blades of their weapons clashing together in a ringing cacophony of metal upon metal.

At the end of the exchange, both of them were bloodied, Arek from a stunning blow to the side of the head from the chain-wrapped fist of the bovigor’s weaponless hand. Arek allowed one of his opponent’s wild swings to knock his sword out of his hand, but it made little difference. The bovigor was already dead, it just didn’t know it yet. Arek had taken that blow to the head, but the damage he had inflicted in return had been far more subtle and far more telling. A precise sword thrust had skewered the creature’s kidneys, and its massive body would be bled out in a matter of minutes. The bovigor was too rage-maddened to even feel the pain, and there was little outward sign of the fatal injury, since most of the bleeding would be occurring internally.

The fight was already as good as over, Arek knew. Everything that happened now was just a pantomime for the benefit of his keenly attentive beastman audience.

The bovigor charged forward towards its weaponless opponent, but stumbled along the way. Maybe the watching beastmen imagined it had tripped over a stone or tree-root hidden beneath the leaf-covered ground. Only Arek knew the mistake for what it was, evidence that the creature was starting to weaken from massive blood loss. He was on the champion of Khorne in moments, his fists inside their mailed, spike-knuckled gauntlets smashing blow upon blow into the creature’s bull face.

The bovigor’s followers bayed and howled for blood, blood they would now have.

Arek’s fists broke the creature’s jaw, smashed its teeth, shattered the cartilage of its snout, and burst one of its eyes. The creature reeled back, slamming into a tree, mewling in pain, its monstrous face reduced to a broken, red ruin. Arek didn’t hesitate and scooped up his nearby fallen sword, grabbing it by its bone-carved pommel and hurling it at his opponent. The sword tumbled through the air, spinning end over end until it struck the bovigor, impaling it through one thickly-muscled shoulder and pinning it to a tree behind it.

Even though it was dying—indeed, was already dead, truth be told—the creature roared in defiance and weakly tried to wrench itself free of the blade. Arek walked forward, making a slow bravado show of everything he was doing now. He bent down and picked up the creature’s axe, hefted it once as if testing the weight, looked the bovigor in the eye and then swung the weapon down onto its head, striking it at a point exactly between its twin bull’s horns, splitting its skull with one blow.

The bovigor hung limply, heavy head leaning drunkenly forward, its blood and brains dripping down the haft of the weapon buried deep in its skull.

Arek turned, catching a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye. The rival warband’s beastman shaman chanted words of power and gestured spitefully at him with its skull-adorned bone staff. But, before its own incantation was even halfway complete, the shaman was struck down by a greater and more quickly-cast brand of magic than its own. It screamed shrilly as it was enveloped by a flickering nimbus of black fire, its flesh melting off its bones as it fell to the ground. The other Khornate beastmen scattered in panic, several of those standing too close to the shaman also blackening and shrivelling as they too were caught in the fringes of that terrible black fire.

Arek turned to look towards the ranks of his own followers, nodding in sardonic thanks to the figure of his own warband’s sorcerer. The hunched, black-cloaked figure of Sorren stared impassively back at him, his face as ever hidden by that impenetrable mask of beads. The sorcerer was leaning forward heavily on his staff, and Arek knew that such a dramatic and ostentatious display of magical power would have drained the sorcerer’s strength to the point of exhaustion, but the demonstration had been enough to terrify the leaderless Khornate beastmen into total submission.

In truth, he and Sorren both knew that Arek had been in little danger from the enemy shaman’s spell. The mystical protections that Arek had been granted by his corrupt master were more than adequate to deal with the crude magics of a mere beastman shaman. Whether they were also powerful enough to withstand whatever sorceries Sorren could draw upon was a question upon which both men often secretly pondered.

But the final and, no doubt for one of them fatal, resolution of the two Chaos acolytes’ rivalry and mutual hatred would have to wait for another day. For now, they were forced to work together in the service of the Dark Gods. Arek retrieved his sword, the impaled corpse of the vanquished bovigor falling forgotten to the ground as the blade came free of the tree. He turned, brandishing the blood-stained blade at the bovigor’s followers. The beastmen cowered in abeyance before him, emitting a low chorus of subservient grunts.

Arek smiled. For mindless Blood God vassals, they learned quickly.

“Very good. Now we do things my way.”

Crouching in the dense undergrowth some fifty yards away, the hunter checked the range of his shot again, scanning between the two targets on offer. It would be a difficult shot, firing through trees and foliage from this distance, but the hunter was perhaps the finest marksman in the Empire, and had no doubts about his ability to strike and kill either target.

Head and heart shots were always the best, and, as he proved every year at the public games in the Kaiserplatz to celebrate the Emperor’s birthday, the hunter could drill a crossbow quarrel through the centre of a silver shilling from a distance of fifty paces away. So, no, the surety of killing what he fired at was not the problem.

The problem was which one of those Dark-damned bastard sons of bitches should he kill first?

He moved the crossbow between the two targets, unable to decide which target most deserved to be skewered by his deadly accurate marksmanship skills. He would, after all, only have one shot. Lethal as it was, the crossbow was slow and awkward to reload, and, even if he did manage to reload the weapon in time, the other target would doubtlessly have taken cover by that point.

And there was also the small matter of the dozens of beast things milling around nearby. The hunter had picked a position carefully upwind of his prey, and had smeared himself with the creatures’ blood and musk to disguise his own scent, but as soon as he fired, they would become aware of his presence.

The newly-arrived and dangerous-looking human warband leader was the most obvious target, and the hunter trained the crossbow sights on the Chaos knight’s face, knowing that one shot would be enough to end the man’s foul, treacherous existence. Still, the presence of the Chaos sorcerer greatly troubled the hunter, and the traditional woodsman in him gave him a dread of any kind of sorcery. His veteran assassin’s instincts told him to kill the warband leader; strike off the head, and the body will die of its own accord. The superstitious peasant in him told him to kill the sorcerer first, and be done with it.

The hunter sighed, and lowered the crossbow. He would shoot neither. In the end, it was the voice of the dutiful servant of the Emperor that won out. The hunter was no coward, but neither had he survived this long by being stupid and disobedient of his master’s orders. His mission was to protect the sage and render to him any secret aid he could in the successful completion of his investigation. He could do neither of these things if he was dead. For the likelihood of the matter was that, Chaos knight or sorcerer, whichever one he killed, he would be hunted down and killed by a large pack of vengeful beastmen, and then he would be unable to carry out his orders.

Slowly, silently, he retraced his steps, careful not to tread on any twigs or branches that might be lying on the ground. The deaths of those two servants of the Dark would surely come—and by his hands, if he had any say in the matter. But, for, now, the pleasure of their deaths would have to wait.

Not that the hunter had been lax during his time hiding in the forest observing the gathering of the beastman warbands. He had gone hunting in the woods with crossbow, dagger and garrotte, and there were more than a dozen beastman corpses lying carefully buried in the dark woods behind them. They were stragglers from the main warbands, scouts or foragers perhaps, carefully picked off in ones and twos by the hunter’s deadly skills.

Satisfying as it was, he realised that this kind of small-scale guerrilla warfare action against the enemy was of little use to the successful completion of his main duty.

It was time to make his presence more obvious to the one he was supposed to be watching over.

Seven

The row of blood-soaked, blanket-covered corpses stretched out below the low shed roof of the monastery’s abandoned stables. Monks and Templars knelt over them, praying for the souls of their slain brethren. Vido stood and watched, counting the pairs of feet sticking out from beneath the coverings. Eight pairs of simple, leather-shod sandals. Seven pairs of worn, sturdy boots. Eight dead monks, seven dead Templars. And that wasn’t counting the wounded—more than double those figures.

Still, Vido thought, it was far less than the casualties suffered by the defeated beastmen. There were several dozen of the vile things lying around the courtyard and on the battlements, dozens more lying outside, either piled at the foot of the walls and gates or scattered across the open ground in the road up to the monastery gates. The men of the Empire accorded their dead all proper respect, but the only epitaph the beastmen received from those now gathering up the enemy dead was a spitting curse as the Templars threw their corpses over the side of the battlements, sending them plummeting forgotten and unmourned down the face of the rocky escarpment upon which the monastery stood.

Vido watched as Konniger bent down to inspect the laid-out row of corpses, lifting the covers to check faces and then murmuring a few words of prayer as he made the blessing of the hammer over each in turn. He paused over one of them, and Vido recognised the face of the dead man—more of a boy, really, he ruefully realised—as being the young novice who had come to the graveyard to convey the abbot’s message to them just that morning.

There was something about the corpse that seemed to catch Konniger’s curiosity, and he lingered over it, looking down towards where a blood-stained and heavily-bandaged foot protruded from beneath the hem of his cassock. Vido remembered that the boy had been club-footed, and certainly the foot inside the bandages looked malformed and oddly oversized.

Still, there was something about it that Konniger, and now Vido, found oddly disturbing.

“Vido, one of your knives please,” asked Konniger.

Vido hurried over to hand a blade to his master. Himerius, who had been nearby praying over another of the dead, looked up and immediately understood Konniger’s intent.

“No! I forbid it!” he called out, making a move towards the kneeling sage-detective. His way was suddenly blocked by a sword blade, the finely-tempered metal still stained with beastman blood. Waasen stood before him, glaring at the monk in warning. Clearly, with the battle over for now, the truce was over too. The Templars had not forgotten their suspicions about the monks’ role in the still unsolved mystery of the disappearance of their comrade.

Swiftly, with Waasen looking on, Konniger split open the bindings on the corpse’s leg. It was the smell—foul and rotten—that instantly alerted Vido to the worst possibilities of what they were about to see.

A typical inhabitant of the Old World, Vido was more than familiar with a wide range of horrifying-looking natural deformities and crudely-healed wounds. Sometimes, it seemed to him that the streets of Altdorf were full of little else but crippled, deformed, diseased or battle-wounded limbless beggars.

The deformity revealed beneath the bandage was quite different, however. The flesh of the boy’s leg looked as if it had been turned inside out. Curlicued muscle and veins glistened wetly as they crawled snake-like round the clearly visible stem of the corpse’s leg bone. The mess tapered down towards the flesh-fused remains of the foot, which was altering and dividing into what was clearly a split-toed animal’s hoof.

“Mutation,” breathed Vido. The word ran in a terrified whisper round the ranks of the Templars crowding round the scene.

“There’s another one here,” growled Gustav, using his sword to saw open the front of another corpse’s cassock. Fanged mouths, wet and vile, gaped from the man’s chest, gasping for breath like dying fish.

“One here too,” called another Templar, finding yet another secret obscenity marked into the body of one of the dead monks.

There were shouts of anger now from the Templars, and drawn swords were raised threateningly in the direction of the other, still-living monks. “Round them up!” bellowed Gustav in enraged disgust. “Watch them well. We’ll strip them and then we’ll see which are monsters, and which if any are still human.”

“That may not be enough, captain,” growled another Templar, a scar-faced veteran man-at-arms with an unpleasant gleam in his eye. “I’ve helped deal with these kind of altered scum before, back when I was in the service of Witch Hunter Lord Kamen. They’re cunning devils, sir, and not all of them bear the mark of Chaos on the outside. Sometimes Lord Kamen had to open up them that didn’t show any mark, just to check what kind of altered devilment there might be inside of them.”

There was an angry chorus of approval from many of the other Templars, and Vido sensed the beginnings of a massacre. He looked in concern towards his master. Konniger stepped forward, placing himself between the Templars’ blades and the nearest terrified monk.

“I remember Kamen and his work,” he intoned. “He was a blood-maddened butcher who built a career and a fortune on torture and the execution of hundreds of innocents. It was a blessing to the Holy Church and the Empire when he was finally torn apart by the mob in Nuln, when he accused Saint Friga the Blessed of being in league with the Unholy Powers. I condemned Kamen and his slaughter then, and I forbid any slaughter of these men here.”

“What are you? Some kind of altered lover?” sneered Gustav. “I’ve heard some of the stories about you, Konniger, about how you were once charged with heresy. I see now that those charges may have had some substance to them.”

Konniger glared back at the Templar commander. “What am I, you ask? I am the chosen emissary of the Office of the Grand Theogonist, sent here on a mission vital to the Church’s interests. I am a confidante of the Graf Otto von Bitternach, and I assume that you are familiar with the reputation and power behind that name. I am a former Imperial ambassador to the court of Bretonnia in Gisoreux, and with the Emperor’s blessings I still carry the mark of his authority.”

Konniger brazenly held out his hand, showing the gold ring upon his finger. The double-headed eagle emblem of the Imperial House of Altdorf shone on the face of the ring, its details picked out in tiny specks of sparkling ruby. Vido had seen the ring before, but knew that Konniger rarely wore it. Though his master carried the ring most of the time, he only slipped it onto his finger when occasion demanded a show of official authority.

“I am all this, and much more, my good captain, and I remind you now of the oaths of holy service that you have sworn, and that your authority here is very much subordinate to my own.”

“Then what is it you wish us to do, Herr Konniger? We have found the evidence you were sent here to uncover. Are we to let the matter end here?” There was still anger in the Templar’s voice, but his dangerous rage had been tempered by Konniger’s authoritative, commanding tone and the significance of the emblem on the ring he wore.

Vido realised that the Templar commander had been close to snapping, his anger and that of his men fuelled by the recent battle, the losses they had suffered on the journey and the disappearance of their comrade, not to mention the eerie, strangely malevolent mood of the monastery. The braying war-cries from the forest, where the beastmen were apparently beginning to rally and reform in preparation for a second attack, did little to ease the tension. Konniger realised it too, for he softened the tone of his voice when he answered the Templar’s question.

“There is the taint of Chaos here, that much we are sure of now, but such corruption may take many different forms, and one need not willingly promise one’s soul in some damnable pact with the Lords of the Malign Powers to become infected with the dread touch of the physical marks of corruption.”

There was a look of confused puzzlement on Gustav’s face, but also a hint of a growing need to learn more. Encouraged by the impetuous Templar’s return to something approximating reasonable sense, the sage-detective quickly continued with his explanation.

