Blighted Empire

by C. L. Werner

  These were the same men who had told him he would be crippled, Kreyssig reflected. He flexed his arm, feeling the powerful muscles ripple beneath his doublet. Ignorant charlatans! Fortunately he had found a better way to heal his wounds. If the Black Plague should try to take him, he would know how to beat it back.

  Kreyssig stopped in the street, alarmed by the turn his thoughts had taken. All of his life he had learned never to rely on anyone. The beneficence of a master, the loyalty of a friend, the fidelity of a servant, none of these could be trusted. Yet he was becoming dependent on the magic of a witch, an ambitious noblewoman at that. He was too clever to be taken in by her intrigues, or deceived by her amorous attentions. She was using him, exploiting him to get closer to the Imperial throne. Even knowing this, however, he couldn’t escape the fascination she held over him. At times he felt like a fly caught in a spider’s web, every effort to escape only drawing the trap tighter about him.

  He cast a wary glance at the street around him. At this hour, the lane was nearly deserted. The days of early-morning productivity were long past, casualties of a rumour that held the plague was most active during the threshold hours of twilight and dawn, those moments midway between night and day. Only the harshest stewards were able to rouse their households at such times and even then to little effect. Those shops that still had wares to peddle wouldn’t be open until well past the dangerous time.

  What companions Kreyssig had as he ventured through the streets were those too dejected or desperate to cling to shelter. Beggars rummaging in the gutters, muck-rakers shovelling night-dirt, rat-catchers clearing out their traps before hungry cats or even hungrier peasants did the job for them. By rights, such rabble should be restricted from the districts of the rich and powerful, kept to their shanties and hovels beyond the walls and across the river. But, like so much since the plague had struck, the diligence of the Altdorf city guard, the Schuetzenverein, had diminished. The Schueters were suffering the same shortages as the rest of the city, losing men to plague, murder and outright desertion. Most of their best had been drawn away by conscription into the army Duke Vidor had used to chase the traitor Boeckenfoerde, the confused horde Altdorfers alternately called the ‘replacement army’ or ‘Vidor’s Graues Haufen’. What was left were the old, the young and a thuggish rabble too undisciplined for soldiering. Given the choice between beggars and patrols of the Schueters, most of the nobles had brains enough to risk catching disease from a tramp over a knife from a guard.

  Even in such lowly company, Kreyssig was careful. The shabby cloak he wore enveloped him from head to foot, making him seem just another peasant scavenging in the streets. No armed escort, no panoply of attendants, nothing that would make anyone suspect that the Protector of the Empire was abroad. A few Kaiserjaeger in the nearby streets watching for spies was the only entourage he needed. The best defence, he had always felt, was to be inconspicuous.

  With a last look around, Kreyssig shifted direction, darting into the cramped alleyway between two houses. He had passed this spot several times already in his circuitous ramble through the neighbourhood, allowing his Kaiserjaeger ample opportunity to catch any tails he had acquired. Now he would delay no longer.

  Reaching an iron-banded door set into the wall bordering the alley, Kreyssig fished a key from his pocket. The portal groaned as he opened it and slipped into the shadowy environs of a small wood room. Piles of logs, heaps of kindling littered the floor – and something more that came to his attention only as he locked the door and started to walk towards the opposite entrance. It was a curious object to find, a single leather shoe sitting in the middle of the room. It was enough for Kreyssig to puzzle over, but not enough to alarm him.

  In the kitchen beyond the wood room, Kreyssig found the other shoe. It was still attached to the foot of a liveried servant, the steward of Baroness von den Linden’s household. The man was lying sprawled before the brick oven, his head mashed into a red paste. From the way the rug he was sprawled upon was curled, it looked as though the man had been struck down in the wood room and dragged here.

  Kreyssig’s fist closed about the dagger he wore beneath his cloak, dragging the blade from its sheath. He spun around, intending to retreat back through the wood room, but even as he started to move, the route was cut off. The door of the pantry exploded outwards, disgorging a trio of tatterdemalion figures with drawn, starveling faces and a vicious gleam in their eyes. Each of the men held a cudgel in his hand.

