The Corrupted

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  This time, two of the witch hunters drew the arrow, scoring deep grooves with their stones. Only when they were sure the sign would be impossible to miss, did they carry on again.

  After they had gone, the things that were following them paused and studied the sign. They pawed at the scratches, and sniffed at the scent their prey had left. Then they pattered eagerly forwards, hiding their own steps beneath the echo of the witch hunters’ own.

  They had been walking for hours when the lamp finally started to die. Vaught paused as the last of the blue edge of the flame breathed up the last of the oil and then winked out of existence.

  The darkness rushed in, blinding and heavy. For a moment, nobody spoke.

  “The light of Sigmar is greater than any darkness,” Vaught decided, his voice echoing through the void.

  “Quite right,” said Fargo. “Now, everybody take hold of the belt of the man in front.”

  “How will you know that we are going in the right direction?” Peik asked, his voice querulous.

  “Sigmar will show us the way,” Vaught replied, “or he will not. Either way, we are in his hands.”

  “Well, that’s me reassured,” Fargo said, his rolling eyes invisible in the darkness.

  “Good,” Vaught replied, and started to cautiously edge his way forwards.

  Behind them, the gathering predators began to draw closer, their boldness owing as much to their swelling numbers as it did to the vanishing light. Even so, they still hung back. They had hunted trespassers into these endless vaults for long enough to know that time was on their side.

  At first, Peik thought that it might have been the thirst, or the sore feet, or some combination of the two. During the ordeals of his initiation, he had suffered from similar hallucinations.

  Now, as he staggered along through the sunless depths, he imagined that he could see the shapes of the rocks around them, not in colour or in much detail, just the outlines of the stalactites, and the dips and outcroppings of the floor in front of him. It gave him the uneasy idea that he was living in a charcoal sketch.

  For a moment, he considered mentioning his symptoms to the others, but only for a moment. Even during the initiation, he had kept his mouth shut, and then he had seen all sorts of colours.

  The problem was not just that such weakness was beneath one of Sigmar’s chosen. It was also that such talk of colours was so often on the lips of heretics as they writhed on their pyres.

  A sudden twist of anxiety cut through Peik’s physical discomfort. Of course these… these illusions he had couldn’t be the same thing that the heretics raved about. If they were, then surely Sigmar would have smote him down rather than allow him to become one of his witch hunters. Unless…

  Peik pushed the thought away and concentrated on the rhythm of his feet. A boulder seemed to appear in front of him. He ignored it.

  “Hey,” the man in front of him rumbled as he tripped forwards. “Watch where you’re going.”

  “How can I?” Peik tried to sound offended.

  “Open your eyes. Haven’t you noticed the glimmering? It’s from fungus.”

  “Oh,” Peik said weakly. “Oh yes, you’re right.”

  “Silence in the ranks,” Vaught growled back at them.

  Peik swallowed with a strange sense of relief, and squinted at the world they were marching through. This was no manmade tunnel, of that he was sure. The chaos of fallen rock and interconnected caverns was too haphazard, and the stalagmites too artlessly formed.

  If only there was something to drink, he thought. His tongue felt like leather, and Sigmar alone knew how much further they had to go.

  It was another hour before he heard the first musical notes of falling water, and when he did, he thought it the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.

  Another man might have cursed his fate for leading them, as the blind lead the blind. It might have occurred to another man to feel guilt over the decisions that had brought them here.

  Another man might even have begun to fear what his followers might do when their patience snapped.

  Although all those thoughts might have occurred to another man, they didn’t occur to Vaught, not even for a second. He was too busy listening for the voice of his god to worry about such nonsense, and the harder he listened, the surer he became that Sigmar was indeed speaking to him.

  It wasn’t that he could hear a voice, and there were no visions either, but even so, the directions were clear enough. Every time he reached a turning in the way, or found himself echoing through a forest of stalactites, he felt Sigmar’s presence beckoning from the direction he was to take. He would turn his face to it, and as he followed it he would be rewarded with the sense of his god’s approval.

