02 - Taint of Evil

by Neil McIntosh - (ebook by Undead)

  “Sewers, probably,” Bruno had offered, speculating about their use. “But bone dry now.”

  Lothar Koenig didn’t care what they had once been, so long as they could now lead him back towards sunlight, clean air and freedom. Again, it had been exactly as Rilke had described it. The tunnels splayed off at different angles and in various directions, some boring deeper into the ground, but others following a gentle incline towards the surface. Lothar could swear he could see daylight, or at the very least, smell it. His sense of direction was unerring he was confident he could find a way back to the surface in a matter of hours. It came as a shock to him when Stefan told him he had no intention of going that way.

  “We’re heading back into the citadel,” Stefan repeated. “We’re going to try to find a path through the ruins of the old city that will lead us back into the heart of Sigmarsgeist.”

  “Right under its belly,” Bruno added.

  Lothar spread his arms as wide as the narrow passageway would allow. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because we have friends there,” Stefan told him, “and enemies. And unfinished business that concerns both. We’re going back.”

  “You’re an excellent scout, you told us as much yourself,” Bruno continued. “You could lead us there.”

  “Or I could not!” Lothar laughed. “I could leave you here to wander around lost in the darkness until you died of starvation. And more fool you for not getting out of this Morr-forsaken hole whilst you still had the chance. Look,” he said, “your friend Rilke was telling the truth. I reckon I can use these old tunnels to find our way out. Three or four hours, five at most and you can be breathing fresh air and soaking up the sunlight. Think about it.”

  Stefan thought about it. He had no particular wish to stay with Lothar Koenig, and if the bounty hunter wanted to get out now, he wasn’t going to stop him. But finding their way back towards the city through the maze of derelict tunnels underground wasn’t going to be easy by any means. Stefan knew they were going to need all the help they could get.

  “Listen,” he said at last. “If you want to go on alone, then go. But what will be waiting for you, up there?”

  “The rest of my life, hopefully.”

  “I thought you said you were still owed something,” Stefan continued. “Walk away now and you’ll have nothing. Come with us, and—who knows? We don’t intend to come out of this empty handed, do we Bruno?”

  “Forget it,” Bruno advised. “He’s a man who doesn’t want to take a risk. Who can blame him?”

  “I’ve known more risks than you’ve had pots of ale,” Lothar countered, bridling at Bruno’s suggestion. “And don’t you forget it.”

  Stefan turned away to survey the path ahead. “Well,” he said. “Do whatever you want. We go this way, back to the citadel.”

  “You’ll never find your way without me.”

  Stefan shrugged. “It seems we don’t have a choice. Ready?” he asked Bruno.

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  “Just a moment.” Lothar called them back. “Just let me think about this. If you’re going to throw away the chance of getting out of here to crawl through some monster-infested sewer, just to get back inside Sigmarsgeist—” he stopped short. “Well, you’re either mad, or there’s something worth going back for.”

  “Fair assessment,” Stefan agreed. “I suppose you’ll never know which.”

  “Wait,” Lothar insisted, catching hold of Bruno. “What are you going to do if you do get back in there? What about your tattooed friend, for example?”

  Stefan stood facing the bounty hunter in the darkness. He knew the answer, but bringing the words to his tongue acknowledged a hard truth.

  “I’m going to have to kill him,” he said at last.

  “Oh yes?” Lothar snorted, incredulously “And I suppose you’re going to bring down the city whilst you’re about it?”

  “That’s the general idea,” Bruno concurred calmly. “There should be plenty of spoils for the likes of you in the process,” he added.

  “So,” Stefan said. “Are you with us, or not?”

  Lothar stared down the length of the tunnel that, not so far ahead, would surely lead to freedom… and hunger… and poverty. He drew down a lungful of air, savouring its smell, savouring the prospect of what might now never be. Then he turned about and walked on ahead of Stefan, taking the tunnel that tracked not north, but due south, back towards the heart of Sigmarsgeist. He was already regretting the decision he was about to make. But he was going to make it, all the same.

