02 - Taint of Evil

by Neil McIntosh - (ebook by Undead)

  There was another hour’s journey beyond the walls before the wagons rolled to a stop, and the prisoners were ordered down into the pale morning light. The land around them was desolate and barren, hemmed in by bare grey hills stretching up towards a leaden sky. Some way in the distance, deep within the cradle of those hills, lay Sigmarsgeist. Stefan looked upon it, and saw it no longer as a jewel, but as a canker. A canker, steadily, remorselessly spreading.

  Nearly fifty men in all were gathered by the wagons, shivering in the early dawn. Many of them flung back their heads to the open sky, drinking in the light as though it were for the last time. The guards allowed a moment’s respite, then marched the men towards a yawning fissure, a cleft carved in the rock like an entrance to a gigantic cave. In single file, and still shackled one to another, the men walked down a steep slope towards the entrance to the mine. With each step the air around them grew ever more stale and foetid. The dark mouth of the mine disgorged a steady flow of men, caked in filth, some hauling laden barrows and wagons, others with sacks loaded upon their backs.

  Stefan gazed into their bruised and broken faces, and saw nothing but a vacant numbness written there. They were the lucky ones, Stefan supposed, men who were still able to walk from the mines on their own two feet. Piles of bodies lay stacked like so much ballast either side of the gravel path, awaiting disposal. The stench of death mixed with the odours of sweat and grime pouring off the exhausted souls trudging out of the mine.

  All we are, Stefan realised, is more fuel for the furnace. Sticks of human tinder to feed the flames of Sigmarsgeist. His life was worth precisely the sum of the labour that could be wrung from it. No more and no less.

  He was pulled back from his thoughts by someone—or something—barging into him from behind. He turned about and found himself staring into the face of a tall Norscan, a scar running the length of one cheek. The Norscan stared at Stefan, a murderous expression on his face.

  “Erengrad,” the man said. “You were there. We don’t forget.”

  “Neither do I,” Stefan replied. “I won’t forget Erengrad, or you and your kind, for as long as I live.”

  “Which won’t be for long,” the other countered. Stefan braced himself, ready to fight there and then if necessary. But he wasn’t to have the chance. Two guards standing close by had seen the altercation between Stefan and the Norscan. Now they weighed in energetically, lashing out with their staffs, and pulled the two men apart.

  “Save it for later,” the guard snarled. “First we want some work out of you.”

  The Norscan backed off, but shot a look towards Stefan that clearly signalled his intent. A look that said, this is not over.

  The guard at the head of the column of prisoners shouted for silence.

  “Behold the Mines of Sigmar,” he announced to the waiting men. “Behold them, and despair. For those of you who work hard—” he looked around at the prisoners, and laughed. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll find some food and rest as your reward at the end of the day.” The guard looked down the line, scanning the faces. “For those who don’t, take a good look about as you climb down the shaft.” He looked down, and spat upon the ground. “Because they’ll be your tomb.”

  The guards standing to either side of the column of men cracked down upon their whips, and slowly, with something approaching dread, the line moved forward into the darkness.

  “Gods spare us,” Bruno muttered. “The Gates of Morr themselves couldn’t be a crueller place.”

  “Courage, my friend,” Stefan replied tersely. “The worst of this still lies ahead.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Mines of Sigmarsgeist

  Kyros, the dark lord of Chaos, looked out upon the world through the eyes of Alexei Zucharov. Through those eyes he examined the citadel men had named after Sigmar, that old and obdurate enemy of the dark powers. In times past Kyros would have taken no comfort from that cursed name, but what he saw now gratified him beyond all measure. The forces of change, servants of his master, the dread god Tzeentch, had been loosed upon the citadel, irreversible and, ultimately, irresistible.

  He gazed through eyes the colour of storm-beaten seas as Zucharov was led, his limbs still weighed down with chains, through the courtyards and corridors of the palace. He looked out upon the streets, across the face of the citadel. The Chaos Lord could sense what was—as yet—still invisible to the mortal eye.

