Esselt followed Talorcan’s gesture, her own eyes narrowing as she spotted the disruption of the heatwaves. There was only one thing that could distort the sun’s effect upon the dunes, and that was some object blocking its rays from the metallic sands. There were some nomads who could track a hare by the faintest chink in the haze.
‘Your observation, as ever, surpasses my own. If you say there is some sign, I believe you, my love,’ Esselt said. Her face dropped into an expression of gravity. ‘Please to Sigmar God-King we have found our quarry.’
Talorcan nodded his head, his voice taking a sombre turn. ‘We do Sigmar’s work. He is always with us.’ He reached to the hammer-shaped amulet that hung from the clasp of his cloak. ‘But there are other powers and they are in opposition to our work. Where faith is weak, the Dark Gods prevail.’
‘Our faith is as sharp as our blades.’ Esselt once again patted the immense sword hanging from the saddle sheath beside her. A flicker of a smile crossed her face as she peered intently at Talorcan. ‘Or do you question my sincerity?’
‘I would not dare,’ Talorcan said, looking to Esselt and returning her smile. For a fleeting instant, the grim duty ahead of them was forgotten. Then his demi-gryph started down the incline of the dune and the onerous nature of their task resumed its primacy.
They could not know what they would find at the end of the trail, but of one thing Esselt and Talorcan were certain: there would be death. That was the one constant in the work of witch hunters.
He was dying. Perhaps he should be dead already. He wanted to die. He wanted to just lie down and let Black Nagash have him.
But to live or die was no longer his choice. A burning, snarling compulsion drove him on. His breath was a reedy rasp that seared his lungs, yet still he persisted. His muscles felt like they would rip through his skin, yet still he kept walking. Blood, yes, blood. It dripped and trickled, oozing from his wounds. So much blood. How could there be any left in his veins? How could there be enough to keep his heart pumping?
The demand that roared inside him would not let him stop. He could not pull out the spear-shaft that was lodged in his chest. He could not tie off the sword-slash that left his back open from shoulder to hip. He could not see from the eye that had been crushed when a mace had caved in the side of his head. Still, it would not let him die.
There was a terrible imperative that forced him onwards. Only when it was satisfied could he relent. Until then, he would stumble on through the dunes, lost and damned.
Tears glistened in his remaining eye. He wanted to die so badly. He deserved to die. The things he had done… atrocity! He had no right to draw that next breath.
But draw it he did. And the next. And the one after that. The compulsion kept him moving. Up and down the crawling dunes, defying the desert heat and the ghastly wounds.
Through the desolation, at last a sight greeted him. The force driving him on became ferocious. Hungrily it urged him to greater effort, compelling him towards… something? No. Someone.
He tried to stop himself when he understood. He tried to throw the damned treasure away, to cast it out among the dunes where it should never be found. He didn’t have that kind of strength now. He only had the strength his destroyer allowed him to have.
The nomad spotted him. He saw the robed man draw a sword and watch him with wary eyes. The force driving him onwards exulted. It had no need of him now. The strength it had been dragging out of him evaporated and he crumpled. Almost lifeless, he slid down the dune towards the stranger.
His vision was already fading. He didn’t see the nomad, but he felt the boot that prodded his side. A moment later he felt the hands roving across his body. Frantically, he tried to warn the nomad, but all that escaped his lips was a gargled rasp.
The last thing he heard as his life drained from him was the nomad walking away. Death, so long denied, closed around him, conveying his spirit not to the morbid halls of Nagash but to a realm of blood and skulls.
Everywhere Talorcan looked the sand-like metal scales were stained a dull crimson, blotting out both their shine and the eerie animation that set the dunes of Droost crawling across the wastes. The unblemished scales about the blighted region shivered their way over the gory spectacle, creeping around the destruction.