  The men from the pantry blocked the entrance to the wood room. As Kreyssig turned towards the other doorways leading out from the kitchen, he found more antagonists rushing towards him. Some were less ragged than the three from the pantry, some weren’t quite so haggard and sickly in condition, but there was the same rage smouldering in each eye.

  The mob descended upon Kreyssig in a mass. The first to reach him howled as his dagger slashed out, a forearm cut to the bone. A second foeman pitched to the floor, clutching at a stabbed belly. Then they were on him, smashing him down with wooden clubs and the iron hilts of knives.

  ‘Don’t kill him!’ a commanding voice boomed. From beneath the confusion of kicking boots and flailing clubs, Kreyssig saw a hulking shape in a black cloak descend the half a dozen steps between dining hall and kitchen. ‘This creature must burn with the witch!’

  The witch-taker’s words brought fresh savagery to the mob. Brutally, they dragged Kreyssig to his feet, ripping away the concealing cloak in the process. One of the rabble, his tones more cultured than the rest, gasped in horror as he recognised the face of their captive.

  ‘Commander Kreyssig!’ the man wailed, drawing back in fear. His fright spread to the rest of the mob, who relented in their violence, cringing away from their terrible foe.

  It needed but a moment more and the mob should have fractured and fled. But that moment was denied Kreyssig. From the doorway, Auernheimer berated his followers for their fear. ‘Seize this spawn of Chaos!’ he roared. ‘Do you fear a man more than you fear the gods?’

  Kreyssig tried to break away as Auernheimer’s oratory poured courage back into his mob. He was too slow. With an angry growl, the rabble was on him again, catching him and pinning his arms behind his back.

  ‘This is treason!’ Kreyssig raged. ‘Your heads will rot on the palace walls for this!’

  Auernheimer sneered from the shadows of his hood. ‘What matter a man’s head when his soul belongs to the gods?’ He pointed at his prisoner. ‘Solkan has guided us here, set us to where we might fight the canker that rots the Empire. You, the so-called Protector! You, the pawn of daemons and witches! The corruption that makes the gods turn their faces! The wickedness that would damn us all to plague and famine!’

  The witch-taker swept his hand, waving the mob into the dining hall. ‘Bring this heretic,’ he snarled. ‘Solkan has given us the honour of purging this blight from our Empire. This creature burns with his mistress!’

  Struggling against his captors, Kreyssig was dragged up from the kitchen and marched across the dining hall. The great table that had once dominated the room was gone, smashed into kindling and piled along with other pieces of furniture at the centre of the room. The bodies of several servants lay draped about the base of the pile. More servants, bound and gagged, lay higher up on the heap. At the very top, her body fairly smothered in rope and chain, her mouth banded about with choking straps of leather, Baroness von den Linden fixed a despairing gaze upon Kreyssig.

  ‘There is purity in fire!’ Auernheimer declaimed as the mob began to tie Kreyssig’s arms behind him and lash his legs together. ‘By fire did Great Solkan cleanse the fog-devils from Westerland, by fire were the heathen Kurgan driven into the Wastes!’ The witch-taker brandished a steel mace adorned with razor-edged flanges. ‘By fire will we purge this place.’ He glared into Kreyssig’s eyes. ‘The flames will consume your evil, your pain will cry out to Great Solkan and draw His eye upon our suffering!
He will know the justice of our cause when we deliver to him the souls of an arch-traitor and his witch!’

  Thrashing against the rough hands that bore him, Kreyssig was carried over to the pyre, dumped with all the ceremony of a sack of rubbish next to the trussed figure of the baroness. Auernheimer gestured with his flanged mace again, motioning several of his mob towards the fire blazing away in the hearth. The witch-taker’s eyes reflected the flames, shining with the chilling fanaticism of the true zealot. He cocked his head to one side, his brow knitting as a sudden thought occurred to him. Swinging his mace around, he waved a few of his peasant followers back into the kitchen. ‘Remove the last of the witch’s minions,’ he commanded. ‘All must be consumed in the holy flame.’