“From too many priestly pulpits we hear blood and thunder sermons about the corrupting touch of Chaos and of how all those who come into contact with it, who bear its mark on their unnaturally altered flesh, must be willing agents of the Malign Powers.”

“You dare to challenge the teachings of the Holy Church?”

It was the scarred, witch hunter-serving veteran again, his voice thick with sneering disdain. Despite their commander’s willingness to listen to reason, some of his men were clearly still angry and lusting for blood. In contrast to that of his doubter, the tone of Konniger’s reply was measured and reasonable, almost as if he were debating some finer theosophical point with a fellow scholar of the esoteric, rather than addressing a coarse and violent-tempered armed warrior.

“My studies suggest that some forms of the contagion of Chaos may be more akin to the properties of a disease or plague than the popular misconceptions of pacts with devils and daemons. If that is true in this case, then these poor wretches are no more responsible for the mutations they bear than the leper or blind man can be held responsible for their own unfortunate afflictions.”

Understanding dawned on the face of the Templar commander. “If this contagion is indeed spread like a disease, Herr Konniger, then there must be a source of the contamination, some thing that all those afflicted must have somehow come into contact with. The books in the library? That was the manner in which the contagion was originally carried to Altdorf, after all.”

Konniger smiled. Despite a few rough edges, this young Templar showed great promise.

“Perhaps, but let us start instead with the most obvious sources of contamination and develop our search from there.”

Gustav followed Konniger’s questing gaze, looking over to what lay in the centre of the courtyard. The monastery’s deep, stone-walled well. “Yes,” murmured Konniger, “water. The most common source and carrier of so many different diseases. Every living thing requires it and so it would be the easiest and most effective way to contaminate every human soul within these walls.”

He broke off, looking at Vido.

“Vido, would you be so good as to fetch my field kit from the stowage of our wagon. I may also require your assistance in a simple but important alchemical experiment.”

Arek turned away in bored disinterest as his warband followers impaled another of the Khornate followers on the sharpened spoke of a hanging tree limb. The creature’s roars and maddened shouts of devotion to the Blood God quickly irked the Chaos champion and he gestured impatiently to Vorr. The big beastman hetman shambled forward and despatched the screaming creature with a single spear-blade stab to the heart.

A second slash with the spear opened up the dead creature’s throat. Beastmen pushed eagerly forward, bathing in the spraying shower of blood, and holding up hollowed-out skull gourds in which to catch the precious red fluid.

Arek impatiently waved away the contents of the blood-splattered bowl offered up to him by one of his followers. More than a century of service to the Lord of Chaos had given him a fondness for the occasional taste of human blood, but he considered the drinking of debased beastman blood to be beneath him.

“Strange fruit indeed,” snickered Sorren, pointing at the several blood-dripping beastman bodies hanging from the branches of the trees around them.

Arek bore little love for his warband’s pet magic user, and even less for the sorcerer’s petty sense of macabre humour. “When?” Arek demanded simply, pointing towards the shape of the monastery silhouetted against the skyline by the slowly sinking sun.

“Soon. Nightfall, I think,” answered the sorcerer, toying with the bone rune pieces in his hand. “Our master will send us a signal when he wishes us to be summoned.”

“What kind of a signal?”

Sorren looked up at the tall warrior. Arek couldn’t see the other’s face—mysteriously, even his Chaos-gifted night vision couldn’t penetrate the shadows glimpsed behind the shifting movement of the metal-beaded mask—but somehow he sensed that the sorcerer was smiling.

“We shall know when it comes.”

The daemon-thing shifted in the darkness, feeling the invisible fate-patterns around it warping and changing. As it had died and left behind its human self, a whole new world—strange and terrible, magnificent and awesome—had opened up to it, revealed by the awesome, dormant power of the thing that lay buried deep beneath the monastery rock. This world was a secret, hidden universe, full of blasphemously beautiful wonders. It was the shadow of the Realm of Chaos, imprinting itself on the reality of this lesser, physical world, but there for those blessed with the mystic vision to see it.

The nascent daemon-thing was still exploring the extent of this new and wondrous prescience-sight. It had much to learn in interpreting the meaning of the ever-changing patterns of fate-lines and flickering glimpses of possible, unborn futures. Yes, still so much to know and understand, it realised, but already it had achieved some rudimentary skill in interpreting the portents.

There was still danger, it knew. Danger from the clever human, the one whose mind burned like starfire. He was close to the truth now: too close. The daemon-thing knew it must act now to protect itself. Events were coming to a head. It had servants inside these walls and many, many more outside, but the time had come to art more directly and test its growing, new-found powers.

The daemon snarled in anticipation, the sound stirring up vast clouds of flies that had been nesting amongst the mummified human detritus around it. The cloud pulsed and swirled, reacting as if it were a single living entity. The daemon seized control of it with a casual mental flick, shaping and forming the fly-cloud to properly serve his will.

Under his direction, the black cloud flowed through the darkness, passing through dust-choked passages and chambers that had not known the tread of human feet in many years.

The way ahead was blocked by a stone barrier, but that would not stop his servants, the daemon knew. The cloud buzzed angrily against the barrier, untold thousands of tiny feet and delicate feelers mapping out the rough topography of the stonework.

There were flaws in the stonework. Cracks and weaknesses, places where the mortar had crumbled away between the stones of the hastily-constructed wall as its desperate, terrified builders sought to brick up the horrors that lay beyond. The black cloud crawled and buzzed across the barrier, searching for ways past the apparently impenetrable material of the stonework.

As one, the cloud reshaped itself into a myriad thin tendrils and flowed through these tiny apertures.

Passing out into the halls of the monastery beyond.

All eyes were on Konniger as he dipped the bowl into the bucket of seemingly fresh and clean-looking water that had been drawn up from the depths of the well. To this he added the contents of a small bowl, a mixture of two different-coloured, crushed powders. He stirred the mixture into the water with a stone pestle, and those closest fancied they could hear a faint hissing sound emanating from the water bowl as he did so.

“Some kind of Sigmar-damned sorcery,” breathed a Templar, part in fear, part in awe, although Vido, who was standing nearby, could have told him differently. Despite what the common herd may think about the sage-detective and his mysterious methods, Vido knew that Konniger had little time or use for magics of any kind, and would only employ them as a last recourse.

“What does any of this prove, Herr Konniger?” asked Gustav, his voice tempered with impatience.

In response, Konniger held up the bowl towards the young Templar and then slowly tipped it. A thick, vile mess of black, foul-smelling sludge oozed out, forming a steaming pool on the ground.

“It proves I was wise to insist that we brought our own water supplies with us, captain,” answered Konniger, nodding towards the Templar company’s heavily-laden supply wagons. “The well is contaminated with the corrupting stuff of Chaos. That is, almost without doubt, the source of the mutations here.”

There was a low, despairing moan from the monks, many of them falling to their knees gabbling prayers and making the sign of the hammer. One of them rolled on the ground, thrashing about in mortified horror, desperately pulling and tearing at his vestments and at the flesh beneath.

“How could this be, Herr Konniger?” asked Gustav. “How could the well have become polluted?”

“That is a question I fear only someone within the monastery can answer.” Konniger looked round, searching amongst the assembled Templars and monks. “Abbot Himerius, Brothers Kree and Rynok, where are they?”

Gustav and Waasen looked round in confusion. “They were here a few moments ago, I swear. How could they have vanished so suddenly?”

“We must find them, and quickly,” demanded Konniger, the tone in his voice forbidding any disagreement. “If my suspicions are correct, one of them at least knows all too well what has been going on within these walls.”

The abbot fell sobbing to his knees before the altar, his hands clasped together in agonised entreaty. He fixed his gaze on the silver hammer icon engraved on the surface of the altar, and on the faded, gold-haloed image of the proud and impervious warrior man-god on the sacristy wall.

“Forgive me, Lord Sigmar… forgive me for the many ways I have failed you… failed to carry out my sacred duties. We have known for so long about the scourge which has afflicted so many of our brethren, but in our piety and devotion to you, we took it to be a holy sign. A sign that you were displeased with us… that you sought to punish us for our transgressions. It was my fault that I did not realise the truth, but I swear to you in the name of your blessed saints Werner, Dieter and Gunther that I was misled onto the path of falsehood and damnation… there was another who whispered lies into my ear, who corrupted us all… who encouraged us to believe that the affliction was a holy judgement upon us… I see now how grievously I was misled, and I swear to you that—”

He stopped, distracted by a low reverberation that seemed to fill the chill air of the small sacristy. He looked around in fear and confusion for the source of it, and then it appeared.

Flies. Thousands of them. Pouring out from the stonework of the walls and floor.

It was as if a veil of darkness had suddenly descended on the room. Himerius was immediately enveloped in a living black cloud of crawling, buzzing horror. He flailed about wildly, running for the door, but terror and blindness conspired to confuse his senses and he dashed himself face first into a nearby stone pillar. He fell heavily to the ground, his face wet with blood from his cut-open forehead. At once, a thick, crawling mask of insects settled on his head, attracted by the warm, sticky wetness of the flowing blood.

Blinded, Himerius clawed at his face, scooping handfuls of flies out of his eyes.

Flies crawled into his ears, filling his skull with their deafening buzz.

He felt them swarming around his nose, the first few pushing experimentally into the warm wetness of his nostrils.

He opened his mouth to scream, but the sound was stillborn, stifled into choking silence by the rush of insects that flew into his mouth and down his throat.

For the second time that day, the Templars began a systematic search of the monastery building.

There were fewer of them this time; the recent battle had taken a further toll of their numbers in terms of dead and wounded. Of the sixty knights and men-at-arms that Gustav had led out of Altdorf just over a week ago, now less than thirty remained alive and able-bodied. Of the remainder, he had been forced to leave the majority back outside, either manning the battlements, tending the wounded or guarding the monks now being sequestered once again in the refectory.

The Templars had forced the monks at sword-point to disrobe. More than half of them bore some kind of sign of mutation, many of them also showing the disfiguring scars or wounds where they had tried to flay their flesh free from the shameful marks of Chaos infection.

With far fewer men to spare, Gustav had been reluctantly forced to make his men search on their own, although he had tried to organise things so, whenever possible, each man always had another comrade close by. The halls of the monastery rang with shouts as the Templars conducted their latest search, the men calling out to each other in frequent reassuring hails that all was still well with them. With one man already missing, a beastman horde lurking in the forest outside, and three senior monastery brethren unaccounted for—each missing man a prime suspect for the secret follower of the Unholy Powers—no one was taking any chances.

Vido most of all.

Corralled into joining the search, he nervously prowled the passages with a throwing dagger held ready in each hand, scanning entranceways and cautiously pushing open doors to reveal one empty, deserted chamber after another. There was another searching Templar a few passageways distant. He could clearly hear the larger, clumsier human cursing and swearing to himself as he noisily ransacked his way through rooms that he, or least one of his comrades, had most likely already turned over just a few hours ago. Vido’s thievish instincts told him that stealth and caution were the best tools to employ when searching for some lurking and probably highly dangerous foe. He considered the presence of the nearby Templar more of a liability than a reassurance, and did his best to keep as much distance as possible between the two of them.

It was the sound that alerted him first: a soft, scuffling, scraping noise, sounding unmistakably like something being dragged across a stone floor. Vido froze, and then peered cautiously round the turning in the passageway ahead of him.

His instinct had been correct. There were two figures at the far end of the dimly-lit passageway, one of them dragging the other backwards up the floor of the passage. They were both wearing monk’s habits, and, as Vido listened, he could hear two voices, although from its limp, lax posture, he would swear that the figure being dragged was unconscious. He couldn’t make out any distinct words but, while one voice sounded human enough, the other had an insane, gibbering, high-pitched tone to it which made it sound worryingly inhuman.

Daemonic even, thought Vido with a shiver, as he considered his options. No ordinary Moot-born fool of a halfling, as his master might have termed it, he did consider the possibility of slipping back in search of that nearby Templar, but realized by the time he returned, the figure and its unconscious burden would be long gone.

What would Konniger do in these circumstances, he asked himself, and then unhappily realised the answer. How many times had he seen the sage-detective rush off in search of some vital clue or piece of information, barely even considering the attendant risks?

Daggers in hand and courage to the fore, he slipped round the corner and padded silently after the strange procession.

Besides, he reminded himself, he was a cunning and streetwise former master thief from the greatest city in the Old World, with a razor-sharp dagger in each hand and the matching skill and willingness to use them to deadly effect. How much threat could one mad and disease-weakened old monk—even one possibly in league with the Ruinous Powers of Chaos—possibly pose to him?

His journey took him down into the lower levels of the monastery, away from the areas currently being searched by Gustav and his men. Several times, Vido heard the Templars’ echoing shouts from elsewhere within the building, but each time his quarry’s chosen path seemed to carry it safely away from a random encounter with any searchers. Vido lagged behind the figures, staying safely out of sight as much as possible, tracking mostly by sound. After a minute or two, he realised that he had heard the distinctive footstep of his quarry’s strange, shuffling gait before.

It had been that first night, after their arrival at the monastery, when he and Konniger had unsuccessfully tried to pursue and apprehend their unknown secret watcher.

“I don’t think whatever made those footsteps was entirely human.” That was what Vido had said then, and what he was hearing now only further reinforced that grim impression. He was going down a stone stairwell now, depending on his keen halfling night-vision to find his way in the dark, down the steep and potentially lethally dangerous spiral of narrow, stone steps. He could hear the voices again from below, the strange echoes in the stairwell carrying occasional words and snatches of conversation back to him.

“Power of the fly lord… master grows impatient… gloria pestilens… nomine Avus Nurgle…”

The words were mostly nonsense, some of them spoken in the archaic and rarely-used tongue called Priests’ Cant, but Vido was able to recognise them clearly enough from his years in Konniger’s service. They were all spoken by that same strange and disquieting voice he had heard earlier, but now he could discern something of the second voice. It was distinctly more human-sounding, and it seemed to be arguing with the other voice, trying to quell its companion’s gibbering excitement. And then Vido recognised the second voice.

It was Brother Rynok, the monastery’s surly cellarer.

