His mercenaries nodded and spread out, checking the buildings. Pieter died when he stuck his head in the second intact doorway, shrieking and pulling back to reveal that his face and forehead were gone. A beastman followed him out onto the path, its monstrous jaws dripping with fresh blood, bits of Pieter’s flesh still clinging to its long sharp teeth. Wilcreitz stepped up, placed his pistol against the creature’s left eye and pulled the trigger. The blast sent the beastman reeling backward, and it slammed into the wall behind it, and then slid down to lay in a crumpled heap with the others in the street.
A second mercenary, Ralf, died a moment later, an arrow in his throat. It had come from an elf bow, and the same elf also shot the beastman next to Rolf, before disappearing around a corner without a word.
“Sir.” Heimlich was tugging at a door several buildings away. “This one’s locked!”
Ah, excellent, Wilcreitz thought. The only thing these sorry creatures might possess worth locking up would be the blackpowder weapons.
“Move aside,” he told Heimlich, raising his loaded pistol. He set the muzzle tip into the spot where the door and the doorframe met, right about where he would put a bar or a lock upon a door. Then he pulled the trigger.
The report was almost deafening. It echoed all along the strange street, reverberating from all the old stone buildings. Wilcreitz pushed on the door and it swung open easily. Peering in, he saw barrels, casks, chests, and several long bundles wrapped in heavy blankets.
“Sigmar be praised,” he said, stepping into the building quickly. “We have found them.” He pulled one of the rifles from the bundle and tossed it to Heimlich. Another went to Jarl, and then one to Otto, and so on, followed by powder and ammunition, until all of them were armed with blackpowder weapons as well as their own weapons of choice.
“What shall we do now?” one of the mercenaries asked then. “We have the weapons, should we bring them back to camp?”
Wilcreitz was still looking around inside the small building, and especially towards the boxes and crates. “We cannot carry those from here, but we cannot leave them to the beastmen, either.” He glanced up at Jarl and the others, and grinned. “I believe Sigmar has shown me the way.” He stepped back into the building, leaving his men to defend it and him, but emerged a minute later. “There, I am ready,” was all the explanation he gave. “Now let us find our fellows and see how they fare.” He raised his new rifle to his cheek and shot down a beastman leaping across rooftops to reach them. “I believe,” Wilcreitz told the others, “that we will be able to lend a hand.”
Dietz and Lankdorf had fought their way into the ruins, and were battling their way through the hordes of beastmen gathered there. Kleiber and his men were beside and around them, and the shattered stone buildings resounded with the clash of metal on metal, the thud of wood and stone on metal and bone, and the meaty thunk and wet hiss of weapons striking home.
There was still no sign of Alaric.
“He’s got to be here somewhere,” Dietz muttered. He took a blow on one arm from a sturdy club, the impact numbing him from shoulder to wrist, and dropped his mace. He still had the knife in the other hand, though, so he stabbed that into his opponent’s eye, and then reached down and reclaimed his mace, in time to straighten and pluck the knife free as the dead beastman toppled.
“He’ll turn up,” Lankdorf assured him, firing a crossbow bolt into a beastman a short distance away, and then clubbing another with the weapon butt. “Keep going!”
Dietz nodded. There was no point in turning around, or in splitting off to search the rest of the buildings for Alaric. If he wasn’t in the battle, he would be safe until it was over, safer than they were, anyway. Right now, he needed all his concentration just to stay alive.
They rounded a corner, and saw a vast central courtyard beyond the next building. Several figures milled about near the centre, including two that seemed locked in battle. Behind and between them, tied across some sort of broken table or sculpture, was a man with fair hair and once-fine clothes.
“Alaric!” Dietz knew his friend couldn’t hear him, but that didn’t stop him from shouting. At least it got Lankdorf’s attention, and the bounty hunter followed his gaze.
“We know where he is, at least,” Lankdorf pointed out. “We just have to get over there and cut him loose.”
That proved easier said than done, however. A tall, dark man stood near Alaric and the two combatants, and as Dietz reached the edge of the square the man gestured towards them. His mouth moved and Dietz felt a chill, even though he couldn’t hear the words. The air before him seemed to thicken somehow, shimmering like oil on water, and Dietz found he could not go any farther. It was like trying to walk through stagnant water.