  Kreyssig watched the men shuffle away, dread pounding in his heart. Once they recovered the body, added it to the base of the pile, the witch-taker would order the pyre put to the torch. He rolled his eyes, managing to meet the panicked gaze of the baroness. For all her vaunted mastery of charms and enchantments, her magic hadn’t preserved her against her enemies. She was trussed like a Sigmarsfest goose and just as helpless. There was no help to be had from that quarter, and he cursed himself for thinking there could be. His relations with the witch were the root of his destruction, not the source of deliverance. He had come here in secret, even his Kaiserjaeger didn’t know his destination. There was no prospect of rescue, no one to deliver him.

  Only a miracle would prevent the Protector of the Empire from the mob justice of the rabble.

  Sometimes, however, miracles did manifest. It was a dark miracle that delivered Adolf Kreyssig from his doom.

  Soon after the peasants Auernheimer had sent to retrieve the steward withdrew into the kitchen, there arose chilling screams. The men tried to flee up the steps and back into the dining hall, but not one of them managed the attempt. They were struck down from behind, pierced by jagged spears and slashed by rusted swords. The mangled peasants pitched and fell, their shrieking bodies dragged back into the darkness of the kitchen.

  A moment of horrified silence followed, a silence that was broken by an explosion of inhuman chitters and growls. From the blackness, a grotesque swarm of verminous shapes flooded into the dining hall. The muck of sewer and cellar clung to the ragged strips of cloth they wore and the mangy brown fur that covered their lean, hungry bodies. Their hand-like paws clutched a motley confusion of swords and axes, spears and knives. Long scaly tails whipped behind them as they charged, and froth bubbled from the fangs of their rat-like heads.

  The mob stood stricken with a paralysis of superstitious terror as the bestial swarm descended upon them. Only Auernheimer was unfazed, unperturbed in his stalwart zealotry. Swinging his mace overhead, snatching a brand from the nearest of his followers, the witch-taker roared his defiance of the monstrous horde. ‘Daemons of the witch! Rejoice, brethren, in this test of our sacred conviction!’ He added deeds to words, bringing his mace smashing down into the snout of the first ratman to draw near him. The monster squeaked in agony, collapsing in a shivering mess at his feet.

  The witch-taker’s rabble rallied, charging at the oncoming monsters, meeting them at the middle of the hall. Swords clashed, knives slashed and screams human and inhuman echoed through the house. Some of the combatants broke away, fleeing down passages, hotly pursued by vengeful foes. In the space of only a few heartbeats, a dozen bodies littered the floor.

  Auernheimer seared the eyes of another ratman, blinding it before bashing its skull with his mace. The witch-taker looked beyond his collapsing foe, watching with grim fatalism as more of the monstrous vermin swarmed up from the kitchen. ‘Ernst! Andreas!’ he shouted. ‘Light the pyre! These daemons shall not save their mistress!’

  The peasants Auernheimer called out to broke away from their enemies. Alone among his rabble, these two had been soldiers, Dienstleute that had survived the massacre of Engel’s Bread Marchers. They had the skill at arms and the martial discipline to carry out the witch-taker’s command. What they didn’t have was the opportunity.

  Ernst and Andreas snatched glowing brands from the hearth, but as the men rushed towards the pyre, their destruction climbed the kitchen steps. A tall, wizened ratman dressed in black robes, its visage a confusion of scars and metal, tubes and wires dangling from its face and jaw. The monster’s eyes were enormous rubies that bulged from its sockets. The fangs in its mouth were metal, and blue sparks crackled from them as the strange creature snarled at its minions.

  The robed ratman raised one of its withered paws, displaying a brilliant green jewel embedded in its palm. The creature pointed the jewel in the direction of Ernst and Andreas. More sparks crackled about its fangs as it squeaked an incantation.

  A bolt of coruscating energy burst from the ratman’s jewel, searing a path through the hall. Vermin and human alike were caught in the path of that beam, burning fur, charring skin and boiling blood. The robed ratman cared not for these incidental casualties, and upon Ernst and Andreas it directed the full malignity of its magic.