‘Massacre,’ Esselt declared the site as she gazed down upon it. Boxes and bundles lay scattered about the depression between two dunes, strewn as though by a petulant gargant. The tatters of tents and pavilions fluttered in the hot desert breeze. Carcasses of immense draft-lizards quivered on their backs, their sluggish nerves still tugging at the muscles of their slaughtered bodies. Smaller bodies were littered about the scene, so covered in their own gore that it was impossible to tell simple drover from wealthy caravaneer.
‘By the Hammer, we are too late,’ Talorcan growled. He tried to urge his steed down into the depression, but the demi-gryph balked at his commands. The creature threw back its head and crackled an anxious cry. Annoyed, he dismounted and trudged down the crawling slope to reach the grisly scene. Throwing back his hood, Talorcan kneeled beside a small body, carefully folding what was left of its hands across its breast.
Esselt followed Talorcan down, leaving her own steed with the other animals. In her hands she carried the massive greatsword she had taken from her saddle. The silver blade glistened in the afternoon light, the sacred runes etched across its length shining like golden flames. The holy sword had been forged by the armourers of the Order of Azyr and thrice-blessed by no less than High Priest Crautreic himself. She had used the weapon many times to strike down the obscene daemons and mutated monsters of Chaos, but as she looked across the massacred caravan, the desire to visit justice and judgement with the edge of her sword burned more fiercely in her heart than ever before.
‘How many?’ Talorcan shook his head and looked up at Esselt. His face was lean and hard, browned by the desert sun, weathered by the horrors he had unearthed and combated for so long.
‘Three nomad camps, one village, and now this caravan.’ Esselt stepped to Talorcan’s side and laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ve been with you a long time, Tal. I know whatever atrocities you’ve been confronted by have not caused you to waver. You have never failed to see Sigmar’s justice meted out. It doesn’t matter how many it has claimed.’ An edge crept into her voice, a tone of menace that promised vengeance for the fiend they sought. ‘All that matters is we keep it from taking any more.’
Talorcan closed his hand around Esselt’s, drawing comfort from her reassurance and her determination. ‘I will track this fiend to the gates of Shadowfell if needs must,’ he vowed.
‘Perhaps it is dead already,’ Esselt said. She drew Talorcan’s attention to one of the bodies lying nearby, a corpse wearing the mail hauberk of a mercenary. Clenched in his hand was a bloodied scimitar. A little further on, another armoured body gripped a spear with its head snapped off. ‘The killer didn’t find such helpless victims this time. These people fought back.’
‘No,’ Talorcan stated, releasing her hand and rising to his feet. ‘It isn’t here. If it was, we would know it. The Order of Azyr has trained us to sense the corruption of Chaos. We would sense its taint, feel it crying out for new victims. The evil is gone. It has gone to seek new prey. To lurk unsuspected until its hunger is aroused.’ He stood and began stalking about the scene. Crouched over, his face peering intently at the ground, his hand brushing across the scaly sands. He looked at the footprints scattered about the havoc, trying to pick from the marks left by victims and killer. At length he found a track that steered away from the murder site. As he pursued it towards the farther dunes, he shouted to Esselt.
‘The trail will be easy to follow,’ Talorcan declared. ‘The ground on the slope of the dune bears similar discolourations. Faint, but obvious enough if you know what you are looking for.’
Esselt stood above the small body Talorcan had fir
st inspected. She repressed the empathy the corpse evoked, her mind processing the sight with the cold practicality demanded of all witch hunters. ‘No vultures have been around,’ she observed. ‘Not even a hint of bloat-moths sucking at the wounds.’
Talorcan managed a smile. Despite the grim circumstances, he was proud Esselt had learned so much from his teaching. ‘Bloat-moths would already have laid eggs if they were here. That means these bodies have not been here overnight. At best this happened in the morning. The killer cannot have gone far.’
Esselt’s fingers tightened on the grip of her sword. Her eyes roved across the carnage. ‘I ask few favours of you, Tal, but I ask for one now. When we find this thing, I want to be the one who brings it the doom it has earned.’
Three hours riding across the crawling dunes of Droost brought the witch hunters to yet another morbid scene. From the crest of one dune, a dark shape sprawled in the sand. Crimson-stained blemishes along the slope of the dune gave vivid evidence of where the body had initially fallen and rolled its way downwards.