  The tide of anarchy, barely contained within the physical bounds of the citadel. Sigmarsgeist was growing too fast; it was close to tearing itself apart. The men who had built this folly had released a force which they barely comprehended. Soon, surely, the walls would crumble and blood would wash through this dry place. Sigmarsgeist would fall, and another piece of the puzzle would have been completed, another step taken upon the road towards the inevitable victory.

  But the citadel of Sigmarsgeist was only a token, a gilding gift for his master to add to the greater prize. Kyros was concerned with what lay somewhere, far below the folly of timber and stone, a place possessed of powers that the rulers of the citadel could only dream of. Powers that would render his glorious master all but omnipotent. Kyros had vowed to claim the waters of Tal Dur for the glory of almighty Tzeentch, and Alexei Zucharov was going to lead him there.

  Zucharov was strong, his will had proved stubborn and obdurate. Even now, weeks after the amulet had infected his veins with the elixir of Chaos, Zucharov still struggled to hold on to his former self—a man possessed of his own, indomitable will. Kyros would subdue that will, remould and recast Zucharov’s spirit until his single remaining purpose on this earth was to serve Kyros, his eternal lord and master.

  Through Zucharov’s eyes, Kyros followed Anaise von Augen as she strode several paces ahead of the man she considered her prisoner. Surrounded by her retinue, she exuded a calm authority that Kyros admired and mocked in equal measure. She did not yet understand that the strongest shackles were those the eye cannot see.

  The Chaos Lord studied her movements. She was so proud, so confident, possessed of absolute certainty and an iron resolve. Kyros would probe that certainty until he had found each and every weakness, uncovered the keys that unlocked the gateways to her soul, then he would put her resolve to the test, bear down upon it and not desist until it had been utterly, irrevocably broken.

  But first came Tal Dur. Between them, Zucharov and the Guide would lead Kyros to the source, each of them drawn to its light by yearnings too powerful to ignore. Like moths to the fatal flame, they would lead Kyros there. And when Tal Dur had been delivered, the followers of Tzeentch would have need of no one, nor would anyone be able to stand in their way.

  First, the light had faded until all that remained was the residual glow of the tallow lamps set at intervals along the length of the mineshafts. Then the air had begun to grow so stale and scarce that Stefan had begun to wonder if there could possibly be enough to sustain so many men. And this was not to be a brief stay below ground. The ordeal had begun with the descent into the underworld. The prisoners had descended a series of shafts linked by narrow, interconnecting corridors carved out of the rock. Each successive shaft took them deeper, plunging them further into the belly of the earth. Some had the luxury of a few crude steps, like a ladder cut into the sides of the shaft. Others offered nothing but a rope dropping down into the darkness. Either way, they were a single slip from their deaths. Stefan cast a wary eye about for the two Norscans from the wagons, but there was no sign of either man. In any case, Stefan reckoned, there were more pressing matters of life and death to occupy all of them for the time being.

  He and Bruno joined the line of men descending down angled ladders into the gloom. For a while, on the surface, conversation amongst the prisoners had been animated, despite the attentions of the guards. Now, an almost eerie silence fell upon the men. One by one they disappeared into the dark void of the mine, interspersed between the guards. No one spoke. Each man was left alone with his own imaginings of what might lie ah
ead.

  For what seemed an eternity, the descent continued, men clambering down into the suffocating darkness, whilst the newly-mined ore was hauled relentlessly up through the shafts towards the surface. Stefan counted at least a dozen heavy rope nets filled to the brim with rough hewn stone, passing above his head on the way back up the mine. He tried to keep some measure of how far below the surface they had travelled, but after the fifth shaft had given way to a sixth, he gave up. It was far enough, further below the face of the world than he had ever ventured before.

  He had expected it to be cold below ground, but it was not. A thick, sticky heat had been apparent from the moment he reached the bottom of the first shaft, and with each successive descent it grew worse. Long before he had reached the bottom of the climb, Stefan was drenched in sweat.

