Witch Finder

by C. L. Werner

  Doubt, distrust and fear clawed at Silja’s thoughts as the hours of night wore on.

  Freiherr Weichs ran a cloth against his forehead, drenching it in sweat. Grey Seer Skilk was an unpleasant creature at the best of times, but the skaven sorcerer-priest was even more intimidating when angry. Weichs cringed every time the ratman’s long, scaly tail slapped against the floor, writhing like some gigantic worm. Skilk ran one black-furred paw across the ghastly collection of trophies ringing his neck, the monster’s teeth bared in a fearsome grin.

  The source of the grey seer’s ire grovelled on the floor before him, its belly resting on the bare earth. It mewed piteously at the horned ratman, chittering in its own shrill, piercing language. Whatever words were exchanged, they only seemed to add to the grey seer’s fury and increased the creature’s misery. Weichs could see that the skaven had already undergone some terrible ordeal, dozens of wounds marking its body, apparently bite marks, its foul black blood slowly dripping. Was there some disagreement among the ranks? From what Weichs had seen of the brutality that passed for society among the skaven, some schism among their own kind might explain both the messenger’s wounds and the grey seer’s ire.

  ‘Dead-things?’ Skilk suddenly snapped, turning his hostile gaze upon Weichs. ‘Dead-things in tunnels?’ he hissed. The grey seer reached down at the miserable wretch whimpering at his feet, grabbing the ratman by the scruff of its neck. With a savage shove, Skilk threw the messenger across Weichs’s lab toward one of the iron specimen cages. ‘Look-scent.’ Skilk snarled, still glaring at Weichs. With horror, the scientist understood what Skilk was saying in his debased Reikspiel.

  Something had invaded the skaven tunnels, something the messenger described as ‘dead-things’. Skilk had connected this description to the strange comatose man lying in the cage, the one who had ‘death-smell’. The grey seer was quick to suspect treachery, and now his distrust was focused upon Weichs. The scientist felt a wave of nausea as he contemplated what Skilk would do if he thought he had betrayed him.

  ‘Same-same,’ the messenger squeaked, scurrying away from the cage as though it held all the daemons of the Wastes within. Skilk’s malevolent smile grew as he advanced on Weichs.

  ‘Doktor-man plot-sneak,’ the grey seer accused. ‘Want-like Skilk kill-kill, yes?’ Weichs could see the two armoured killers that always accompanied the priest slinking toward him from either side. The scientist glanced about his warren-like lab, searching for some means of escape. His own assistants were cowering behind their stations, even the malformed Lobo trying to hide behind one of the presses. The skaven that had been working with him were slowly creeping forward, their faithless hearts eager to see the drama play itself out. Guttural screams of excitement and glee roared from the cages, their twisted inmates rattling the bars at the prospect of seeing their tormentor destroyed.

  ‘I’ve been loyal.’ Weichs shrieked. ‘I would not betray you.’ He backed away from the snarling skaven, trying to place a worktable between himself and Skilk’s guards. ‘Someone is trying to trick you, trying to stop our work.’ Weichs knew enough about the skaven mind to understand it was useless to try to appease its suspicious nature. If he was going to save his skin, he had to redirect its paranoia.

  Skilk hesitated, almost visibly contemplating Weichs’s desperate words. His bodyguards continued to stalk him, corroded swords clutched in their hands. Weichs began to scan the table for anything heavy enough to serve as a weapon. Suddenly Skilk lifted a black paw and uttered a sharp hiss. The two skaven warriors backed away, lashing their tails as they withdrew.

  ‘Doktor-man true-speak, maybe,’ Skilk said, his voice still dreadful in its uncertainty. ‘Other grey seers like-want Skilk fail-fall,’ the sorcerer considered. After what seemed an eternity Skilk turned away. Weichs breathed a deep sigh of relief as the grey seer barked orders to the other skaven.

  ‘Take-fetch dead-thing,’ Skilk snapped. ‘Burn-burn,’ he added, pointing a clawed finger to the largest of the workshop’s furnaces. Weichs would regret losing the opportunity to study the strange man, but the loss was more than balanced by the continuance of his own life.