Now Vido was truly confused. Rynok was tall and gaunt, not at all like the hunched, misshapen figure he and Konniger had caught sight of last night, and which Vido had managed to snatch a few confirming glimpses of in this pursuit now.

Ranald’s eye, he swore to himself. Just how many servants of the Dark were there in this place, and exactly how many of them was he currently hot on the trail of?

They were in one of the lower halls now, possibly even a subterranean level beneath the main monastery holdings. Hadn’t Abbot Himerius mentioned something about crypts where they keep their dead, thought Vido, and then wished he hadn’t recalled such a detail at this particular moment in time. He crept forward with even greater stealth, hugging the walls of the shadowy passage. His quarry was in sight now, paused at the end of the passage, and muttering to itself—arguing with itself, thought Vido. He swore he could hear two simultaneous and contradictory voices, that of Brother Rynok and the other impatient-sounding, inhuman-voiced thing—as it stood before a door at the end of the passage and fumbled with a large set of keys. Its burden lay bound at its feet. Vido saw another, slighter figure in monk’s robes, and thought he heard a moan of pain or fear escape through the gag that bound the victim’s mouth.

Suddenly, there was a shrill hiss of urgent warning from the inhuman voice, and the misshapen figure spun round in alarm. Vido’s reactions were up to the test. He instinctively located the closest and deepest band of alcoved shadows, losing himself amongst them. He pressed himself into the stonework of the wall, holding his daggers ready and straining to hear every perceptible sound from further along the passage.

He heard the two voices engaged in urgent, hushed whispers, then the rattling of keys and the sound of a heavy door being drawn open.

And, after that, nothing.

After an apparent eternity of waiting, he dared to peer cautiously out, expecting at any second to be seized and attacked by some Chaos-altered horror.

The passage beyond was free of any immediate danger. The doorway was now open, and Vido could make out a prone, bound form lying there, apparently perched at the edge of a steep flight of steps leading down into impenetrable darkness. Cautiously, Vido began moving up the passage towards the bound form, constantly alert for any possible hint of threat.

None was forthcoming, although Vido was not so foolish as to let his guard down. As he drew closer, he recognised the bound figure. It was Brother Kree, the monastery’s librarian, one of the three missing monks Konniger and the Templars were now searching for. Well, he had found Kree, and he had heard Rynok. He wondered if somehow the still-missing Abbot Himerius couldn’t be too far away either. Vido moved closer, bending down over the bound figure of the librarian. Kree, apparently now conscious, flinched at his touch and struggled in panic to turn his head to look up at him. There was blood on the monk’s face from a wound to his head—evidence of how he had been overcome before being brought down here, surely—and the man looked up at him with eyes full of pain and fear.

Vido lent down towards him, raising a dagger in what he hoped was a non-threatening manner, intending to cut the monk free of his bindings and then get both Kree and himself out of this dark and dangerous place with as much speed as possible. Only when safely back in the better-lit upper levels, and with Kree delivered into the hands of the searchers, would he think about venturing back down here in pursuit of Rynok and his mysterious, misshapen accomplice, with Vido serving as guide to Konniger and a party of fully-armed Templars.

Kree stared at him with wide, fear-crazed eyes, making urgent moaning sounds through the rough material of the gag tied round his mouth. Too late, just as Vido felt a presence fill the passage behind him, did he realise what the terrified librarian-monk was trying to warn him of.

Vido spun round, slashing the air with one of his daggers. He felt the point of the blade tear through rough, heavily-woven fabric—a monk’s habit—and then into human flesh.

Something slammed into him, and the next second he was flying through darkness, spinning over the precipice of the stairs down into the blackness below. He caught a fleeting glimpse of his attacker—a twisted and blurred impossible double-image of the face of the cellarer—and then instinct and the needs of his own immediate survival took over.

Smaller, lighter and more nimble than a human, and with the training and experience of a master thief to back him up, Vido knew that he stood a better than even chance of surviving the fall. He allowed his body to relax, knowing that tensed muscles and limbs were the surest way to broken, shattered bones. He hit the surface of the steps below with what still felt like bone-crushing force, and then went into a roll, tucking his limbs protectively around his head and body as he bounced and rolled down the steep and rough-edged stone steps.

And then he came to a halt, and was instantly on his feet again. His left arm was numb from the elbow down, his right ankle felt like it was fractured or worse, there was a flood of blood in his mouth—from nothing more serious than a smashed tooth or bitten-through tongue, he prayed—and half his body ached with the first dull reports of numerous cuts and contusions, but, for now, all of this could wait. He drew his still-good, right arm back to throw the dagger still gripped there, but, before he could do so, the hunched figure framed in the doorway at the top of the stairs gave a high-pitched snigger of glee and with one swift kick sent the struggling form of Kree down to join him.

Vido dodged aside as the librarian’s body hurtled past him, falling back himself as his injured ankle gave way beneath him. By the time he found his feet again, the door above was already starting to groan shut. Vido threw himself forward, putting everything he had into a last, desperate dagger cast. The spinning dagger flew through the narrowing gap of the closing door, drawing a shrill, inhuman scream of pain and surprise from the creature there as it plunged hilt deep into its flesh.

It was a fine throw, but it was not enough. The door closed with a final, death-knell slam, plunging the area below into utter darkness.

Vido did not panic. Taking a leaf from his master’s book, he took pains to prepare himself for as many unpleasant eventualities as possible. A quick search of the pockets inside his cloak and jerkin produced a small, compact tinder box and two short candle stubs. Half a minute’s work with the tinder box and he had light again, the precious, tiny candle flame revealing the first details of his new surroundings.

He could see the vague form of Kree lying at the bottom of the stairs. His main thought was of the door above, and the immediate need to escape from this place and find his master again, but he had heard the tell-tale, heart-sinking sounds of metal scraping on metal from the other side of the door after it had slammed shut. Hopefully he might have dealt his assailant a grievous wound, but it had apparently not been enough to prevent the creature from locking the door behind it.

A locked door was not necessarily an impenetrable barrier, but it would take time to deal with, so he had no excuse not to check on the status of the unfortunate Brother Kree. He had obviously been in Zavant Konniger’s service too long, he ruefully told himself as he limped down the stairs towards the body of the monk. Who would have guessed even a few years ago that the likes of he would ever have dreamed of doing anything so altruistic and selfless as going to the aid of another living being? His former acquaintances from the Albrecht Strasse mob of rogues and cutpurses would have hooted in derisive disbelief if they could see him now.

The dull gleam of something reflecting the light of the candle caught his eye as he reached the bottom of his stairs. He shuffled cautiously over towards it, his burrow-dwelling racial instincts starting to tell him that he was standing at the entrance of what looked like a large and warren-like subterranean area.

Ancient underground crypts, he reminded himself unhappily. Where these self-torturing, Chaos-tainted madmen hide away their dead.

He found a sword, its gleaming metal sticky with partially-dried blood. Nearby was a body, torn and mostly consumed, the blood splattered over the stone floor beneath it still wet. He recognised the red-coloured, rearing griffon emblem of one of Gustav’s Templars amongst the blood-stained ruins of its armour and clothing.

“Templar-brother Detlef Plievier, I presume,” breathed Vido to himself, realising he had just found Gustav’s missing man. His service with Konniger had exposed him to various exotic kinds of violent and unpleasant death and their aftermaths, and Vido didn’t need his master’s forensic skills to tell him that the Templar had been ripped apart and eaten. And very recently, too.

Suddenly, the need to get that door open and escape became even more immediate.

He heard a groan in the darkness and saw Kree stirring feebly. Hurrying over to the librarian, he pulled out another dagger and cut away the man’s gag, holding up his head so that he could breathe more easily. Weak and frail, tied, bound and unable to move, the monk had not weathered the fall down the stairs as well as Vido. The halfling felt the cruel evidence of broken, shattered bones jutting out from underneath the monk’s robes, and saw the deathly pallor already settling over the man’s face.

“He tricked us,” gasped the dying man. “Rynok… or the thing which attacked me tonight, which only calls itself Rynok… it was he who convinced us with his lies and deceits that the afflictions were but another hardship sent to test us. A gift from the Holy Three to separate the worthy from the unworthy. When the changes became too terrible in those so afflicted, it was he who convinced us to keep them down here. We fed them and cared for them after a fashion, for they were still our brethren, but it wasn’t until I knew what your master found in the well that I realised how badly we had been deceived.”

The dying monk reached up, grasping Vido by the collar of his cloak and staring at him with the urgency of a man who could hear the call of Morr. “The afflicted ones… the hungry ones… he gave them the Templar, and now he gives them us too. They have a taste for human flesh now, and he wants them loose in the halls above… anything to delay your master’s discovery of what might be waiting in the west wing… of what old Radolphus, or whatever’s left of him, might have become. I suspected, for so long I suspected… but I never knew, never dreamed, how far the sickness of this place had spread…”

The man fell back exhausted, possibly only a few short minutes away from death. Vido’s mind reeled with the import of what he had just heard.

Afflicted ones?

A taste for human flesh now?

What might be waiting in the west wing?

Old Radolphus, or whatever was left of him?

From somewhere disturbingly close by in the surrounding darkness, Vido heard a heavy, shuffling sound. Footsteps. And soft, hungry grunting sounds. Coming towards him from all around.

Suddenly, the need to get that door open and escape became very, very immediate indeed.

Eight

The hunter stood at the foot of the rocky escarpment, looking up at the monastery battlements high above. He had made his way round the forest’s edge to this point, encountering only three beastman scouts as he did so. They were lying somewhere in the thickets behind him, although this time he had not bothered to conceal the corpses.

There was no point anymore. Not when matters seemed to be coming to a head, and time was now at a premium. The creatures at the main gate around the other side of the escarpment were massing for another attack, one which the hunter judged would probably succeed, and he had decided that the best place for him now was inside the monastery, at the side of the man he had been ordered to protect from harm.

The sides of the stone cliff were almost sheer, and the hunter could see why the monastery’s builders had concentrated all their defensive efforts at the other side of the structure, for surely no enemy could ever think of scaling such an obstacle.

The hunter allowed himself a rare smile as he remembered another rocky promontory with a fortress built atop it. It was on the border marches between the Empire and Bretonnia, and had been home to a rebel Bretonnian duke who had taken to sending raiding parties into the lands of his Empire neighbours. The Imperial subjects of those lands complained to the Emperor Karl-Franz. He could have taken the matter up with the ambassador of his ally, King Louen of Bretonnia. Instead, the Emperor, after taking advice from his Lord Chamberlain, the Graf Otto von Bitternach, chose a different way to make his displeasure known.

Each day, the Bretonnian duke would awake and look out from the balcony of his bed chambers at the lands beyond, casting covetous eyes on the territories and wealth of his Empire neighbours, safe in the knowledge that no enemy could assault him in his impregnable rock-pinnacle fortress. Until one day, the duke did not arise to look out from his balcony, for in the night someone had scaled the surface of that unassailable rock-face, climbed into his bed chambers and had slit his throat from ear to ear while he lay there sleeping. After that, there were no more troublesome border raids from him or any of his fellow Bretonnian rebel friends.

Diligently, patiently, the hunter began to climb the surface of this supposedly unassailable escarpment, a trace of a smile still on his face as he did so.

Sobbing in pain, staggering from the growing effects of blood-loss, Brother Rynok fled upwards through the interior of the monastery, heading for the central bell-tower above the main chapel. His monstrous twin gibbered and muttered behind him, urging him on in his commission of this one final task for their mutual master.

Yes, one last task, the tortured Sigmarite monk reminded himself. One last act of betrayal, and he would be free of his monstrous burden. With the few shreds of sanity that remained to him, he could still remember when he had discovered the marks of mutation upon his own flesh, marks which no amount of holy prayer or rigorous self-mortification could erase. In the blessed solitude of his cell he had prayed to Lord Sigmar for salvation and there, in the darkness, a voice had answered him.

It had not been the voice of Lord Sigmar.

It had been the voice of his own, tainted flesh, or at least the voice of something which spoke to him through that flesh. From the darkness, as he lay alone in his cell at night, wracked with shame and self-loathing, it whispered forth to him, making promises and threats, demands and suggestions. In time, he had come to hear the voice more clearly than his own thoughts, and had come to obey it more than that other, lesser voice.

He capitulated, doing as the voice demanded, betraying and deceiving his brethren, but his abeyance had not been enough for the voice: it had set a guardian to watch over him. A guardian that wore a foul, mocking parody of his face and which came impossibly bubbling out of his tainted flesh, claiming his body, and, even sometimes his mind for itself. His “twin” he called it, a monstrous tumor-thing which lurked within him, manifesting itself only at night, twisting and altering the shape of his body as it grew out of him until he resembled one of those hunched, misshapen things in the crypts below.

He could feel its presence behind him now: its giggling, simpering voice, its foul breath rasping on the back of his neck. He knew that if he turned round he would see its face staring balefully back at him, rearing up out of the hidden slit in the shoulder of his cassock. Its single, stunted vestigial limb twitching as it scratched bloody grooves in its own skin—their own skin, he reminded himself with a shudder of revulsion—with its two hook-clawed fingers.

Was it any wonder that he had been insane for these last ten years?

But it will all end tonight, he reminded himself, fumbling with the large ring of keys which gave him egress to any door in the entire monastery. The door swung open, and with fading strength he fled up the narrow stairs towards the belfry.

One last task. And then he would at last be allowed to meet the blessed oblivion that had been withheld from him for so long. One last task.

The sound of sword pommels angrily pounding on thick, stubbornly resistant wood quickly summoned Konniger and Gustav to the scene.

They found two Templars banging on the sealed double doors of the sacristy chapel.

“Locked or barred from inside, sir,” one of them saluted to his commander, “so there’s definitely someone in there.”

Gustav drew his sword, motioning for his men to step away. They quickly did so, for the Templar captain’s sword was no ordinary blade. Forged from dwarf-gifted metal and blessed by Magnus the Pious himself, it had been wielded by many brave heroes through the history of the Order of the Red Griffon, and both the sword and its holder commanded instant respect from all its members.

One swift blow, and Gustav smashed through the brass lock. A powerful kick from a mail-armoured foot reduced the wooden beam securing the other side of the door to a splintered ruin. Then they were into the chamber, his two men fanning out with swords ready to guard their commander’s flanks.