“Dark magic,” Lankdorf spat, also stuck. Then the tracker turned his head. “Herr Kleiber,” he called, “they have fouled the very air!”
The witch hunter was beside them in a second. He frowned and put a hand forward, testing the disturbance. “Indeed they have, Herr Lankdorf,” Kleiber replied gravely, “but such taint will not stand in our way.” Holding his sword before him, Kleiber uttered a short prayer. “Oh holy Sigmar, let your divine light shine through my blade and part this evil, that we might rid this land of its foul creators!”
It was hard to tell in the bright daylight, but Dietz thought the witch hunter’s blade did indeed begin to glow, albeit faintly. There was no mistaking the effect, however. Kleiber swung his sword before him in a crisp downward arc, and the shimmering air parted like a curtain. He charged through, and Dietz and Lankdorf were right behind him.
As they closed the distance, Dietz got a better look at the two figures battling near Alaric, and almost skidded to a halt. One was a massive warrior, with armour that looked as if it was carved from night and shaped from blood, and torn from a vein of gold. Every inch of the heavy plate was sharp or hooked, or both. The other was a beastman, the largest Dietz had ever seen, with huge curling horns from his forehead, matted fur everywhere, and bone spikes protruding from his shoulders, chest, back, and arms. The creature also wore a rune-carved object covering one hand, a relic that Dietz knew he would never forget: the gauntlet from the liche king’s tomb.
“Is that—?” Lankdorf started to ask, staring at the creature’s arm.
“Yes.”
“Myrmidia’s spear,” the bounty hunter whispered in reply. “This just gets worse and worse.”
Dietz nodded, then shook himself. “Come on.”
The two figures had stepped away from Alaric, the beastman smashing his gauntleted hand into the warrior’s armoured chest and denting the heavy plate, the warrior responding by slamming his own fist into the creature’s throat and tearing at it with the spikes along his armour. Dietz took the opportunity to skirt them and kneel beside Alaric, who seemed dazed, but happy to see them.
“It was the only way,” Alaric was muttering as Dietz cut the ropes and helped him slip down from what he now realised was a shattered fountain. “Sigmar forgive me, it was the only way.”
“I’m sure he will,” Dietz said sharply, “but only if we get out of here alive.”
“Yes.” Lankdorf handed Alaric a crossbow he must have liberated from one of the beastmen, and Alaric accepted it absently. There was nothing distracted about the way he loaded a bolt and shot down a beastman loping towards them, however.
The rest of the beastmen had entered the square, and the battle raged all around them. “What happened to the elves?” Alaric asked, shooting another foe, but only catching it in the shoulder. His rapier was missing, and Dietz assumed the beastmen had taken it at some point.
“No idea,” Lankdorf replied, shooting a charging beastman in the face, and then smashing another with the crossbow’s heavy wooden stock. “Don’t much care, either.”
“You’d better care,” Alaric replied sharply, firing his crossbow at a beastman some way away, and taking the ugly brute in the head. There were others closer in, and Dietz wasn’t sure why his frie
nd had targeted that one, until Alaric ducked another’s rush, sprinted over to the dead beastman, and lifted something from the body. “Got it!” he shouted as he returned. He had his rapier in his hand.
Dietz shook his head, using his mace to block another beastman’s attack and cave in its skull on the return stroke. “This is as bad as Vitrolle,” he muttered.
“Not quite,” Alaric corrected, skewering a beastman through the eye, and then swiftly pulling back so he could block another of the creatures from gutting him with a long jagged blade. “There we had four different armies, and none of them particularly liked us,” he reminded him. “Here it’s just beastmen versus humans, nice and neat, unless the elves show, in which case it could get ugly. That’s why you should care.”
Dietz considered that. “Fair enough,” he agreed after a second, “but I—” He forgot what he had been about to say, however, as a large figure suddenly reared up behind them, its shadow enveloping all three of them in sudden darkness. “Move!”
The massive armoured figure and the towering beastman were grappling, neither able to overwhelm the other, and in their fury they trampled across the courtyard right by where Dietz, Alaric and Lankdorf were standing. The three of them darted to the side, narrowly avoiding being stepped on, but the two titans barely noticed.