  “Best get going,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “After all, we all have to die sometime.”

  Anaise clasped hold of Bea’s face, forcing the girl to look at her. “However much you may wish it not to be true, it is nonetheless,” she insisted. “Your friends have abandoned you.”

  Bea tossed her head angrily, eager to prise herself away from Anaise’s grip. The other woman was as strong as a warrior, but at last she let the healer go.

  “How do you know this?” Bea demanded, haughtily. “Did Stefan and Bruno come and tell you as much themselves?”

  “They had no need to,” Anaise countered, her voice rising. “We have snared their accomplice, Rilke,” she went on, bitterly. “That wretched worm who sat for so long at Konstantin’s side, whispering his lies in my dear brother’s ear, poisoning his heart against all wisdom.” Anaise brought her hand down hard upon the table, scattering crystal glasses upon the floor. “Well,” she said. “He’ll whisper his lies no more. Now he’ll pay a reckoning for all of them.”

  Bea shook her head, incredulous. “Rilke was no friend to Stefan and Bruno,” she said. “They had him marked as their enemy before any other man here in Sigmarsgeist. Why would I believe such a story?”

  “Believe what you want,” Anaise snapped back. “The proof is rotting even now in the cells. As for your friends, they are gone. Already far from here, eager to save their own skins.”

  “Then I am glad,” Bea said. “Glad that they are free. Stefan and Bruno were unjustly accused, and wrongly punished for their deeds. I pray that they find freedom far from this place.”

  Anaise spun round on Bea, and for a moment seemed about to strike her. Then she pulled back. The Guide’s face softened, and her voice took on a gentler tone.

  “Bea,” she remonstrated, gently. “We must not let these things divide us. We are sisters, you and I. Sisters joined by our pledge to bring the healing might of Tal Dur to Sigmarsgeist.”

  Bea would not be placated. “You do not understand me, and you do not understand the forces of Tal Dur. It is not a gift to be tapped, like the water in a barrel. And you cannot use me as your vessel, to channel it here.”

  “Then take me to the place where Tal Dur lies,” Anaise said, eagerly. “Let us travel together, you and I, for as far as it takes. And let us worship together at the source of its divine power.”

  “I cannot do that,” Bea replied, defensively. “Truly, I cannot.”

  “You can!” Anaise insisted. “All you lack is true belief. Surrender yourself to Tal Dur, and it will surely draw you to its heart.”

  “For what purpose?” Bea asked her. “So that the waters may wash away the evil that has taken hold of Sigmarsgeist?”

  This time Anaise did strike out, lashing Bea across the face with the back of her hand. Bea cried out in pain and surprise, but her eyes still held their look of defiance.

  “I mean what I say,” she blurted out. “You only have to look with your own eyes to see what is happening around you. You are becoming that which you claim to oppose.”

  Anaise stepped forward and touched her hand, gently this time, to Bea’s face. “I wish that I had one tenth of your powers, Bea,” she murmured. “For I would heal the hurt I inflicted on you. And I would heal this terrible rift that threatens to come between us. Will you not put it aside? The only evil here is for us to be set against each other.” She stroked Bea’s cheek. “I implore you, Bea, let us be friends o
nce again.”

  Bea shook herself free. “You do not want my friendship,” she retorted. “You only want what you think that friendship can bring you.” She wiped a tear from her face. “If I am to be prisoner here, then I will be a prisoner on my own terms.” She pulled away from Anaise. “Whilst the sick and the weary are put to work in your mines, and upon the walls, then I will tend to them.”

  Anaise made no attempt to stop her leaving. “You are truly a daughter of the goddess,” she avowed. Bea stopped in the doorway, her body shaking with anger and despair. “The Goddess Shallya would surely weep to find me here,” she said.