  Vaught’s lips had already begun to move in a silent prayer of thanks for this favour when the darkness had begun to lift. As blinding darkness turned to grey half-light, he could barely contain his gratitude. He even sounded pleased when he chided two of his brothers for talking.

  Truly, he thought, we are the chosen of Sigmar.

  When he heard the call of the flowing water ahead, he almost laughed out loud with the joy of it. He turned his face towards the enticing sound, and basked in the sensation of divine approval as he led his men to the fountain.

  Their eyes had adjusted enough to see the waterfall that rained down into the pool before them. It fell from a gap lost in the distant heights of the cavern, the water as heavy and grey as lead in the dim light.

  “Thank Sigmar,” one of the witch hunters gasped as the column stumbled to a halt.

  “Thank him indeed,” Vaught said, and strode across to the edge of the pool. The mist cooled his face, and the roar of the falling water soothed his soul. How could he doubt that Sigmar would lead them out of this place?

  Vaught got to his knees and scooped up a double handful of water.

  “To Sigmar,” he toasted and, with a rare grin, drank deeply.

  It tasted unlike any water he had ever drunk before. There was an iron tang to it that reminded him of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was warm, too, almost warm enough to steam.

  “Mineral water,” Fargo said. He had knelt down beside his captain and was drinking straight from the pool, like a horse from a trough.

  “I hear it’s good for the blood,” somebody else said, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Blood. Yes, that was it. That iron taste reminded him of blood.

  Vaught scooped up another double handful of the water and drank deeply. As he did so, he felt a surge of euphoria rise up within him, as if this was the finest Bretonnian brandy.

  He grinned, and his teeth looked as sharp as a wolf’s in the gloom. Glancing around the pool, he saw that his brothers wore the same delighted expression, their lips pulled back in vulpine snarls of joy.

  Vaught chuckled, although somehow what came from his mouth was more of a howl. He chuckled again, and then stretched to feel the new vitality that was flowing through his veins. Life was good!

  He was about to share the good news with his brothers when, over the constant roar of the waterfall, he heard a hundred shrill voices, and countless stooped forms rushed shrieking out of the shadows.

  “Thank Sigmar!” Vaught roared with a terrible joy. “Thank you for even more gifts!”

  With that, he lifted a stone in each fist and rushed forwards to spill blood for his god.

  It was like no battle Peik had ever been in. Most of the combat he had experienced had been during Vaught’s raids, and they were planned as meticulously as clockwork traps.

  Down here, everything was different. There were no orders, no plans, and no manoeuvres. There was only rage and fear, and the need to win.

  Peik followed his brothers as they rushed through the darkness to meet the anaemic hordes that had cornered them. There was a flash of movement in front of him, and one of the things leapt forwards, its hands raised in what Peik assumed was an attempt to strangle him.

 
The witch hunter twisted to one side and, as the momentum of the thing’s attack carried it past him, he brought the stone down on the back of its head. There was an eggshell crunch, and his assailant slapped onto the floor, shaking with convulsions.

  Two of his fellows were upon Peik before he could administer the coup de grace. He tore out the eye of one of them with a crooked thumb, and as his shrieks pierced the echoing roar of the battle, Peik grabbed the throat of the second opponent and brought the bloodied stone down onto the crown of his head.

  This time there was no need for a second blow. The lifeless corpse fell from Peik’s grip and landed as neatly as beef onto a butcher’s slab.

  Peik screamed, his blood fizzing with his terrible victories. He blinked away the tears and turned to face the next knot of the enemy.

  Even as he smashed the kneecap off one, and crushed the larynx of a second, he couldn’t be sure exactly what they were. They could almost have been human. They had the right form, and the blurred features could have belonged to men.

  Yet, no humans Peik had ever seen had such insect thin arms or collapsed so easily. Even as the thought skittered across his mind, he grabbed one by the face and flung him across the cavern.