Konniger swept in behind them, his keen eyes instantly seeing the prone figure of Himerius kneeling in prayer before the altar.

“Dark-loving bastard,” growled one of the Templars. “Bit late now for prayers to the Lord Sigmar. On your feet! I’ll not spill blood—even that of a betrayer of the faith—in the house of our Lord.”

There was no response from the kneeling, head-bowed figure. “Pick him up,” gestured Gustav. “We’ll drag him into the passage outside. Herr Konniger can ask his questions outside before we cut the devil’s throat.”

The two Templars moved forward at their captain’s command. Even as they did so, Konniger sensed something terribly wrong with the prone figure of the abbot. There was something about the figure’s deathly stillness; something about the way the form under the cassock seemed somehow swollen and obese; something in the way the folds and creases of its vestments bulged and moved, almost as if…

“You heard the captain, heretic. On your feet. I’ll not allow you to defile this holy place for a second longer than I have to—”

Konniger was already opening his mouth to call out a warning, filled with a terrible realisation, as the Templar aimed a kick into the side of the abbot.

A cloud of living, buzzing darkness exploded out of the abbot’s corpse as the Templar’s foot crashed into it, disturbing the thousands of insects that had filled Himerius’ body to near bursting point or that were nesting in thick, crawling clusters amongst the layers of the monk’s clothing.

Everyone inside the chapel was enveloped by the black cloud. “Cover your faces!” warned Konniger, intuitively understanding the terrible death that must have befallen Himerius and shielding his own mouth and nose with the collar of his robe. This plague of flies was obviously some kind of daemon-work, the sage realised, but there were other mundane but no less lethal dangers here too, he knew. Maddened with fear, one of the Templars blindly swung his sword at the fly-filled air, as if he could hack a path through the cloud. Konniger ducked as the man’s blindly-aimed back-swing almost took his head off.

Clearly, he had to do something, and fast.

He grabbed a burning torch from a nearby wall scion, intoning a few memory-dredged words of power over the simple flame. He always maintained a healthy disdain for magic and its practitioners, but what he was doing now was not magic as such. He had once been a priest of Sigmar, and still remembered the secret words of holy devotion through which a servant of the god might briefly invoke some of the deity’s power as their own. It had been many years since Konniger had broken his ties of service to the Church, but he had never forgotten the necessary words of invocation, nor had he ever forsaken his personal vows to the god himself.

He was still a servant of Sigmar, and, here in the house of his god, his prayers and words of power were heard and answered.

A gushing lance of flame erupted from the torch, instantly vaporising and burning away those parts of the broiling cloud of flies which it touched. Konniger wielded the thing like a weapon, shouting the prayer words as he swung the torch back and forth, clearing a path through the living, seething cloud and achieving for real what the panicked Templar had uselessly been trying to do with his clumsy, futile sword blows.

“Back! Back through the doors to the passage outside!” called Konniger, waving the burning firebrand and rallying the Templars to him. Together, they retreated back out of the doorway, Konniger waving the torch like a shield, creating a barrier between them and the daemonic plague of flies. The Templars almost fell through the doors, Gustav alone having the presence of mind to hang back and haul shut the wooden double doors as Konniger, bringing up the rear, backed through them, still warding off the buzzing, angry storm of flies. Only after the sage-detective was safely through did the Templar push shut the doors behind him. As soon as Konniger stepped across the threshold out of the chapel the bright jet of flame from the torch faded back to normal.

Konniger discarded the now-useless object without a second glance. “The doors, man, seal the doors!”

Gustav grabbed a sword from one of his men’s grasp in response to Konniger’s warning, thrusting it through the dual set of door handles, employing the weapon as a makeshift door-beam. The doors held shut, but shook violently as the storm of insects battered angrily against them on the other side. The droning, buzzing sound was near-deafening, impossibly, unnaturally so, and the men had to shout to be heard over the noise.

“They won’t hold for long!” shouted Gustav, watching as—impossibly, yet again—the wood of the doors started to bulge outwards from the pressure being exerted upon it from the other side. He didn’t care how many insects that cloud had been composed of, even though it had seemed far more than any one human form could ever have blasphemously contained; no amount of such tiny creatures could exert that much force and weight. There was dark sorcery at work here, and the daemonically-inspired nature of that terrible insect storm was now clearly evident to all of them.

“Your sword, captain,” asked Konniger. “Was it truly blessed by Magnus the Pious himself?”

“If it wasn’t, then all those who have wielded it before me for these last two hundred years have damned themselves as impious liars,” replied the Templar commander, not understanding the reasoning behind the scholar’s seemingly strange and incongruous question.

Konniger extended his hand, the tone in his voice deadly serious. “Then give it to me, and let us put its authenticity to the test, otherwise we’re all surely damned to the Dark.”

The sage-detective took the sword from the officer’s hand, expertly brandishing it as he slashed the face of the doors, cutting a precise line of patterns across them. As he did so, he mumbled more prayers to himself, invoking the power of the deity he had once served in his earlier years as a priest.

At his words, at the touch of the saint-blessed blade upon the wood, lines of fire spread across the surface of the door, marking out the pattern which the former holy brother of the Imperial faith had slashed into the wood. It was the sacred cross shape of the hammer of Sigmar.

At its blazing appearance, there was a dull roar of raging anger from behind the sealed doors. The violent shaking immediately stopped, as if something on the other side had recoiled in fear and pain. The furious, droning insert buzzing faded away, and a second later was gone.

The men standing before the doors looked at each other in dumbfounded amazement. The sigil on the door was still burning, but no longer with the same unearthly radiance. Konniger felt the power that had briefly flowed through him fade away as he handed the sword back to Gustav.

“My thanks, captain. I’m heartily glad to be able to confirm for all our sakes that your blade was indeed blessed by one of the Church’s most holy and venerable saints.”

Inwardly, despite the danger they had all just been in, Konniger was elated. He had called to his god for help. Sigmar was here with them, and had answered that call. Perhaps, Konniger thought to himself, all was not yet lost.

Konniger ran towards the stone wall beside the doors, crouching down until he was almost lying on the floor, and pressed an ear to the stone, straining his senses as he listened hard to the mute and solid stonework of the monastery. The Templars gawped at him in amazement, exchanging puzzled, worried glances. They surely owed their lives to this strange Altdorf scholar, but watching his actions now, none of them were willing to discount the rumours they had heard about him being some kind of raving madman.

“West,” said Konniger in satisfaction, standing back up and brushing away dust and the remains of dead, fire-blackened flies from the folds of his robes. “You can still faintly hear them within the stonework of the building, and, by the sounds of it, they’re heading west.”

“To the abandoned west tower?” suggested Gustav, immediately realising the import of Konniger’s words.

“Exactly,” smiled Konniger, grimly. “There is still much happening here that remains hidden from us, but at least now we know where the answers are possibly hidden.”

He looked sharply at the Templar officer. “Captain Gustav, are you and your men in the mood for some stone-breaking?”

Now it was Gustav’s turn to smile. “To avenge the deaths of my men? To end the evil abroad in this place? Certainly, Herr Konniger. Lead on.” He gestured towards one of his men, a large, powerfully-built man-at-arms whose muscles swelled beneath his padded leather jerkin and chainmail hauberk. A heavy warhammer was strapped across the man’s back. “Master Beck here can crack the head of a man in full plate helm or even the thick skull of a greenskin savage with one hammer swing. I doubt a wall of monk-built stonework will prove much of a challenge to him.”

Konniger nodded, and led the Templars away, heading towards the west tower at the far side of the monastery building, leaving behind them the sealed doors of the now silent and empty chapel. Inside the daemon-defiled holy chamber, the empty, insert-devoured husk of Abbot Himerius lay forgotten on the floor before the altar, his corpse still caught in a position of perpetual contrition and confession.

Whatever secrets the abbot had to tell, whatever he knew of the horrors that had been going on here undetected apparently for so long, he would now have to stand before Lord Sigmar and answer for them.

In the darkness of its prison, the daemon-thing hissed in anger at the failure of its insert servants who were even now returning to their master’s lair. But they were not the only ones coming, the once-human creature sensed. The secret of its lair had now been discovered, and the sage and the holy warriors were on their way.

Another part of its diffused, nebulous mind buzzed in soothing reassurance, reminding it that all was far from lost. It had other servants at its disposal, did it not? To defend it and die for it. The things waiting in the woods outside, and one more was still at large within these walls. The creature focussed its new daemon-sight, seeking for and finding the final one, seeing with satisfaction that it was where it should be.

One last task, and its work would be done. One final act of subservience, and it could be safely disposed of.

Up in the belfry, Rynok balanced on the precarious wood-board rim that ran round the edge of the shaft of the bell-tower, carefully wrapping the thick coils of bell-rope round his body. Twice round his waist and several more times round his neck, leaving enough slack between them for the ones round his neck to do their proper task. He had torn away the stitches of his cassock, hauling it down off his shoulders, baring his deformed, Chaos-damned flesh to the world. The thing at his back moaned and gibbered, but he no longer cared to listen to it. His task was almost done.

He stepped off the platform into nothingness, the weight of his falling body drawing the coiled lengths of rope tight around his waist and neck. The hideous twin-thing growing out of his back screeched in fear and excitement.

Rynok’s neck snapped a split-second before his weight on the rope set the bell in motion, and the last thing the damned-for-all-eternity monk heard was the apocalyptic tolling of the huge bronze bell in the belfry above.

The bell kept ringing, sending out its summons to those waiting beyond the monastery walls as Rynok’s corpse swung from side to side, battering with bone-crushing force against the walls of the belfry shaft. It didn’t matter. The monk had already found the oblivion he had been praying for, and his work here was finally done.

The sound of the tolling bell rang out over the tree-tops of the darkened forest, setting off a chorus of excited whoops and barks from the ranks of the assembled beastmen.

Arek looked expectantly towards Sorren. The sorcerer nodded, clucking to himself in pleased satisfaction. “See? Did I not say a signal would be sent to us when the time was right?”

He drew his sword, eliciting another chorus of excited roars from his troops. At his command, the beastman horde charged forward towards the monastery gates once more.

* * *

There was pandemonium in the refectory as the occupants reacted to the sound of the tolling bell. Templars nervously fingered their sword pommels, wondering if their prisoners were manifesting further new signs of Chaos contamination as the monks wailed and moaned in terror. The Templars considered the flagellant monks to be madmen at best, and, at worst Chaos-corrupted servants of the Unholy Powers. None of them thought to ask the monks about the specific source of their new-found terror.

The great bell of the monastery of Alt Krantzstein had never been rung in the entire long history of the Order of the Holy Three. The legend went, in a decree handed down from the sainted trinity themselves, that it would ring only of its own volition, and then only in two momentous occasions. The first was the prophesied second coming of Sigmar, as the patron deity of the Empire returned to save his faithful people in their greatest hour of need.

The second—closely related to the first, some theologians argued—was to herald in the end of the world.

Given the recent events in the monastery, and the unhappy fact that none of the well-documented portentous events that were supposed to precede the return of the Lord Sigmar had yet occurred, the monks could only assume that the tolling of the bell signalled the second and more calamitous of the two possibilities.

Perhaps, though, they were not far wrong. For, as far as most within the monastery were concerned, that night would indeed be the end of the world.

Hurrying through the passages of the monastery, Konniger and the others were stopped short by the tolling of the bell. Several more Templars, their so-far fruitless search of the building interrupted by the ominous sound, joined them at the entrance to the monastery’s great hall.

“Herr captain, what’s happening? Is it another attack?”

Gustav answered his man’s urgent query with a shrug, apparently not knowing what to do or say. Events in this Sigmar-damned place were moving faster than he could keep pace with, and while he was still trying to get to grips with one Dark-inspired event, another one or two—equally ominous and mysterious—occurred in the meantime.

There was something lurking in this place he could not see, something intangible, yet able to manipulate events around them all. In trying to fight it or even understand what manner of foe he faced, Gustav secretly felt as clumsy and out-of-his-depth as the Templar brother who had tried to use his sword to cleave a path through that unnatural cloud of insect creatures. This was not what the captain’s training or temperament were suited for, he knew. Give him an enemy he could see and perceive, and he would stand and face it without fear, pursuing it to the ends of the earth, if necessary.

As if on cue, there came the sound of another smaller bell, urgent and clanging, from nearby: the alarm bell from the guards on the battlements outside. The meaning of this he understood immediately, and almost welcomed the sound, since at least now he knew instantly how to respond. He looked towards the scholar.

“Another attack on the walls. Our brethren outside need our help…” He looked helplessly at Konniger, his voice tailing away.

“I understand. You and your men have more immediate matters to attend to. I will continue to deal with this other matter on my own.”

“Alone and unarmed?” queried Gustav, clearly torn between his mission to guard the scholar and the need, with battle imminent, to be with his men outside. “I cannot allow that, Herr Konniger. I insist you take some of my men with you.”

“We both know you have no men to spare, captain. What good would taking men away from their places on the battlements do, if all it achieved in the end was making the task of the enemy outside that much easier? No, let me go alone. You have your work to do, and I have mine.

“Besides,” he added with another grim smile, “Sigmar’s favour has been with me so far, so I trust he has not abandoned me just yet.”

Gustav nodded, and gestured towards the Templar called Beck. Without a word, the man unslung his warhammer and handed it to Konniger. “If I cannot give you an escort, I can at least give you a weapon,” noted Gustav. “If Sigmar’s favour is with you, then it seems appropriate that his weapon should go with you too.”

The two men—sage and soldier—nodded to each other in salute. “Sigmar watch over you, Herr Konniger,” said Gustav as he turned and led his men off at a run towards the growing clamour from outside. Konniger watched them for a second, intoning a silent prayer for their safety as he hefted the unfamiliar weight of the weapon in his hands.

A warhammer, one end of the forged-steel hammerhead blunt and solid, designed for crushing bone and pulverising flesh. The other end of the weapon’s head had been shaped into a cruel metal beak, engraved to resemble the head and beak of the Templar order’s mascot griffon beast, and was designed to smash through metal armour to reach the vulnerable enemy flesh inside. Not a subtle or artful weapon, reasoned Konniger, even if it was similar to that legendary weapon wielded by the Lord Sigmar in his mortal guise as Sigmar Heldenhammer.