  Three of the ratmen scurried toward the cage, one of them snatching the key to the lock from Lobo as the malformed halfling emerged from hiding. The furred monsters hesitated at the unpleasant smell of the cage’s occupant, but a glance over their hunched shoulders at Skilk reminded the vermin who they were more afraid of. The ratmen opened the lock, scuttling into the small cell and dragging the unconscious man from his prison. Weichs could see him move his arm slightly, a faint groan rasping from his mouth. The man should have stayed in his coma longer, Weichs considered. It was certainly no respite to wake up to discover the skaven’s intentions toward him.

  The ratmen dragged the man across the laboratory, toward the fiery maw of the furnace. One of the ratmen was the mangled specimen that had brought word to Skilk of the intruders in their tunnels. Black blood continued to drip from its injuries, trickling from the monster’s fur onto the pale skin of the prisoner’s arm.

  The prisoner shuddered into motion almost faster than the eye could perceive, throwing aside his captors as though they were made of straw. One crashed into the side of a cage, its back snapping on the unyielding metal. The ratman’s pitiful cries became frantic, as limbs that had once been arms reached from inside the cage and began to tear the rest of his bones from its skin. Another of the skaven flew across a worktable, its body colliding with the delicate glass apparatus as fiercely as if fired from a ballista. The vessels exploded under the impact, bathing the hurtling skaven with their volatile contents. The ratman struck the floor screaming, the corrosive mixture melting the flesh from its bones.

  The wounded skaven was not cast aside by the prisoner, but dragged close to the man’s breast. Weichs saw the man throw back his head, mouth opened wide, displaying a set of serpentine fangs. The skaven held in his powerful grip shrieked as the fangs buried themselves in its neck. Blood exploded from the wound. Weichs was sickened to see even more of the foul liquid sucked up by the prisoner’s leech-like mouth. He had always discounted the myths and legends that spoke of the Children of the Night, the creatures known as vampires. Now he knew better.

  Gregor drank deeply, the squirming skaven he held clawing ineffectually at his face. The world around him had become red, his mind thundering with the unclean hunger that filled his entire being. He had denied it too long, so long that even the putrid smell of the ratman’s corrupt blood was enough to make the hunger explode inside him. It was an avalanche, a tidal wave. He could no more resist it than an ant could resist the crushing tread of a giant. Now the skaven’s blood surged through him, feeding the foulness he had tried to resist. Gregor could feel the strength rippling through his body, feel the power coursing through his ravaged frame. He howled in disgust as he tossed the dead skaven aside, feeling the triumph of the corruption within him.

  More of the ghastly underfolk were surging toward him, chittering their wrath, knives and swords flashing in their unclean hands. Gregor knew them for the monsters they were, had heard his own father wake up screaming in the night as his dreams touched upon memories of the vile ratmen. But there was no room for terror in the shrivelled, dying thing that had been his heart. What were these noxious vermin beside the horror that he himself had become? Gregor roared back at the scurrying ratmen, not waiting to receive their charge but pouncing upon them, such was the unholy lust burning in his veins. Like a lion among jackals Gregor lashed out at his inhuman attackers, each blow crushing ribs or breaking limbs.

  Above the cries and screams of the skaven, Gregor could hear a sharp, shrill voice shrieking commands. He turned his red-rimmed eyes, scowling at the verminous shape that barked orders to its kin. The horned skaven priest withered before Gregor’s terrible gaze. He saw the creature lift a shard of black stone to its muzzle. As it gnawed the stone, profane energies gathered. The sorcerer stretched forth its hand, a sizzling bolt of black lightning
leaping from its paw.

  ‘The apparatus.’ an elderly man hiding behind a cabinet screamed. ‘Be careful of the apparatus.’

  A normal man would have been struck by that terrible lightning, his body burned to a crisp. But Gregor was no longer a normal man. As swiftly as the priest’s spell was unleashed, Gregor was faster still, diving aside an instant before it could strike him. The terrible energy struck like daemonic thunderbolts, smashing into the bars of the cage behind him, turning them into molten slag.

  Gregor did not have the luxury of relief. Set upon by a pair of frantic men wielding heavy hammers, his unholy eyes could see the blood glowing inside them, a foul, corrupt purple. ‘Mutants,’ he decided as he broke the arm of one, and tore out the throat of the other, his filthy blood spraying across the cavern. Gregor grabbed the crumpled, shrieking shape of his wounded antagonist, pulling it toward him. Man or monster, blood or daemon ichor, Gregor would appease the hunger with the creature’s life.