Cautiously the witch hunters dismounted and approached the gore-spattered body. Talorcan threw back the folds of his cloak, drawing sword and pistol from his weapon belt. The blade he bore was smaller and slighter than the one Esselt carried, a weapon made for finesse and speed. The pistol was a silver-barrelled device fitted to a frame of sacred shimmerwood. The charge within was derived from an alchemical powder, the shot itself a ball of silver bathed in the holy unguents of Sigmar’s temple. Talorcan kept his sword held out to one side and aimed the pistol at the body’s head.
Esselt stepped closer, both hands locked on her weapon. Her strength, the brutal impact of the silver greatsword she carried, the heavy armour she wore under her cloak, drove her to investigate the grisly carcass. Talorcan’s forte was the quickness of his reflexes. Coupled with the reach of his pistol, it made sense for him to provide cover for Esselt.
The wounds that afflicted the body were almost beyond measure. Esselt could count at least five that should have been mortal blows. The caravan had fought hard, even if their efforts had not been enough to save them. Keeping a wary eye on the body, she kicked it over onto its side. For a moment she watched it, waiting for some kind of reaction. She was about to dismiss the thing as nothing but a corpse when a sanguine glow filled the empty eyes.
In a heartbeat the thing sprang onto its feet. It rushed at Esselt with outstretched hands. Long talons were emerging from them and the clawed fingers raked across her breastplate, scraping the metal surface.
The next instant there was a cracking boom as Talorcan fired his pistol into the cadaverous thing. The shot caught the fiend in its shoulder, shattering bone and shredding flesh. A spray of dark blood and gleaming ichor flashed from the wound. The creature swung around, glaring at its new attacker. Its head was distorted beyond the vicious injuries the body had suffered in life. Great black horns were tearing their way up from beneath the scalp. Long yellow fangs pushed up from the jaws.
Talorcan readied himself for the fiend’s charge, but before it could rush him it was served a violent reminder of the foe it had left behind. In a shining arc of silver, Esselt brought her sword slicing down upon the monster’s neck, all but cleaving its head from its body. Smoke sizzled from the mutilating wound, ichor vaporising as it encountered the blessed residue left behind by the slashing blade. It swung back around, clashing its fangs together as it glared at Esselt. Then it collapsed against the scaly sands, the impact tearing its head free from the flap of skin that held it.
‘Receive Sigmar’s judgement, horror of Old Night,’ Esselt recited as she stared down at the desiccated remains. The horns and other daemonic manifestations were rapidly fading into a crusty residue, leaving behind only a mangled corpse.
‘A minor daemon of the Blood God,’ Talorcan said as he observed the dissolution. ‘I should think it took possession of this body only after the soul was gone. The flesh was seeped in the energies of Khorne, enough to act as a temporary host. Without the life-force to sustain it, the thing could not have lingered long in Chamon.’
Esselt shook her head and pointed at the bullet wound in the corpse’s shoulder. ‘It had vitality enough to endure being shot. The one we found outside the village withered as soon as it was struck.’
‘And the host bodies we found outside the nomad camps were simply corpses,’ Talorcan expanded. ‘Time is the explanation to that riddle. We were farther back on the trail when we found the others.’
‘Then the strength of this possession means we are close,’ Esselt stated. A hard glint came into her eyes; a coldness settled upon her face.
Talorcan stepped past her and inspected the corpse. ‘It isn’t here,’ he declared. ‘Whatever damn thing was brought up from that tomb, it isn’t here.’
‘Someone else has it,’ Esselt said. ‘Like every other time, it found someone else to take it before relinquishing its previous owner.’
‘Someone else has it,’ Talorcan agreed. ‘But we can be thankful the evil is dormant now. It lacks even the power to make its new owner cover his tracks.’ He waved his empty pistol at a line of footprints that stretched out across the dunes. Already some of them had been covered by the crawling sands, but enough remained to betray a general direction.