  For a while the darkness was near total, the men finding their way by touch alone. But as Stefan neared the bottom of what he. counted as the seventh shaft he saw a faint glow of light beneath him, and heard the sounds of iron beating upon stone. At long last they reached the face of the mine itself, and joined a queue of prisoners shuffling slowly forward along a cramped, narrow gallery. Up ahead the space opened out, temporarily at least, and there was enough room to walk two abreast, and more or less upright. At one end of the gallery, guards were handing out a supply of tools, spades and pick-axes.

  Bruno came alongside Stefan. “One of those could be turned to a useful weapon,” he commented, quietly. “Maybe we have a chance of getting out of here.”

  They came level with the guards, and Stefan reached out to take one of the picks. The guard issuing the tools gave him a knowing look and pulled the tool from out of his grasp.

  “Not you, friend,” the guard smirked, unpleasantly, then raised his eyes. “Orders from up above. You don’t get one of these, not today, at any rate.” He moved the line along and then gave the pick to a prisoner further down the queue.

  “How do you expect us to work then?” Bruno demanded. “With our bare hands?”

  “You learn fast,” the guard replied, sarcastically. “With your bare hands. The ones with the picks hew the ore, the rest of you gather it up. With your bare hands.”

  Stefan counted the guards he could see. There were four of them positioned around the space where the prisoners were collecting their tools. There was a chance that they could overpower them. But only a slim chance. And once they were free, they still had to find their way out of the mines. The only way that Stefan knew to do that was through the long climb back to the surface, back the way they had come.

  “Even if we could get our hands on a pick we’d be lucky to make it,” he told Bruno, shaking his head. “Once we started to climb out of here they’d have us caught like rats.”

  “Then our best hope rests with Rilke,” Bruno said. “Which hardly brings me comfort.”

  “Nor me,” Stefan agreed. “But at the moment that may be all we have.”

  “What are we digging for anyway?” he demanded of the guard. “If I’m going to break my back in the service of Sigmarsgeist I’d like to know why.”

  “Metal ore,” the guard replied. “To be forged into steel in the furnaces above.”

  “How much are you expecting us to dig out?” Bruno asked.

  “You’ll dig till you drop,” the guard told him. “And then some. Here,” he thrust a sack into Bruno’s hands. “Get a move on.”

  The line pushed forward, marched briskly on into a linking galley on the other side. The heat, and the reek of the bodies pressed in all around him, was overpowering. The guards were herding the prisoners through as quickly as possible, but progress along the galley was still slow. The floor of the mine was slick and wet, treacherous underfoot, and the threat of a roof-fall looked ever present. Despite the order to stay silent, sporadic conversations broke out once more, as prisoners planned hopeless escapes, or offered prayers for their gods to intervene on their behalf. A voice spoke, somewhere right behind Stefan.

  “You can believe them about the ore if you want,” the voice muttered. “I reckon there’s more to it than that.”

  Stefan turned in the confined space of the passage, and glanced over his shoulder. In the flickering half-light cast by the tallow lamps he could just make out the features of the man standing a few paces to the rear of him. He remembered that sallow, knowing face. It was the man he had spoken briefly with whilst they were waiting to be sent to work on the walls. He looked pale and ill, but for all that still exuded a stubborn air of survival, a refusal to give in.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” he reminded Stefan. “They owe me. It’s a misunderstanding.”

  “You said as much yesterday,” Stefan responded. “And something about how you came to be here.”

  The sallow man grinned, but there was bitterness in his smile.

  “The tattooed one,” he said. “Damn him to Morr. A blessing that turned out to be a curse, he was.”

  “He’s lost his mind,” Bruno observed, not without some sympathy for the man.

  “I’m not so sure,” Stefan replied. He wanted to hear more of the man’s story, but he was too late. The prisoners were being separated out into two work parties. Stefan, Bruno and about a dozen other prisoners were taken down a passage to their right, their new companion taken off in the opposite direction. Stefan caught a brief glance of the flaxen-haired Norscans, towards the tail end of the second work-gang. The bigger of the two men turned, as if sensing Stefan’s eyes upon him. He smiled at Stefan, his face registering neither warmth nor humour. Stefan met his gaze for an instant, then, as the guard’s whip cracked down, he turned away, following Bruno and the others toward the seam. One less problem to contend with, for the moment at least.