Even though he disdained the use of weapons, Konniger had no little proficiency in the use of one or two of them. The warhammer was not one he was familiar with, however. It did not matter, he told himself, since he would be using the thing as a tool rather than a weapon, and the only material that the fearsome, heavy steel head would be smashing and pulverising would be ancient, crumbling stone and mortar rather than living flesh and bone. Or so he hoped.

He was about to leave when a sudden thought stopped him in his tracks.

The tolling of the bell had brought all the searchers running to meet here, at this central point. All of Gustav’s men were accounted for, but it was only now, with a lurch of sudden and apprehensive awareness, that Konniger realised that there was still one person unaccounted for.

Sigmar’s oath, he silently asked himself, afraid of what the answer might be, what had happened to Vido?

Vido frantically scrabbled with his dagger blade at the damnably resistant, rust-frozen internal workings of the door lock, aware all the time of the terrible sounds of the monstrous things crawling and flopping up the stairs towards him.

They had come out of the darkness, summoned from their lairs far back in the tunnels and passages of the surrounding crypts by the light and the noise, and by the heavy slamming of the door which they no doubt had been conditioned to realise meant the coming of food. And by the scent of freshly-spilled human blood.

Vido had snuffed out the candle at the first sign of the approaching mutant monstrosities, realising that its light was literally a beacon for them to home in on. He had started to drag Kree up the stairs, in an uncharacteristically noble but no doubt futile attempt to save the man, but the monk was already dead. Vido was not proud of what he had done next, but he defied anyone to claim that they would not have at least thought of doing the same. The monk was dead, his soul already with Morr, and Vido had more use for his now lifeless flesh than Kree did himself.

He had dragged the corpse away from the foot of the steps, all the time aware of the sounds of the things now dragging themselves out of the darkness towards him. Scurrying back towards the imagined safety of the top of the stairs, he had fired off a mass of hasty prayers to as many benign-minded deities as he could remember, entreating them to ensure that the creatures would not pass up on the gift he had left for them below.

One of those benevolent deities must have been smiling down upon him, for his ruse had worked. Or perhaps these dwellers in darkness were just like any other, unlikely to pass up the offer of a free meal.

Vido crouched at the top of the stairs in front of the locked door and began to work diligently away with his dagger point, trying to ignore the awful noises from below. Sounds of rending flesh and snapping bones were mixed with the creatures’ hungry, angry growls as they fought and snarled with each other over the choicest morsels. Even before the sounds had died away to a low chorus of contented moans and snarls, he could hear other bodies moving through the darkness. Latecomers, perhaps, or those who had lost out in the brief, violent battles over the numerous pieces of the unfortunate, recently departed Brother Kree. They were still hungry, these ones, and they would be searching for some of the same sustenance that their brethren had found.

Vido knew it wouldn’t be long before they found him. He had no idea whether they could see in the dark or what other kind of unnatural, Chaos-gifted senses these things might have, but he knew that, sooner rather than later, they would awaken to his presence amongst them.

Sure enough, he heard a sound at the foot of the steps. A clumsy shuffling, scraping sound, followed by an exploratory snuffling. Then the shuffling began again. Something, he realised, had picked up his scent and was crawling up the steps towards him.

In a frenzy, he redoubled his efforts to pick the door’s lock, not even daring to consider the possibility that such efforts would all be in vain if his assailant had also taken the trouble to close the heavy iron bolts on the other side of the door. Before, he had taken pains to work quietly, now he thought only of the need for speed. His knife scraped and rattled against the metal of the lock, the unfamiliar sound of metal on metal echoing through the subterranean space and drawing puzzled, vaguely angry grunts from the things in the darkness below.

More of them started shuffling towards the steps, and Vido felt near uncontrollable panic well up within him. With an effort, he quashed it, remembering one of the mental tricks his master had insisted on teaching him. When he had first entered Konniger’s service, Vido had greatly resented these mental gymnastics that his master set for him, apparently for the sage-detective’s own amusement, or so his servant had sourly thought at the time, but now Vido could see the sense of them. Well, most of them, at least.

He silently intoned the words he had learned, thinking not about the meaning of the words themselves—they were stanzas from a typically long and turgidly dull Tilean pastoral poem—but about where he was when he had learned them.

The parlour off the kitchen in Konniger’s residence in Altdorf. There was a fire burning in the hearth, a pitcher of fine, Moot-brewed beer on the table before him, the smell of succulent roast venison wafting through from the kitchen beyond. He remembered all these fine and wonderful things, and realised that all he had to do was get this Sigmar-damned door open, and they would be his to experience again soon. It may not have been exactly what Konniger had had in mind when he set him this mind-calming trick, but it was enough to—

Something tugged at the hem of Vido’s cloak. Clawed nails rasped against the surface of the step just behind him, and he heard a laboured, heavy wheezing as a bulky, malformed body pulled itself up towards him. Vido spun round, the knife in his hand slashing out into the darkness. He felt the blade cut through vile, wart-covered flesh. Something that felt like blood, but may not have been, splashed over his hand. There was a loud whinny of pain and shock, and, in the dim light coming through from the edges of the door, Vido saw something vaguely human-shaped rear up before him, tottering off balance.

He struck out blindly again, this time with a stabbing motion, rather than a slashing one. The wound may not have been fatal, but it was enough to do its job. Wounded and knocked off-balance, the creature tumbled screaming back down the steps, landing heavily amongst its brethren now gathered there. Its screams increased in intensity as, excited by the scent of blood and the wounded creature’s pain, its companions fell upon their fellow and hungrily ripped it to shreds.

With an effort, Vido turned his attention away from what was happening down in the darkness and concentrated once more on the life-dependant lock-picking test before him. Picking a lock of this kind would be child’s play to the clumsiest of apprentice thieves, but Vido defied any of his peers to try to accomplish the same task under the same conditions he was now suffering.

In the pitch dark. With only a dagger instead of the specialist lock-picking tools the task required. And with a pack of flesh-eating, Chaos-mutated former monk monstrosities lurking just a few yards away.

Roars and grunts from below.

A warm fire burning in the hearth, he reminded himself.

The sounds of more heavy, shuffling footsteps on the stone steps.

A pitcher of fine, malt-tasting, Moot-brewed beer.

The thick, rasping breath of something now just a few steps behind him. The grinding of hungry, fleshless jaws.

Roast venison, stewing in a rich gravy of its own juices.

The rusty lock workings gave with a protesting groan. The sudden movement inside the lock snapped the tip off Vido’s dagger, jamming the lock for good. It didn’t matter. He already had it sprung open.

He heaved against the wood of the door, still not daring to think about the bolts. The door pushed open, and Vido tumbled forward into the passageway beyond. He flipped instantly to his feet, damaged ankle be damned, and turned and ran.

A braver being, he realised, would have turned and fought the creatures, slaying the first few and clearing the top of the steps, giving time to close and securely bolt the door behind which they had been held for so long.

Vido was no such a being. He was a halfling, a fact which he had never been forced to feel the need to apologise for, and it was not in the nature of halflings to indulge in such audacious and foolhardy deeds of suicidal recklessness. The average lifespan of a halfling was more than twice that of a human, and Vido fully intended to see out and enjoy every single day still remaining in his allotted time.

He reached the entrance to the spiral stairwell leading back up to the upper levels of the monastery, and took it unhesitatingly. Behind him, he heard the door to the crypts bang open and a refrain of angry, snapping growls and hisses as too many deformed, monstrous-shaped bodies tried to simultaneously push through into the passage beyond. It was more than enough to keep Vido limping onwards at speed up the stairs, ignoring the protesting screams of pain from his injured ankle.

He had to find Konniger. Instinctively, he suspected that, whatever Konniger had been doing in the meantime, by now his master would have already learned at least some of the information Vido now had to tell him. If he was right, then he already knew where he would find the sage-detective.

Vido ran through the empty, echoing halls and corridors of the monastery, dreading what further horrific discoveries awaited him at his eventual destination.

Nine

For the second time that day, the beastmen charged screaming and roaring at the monastery gates. For the second time that day, the Templar defenders stood ready to meet them on the battlements. Some things, however, had changed.

There were fewer Templars than before, and no monks at all, since the Templars would not trust those touched by the taint of mutation to stand with them. The beastmen also had darkness on their side, shielding them from the wrath of the Templar crossbowmen almost until they were right before the walls of the monastery.

And sorcery. The beastmen had that on their side this time also, as the defenders were about to learn.

“Fire!” called Gustav, watching as his men loosed crossbow bolts and spears at near point-blank range into the first ragged line of attackers. Beastmen fell to the ground as Nuln-forged steel pierced their bodies. Too late, though, Gustav saw the group in the assault’s second line. They were clustered -together, carrying tall wicker shields covered with stretched hide. Shields like that would not stop a speeding crossbow bolt, Gustav knew, but he realised now that they were designed to shield something from sight rather than from harm. With a precision that the Templar would not have suspected such creatures to be capable of, the hedgehog formation of beast-things split apart, revealing the figure that had been sheltering amongst this living shield wall.

“Reload! Sigmar’s oath, someone give me a throwing spear!” shouted the Templar, as the black-cloaked figure of the Chaos sorcerer extended his skull-topped staff towards the men on the battlements.

Black fire leapt from the staff, scouring half the battlements in one sweep. Stone cracked and exploded. Men fell screaming to their deaths, surrounded by flickering auras of black fire, hitting the ground not as men but as shrivelled, blackened, doll-like parodies of what they had once been.

Three crossbowmen beside Gustav were consumed in the unnatural conflagration. He had the time and the wits to hold up his shield. Black fire splashed against it, instantly burning into the metal.

Gustav saw a network of cracks and fractures spread like wildfire across the inside surface of the shield. The sorcerous fire ate through the now rust-corroded metal, licking against his mailed arm. Instantly, the arm withered and died. Gustav reeled back in shock and pain, falling headlong off the battlement platform.

Sorren gestured again, and another blast of the terrible fire sprang out from his staff. This time, the target was the monastery gates. Black fire played across them, inflicting the withering damage of centuries of exposure to the elements in a matter of seconds. The wood warped and split, and those inside the courtyard saw the surface of the gates change colour to a withered, aged shade of grey as the Chaos magic drained all life and strength out of the materials they were constructed from.

Incredibly, though, when the stream of energy died away, the gates were still standing, and the defenders inside the courtyard allowed themselves a few seconds of impossible hope. It didn’t last.

An instant later the gates exploded apart, the crumbling, now ancient wood reduced to splintered ruins by the impact of the horse and rider crashing against them.

Arek kept control of his steed, spurring it forward through the remains of the gate and mercilessly riding down a helpless, stunned-looking Templar in his path. Behind him, his beastmen rushed through the gap of the destroyed gates, and into the monastery courtyard. This time, there were too few defenders for them to be driven back out again, and no trap waiting to be sprung.

Watching from a narrow cell window above, the hunter cursed in anger. The Chaos warrior’s dramatic entrance through the gates had taken even him by surprise, and he had missed the opportunity to let loose a crossbow bolt that would have knocked the warband leader dead from the saddle. Now the warrior was gone, his charge carrying him too far forward into the monastery entrance, out of sight of the hunter’s limited visibility vantage point.

The hunter had just begun his search of the monastery’s upper levels when the beastman attack had begun. Out of reach of danger, but unable to help the defenders, he had been forced to watch the disaster unfold below, unable to alter the course of events. The defenders were doomed now, he knew, and so it became all the more imperative that he find the sage-detective as fast as possible.

Still, he thought, bringing his crossbow to bear again, there was still one thing he could accomplish from up here.

His practiced eyes scanned the chaos of the night-time battle below, until at last they found what they had been searching for: the figure of the Chaos sorcerer, striding confidently through the gates, accompanied by his shambling phalanx of beastman bodyguards.

Head or heart, the assassin-marksman in him queried as he took aim. The woodsman peasant in him answered, reminding him of the forest tales of evil sorcerers who tried to cheat death by removing their own hearts from their bodies and then secreting the precious, still-beating organ in a well-guarded hiding place.

The hunter took the advice, and let loose his shot.

Sorren the Foresworn was well pleased with himself, feeling the balance of power in the warband now starting to swing decisively in his favour. Let Arek kill and torture as many as he wanted. The Chaos champion thought that these creatures would follow him because they feared him. Feared him, and so respected his power.

Now, though, with a few passes of his staff, Sorren had shown these stupid, mindless creatures what true power really was. The beastmen around him were totally under his submission now, completely in awe of the power they knew he wielded, and that awe would soon spread to the rest of the creatures in the growing warband.

Yes, after this battle, he would make his challenge against Arek, and the Chaos champion would then learn how much respect his followers had for him when they sided instead with Sorren. The sorcerer’s power and reputation would quickly draw many new recruits to the warband. Not just beastmen, but other, greater servants of the Lords of Chaos: the powerful minotaur creatures which haunted the depths of the Forest of Shadows; human Chaos warriors, keen to swear their allegiance to this new champion-sorcerer; heretic acolytes and novice sorcerers, who would flock to learn the arcane secrets of black sorcery from one of its master practitioners. And, while Arek had been content to skulk around in the forests attacking remote villages and farmsteads, the Lords of Chaos would soon know that their new champion’s ambitions were far greater than those of his unworthy and cowardly predecessor.

His warband would become an army, and, when the time was right, he would lead that army out of these dank forests and march south on the cities of the Empire. The Empire armies sent against him would be crushed, and—

His dreams of glories to be were cut short rudely as the crossbow bolt transfixed him through his hidden face, one feathered end jutting from the opening of his hood while the other steel-headed end emerged, blood dripping, from the back of his skull.

The sorcerer tumbled backwards to lie in the churned mud at the entrance to the courtyard. Charging beastmen trampled over the body, not even noticing it in their blood-maddened haste to rush through the shattered gates and join the killing beyond.

* * *

More and more beastmen poured into the courtyard. All too aware that they were almost certainly doomed, Waasen rallied a few trustworthy veterans and prepared to make a last stand at the steps to the monastery building.