  Anaise watched her go, a smile still playing upon her lips. “The goddess may weep all she likes,” she murmured, “but, wherever you go, it is Tal Dur that will find you before long.” She lifted a looking-glass to her face, and studied her reflection in its silvered pane. “And, rest assured, I will be there when it does.”

  * * *

  The lantern had finally given out. Now they would have to rely on whatever they could find to burn to give them light to find their way. Fortunately, or so it seemed, there was plenty of fuel to hand.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Bruno said, surveying the mess of broken, desiccated timbers that lay around the floor of the tunnel. “You’d think a great storm had raged through here, destroying everything in its path.” He prised another length of wood free of the debris, and lit it from the remnant of the last. The flame welled up, light filling the interior of the tunnel.

  “Unlikely,” Stefan commented. He breathed in another lungful of the stale, foetid air. “I wouldn’t have thought anything had stirred down here for a generation.”

  A few yards further on they found the first of the bodies, or what was left of them.

  Stefan knelt amongst the soft earth, and turned the remains of the corpse between his hands. Apart from some bleached and pitted bones, and a few strands of rotted cloth, there wasn’t all that much left.

  Bruno whistled softly. “I wonder what got the better of him?” he asked.

  “Time, amongst other things,” Stefan replied. “I’d say he or she has been dead a good few years.”

  “But what were they doing down in a sewer?”

  “The same as us?” Stefan answered. “Trying to get in—or out?”

  “Maybe,” Bruno conceded. But he didn’t sound convinced.

  Further down the tunnel they found more debris of the human kind. A second skeleton, this one more complete than the first. Bruno crouched down and studied the remains in silence for a few moments.

  “It’s odd,” he said, eventually. “Look at the way this one seems to be gripping hold of the sides of the tunnel. Almost as though they were desperately trying to hang on to something when they died.”

  Stefan looked. These were old bones, much like the first skeleton they had found. It seemed unlikely they would give up their secrets now. But Bruno was right. The fleshless hands did indeed seem to be clinging on to the wall of the tunnel, clinging with a desperation which seemed at odds with the lonely stillness of the place now.

  “This doesn’t feel good,” Lothar grumbled, still regretting his earlier decision. “I should have followed my head way back there instead of letting you talk me into this.”

  Stefan clapped his hand upon the bounty hunter’s shoulder. “Don’t give up now,” he urged him. “You’ve done well. You’ll have us back inside the citadel in no time now.”

  “Exactly,” the bounty hunter agreed. “That was what I was worrying about.”

  “I don’t know how you can be so sure,” Bruno observed, warily. “Any direction looks much the same as any other in this Morr-forsaken warren.”

  “It’s the right direction, all right,” Lothar replied, quietly. “I’ve found a safe path halfway across the Ostermark Marches, without so much as a star in the sky to guide me. Don’t worry. We’ll find your citadel all right. I only hope it’s going to be worth my while.”

  “Wait!” Stefan interrupted him. “What was that?”

  “What was what?” Bruno demanded. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  The three men stood, stooped and stock still in the musty interior of the tunnel. At first the only sound was the intermittent crackle of the flames licking at the wooden stave Bruno held in his hand. Then, from somewhere far behind them, came another sound. A sound from deep underground, a groaning and churning as though the very belly of the earth itself were being torn open.

  “I don’t like the sound of that all,” Lothar declared. “What in the name of Taal is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Stefan said. He strained to listen, but all was now quiet once more. “Whatever it was, it’s a long way away,” he concluded. “If it’s headed this way then all the more reason for us to press on.” He turned to look back into the darkness, the way they had come. He saw and heard nothing, but where the air before had been utterly still, he now felt a stirring, a gust so faint as to be almost imperceptible, against his face.

  “Come on,” he said to the others. “Let’s see if we can’t move a little quicker.”