  The guards forced the pace as far as they could, but, bent almost double in the half light of the subterranean tunnel, progress was still barely more than a crawl. After about ten minutes the passage opened wide enough for the men to stand upright. Here more guards waited for them and extra lanterns had been set, but there was still barely enough light to work by The far wall of the chamber had been hollowed out from digging, and hewn stone lay stacked in great piles to either side. One of the guards indicated Stefan and Bruno and several others, the fittest and strongest amongst the gang.

  “Don’t stand there staring,” he barked. “This is what you’re here for. Those that have picks, use them. Those that don’t, use the tools Sigmar gave you. I want at least six sack-loads of ore out of every man today. You others can start carting the loads back to the head of the mine.”

  Stefan waited whilst the man ahead of him struck at the rock-face with his pick. The first strike jarred against the solid rock, and made hardly any impact at all. The second dislodged a fist-sized fragment of stone, and the third another piece of about the same size. Stefan and the others moved in, and started to pull out the fragments loosened by the work of the pick. The interior of the mine was already roasting; a hot, stinking pit starved of both light and air. It was going to be slow, exhausting work.

  But Stefan’s sallow-faced friend might have been wrong about the purpose of the mine. There was certainly ore here, about half the stone quarried out was flecked with a silver metal that shone with a dull lustre in the light of the lanterns. But, for all that, it looked like a poor return. Mining enough ore to fill even half a dozen sacks would take an eternity.

  They worked for perhaps an hour under the unwavering gaze of the guards. A good part of the stone quarried out was useless, and at the end of that time Stefan had managed to fill barely half a sack. At some point the guards must have decided that the seam had nothing left to offer. New instructions were issued, the gangs were reassigned a second time, and Stefan and Bruno found themselves separated.

  Stefan and five others were led away, deeper into the mine, to where—he assumed—the ore-seam might be thicker. The men squeezed through another tunnel barely big enough to accommodate their bodies, and emerged into a lower chamber that was smaller and darker than the f
irst. By now Stefan’s body was drenched in sweat, and his throat parched dry. A flask of water was produced and thrust into his hand, and Stefan drank, gratefully.

  It was now so dark that Stefan could barely make out who else was in the chamber with him, or how many. He stumbled, momentarily losing his footing on the slippery granite floor. When he grabbed out to steady himself, a shower of loose rock and stone fell down around him, peppering his face and shoulders. It wouldn’t take much for the whole mine to collapse in on itself, and a man could easily end up buried alive.

  Stefan looked around, his eyes still battling the gloom, trying to orientate himself. The voices that had been around him a moment ago had dropped away. He had the sudden, disorientating sense of being alone inside the dark cavern of the mine chamber. Then, out of the silence, a voice quiet but clear called out, “Over here.”

  Stefan’s first thought was that it was Rilke. He didn’t recognise the voice, but it had been in his mind ever since they had entered the mine that Rilke had promised to find them and help them escape. Perhaps this was part of that plan. He couldn’t be sure either way, but took a step forward all the same. Somewhere in the space in front of him, someone moved, emerging out of the shadows. He still couldn’t make out the figure ahead of him, and he certainly hadn’t seen the second, closing in behind.

  And he didn’t see the knife coming at him until it was all but too late.

  Anaise looked upon Zucharov, fixing him with an unblinking stare.

  “Don’t delude yourself,” she told him. “Your surroundings may have changed, but you are still a prisoner.” She paused, reflecting on her words. “You are still my prisoner.”

  Alexei Zucharov returned her stare with his own cold, unblinking gaze. Through him Kyros looked upon the Guide, appraising her with a disdain that he would never confuse with pity. How haughty she was, how proud. How greatly he would enjoy the mighty fall of Anaise von Augen, once her work was done and her purpose spent. But to do that he must win her trust. Kyros would see her drink from the bottomless cup of Chaos, drink with a thirst that could never be extinguished, then they would see who was the prisoner, and who the guardian of the keys.