A beastman charged at him. He hurled a handaxe at it and split its horned skull. Another one came close behind it. Waasen picked up a discarded spear, braced it against the steps behind him and held it ready, skewering the second brute upon it. The Templar next to him swung his sword and decapitated the creature while it was still pushing itself forward down the blood-slickened spear haft to get at Waasen.

There was no respite from the killing. Another wave of beastmen burst upon them. “Sigmar! For Sigmar!” screamed Waasen, his blade rising and falling along with those of his three comrades as they visited their god’s holy wrath upon the Chaos creatures. And then, suddenly, there were no more enemies before him, only their butchered and bloody corpses, and those of his comrades. He was left standing alone on the steps surrounded by a heap of dead. The Templar sergeant’s own body was pierced and slashed in many places, and he could feel the chill touch of the hand of Morr settle upon him. He was not ready to die yet, though, not when there were still so many enemies of his god left alive. He readied his sword as another beastman shambled eagerly towards him.

This one was truly a monster: tall, even taking into account its typical stooped posture, and heavily muscled. A curious latticework of crude, chain-dangling charms was strung between its two horns, and a third bony horn grew from its snout, giving it the appearance of one of those strange, legendary creatures rumoured to roam the grassland plains of the mysterious Southlands that lay beyond the deserts of Araby. The beastman grunted in challenge, and there was the unmistakable gleam of primitive animal intelligence in its red eyes.

It charged forward, lowering its head in an unmistakable show of its intent, covering the front of its body with its shield. Waasen laid a brutal, down-swinging sword blow at it, which the creature deflected with an unexpectedly skilful parry from its own primitive scimitar.

It crashed into the Templar sergeant, goring him with its snout horn. The impact stunned Waasen, throwing him back upon the steps, and knocking the breath from his body. His chest was ablaze with the agony of his smashed ribs, and he coughed up blood as he tried to rise. The creature was instantly on him again, impaling him with its head horns, tearing into him with its small, sharp goat’s teeth. Too close to stab it, Waasen uselessly pummelled at it with the pommel of his sword, his strength ebbing away with every blow.

Gustav had surely died minutes earlier on the battlements, seared by the sorcerer’s black inferno, but, as the beastman’s teeth tore into his throat, Waasen fancied that the last thing heard was the voice of his captain welcoming him into the halls of the faithful of Sigmar in the realm of Morr.

“Wassen!” Gustav screamed in anguish, limping forward to the aid of his second-in-command. His sorcery-withered arm hung uselessly at his side, and the pain from it was beyond any natural measure, but the Templar captain closed his mind to the agony and kept on running. A beastman reared up before him. Gustav cut it down with one swing of his sword, as he did the one that came after it.

Cruel eyes tracked his progress across the battle-filled courtyard. Arek had done his share of killing, but quickly became bored and now hung back, watching his warband in savage action. He recognised the Templar’s rank markings—he had killed enough of Sigmar’s holy warriors in his time to realise the meaning of the silver trimming on the man’s scarlet cloak—and wondered if this one was worth killing. He glanced across the courtyard, seeing the Templar’s obvious target. If the man managed to kill Vorr, Arek decided, then perhaps he would be a worthy next victim for Arek’s own blade.

Screaming in rage, Gustav threw himself at Waasen’s killer, raining a hail of blows at its shield and parrying blade. Wielded two-handed, his sword could easily have cleaved through whatever defence the creature tried to throw up before it. Forced to fight one-handed and without the protection of a shield, it took Gustav several seconds longer than he would have expected to kill the beast-thing.

Stepping past its guard, he severed its spine with one clean stroke. The beastman fell to the ground, dying with a quizzical grunt as Gustav put the point of his blade through its heart.

Gustav leaned forward, resting on the blade, pushing it deeper into the twitching corpse. The pain from his dead arm drained away his strength, but he mustered enough of it to stand back up and pull away his blade in readiness at the sound of the voice addressing him.

“Templar.”

It was the Chaos warrior, the one who Gustav had previously only glimpsed from afar at the onset of tonight’s battle. Now he was almost upon him, drawing his own blade as he strode confidently towards Gustav.

“Are you strong enough, Templar? Are you worth the effort of killing, or shall I summon one of my lesser bray beasts to do the task for me?”

Gustav answered the warrior’s sneer with a defiant roar, bringing his own sword up in challenge. The blades of the two warriors clashed in a blurring series of blows and parries. Both of them seemed perfectly matched in skill, but, as one of them was soon to discover, it was all a cruel feint.

Arek broke first, apparently stumbling back and encouraging Gustav to press forward with his attack. The Chaos warrior attempted a desperate counter-attack, bringing his sword up for a downward blow at Gustav’s head. It was a clumsily-telegraphed move, and one which the Templar was well prepared to counter.

Then, suddenly, impossibly, the Chaos warrior spun the blade from one hand to the other, reversing its sweep in the progress; what had been a downwards slashing motion now became an upwards thrust. The thrust cruelly gutted Gustav, and he stared in wide-eyed horror and disbelief at the sneering features of his enemy, now only inches away from his own face.

“Weakling gods deserve only weakling followers, Templar. Go tell that to your precious Lord Sigmar.”

Arek pulled the blade upwards in one brutal ripping motion. Gustav fell dead to the ground, laid open from abdomen to sternum. The Chaos warrior stepped casually over him and mounted the steps of the entrance to the monastery. Let his followers continue the slaughter out here, he thought. He had more important business within.

“Master!” Vido called in relief.

He would have rushed forward, but was stopped short by the strange sight of Konniger on his hands and knees, bending down before the stonework of the bricked-up entranceway to the forbidden west tower, muttering to himself over the intricacies of the mysterious task he was busying himself with. A warhammer, brutal and incongruous looking, lay on the ground beside him.

If Vido was surprised at the sight of Konniger engaged in whatever he was doing, armed with something as uncharacteristic as a warhammer, he was taken even more by surprise by the appearance of the figure that stepped from out of the shadows beside him. A figure wearing grimy, dirt-smeared black leather breeches and jerkin. A figure holding a sword in one hand and casually aiming a loaded crossbow at him with the other as it regarded Vido with its grey, cold eyes.

Vaul Steiner, the Emperor’s personal bodyguard and assassin.

“Vido,” noted Konniger, not troubling to look up from his mysterious task. “Good to see you still amongst the land of the living. I trust you remember our friend Herr Steiner?”

Steiner lowered the crossbow, satisfied that Vido represented no threat to him or the sage-detective. He continued to stare at the halfling for a second or two more, and Vido returned his stare for a moment before looking away, seeing only the promise of clinical, cold-blooded death in that terrible, otherwise empty gaze the assassin presented to the world.

Vido looked questioningly at his master, glancing significantly towards the silent shadow-figure of the Imperial assassin.

“When we were sent here, it seems that someone who had our best interests at heart decided that a company of Templars may not have been enough to adequately protect us, so they wisely and kindly decided to despatch the good Herr Steiner here to secretly guard over us. And happily so, perhaps, since we may not even have reached our journey’s end without his hidden aid.”

“That last ambush on the road here… that sound which caused those things to retreat, even when it looked as if they were just about to overwhelm us,” noted Vido, in wonder.

“Quite so,” nodded Konniger. “We owe Herr Steiner our lives, Vido, and not merely on that occasion, but also on several others of which we knew nothing about at the time, so circumspect was he in scouting out the road ahead of us during our journey here. As I told another brave man not so long ago, I feel Sigmar is watching in this endeavour, but it seems we must also give some thanks too to Herr Steiner and the Graf von Bitternach.”

The last comment was spoken with a wry smile before Konniger turned his attention back to the task at hand. “Now tell me, Vido, where have you been all this time, and what have you learned?”

In a garbled rush, Vido told Konniger everything that had happened in the crypts—the existence of the mutated former brethren, the treachery of Brother Rynok. As Konniger listened carefully while he worked. Standing beside him, Vido could see that he had mapped out a chalk-drawn grid over the face of the stonework, with a scattering of strange, indecipherable markings and sigils scrawled across it. Some of them looked distinctly dwarfish to Vido’s untrained eye, but that was as much as he could discern. Konniger grunted and muttered to himself as he listened to what Vido had to say. The revelations about the things kept locked in the crypts—“the afflicted ones”, as Kree had called them, drew a hiss of concern from the sage.

“Those Sigmar-damned fools. It would have been wiser and kinder by far to have put those things out of their misery than to allow them to have lived on like that. If the mutations were as severe and far gone as you say, could they really have believed that there was any shred of humanity, any trace of what was once their former brethren, left in those monstrous bodies? Chaos consumes everything, Vido, the mind and soul most of all. And now you say these things are most likely escaped and are at large somewhere within this place?”

The sage-detective shook his head in angry sorrow as he ran his hands one final time over the surface of the stonework, completing the last rune-mark with a last slash of the chalk nub. Vido watched as his master took up the warhammer.

“Hadn’t you better let our good friend Herr Steiner handle that?” Vido meekly suggested. “That wall looks to be a fair old thickness, and I doubt that even Captain Gustav and a half dozen of his men could make an easy task of breaking through it.”

Konniger smiled as he brought the warhammer up to strike. “Stone speaks to you, if you have the ears to listen to it. Any dwarf engineer could tell you that, even though that is one of the secrets their kind always persevere to keep to themselves. Still, ask the stone the correct questions, and it will tell you the correct answers. Such as where its hidden weaknesses lie, and where best to strike in order to break it.”

The hammer smashed into the stonework with a sound like a thunderclap, made all the more deafening and shocking as the noise rebounded off the stone walls of the passageway, sending loud echoes reverberating through the interior of the monastery. The stone barrier blocking the sealed doorway fell apart with a shattering roar, stone blocks fully a foot or more thick crashing down on each other and sending up a choking cloud of dust and destroyed, crumbling mortar.

When the dust cleared, the barrier was gone, revealing a flight of shadow-shrouded stone steps heading up into the unknown interior of the sealed-off tower.

Speaking stone, my Moot-born backside, thought Vido as he surveyed the broken wreckage of the stone wall. Unless he was very much mistaken, there was more than a touch of dwarf runesmith magic to what he had just witnessed. He looked at Konniger speculatively, wondering just how his master might have come upon such knowledge, and just what the notoriously secretive dwarfs would do if they knew that a mere human possessed even a fraction of their most precious and mysterious rune-lore.

The echoes of the wall’s destruction faded away, and it was only then that another sound became apparent. Rapid, confident footsteps, echoing along the passageway towards them. Steiner spun round, alert and lethal, ready to meet the threat of whoever or whatever was now approaching. They saw a figure striding towards them down the corridor, its black beastman-hide fur cloak swept over one shoulder, revealing the burnished highlights of its dark platemail armour. There may once have been heraldic emblems or even the holy cross of the Hammer of Sigmar on the chest-plate of the armour, but all that remained now was the forbidden and unholy eight-arrowed circle emblem of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. The figure had a sword in its hand, the blade bright with blood, and the visor of its crowned helm was up. A face, cruel and arrogant, handsome and merciless, stared out at them, its lips creasing in a smile of mocking amusement.

“What have we here?” asked Arek, with a sneering laugh. “Three more weaklings, perhaps? A bookworm, a halfling runt and some idiot peasant of a woodsman. Come, weaklings, don’t be shy. Who shall be next to have the honour of bearing my respects to your pitiful god?”

Steiner stepped forward, dropping the crossbow and drawing a long-bladed dagger to match the sword in his other hand. He stood solidly in the middle of the passage, shielding Konniger and Vido from the Chaos warrior.

“Go,” he said simply. “Do what you must do, Herr Konniger, and let us be done with our business here.”

Konniger, still carrying the warhammer, pushed Vido forward through the gap in the shattered stonework, pressing a lit firebrand into his servant’s hand. Vido simply did as he was guided, too afraid and nervous—of the enemy right behind them, of the enemies that might be ahead of them—to complain or resist.

He and Konniger hurried up the darkened stairway towards the upper reaches of the tower, and whatever awaited them up there. Behind them, they heard the clash of sword blades as the assassin and the Chaos champion began their duel.

Ten

The daemon-thing waited in the darkness, hearing the footsteps of its would-be destroyers on the stairs. The crucial moment was almost upon it. Glorious rebirth or defeat and death? Both possibilities hovered tantalisingly close there in the surrounding darkness, awaiting the moment of decision. The future was still a shifting, shadowy blur to the creature’s daemon-sight, but the past and the present were unravelled before it and, as it waited and listened to those fatal footsteps approaching, it looked out with its mystic gaze and beheld all.

A footstep.

The past. Millennia ago. The dread shape of the dark Morrslieb moon hangs above the blue and verdant planet. Its eccentric, unpredictable orbit brings it within the invisible, mystic reach of both its parent world and its brighter twin Mannslieb. It rides out the powerful, unseen forces that are exerted upon it, but the strain of the battle causes eruptions and fractures amongst the unstable, unnatural material which the Chaos Moon was composed of. Morrslieb pulls itself free of its spiteful parents’ and sibling’s grasp and continues on its path, leaving a trail of broken, discarded fragments of itself in its wake. They drift in the void, but are soon captured by the irresistible pull of the larger parent planet below.

As meteors, they fall spluttering to earth, cutting fiery trails through the blue sky as they rain down on the world of man.

The world of the daemon-thing’s time is a far different place from what it is now. Here, the face of the Old World is still unscarred by the marks of human civilisation. There are no cities and no roads, only endless green forest covering the face of the lands which will one day come to be known as the Empire. One of the burning fragments falls towards these lands, ploughing into it and gouging a wide, fiery wound into the face of the forest. The land convulses at the violence of the impact, the earth splitting and heaving in reaction to the violating intrusion of the unnatural shard of Chaos Moon material now lodged within it. A rocky peak is thrown up by these convulsions, breaking through the floor of the forest landscape. Buried deep beneath it is the moon-shard, leaking its unnatural, corrupting radiance out into the surrounding earth.

Another footstep.