  The two Dienstleute weren’t burned, weren’t charred or singed. Their bodies seemed to simply evaporate within that beam of unholy power. In that searing flash, their chests turned to vapour, leaving the extremities to crash to the floor. The brands they carried fell from dead fingers to smoulder on the bloody rugs.

  The obscene sorcery shattered the fragile courage of Auernheimer’s mob, their zealotry unequal to this display of magic. The ratmen fell upon the terrified peasants, dragging them down and butchering them where they fell.

  Only the witch-taker himself maintained some measure of composure. Smashing down three ratmen as they lunged at him, Auernheimer turned and threw himself straight into the stained-glass window that fronted the hall and offered a prospect of the street outside. The fanatic’s plunge brought him through the window in a shower of shattered glass and fractured lead. For an instant, he lay crumpled in the street, but then he was on his feet and fleeing down the lane.

  Some of the ratmen rushed to the broken window, eager to cut down their wounded prey, but a sharp bark from their robed leader brought them slinking away from the window.

  Kreyssig could only marvel at this incredible escape. He had berated these mutants for keeping tabs on him, but now he was almost prepared to forgive them their audacity. Almost, for his relief was mitigated by a new, fearful appreciation for the abilities of his verminous agents. The display of magic executed by their leader was more intimidating than anything he had seen from Baroness von den Linden or even old Fleischauer, the Emperor’s pet warlock.

  Some of the mutants began to turn away from their butchery of the zealots. With hungry squeaks, they approached the pyre, dragging away the bodies of dead servants. One of the ratmen scrambled nimbly up the pile and crouched over Kreyssig. Deftly, the creature brought its knife slashing across the ropes binding him.

  ‘Kreyssig-man free-safe!’ the vermin squeaked, its muzzle flecked with blood from some peasant it had killed.

  Painfully, Kreyssig reached one of his numbed arms to his mouth and removed the gag. In his joy at being rescued, he was almost prepared to feel gratitude to these ghastly mutants. They had proven themselves far more capable than he had imagined.

  Then, he noticed that the ratmen weren’t freeing any of the servants. The creatures were leaving them bound as they carried them down from the pyre. Even Kreyssig’s calloused heart was moved to pity when he beheld the raw horror in their eyes as the ratmen bore them off into the darkness of the kitchen. The partially devoured bodies of Auernheimer’s men left little doubt as to their eventual fate.

  ‘Those people are not my enemies,’ Kreyssig told his rescuer, pointing at the bound servants.

  The ratman’s ears wiggled and its body shivered with an amused chitter. ‘See-know much-much,’ the creature explained with a wave of its paw. ‘Never say-tell what they see-know!’

  Kreyssig spun around
as more of the ratmen swarmed up towards him, his heart going cold as he considered that they might bear him away to their lair along with the doomed servants. Instead, the creatures reached out with their paws for Baroness von den Linden.

  Kreyssig saw the witch’s eyes go wide with raw terror, compelling him to action. Heedless of their numbers, he dived at the ratmen, pushing them away. The mutants leapt back, their tails lashing and their fangs bared.

  ‘You will not have her!’ he shouted at the vermin, the leg of a broken chair clenched in his fist.

  The ratmen glared back at him, their whiskers twitching, fangs glistening. The ratman who had cut his bonds circled him, waiting until it was behind him before pouncing. Kreyssig felt the rusty edge of the knife press against his throat.

  The ratmen surged upwards once more, closing about the helpless baroness. One of them, a crook-backed thing with sores across its muzzle, leaned over her, snuffling loudly as it nuzzled her body with its nose. A moment of this loathsome action and the ratman reared back, chittering in a bestial approximation of laughter. It squeaked something in what might have been a language of sorts, bringing similar snickers from the rest of the verminous throng.

  ‘This is your breeder?’ the mutant holding a knife to him asked. Kreyssig was struck by the calm directness of the question, devoid of the fawning excitement with which the creatures usually treated him. He wondered how much of their ignorant subservience was merely pretext.