  When no more stepped up to take his place, Peik squinted around the cavern. In the half-light, a dozen blurred knots of movement struggled back and forth, and around each one, as pale as harvested wheat in the light of the moon, the corpses of the attackers lay tumbled.

  Yet the room still echoed with an insane drum roll of howling laughter. It took Peik a moment to realise that the noise was not coming from their twisted assailants: it was coming from his brothers.

  A blur of movement snatched his attention back to a fresh pair of assailants. They lunged forwards, hands outstretched. Peik smashed one to the ground and turned on the other. It fell to its knees, stick thin arms upraised in surrender.

  “Please don’t kill me,” it wailed, the voice as pitiably thin as its arms. “We don’t want to hurt you, but that water, you mustn’t drink the water.”

  Peik hardened his face and prepared to crush the creature beneath his bloodied stone.

  “Don’t kill me,” it sobbed. “We only wanted to warn you.”

  The last of Peik’s doubts vanished. This grovelling thing was a human all right. It was pale and starving, but there could be no doubt of its race. It even wore the remains of clothes, a ruined tunic and rags that had once been breeches.

  “How did you come to be down here?” he asked, fist still raised.

  “We’re prisoners, just like you. Don’t hurt me, but you mustn’t drink the water.”

  Around him, the battle was finishing, the malnourished horde melting away beneath the ferocity of the witch hunters’ assault. As they began to flee, Vaught’s men howled with a savage joy that echoed around them.

  Peik watched as one of his brothers, a quiet Reiklander called Jop, began to stamp on the corpses that were piled around him. Bones snapped like kindling, and he roared with delight, waltzing back and forth across the ruined bodies like a peasant in a vat of grapes.

  Behind him, another witch hunter had cornered a pair of the ragged foe. Even in the darkness, Peik could see the terror in their eyes. They tried to dodge past their tormentor, but he wasn’t about to let his prey escape that easily.

  He grabbed one by the ankle and, content that he was secure, fastened his teeth into the throat of the other. His laughter turned to gurgling as his mouth filled with blood. Silence followed, as he tore out the throat with his teeth.

  Peik tried not to feel shocked. This was a battle without weapons, that was all. If they had been using swords, things would have been more normal.

  “Spill their blood!” Vaught bellowed, raising both bloodied fists towards the cavern ceiling. “Blood for Sigmar!”

  A chorus of howls rose up in response. It was only when he realised how sore his throat felt that Peik realised he was howling with the best of them. Taken aback, he looked down at his prisoner.

  The frail body sprawled at his feet, its head smashed open to reveal the pink mess within. Peik shifted his grip on the stone he held, and realised that the blood on it was still warm.

  “Blood for Sigmar!” Vaught howled again, his lips pulled back in a feral snarl. “Blood for our lord!”

  This time, Peik joined the chorus willingly, he and his brethren howling like wolves at Morrslieb. Their voices joined and mingled in the vastness of the cavern and, echoing and multiplying beyond all recognition, they rang out through the tunnels that ran through the rotten heart of Praag.

  Miles away, a hint of them even reached the guards who sat above the trapdoor. They checked the bolts and looked each other, relieved that their shift was almost over.

  It was always the smell that was the worst: that burnt pork stink. Titus always associated it with the depression that came after the exhilaration of battle.

  There always was the depression. It followed the slaughter just as surely as a hangover followed too much wine, and in a way Titus welcomed it. It proved that, whatever his indiscretions, he was still in no danger of turning to Chaos.

  The wizard staggered to one side as he looked around the chamber. The slumped bodies of the cultists lay smouldering all around, their charred corpses indistinguishable from each other.

  They were lucky, Titus thought as he prowled amongst them. The daemon hadn’t had a chance to take a single one of them before he had set the shadows alight. They had burned shrieking with pain, but at least their souls had remained their own.