The present. This night. Out in the courtyard below, the battle is almost over. Beastmen mercilessly surround and tear apart the last few still-fighting Templars, while others fall, blood-maddened, upon the human dying and injured. Come dawn, no defenders will remain alive within the monastery, but then few beastmen will either.

Battle-crazed, and without any human leadership, these simple, savage creatures will turn on each other. Tribal animosities between different warbands, inflamed by the worship of different, rival Chaos gods will soon manifest themselves. Left unchecked, with their Chaos warrior master absent and his sorcerer and beastman hetman lieutenants dead, the beast-things will turn their appetite for slaughter on each other. The survivors of the resultant carnage will flee into the woods, some of them eventually making their way back to the sheltering thickets of the Forest of Shadows where they will join the ranks of the warband of yet another aspiring champion of Chaos.

None of this mattered, the daemon-thing knew. The beastmen had already achieved the one task it had required of them.

Another footstep.

The past. Millennia roll forward. The land around the rock recovers from the cataclysm and the forest grows again to cover over the wounds inflicted upon it. But still, deep beneath the earth, the lurking, all-tainting shard of Chaos-stuff remains. Humans come to the land and settle there, building their first wooden stockade settlements upon the rock. They are happy with their new home, for the soil here is rich and fertile, and the rock is a perfect natural bastion where they can be safe from their enemies.

Their happiness does not last.

Their crops wither in the fields. Their cattle sicken and die. Their children are born weak and deformed, and many, many of them die in infancy. There is a secret sickness in the soil, they come to realise, a hidden blight which taints everything around it. Many of them move away and prosper elsewhere. Others remain, the hidden taint already planted within them, and so become even further corrupted.

Centuries roll past. The rock and the land around it become a haven for unnatural and Chaos-tainted things of all kinds. They sense the power in the earth beneath the rock, and gather to venerate it, defiling the stone of the rock with sacrifices to their unholy gods. In time, others come to cleanse the land of their presence. These newcomers wear the hammer-cross of their warrior god upon their shields and armour, and they build a holy fortress upon the rock, consecrating it to the glory of their god.

They give the holy fortress a name, calling it after the ancient name of the rock it stood upon. Alt Krantzstein. “Old Sickstone”.

They believe the re-consecration of the rock will wipe away the blight that had long plagued the land around it. Future events were to prove them wrong.

* * *

Another footstep.

The present. The monastery refectory. The monks there listen to the sounds of slaughter from the courtyard outside and wait for the beastmen to come claim them too. They needn’t worry, the daemon-thing knows. After they have finished with the Templars, the beastmen will be too busy killing each other to feel the need to search out further human victims.

No, the daemon-thing thinks, the monks’ deaths will be at the hands of its other remaining servants still inside the monastery.

They come creeping and slouching towards the place where their former brethren are gathered, scrabbling and sniffing their way through chambers and passageways which a few of them still dimly remember from their previous human existence. There is one thing they all remember, however: their terrible years of captivity in the crypts. The terror and fear of being abandoned in the subterranean darkness as they slowly completed their transformation from the human into the monstrous.

And the terrible hunger that consumed them. Hunger that would not be satisfied by the rotting scraps their former brethren fed to them. A hunger that they had only now found a name for, a hunger for the warm, screaming flesh of the ones who had been delivered into the darkness for them to consume. One of those had escaped—indeed, had hurt and killed several of them—but it did not matter. They had escaped the confines of their prison, and now they had found a plentiful source of this new nourishment to feed their hunger.

The doors of the refectory creak open, and the first hunched, twisted shapes push forward into the room, eager to be reunited with their former brethren. They discover that their brethren have been waiting for them.

The monks have found vats of lamp oil in the cellars beneath the refectory. They have broken them open, smearing themselves with the oil inside. Their robes hang heavy with the liquid. Its smell fills the refectory, where the vats have been dragged up and their remaining contents poured out onto the floor and furnishings of the place. The monks know the moment of their death is upon them. They have sinned and erred against the grace of their god. They are flagellants. They know they must atone in pain and blood for their transgressions.

A lit torch is thrown. Screaming monks, wreathed head to foot in flame, run willingly into the hungry embrace of their mutated former brethren. The flames leap from body to body, consuming everything. So ends the line of the Order of the Holy Three.

Soon the fire will burn out of control, spreading to the rest of the monastery. The daemon-thing realises this, and does not care. By the time the flames reach its prison, it will be long gone from this place where it has been confined for so many years.

Another footstep on the stairs.

The past. Seventeen years ago. Plague burns and ravages the monastery. Fully a third of the brethren are afflicted. The abbot, the good and wise Brother Radolphus, himself bearing the deadly plague-marks, orders that all those so stricken be confined in the empty west tower. The only entrance to the place is sealed up in order to prevent the contagion spreading to the rest of the monastery.

His plan works and, by the grace of Sigmar, the other holy brethren of Alt Krantzstein are spared the plague’s withering, deadly touch.

Meanwhile, in the chill darkness of the sealed-up tower, their stricken brethren endure torments beyond measure.

Radolphus sits in his place, facing his silent congregation of the dead and dying. The holy book he had been reading aloud from these last few days lies forgotten in his lap. Even if he had any voice and sanity left to continue reading from it, the last of the lamp oil ran out a day or so ago.

There are others still alive in the room with him—there are the sounds of the occasional moan or pain-wracked sob from the darkness before him—but he no longer has the wits or reason to hear them. Fever burns through his brain. His blood, curdled into a vile black treacle and laden with plague-death, oozes out from his eyes and nostrils. Flies hatch out from his flesh. His organs are dead and rotting inside his still-living body. His tongue, black and swollen, pushes out to fill his sore-filled mouth. Only his lips keep on moving, silently forming the words of a prayer over and over again.

He prays for death. He prays for salvation. And, from the darkness, his prayers are answered. The source of his salvation comes not from the heavens above, but from the earth beneath. The old monk’s pain and plague-born madness reawakens the corruption that lies in the earth beneath the rock, opening up a conduit to the Realm of Chaos.

To the halls of the plague lord, Grandfather Nurgle.

Another footstep, very close now.

The present. The passageway at the foot of the stairs. The two men, Chaos warrior and Emperor’s servant, wheel and dance, trading blows and feints in a flurry of flashing sword metal too fast for anyone other than themselves to follow. They seem perfectly matched, and, for the first time in more than half a century, the Chaos warrior feels the first stirrings of doubt.

Arek realises now that his opponent is no mere woodsman peasant. His reactions and abilities are those of a skilled and highly capable killer. The man’s two-bladed fighting style is dangerously unfamiliar to the Chaos warrior, and Arek has never before faced an opponent who can wield a blade in each hand with such easy and deadly skill. Twice already, while Arek used his own black metal Chaos blade to parry away the man’s own sword, the point of the long knife in the man’s other hand flicked through his guard, one time piercing between the armour plates of Arek’s shoulder, and the second time slashing him across the face.

Arek looks into the man’s cold, grey eyes, and sees only the promise of swift, merciless death staring back at him. He wonders if that is what all his countless victims over the last century saw then they looked into his eyes too.

Then he snarls in fury, angrily dispelling such weakling thoughts from his mind, as he throws himself forward at his opponent, raining blows at him. The man’s own blades flicker and spin in the air, parrying away everything Arek throws at him, but in doing so he is forced to concede ground to the Chaos warrior. He tries to dodge sideways, but Arek forces him back with a sudden, cunning sword swing which almost separates the man’s head from his shoulders, the impenetrable metal of his sword point missing its target by a hair’s breadth and gouging a deep groove in the stonework of the wall.

The man is forced back another step, towards the pile of rubble from the shattered wall, and, a second before it happens, Arek sees his chance. The man’s foot shifts on the loose rubble underfoot. His stumble is slight, almost imperceptible, and instantly corrected, but the moment’s error is enough for Arek’s purposes. The man’s blade is a split second late in moving to properly parry Arek’s attack. The edge of Arek’s sword strikes it at just the right angle, snapping through the metal of the mere human-forged blade.

The impact knocks the man back. He stumbles again, more seriously this time. Arek is on him in an instant, hissing in triumph as he brings his sword down for the killing blow.

Another footstep, almost at the top of the stair now. So close.

The past. Fifteen years ago. The nascent daemon-thing sits in the darkness, its transformation now underway. It has found its first follower. The cellarer, Rynok. Its daemon-sight has not begun to develop yet, but it has a living link with the mind of its new puppet, and, through that link, can dimly perceive what the cellarer sees.

The puppet is in the woods a mile or two from the monastery. Mushroom-collecting or truffle-hunting, he told his brethren. He bends down, raking through the detritus of the forest floor, and then begins to dig, scrabbling at the earth with his bare hands. A few minutes’ work, and he finds what he was sent here to find.

It is a piece of glowing black stone. A tiny, scattered piece of the larger shard lodged deep beneath the monastery rock. Nervously, he reaches down to touch it and pick it up, crying out in pain and fright as the thing sears his hand with a freezing, invisible fire. As he touches it, he feels the terrible thing growing under the flesh of his back wriggle and squirm in reaction to the stone’s proximity.

Gasping with the pain from his hand and back, he scoops the stone up with the hem of his cassock and drops it into the mushroom-filled sack he carries. He glances around nervously as he makes a feeble effort to cover up the evidence of his digging, before scurrying off back towards the monastery.

Later, in the privacy of his cell, and under the careful directions of his master, he grinds up the rock and reduces it to a pile of black, powdered stone. His master needs the material to aid him in his transformation, and he watches in quiet and terrified wonder as a small swarm of flies appear from the stones of the floor, buzzing and crawling industriously over the heap of powdered warpstone placed there. Once they have devoured it, they crawl back into the cracks between the stones, carrying the stuff, grain by grain, back to their master.

When they have gone, Rynok carefully gathers up the powdery residue, placing it in a small glass phial. Later, after the hour of compline prayers, he does as his master bids and pours the contents of the phial into the water of the courtyard well.

They are here now. It sees the light of their fire glowing at the entrance of the tower stairwell. It is the first light that has shone in this place for over seventeen years. The creature’s mind retreats back from the far edges of its daemon-sight, returning to the reality of the here and now. It sees the two figures at the top of the steps. They have not seen it yet as it sits there in the shadows, and it watches as they nervously step forward into its lair.

It feels a need for speech, a need it has not felt since it left its humanity behind all those many long, lonely years ago. It concentrates for a second, and the creatures nesting within it cluster in the withered cavern of its throat, beating their wings and rubbing insect legs together in compensation for their master’s lack of vocal chords, long-ago rotted away.

“Welcome, Herr Konniger,” came the strange, inhuman-sounding voice, each word sounded out by the loud buzzing of a chorus of flies.

Eleven

“Abbot Radolphus, I presume,” said Konniger, addressing the figure sitting in the wooden throne at the far end of the chamber at the top of the tower. Vido cowered in his master’s shadow, overawed by the repulsive terror of the thing they now faced and the nature of the place it inhabited.

It was some kind of devotional reading room where monks would once have gathered to hear sermons and inspiring passages read from sacred texts held in the monastery library.

There was a small Sigmarite altar—the stone hammer emblem on it broken, Vido saw—with a wooden throne beside it where the lector-priest would have sat as he drilled the meanings of the holy texts into his congregation of young novice apprentices. There were windows in the wide, circular room, although they were smeared with encrusted dirt and filth, and let in very little light.

As he watched, Vido saw some of the dirt moving and crawling across the face of the stained-glass windows. Flies, he realised with a shiver of revulsion, hundreds of them clustering on the surface of the glass, obscuring the holy images depicted there.

The insects were everywhere in the room, he saw: buzzing through the chill, dry, befouled air of the place; nesting amongst the remains of mummified, plague-slain monk corpses which lined the rows of the wooden benches facing the throne and altar, and crawling in adoration around the obscene thing sitting on that throne-chair.

Vido had seen many different kinds of dead bodies. He had once seen an entire battlefield of corpses lying blackened and bloated from the horrible effects of being left for days in the punishing heat of the summer sun. The thing sitting on the wooden throne-chair was something akin to that, but to an even greater and more repulsive effect. Its body was heavy with corruption, obscenely distended to more than twice the normal proportions of the human form. Its skin was black with rot, glistening with slimy residue that wept forth from the sores and lesions marked across it. Its robes had long ago rotted away, revealing the full horror of its disease and Chaos-tainted form. Dark, squirming things could be seen pulsing and squirming beneath its skin, and the impression was one of something swollen, full of pregnant, diseased horror.

The thing’s flesh had long ago rotted into the stuff of the chair, which had also been corrupted by the tainted presence of the being sitting upon it. Diseased flesh and wood mixed together as one, fixing the thing on its throne. Only the subtle pulsing beneath its skin and the unnatural radiance that shone from its empty eye sockets betrayed any sign of life.

And its eerie fly-chorus voice, which again buzzed out of the darkness at them.

“I have been waiting for you, Herr Konniger. I bid you welcome to my home.”

“I trust we haven’t kept you waiting too long, venerable Radolphus,” replied Konniger, walking directly towards the figure on the throne. His words brought a chorus of buzzing insect laughter from the thing seated there.

“Patience is something I have had plenty of opportunity to practise these last seventeen years here in this place, Herr Konniger. Patience is the way of the Grandfather, for we his servants know that, in time, all things must fall to blessed corruption and decay. In the end, all things come to the Grandfather. Just as,” it added with a mocking laugh, “in the end, you have come here to me, as I knew you would.”

Konniger was moving fast now, gesturing towards the altar and chanting Sigmarite prayer words. The daemon-thing that had once been the abbot of Alt Krantzstein buzzed in laughter, and Vido felt—even saw—a palpable wave of energy ripple out from the throne-seated creature. It struck him and Konniger, propelling them backwards and throwing them violently to the stone floor. Vido’s head and shoulder struck the corner of one of the wooden benches, stunning him for a few brief but vital moments. The burning torch flew out of his grasp, landing against the wall at the end of the row of pews.

When he looked up again, Konniger was on his hands and knees, lips pared back in voiceless agony as he dragged himself forward towards where his enemy sat laughing at him. Waves of more daemon-born energy lashed into him, and Vido saw his master’s body cringe under the impacts.