‘It is my belief that whatever devilry is within this cursed relic,’ Talorcan said, ‘lies dormant until something serves to provoke it. The robbers outside the cairn can be assumed to have argued over their spoils. In Skra Voln it looked as though the village had started to butcher an old draft-lizard for a feast. At every site there was some sign that violence occurred before the massacre started. The relic must be empowered by the malignity of the Blood God, and once it senses bloodshed, it uses whoever carries it to create even more to sate its hunger.’
Esselt caught at Talorcan’s arm. ‘How long will it remain dormant? Can we catch the new owner before the evil is aroused?’
Talorcan placed a rough hand over hers. Wrapping his fingers around her wrist, he drew her close. ‘Sigmar knows we must,’ he said in a sombre whisper. ‘Otherwise the trail will lead us to another massacre.’
The oasis of Tora Grae was one of dozens scattered across the vast desert of Droost. Shielded from the crawling dunes by great outcroppings of copper-hued rock, Tora Grae offered succour from the blazing sun. Great stands of frond-leafed trees grew around a large pool of dark water. Tough shrubs and hardy desert grass formed an outer layer that ringed the trees, stretching to the very periphery of the rocks.
Where there was water to be found in the desert, so too would the society of man be found. Built within the outer ring of grass and shrubs, a small village had persisted for many generations. Huts woven from palm-fronds and reinforced with bartered cloth lay clustered together in a confused huddle. Beyond the huts, herds of wiry antelope nuzzled the grass within their fenced enclosures. Huge draft-lizards basked on the tops of rocks, soaking in the warmth of the day until, sated, they crawled into the shadows of their burrows. Demi-gryphs milled about, each animal tethered by a ring fastened to its beak and fixed to a stout wooden post. Dogs and poultry roamed freely through the village, doing their best to avoid the rambunctious children who raced around the huts. The older inhabitants of the village lounged in the shade of the trees. Early morning and early evening were their hours of labour, when they would see to their flocks and gather water from the pool. The middle of the day, with the hot sun blaring down on the world, was a time for rest and repose. Only children and fools bestirred themselves at such an hour.
Scattered about the rocky outcroppings, sentries maintained a lazy watch upon the desert around Tora Grae. Their main concern was the withering scalestorms that would reach down and rip away at the dunes, driving a blinding wall of shimmering sand across the desert to smother anything in its path. A lesser but still serious worry were the raider bands who prowled the wastes. Their usual prey were the caravans, but
sometimes a gang would become large and bold enough to attack a village.
When one of the sentries spotted movement through the shimmering haze, his first inclination was to dip his fingers into the water jug resting beside him and moisten his eyes. After a few blinks, he looked again. There could be no doubt, there was someone riding through the desert in the very worst of the day. Two riders leading a third animal. The sentry hesitated only long enough to assure himself there weren’t others who had evaded his first sighting, then he scrambled down from his shaded perch and hurried into the village to alert his people.
As Talorcan and Esselt rode through a winding cut between the coppery rocks and onto the grassy expanse that surrounded Tora Grae, the witch hunters found themselves the centre of attention for hundreds of villagers. All the able-bodied inhabitants of the village were gathered together, hands locked around the hefts of axes and spears, the grips of swords and lizard-goads. Behind them, from the edge of the settlement itself, the very old and very young watched with anxious gazes as the strangers approached.
Talorcan looked across the assembled villagers, studying them with cold eyes, meeting the mute hostility of their own scrutiny. With a flourish he threw back the white cloak, displaying the weapons holstered on his belt, but more importantly revealing the heavy pectoral that hung across his chest. The surface of the metal plate was adorned in gold, displaying the image of a hammer centred above a pair of crossed lightning bolts. It was the mark of his chapter, the Witch Takers of Azyr.
Even in so remote a place as Tora Grae, the symbol of the witch hunters was recognised. An instant before and the villagers had been ready to fight these intruders. Now they shrank back, eyes wide with fright.
Sacrosanct & Other Stories Page 25