  “Lucky swine,” he muttered, and kicked one of the bodies as if it was responsible for his own misfortune. Somehow, Grendel had escaped. He must have slipped away whilst Titus was otherwise engaged.

  Titus sighed again. He picked up a fallen chair, put it the right way up, and then sat down with his head in his hands. He began to tremble, aftershocks of his incantation rippling through his body. Then he vomited.

  Grendel could be headed anywhere by now, anywhere at all. Now that he knew that the game was up, he was probably already fleeing, slipping through the night to the gods alone knew where.

  Titus, sickened by the sight of the holocaust he had unleashed on the coven, got back to his feet. He decided not to waste any more energy on concealment as he climbed the winding stairs back up to Zhukovsky’s chambers, and the world beyond.

  By the time he had waddled to the top of the two hundred and thirty-six steps, he was ready for another rest. He went and slumped into a divan that beckoned from the corner of the room. Belly heaving, he gasped and choked and wheezed, gradually getting his breath back after his excursions.

  It wasn’t until he had stopped sweating that he noticed the light that pulsed from the gap between the curtains. It shone with the ethereal beauty of colours that had no right to be in this world.

  For a moment, the wizard sat and basked in the splendour of the magical fire. Then, with a rush of understanding that was as steep as vertigo, he leapt to his feet and strode over to the curtains. Pulling them back, he gazed out at the night sky.

  It was lit with the winds of magic, vast rainbows that writhed amongst the stars. Titus had seen the rainbows before, but never like this. What made the sight so amazing was that he could see it with neither preparation, nor concentration.

  Why, he thought giddily, even the herd might be able to see it!

  He had heard rumours of such northern skies, of course, but he had always dismissed them as nonsense. Now, as he stood marvelling at the borealis, he knew that he had been a fool to do so. What knowledge must lay in those forbidden realms, he thought.

  What power.

  Suddenly, Titus knew exactly which way Grendel would be going: where any sorcerer would be going once he was free of the fetters of the colleges. He would be going north.

  Titus, thankful for the excuse his mission gave him, would be following right behind.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The icy winds slipped beneath his furs as skilfull
y as a pickpocket’s fingers. He had passed the last of Kislev’s outposts two days ago, and since then the weather had grown colder. Even his ponies were beginning to shiver, their fur scant protection against the winds that blasted this barren steppe.

  Grendel knew that it was only a matter of time before they froze beneath him, but that was of no concern to him. He had nothing to fear from this wilderness, of that he was sure.

  In fact, he had nothing to fear from anything anymore. Ever since he had abandoned the fool Zhukovsky, his god had begun to talk to him as if to a prodigal son. What could a man who belonged to Slaanesh have to fear from the rest of the world?

  Grendel was listening to the voice of his god, even now. It whispered inside his head as insistently as the gnawing of a rat, and tears fell unchecked down his gaunt cheeks. They froze as they fell, leaving his skin glittering with ice.

  Blinded by tears and deafened by whispered promises, the sorcerer was oblivious to the horsemen who were charging towards him.

  They came from the north, from the very heart of the wastelands into which Grendel was heading. Like all of their kind, the horsemen were ragged and hungry, and the sight of the lone wanderer had set them to salivating as they raced forwards. Although eager, they maintained their discipline. Flankers rode wide on either side, whilst a trio of the fastest riders had already galloped south to cut off Grendel’s retreat.

  The first that the sorcerer knew of his predicament was when his pony stopped and whinnied a greeting to the approaching horses. Blinking the ice from his eyes, he looked up. The voice in his head fell mute as he squinted at the men who surrounded him.

  “Greetings,” their leader sneered. He was bundled in a quilt of mismatched furs, but beneath the cloak, the wiry muscles of his scrawny chest remained bare, as did his scalp. The hair had been shaved, apart from where it jutted upwards in a greasy top knot, but Grendel was too interested in the ruin of the man’s left arm to worry about such minor details.