  It had been no harder than taking a toy from a child. Anaise had given Zucharov the key that would unlock the whole city. Now all he had to do was turn it, and Sigmarsgeist would be delivered to his master. Already, the balance of power had shifted decisively. The humbling of Rilke had been of no interest to him, but it had served a clear purpose. In discrediting the commander of the White Guard he had also weakened Konstantin; the Guide was no longer in a position to stand against that will. And his sister’s will, though Anaise did not yet know it, would be the will of Kyros.

  His first task had been to recruit men who would obey his every command, and who were hungry enough to take pleasure in the bloodiest of tasks. Zucharov did not have far to look. The dungeons of Sigmarsgeist were crammed with men and beasts that had passed through the shadow of Chaos on their road to Sigmarsgeist. Many were beyond redemption, and of no use to him. There were savage orcs who would happily tear any living creature apart for sport, but whose mental strength failed to match their physical might. The dull-witted beastmen, neither man nor beast but a clumsy fusion of both, were barely better. And then there were others, creations of darkness that had once been mortal, but were now too far gone down the path of damnation to be of any use.

  But the Norscans, they were different. Many of them had the mark of Chaos upon them, but the darkness surely mixed well with their cold northern blood. The mutants among their number were still recognisable as mortal men, but stronger, fiercer, far more cruel. This was the stock that Zucharov would draw upon to serve as his guard. They would now wear the white of Sigmar, but they would bear his likeness upon their breast only in hollow mockery. They would bow to only one true master, and they would acknowledge only one god—Tzeentch, the Dark Lord of Change.

  Rilke was discredited, and, with his fall Konstantin, his patron, was fatally weakened. In one simple move, a vacuum had been created that Zucharov had been swift to fill. Even then Anaise could have stopped him, even as he freed the blond butchers from the cells and had them don the white uniforms of the disgraced elite guard. Even then she could have intervened, and drawn a line beneath the madness. But she did not, and she did not because she too was part of the madness now.

  Zucharov had given her the thirst for power, and to slake that thirst she was prepared to see all Sigmarsgeist destroyed. With Anaise in the ascendancy and Konstantin rendered impotent, Rilke’s men—the elite guard—were swiftly disarmed, and imprisoned. Rilke himself would be made an example of. Zucharov would see to it that his would be a very public death: a symbol of the new regime that would seize hold of the citadel, and then, stone by stone, break it apart.

  There were other matters that now concerned Zucharov. He tormented himself with the knowledge that his battle with Stefan Kumansky had been cut short, and cut short with him apparently at the mercy of his opponent. Zucharov had already had more than enough of the taste of submission. To taste i
t again in combat, and against a man who was in all senses his inferior, was unthinkable. He must finish what he had begun, and the only acceptable conclusion now would be Stefan’s death.

  Kyros too, had cause to want the swordsman dead. Stefan had already caused trouble enough for Zucharov’s malign master, and it was he who had done most to deny Kyros the prize of Erengrad. But the Dark Lord knew that Stefan Kumansky’s death would be incidental, a small victory within the bigger game. It would count for nothing if his plans for Tal Dur were allowed to unravel. Through Zucharov he watched from afar as Bea fled Anaise’s chambers. Only through the girl would he uncover the source of the waters. So far, he had been content to wait whilst Anaise snared the healer and turned her to their purpose. But it was taking too long; so far the girl had delivered nothing. If persuasion would not prevail, then some other, cruder means would have to be found to exploit Bea’s naive but precious potential.

  Zucharov waited until the girl was well clear before entering the Guide’s chambers. He found Anaise perched upon the edge of a chair, petulant and angry. She barely reacted when Zucharov appeared in the room, but continued drumming her fingers upon the arms of the chair.

  She grows comfortable with looking upon our disciple, Kyros noted. So much the better.

  “Your men have control of the White Guard?” she said, more as a statement than a question.

  Zucharov nodded. “What of your brother?”

  “What of him?”

  “Konstantin is weak. He is the stone that would weigh down our ambition.”