  Across the workshop, Grey Seer Skilk gathered the terrible energies of the warpstone he had consumed, preparing to unleash another bolt of destruction. Then he watched the creature lift one of Weichs’s human servants over his head and break the man’s back like a twig, reconsidering the wisdom of drawing its attention.

  Skilk backed away, promising his bodyguards a death far worse than anything the creature could do if they did not stop it. The armoured skaven hesitated, cautiously scuttling forward. Skilk watched them depart, then turned and scurried for the nearest tunnel, his infirmity forgotten in his flight. Skilk was dimly aware of others hurrying after him. The skaven was about to snarl his wrath at whichever of his kinfolk was endagering Skilk’s life by deserting the fray. But his companions were not skaven.

  ‘Follow-quick.’ Skilk snapped at Weichs and his malformed halfling slave. They followed close behind the retreating skaven priest as he raced down the burrow-like passageway, leaving the carnage to unfold in the workshop.

  As he fled, Skilk was already making new plans. Someone was concerned that Weichs’s discovery might place great power in Skilk’s paws. Skilk considered that the list of possibilities was almost endless, but only the plague priests of Clan Pestilens or another grey seer would be so bold as to strike in this manner. He had to keep Weichs safe, at least until the human had done what was required of him. And he had to find out who was unleashing these alive-dead man-people.

  The resources of an entire warlord clan were at his disposal. Skilk would flood the tunnels with skaven warriors, bring down these horrible man-monsters, and unmask whatever foolish rival thought himself powerful enough to destroy Grey Seer Skilk.

  ‘It’s no use,’ Streng protested. He hurled the shovel across the room, doubling his body over and sucking great gasps of breath back into his lungs. ‘We’ve been working for hours and for every shovel we remove, three times as much dirt rolls back.’

  Thulmann stared hard at his henchman, angered not by his words, but by the truth they held. The witch hunters had been working all night to excavate the skaven tunnel, yet their efforts had only exposed a few feet. At such a rate, the year would turn before they uncovered more than a few yards of the passageway.

  ‘It is your decision, Brother Mathias,’ old Tuomas advised, leaning on his pick to rest. ‘You currently hold the authority of witch hunter captain.’ Thulmann silently considered the problem.

  ‘We serve no purpose here,’ he finally relented. ‘If we would find these creatures, we must do so in some other fashion. Though I confess that how we will do such a thing eludes me.’

  ‘Sigmar provides,’ Tuomas replied.

  ‘And no debt owed to Morr is left unpaid,’ Captain-Justicar Ehrhardt growled. The Black Guardsman stabbed his shovel into the earthen wall as though spearing the throat of an enemy and stalked from the chamber, pausing only to gather up the armour he removed when he started to dig.

  ‘Friend Ehrhardt has the right idea,’ Thulmann confessed. ‘We all of us need rest. Then we shall plan our next move.’ Days of searching for Sibbechai’s lair had turned up nothing. Now he had lost his best chance of finding Weichs. All he had managed to accomplish in the last few days was an act that many within the Order of Sigmar would decry as mutiny, heresy and insubordination. His only hope to avoid censure was that perhaps Meisser was not entirely unknown to his superiors in Altdorf. His duplicitous character was Thulmann’s best hope of exoneration.

  He ascended the steps leading up from the dungeon, squinting as he emerged into daylight. It did nothing to diminish his grim mood. The witch hunter’s mind turned over the many failures he had endured since returning to Wurtbad. He had failed to find Das Buch die Unholden and failed to destroy Sibbechai. He had spoiled his best chance at tracking down Doktor Weichs, the man who, his instinct told him, was responsible for the horrible plague ravaging the city. He had even failed to stop the atrocity at Otwin Keep, underestimating the lengths to which Meisser would go. The witch hunter shook his head. It was at such times that the power and grace of Sigmar were hard to perceive, when the might of the Dark Powers seemed unassailable.

  The witch hunter saw Ehrhardt’s huge figure filling the hallway. Beside him stood Tuomas and the old servant Eldred. There was an expectant air about the trio, as though they were waiting for him. As Thulmann approached, Eldred stepped away from his companions.