“Your god will not hear you, sage,” cackled the daemon-thing in its strange, droning fly-voice. “This place is defiled, and the only god whose spirit dwells here is that of the Plague Lord. My faith is stronger than yours, for your god does not hear you, while the Grandfather has heard my prayers and has delivered you here to me.”

Konniger’s face was a taut mask of agony as the daemon’s gaze continued to crush him into the flagstones of the floor. With an effort that stole away almost the last of his strength, Konniger raised his head to look at the corrupt thing.

“You expect me to beg for my life, Chaos filth?”

Again, the chamber rang with the sound of the daemon’s laughter. Moving as swiftly and as nimbly as he could on his injured ankle, and using the loud, buzzing laughter to mask any noise he might make, Vido crept along the gaps between the pews. His course brought him into contact with the dried, withered remains of the corpses lying or seated on or around the pews. He looked away from their mummified features in revulsion, the agonies of their last disease-consumed moments still clear in their frozen, pain-filled features. As quickly and quietly as he could, he slipped past them, hugging the shadows around the walls as he made his way towards his objective. As he did so, he heard the voice of the daemon again.

“Beg for your life? If you wish, sage, but it will not save you, I promise. This body has served me well, but it has only been an incubating vessel for the transformation of my soul from human into something far greater. That transformation is now complete, and I will need a fresh physical vessel to carry my new daemon-soul out into the world beyond these walls. Of course,” it buzzed in cruel amusement, “first the Grandfather’s gifts must be bestowed upon you, to make your mortal body a suitable vessel for the spirit of one of his children.”

At last the daemon’s magic ripped a scream from Konniger’s lips. The sage-detective writhed in agony, his body contorting and twisting on the stone floor as the thing that had once been Radolphus refocused his new Nurgle-given powers on his victim’s weak, mortal flesh.

“Which shall it be, sage?” the daemon teased him. “I can cause serpents to hatch out from your innards. I can send the venom of a hundred scorpions coursing through your veins, and the agonies of your torments will tear your body into a far more pleasing form. I can cause the very flesh of your body to consume itself. I can bestow a thousand different plagues and ailments upon you. Tell me, which shall we try first?”

Vido knew that his master was surely doomed unless he acted now. He rushed forward towards the fallen torch, disturbing a cloud of flies nesting amongst the corpses nearby. They buzzed angrily, warning their own master of the danger. The daemon turned its attention away from Konniger, noticing the small shape of the halfling thief, instantly recognising its peril.

It buzzed shrilly, and Vido’s acute senses felt rather than saw the invisible cone of daemonic energy now hurtling towards him. Instinctively, he threw himself forward and rolled low across the ground. Behind him, where he had been a split-second ago, solid flagstones cracked and broke with explosively loud force as the energy bolt broke against them.

Vido came out of the roll, hearing the angry buzzing of the flies grow in intensity as the daemon mustered its powers to lash out at him again. He grasped the end of the still-burning torch and hurled it at the daemon.

The burning firebrand landed in the immobile creature’s lap. Flames licked at its swollen body, its withered, dried flesh instantly catching alight.

The droning, buzzing susurrus of the creature’s fly-voice turned to a shrill insert scream as the flames spread into the corruption-filled bulk of the creature’s body, burning it alive from within.

Konniger slumped forward, released from the daemon’s killing gaze. Vido rushed forward to help his master, running a hazardous path through the milling blizzard of flies stirred up by the daemon-thing’s rage and pain.

Konniger stirred as Vido grabbed hold of him, trying to haul him to his feet. Behind them, a solid, black stream of flies rushed out of the burning pyre of the daemon’s body. The dry-rotted wood of its throne-chair was alight now too, and the flames rose ever higher, consuming whole ribbons of the insects as they poured out of the creature’s now spiritless physical form.

“Cover your face, your mouth and nose particularly,” choked Konniger weakly as Vido helped him up, letting the sage-detective lean his weight heavily upon him as they stumbled together through the thick, shifting blanket of insects that now enveloped everything around them.

Vido led the way, holding his cloak over his face. He risked a look back at the daemon-pyre behind them, and saw in horror the solid, black nucleus mass of what surely must be thousands upon thousands of insects now forming in the air above the burning daemon. Somehow, he understood it for what it was: the daemon’s soul-stuff, the part of it that had escaped the destruction of its physical body.

Konniger saw it too, and urged them onwards. “Hurry, Vido. If we can make it to the stairs we will have crossed the threshold of this defiled place. In its weakened, body-less form, it will be unwilling to pursue us further.”

The insect mass pursued them, rolling across the ceiling of the chamber in single, unified mass. As it did so, it reached down with buzzing tendrils towards the floor of the chamber. Vido instinctively flinched, expecting another direct attack, but the questing tendrils bypassed them.

Instead, they sought other vessels to inhabit, other mouths and throats to pour into. More and more of the tendrils probed downwards, finding what they were seeking. The soul-stuff mass of insects flowed down after them. In seconds, the black mass on the ceiling was gone, siphoned away into its new dwelling places in the chamber below.

For a second all was still.

“Ranald’s eye! Hurry!” Vido almost screamed at his master, realising the nature of the new horror which was about to assail them.

The mummified, disease-rotted congregation of corpses in the rows of silent, darkened pews began to stir. From inside each of them came the faint, muffled buzzing of insects. The living soul-stuff of the daemon, a small part of it now inhabiting and animating each of the cadavers.

Konniger and Vido hurried towards the mouth of the stairwell ahead of them. Parchment-skin hands reached out at them from the pews at either side of the main aisle. Vido slashed at the closest ones with his dagger, slicing through bony, disease-wasted fingers. There were ominous shuffling steps on the flagstones behind them. Ahead of them, more of the shambling corpse-figures were spilling out into the aisle to block their path.

Vido and Konniger threw themselves forward. Konniger, rallying his returning strength, snatched up the leg of a collapsed pew, wielding it as a weapon, and with a single blow crushed the skull of the first walking corpse in his path.

The zombie-thing stumbled back, flies spilling out of the gaping holes in its age-rotted skull. Others pressed forward, hands clawing and grasping at the sage-detective.

Vido slashed and stabbed in despair at them with his knife, knowing the relative uselessness of the weapon against such creatures. Konniger fared better, bringing his unarmed combat skills to bear, apparently determined to go down fighting.

An undead thing came at him, mouth gaping; a blow from Konniger’s fist tore away its lower jaw. A second blow caved in its face. It collapsed away, a dark halo of insects buzzing up from its once again lifeless flesh as that part of the daemon which had inhabited it was forced to flee its damaged new home.

A spinning kick to another’s midriff broke the creature in half, sending another billowing cloud of angry, dispossessed flies spilling out of the shattered remains.

More hands pulled and tore at them, and yet still they pressed forward, coming tantalisingly close to the mouth of the stairwell.

Stabbing and hacking apart another of the things, Vido dared to hope for a moment that they might actually escape, estimating that their chances of making it alive to the stairwell might even be as high as one in ten.

Those seemingly generous odds dropped sharply when he saw the figure emerging from the mouth of the stairwell, and recognised the gleaming black metal blade in the figure’s hand. It was the Chaos knight.

The figure stepped forward, swinging the blade at Konniger. The blow decapitated two of the creatures with one swing.

Vaul Steiner.

The Imperial assassin wielded the purloined Chaos weapon with consummate skill, severing zombie limbs from bodies, splitting dried-out torsos from shoulder to groin with one blow. Suddenly, there were no more of the creatures around Konniger and Vido, and they hurried forward towards the assassin’s protective presence.

More of the creatures tried to pursue them. Steiner cut away the legs of the first of them. With the second, he thrust the tip of the burning torch in his other hand into its caved-in chest, instantly setting the creature ablaze. A good, powerful kick from his boot propelled the flaying, burning thing back into the ranks of the others behind it.

Konniger had once explained the tactics of naval warfare to his servant, and so Vido was dimly aware of the concept of fire ships: vessels deliberately set ablaze and left to adrift amongst the enemy formations. What he saw now was a textbook example of this tactic put into practice, as the burning creature blundered into those around it, setting them alight in turn as the fire quickly took hold of their dry, desiccated bodies.

“Good sirs, our work here is done, I think,” said Steiner without any hint of drama or even grim humour as he took hold of them and herded them down the stairs away from the fire-filled chamber. “It is time we were gone from this place.”

Voiceless, formless, the dispossessed spirit of the daemon-thing could only scream silently into the void as it felt the nebulous stuff of its mind—all that was left of its very being—start to dissolve away. So many of the tiny creatures that each harboured a tiny piece of its soul-stuff had been consumed by the growing heat and flames which now filled the chamber. Robbed of a proper corporeal form, it could not maintain its control over the remaining insectoid mass for long.

Piece by piece, second by second, it felt itself ebb away into the void. It had failed, and it felt the Grandfather withdraw his favour.

Not fair, it screamed soundlessly as the void opened before it, and all that was left of it was swept away and torn apart amongst the seething maelstrom of the Realm of Chaos.

Not fair…

They fled through the monastery, as the place died around them.

At the foot of the stairs, they passed the corpse of the Chaos warrior where it lay amongst the rubble of the destroyed stonework barrier. Steiner stepped casually over it, not even sparing it a second glance. Vido looked down at it, seeing the pommel of Steiner’s long-bladed dagger jutting out from beneath the Chaos follower’s chin, the weapon blade rammed brutally up through the inside of his head. The man stared back at Vido, his gaze still full of unspoken moment-of-death disbelief at the realisation that he had finally met an opponent more deadly than himself.

On they went, the fire in the chamber at the top of the west tower already starting to take hold in earnest. One whole eastern wing of the building was also fully ablaze. The fire there seemed to have started in the area housing the refectory, Vido judged, and the two fires would soon grow to meet each other, destroying the entire monastery in the process. Konniger had to be almost restrained by Steiner from breaking away in an attempt to reach the monastery library to try and save some of the precious, unique volumes and texts housed there. Steiner would hear nothing of such foolishness, as he saw it, and made it quite clear as he herded them on towards the monastery entrance that he would allow nothing to interfere with the orders given to him by the Iron Graf. He was to watch over the sage-detective, give him what aid he could in the successful completion of his investigations at Alt Krantzstein, and then see to it that Konniger made a full and safe return to Altdorf.

When the Iron Graf spoke, he did so with the full authority of the Emperor, and for a man like Steiner, the word of the Emperor and of his chief spymaster was akin to the word of Lord Sigmar himself.

As they exited the main doors of the monastery and entered the courtyard a group of beastmen blocked their path. The Chaos things were snarling and fighting over the remains of a particularly prized corpse meal from the recent slaughter. The appearance of Steiner, Konniger and Vido called a halt to the noisy dispute.

An ungor-caste beastman raised its bloody snout and snarled in challenge at them. Steiner stepped forward, raised the crossbow he was holding and casually fired it one-handed, shooting the creature between the eyes. It dropped dead to the ground, and he brandished the gleaming black blade in his other hand. The beastmen recognised the weapon and ran off in panic, afraid to face any opponent capable of taking that weapon from its original owner.

Steiner motioned for them to proceed. “Wait,” said Konniger, stooping down to inspect one of the Templar corpses lying nearby. It was Gustav. Konniger knelt over him, intoning a silent prayer over the dead Templar commander and touching his hand into the man’s head, shoulders and chest as he invoked the traditional blessing of the Hammer of Sigmar upon the slain holy warrior. Then he reached down, reverently lifting the sword from the dead man’s grip.

“I’ll see this is safely returned to your brethren, captain, and I’ll see to it that they add the name of another brave hero to the worthy list of those who have wielded it in the holy service of Sigmar,” he murmured to the corpse.

Konniger turned, offering the sword to Steiner. The Imperial assassin shook his head and searched amongst the other Templar dead, finding another blade more suited to his humbler, simpler tastes. He threw Arek’s sword into the tainted depths of the courtyard well without a second glance, glad to be rid of the touch of the vile thing.

They found two Templar horses still left alive and relatively unscathed in the stables at the side of the courtyard. Steiner gently stroked their noses and flanks, his peasant woodsman’s intuition showing as he soothed away the fear from the terrified animals. A minute later, and they were riding out through the broken, sorcery-blasted remains of the monastery gates, Vido sharing the saddle of Konniger’s horse. Behind them, flames were already visible in most of the windows of the burning monastery.

They rode on into the forest, into the first dawn light. Fearful beastman eyes watched them from the lurking darkness of the trees, but none tried to stop them. They kept riding, never once looking round. Not even when, a few minutes later, there came the dull roar from the road behind them as the monastery’s west tower, its stones split by the heat of fire raging within it, its wooden support beams burned away, collapsed in upon itself and tumbled down into the graveyard gulley at the base of the rock.

Epilogue

Later, back in Altdorf, letters were written, reports were filed, sacred auguries were performed and certain ancient and prophetic texts were consulted. Some parts of the truth of what had happened over the many years at Alt Krantzstein were discovered. Other parts, darker and more mysterious, were still unknown, while certain things remained suspected but never proven.

A week after Konniger’s return to Altdorf, and by joint decrees from both the Imperial palace and the Holy Office of the Grand Theogonist, three companies of Templars, a phalanx of powerful and high-ranking Sigmarite priests, and a unit from the Imperial Engineering School in Nuln were despatched to Alt Krantzstein. The Templars gathered up the remains of their slain brethren and searched the area around the monastery rock, vigorously purging it of any beastmen stragglers still lurking in the woods there.

The engineers set to work amongst the burned-out ruins of the monastery. They planted powerful gunpowder charges and razed what was left of the place to the ground, sending much of it tumbling down the face of the escarpment to join the heaps of fire-blackened rubble already piled there. Afterwards, when the engineers had finished their work, the priests carried out exorcism rites on the bare and barren rock, trying to drive out the evil that had taken root there. The rock was re-consecrated, but no further attempt would ever be made to build upon it, and when the forces of the Empire gathered up their dead and left the place again, they did so for good this time.

Yet the rock remained, and so did the ancient, unnatural power still buried beneath it.

Dormant.

Lurking.

Waiting for a time, centuries or even millennia from now, when the right set of circumstances might awaken its malignant power once again.

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