  ‘A messenger from the baron left this in my care not five minutes ago,’ Eldred announced. ‘It is for the captain of witch hunters.’ A conspiratorial smile spread on the old man’s wrinkled features. ‘Since Captain Meisser is unwell, I thought it would be prudent if I were to impart it to yourself.’

  Thulmann took the scroll Eldred offered him. He broke its wax seal and slipped the ribbon that held the scroll from the document. His eyes raced over the precise, practised lettering that filled the page, outrage mounting within him as every word imprinted itself upon his mind.

  ‘Brother Mathias?’ Tuomas spoke, worried by his obvious distemper. The templar looked up, crumpling the scroll in his fist.

  ‘It is an invitation from Baron von Gotz,’ Thulmann declared. ‘Herr Captain Meisser has been invited to a feast the baron is holding in his castle. Indeed, he has declared a city-wide celebration.’

  ‘Celebrating what?’ Ehrhardt dourly rumbled.

  ‘The execution of Lord High Justice Markoff,’ Thulmann spat, as though the words were poison. ‘The baron names Markoff a traitor here, and says that he will not forget Meisser’s noble and heroic action at the keep when he appoints a new Lord High Justice.’ Thulmann slammed his fist against the wall, cracking the plaster with his fury.

  ‘He can’t do that.’ protested Tuomas.

  ‘He has the authority to do whatever he wants.’ Thulmann scowled, then paused as a thought occurred. Silja had said her father was convinced that the baron was mad. If this could be proven, if someone was bold enough to level such charges against him in public, and had the power to enforce the baron’s removal…

  ‘Brother Tuomas,’ Thulmann said, pointing a finger at the older witch hunter. ‘Rouse Captain Meisser. Inform him that he has an engagement this evening and that he will be taking a number of guests with him.’ Tuomas’s brow knitted with puzzlement until he realised what Thulmann intended. The old witch hunter hurried to follow his orders.

  ‘Whatever scheme is hatching in that crooked brain of yours,’ Ehrhardt growled, ‘make room in them for a Black Guardsman. The baron consigned all those poor wretches to the flames without allowing them the final grace of Morr. I would hear him answer for such sacrilege.’

  Thulmann smiled and gripped Ehrhardt’s hand. ‘I am coming to believe that there isn’t anyone the Black Guard of Morr doesn’t have a grievance with.’

  ‘Does the Order of Sigmar begrudge sharing its heretics with the templars of Morr?’ Ehrhardt retorted.

  The smile faded from Thulmann’s face. There was one other person he would need to inform of Baron von Gotz’s message.

  Of all the trials he
had endured in Wurtbad, telling Silja Markoff that her father had been executed as a traitor was going to be the hardest.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Awareness began to fight its way through the red mist that filled Gregor’s mind. He looked at his surroundings, the subterranean laboratory of the plague doktor, Freiherr Weichs, seeing it clearly for the first time. The cavern was a shambles, fires burned unchecked where chemicals and volatile compounds had been scattered during the fray. Broken glass and splintered wood lay strewn all about.

  Scattered amidst the debris were twisted, inhuman bodies, the corpses of Weichs’s malformed human assistants, the hideous forms of his skaven patrons. Blood, black and foul, stained the earthen floor. Gregor felt an intense loathing turn his stomach, as he realised that it was on such filth that he had gorged himself. That it was upon such vermin that the hunger raging within him had satiated its thirst. If he had believed he could fight Sibbechai’s curse, if he had thought he could remain a man, he knew better now. He recalled the cold, evil gaze of the vampire, and the life that he had been cheated of. Miranda, with her soft tresses and passionate kisses, his ancestral home with its ancient setting and noble history. He thought of his father and his brother, both slain by the vampire. Sibbechai would suffer for what it had done. Nothing would stop him from having his revenge.

  Gregor abased himself upon the charnel house floor of the cavern, begging for Sigmar to hear his plea. To grant him the determination to pursue his revenge. To do what had to be done in order to redeem his soul from the darkness. As he opened his eyes again, he saw a shaft of splintered wood torn from one of the tables during the battle. He grabbed it with an almost tender embrace, holding it as though the crude spear were some holy relic.