“I shall carve your flesh from your bones, and offer up your soul to the Blood God, who will drink it as if it were fine wine!” the armoured figure growled. His adversary did not dignify the threat with any reply beyond a savage snarl.
“Who is that, and how do we stop him?” Dietz asked Alaric as they stepped further away from the two combatants, but apparently the armoured figure heard him.
“I am Deathmaul, the chosen champion of the Blood God and his servant,” the warrior snarled, head swivelling to glare at Dietz through the slits in his horned helm. He drew himself up to his full height and glowered down at them. “I have dedicated slaughters to his name since the Great War, and I will continue to do so long after your rotted corpses have fallen to dust, and your souls have become but a memory in my master’s belly!”
Dietz heard Alaric gasp, but was too busy staying beyond both figures’ reach to see what had troubled his friend. “It’s you,” he heard Alaric say slowly. “I saw you!”
“Yes, and I shall be the last sight you see,” Deathmaul snarled, scowling at them, before returning his attention to the beastman still pounding on him. “You disrupted the ritual, but I shall tear out your eyes and swallow them whole, along with your still-beating heart. Perhaps my master will smile upon such a sacrifice.”
Ritual? Sacrifice? Dietz didn’t have time to figure out what the Chaos champion was talking about. A pack of beastmen neared them, and he grabbed Alaric by the arm and tugged him out of the way just in time. His friend had stood frozen, still staring at Deathmaul, and the first beastman’s axe just missed cleaving him in two. Dietz slammed his mace into the beastman’s head, sending the creature to the ground with a loud crack, then hurled his knife at another and took it in the throat. Glouste, disturbed by all the commotion, stuck her head out of his jacket, took one look at the massive armoured figure before them, and disappeared back inside, whimpering. Dietz could hardly blame her.
Just as Dietz was drawing his second knife and wondering how he and his two friends could handle this many beastmen at once, he heard several whistling shrieks, and watched as three long feathered shafts shot past, each taking a beastman in the throat. Alaric skewered another, and Lankdorf shot a fifth, giving Dietz a second to breathe and retrieve his first knife. He also glanced back over his shoulder, and saw that he had guessed right; he hadn’t thought any of the mercenaries were carrying longbows.
The elves had arrived. He wasn’t sure where they had come from, exactly, but he spotted several perched on broken columns and rooftops, releasing arrows into the melee and unerringly striking beastmen dead every time. Other elves were in the courtyard, wielding long leaf-bladed swords that glimmered silver in the sunlight, carving their way through the beastmen and through any humans that got in their way.
Dietz definitely considered the elves’ arrival a good thing, however. There were far more beastmen than Kleiber had mercenaries, and the creatures far surpassed them in strength and ferocity.
Judging by the sudden loud report nearby and the way a mercenary jerked back, his hand a smoking ruin, the creatures had apparently just remembered that they had blackpowder weapons.
Looking around, Dietz saw that several beastmen stood along one of the crumbling balconies overlooking this courtyard. Each of them held a blackpowder rifle, and sighted their weapons down upon the men fighting below.
“Take out the rifles!” Dietz shouted, though he wasn’t sure anyone could hear him over the general tumult. He snatched up a fallen crossbow, fitted a bolt to it, and fired it, narrowly missing one of the beastmen on the balcony, but drawing its attention.
Someone had been listening, however, or at least had reached the same conclusion as him. The beastman in question suddenly reeled backward, an arrow protruding from its left eye. The rifle went off, firing up towards the sky, and the dying beastman toppled into the creature next to it before crumpling onto the balcony floor.
More arrows followed. Then Dietz heard another rifle shot, but it hadn’t come from the balcony, and one of the beastmen toppled, its head shattered by a well-placed bullet. Looking around, Dietz saw Wilcreitz at one side of the courtyard, the eight mercenaries who’d accompanied him right beside him. They all had rifles.
“Yes!” Dietz shouted as the bestial rifle squad was cut down. One or two of them got off shots, but the rest fell before they could bring their rifles to bear. Then Wilcreitz and his men turned their weapons towards the courtyard and began picking off beastmen. Suddenly, it looked like they might actually survive this battle.
“We need to stop him!” Alaric shouted, grabbing at Dietz’s arm and leaning in close so he could be heard over the sounds of combat. “Come on!”
“Who?” Dietz shouted back, snagging Lankdorf as Alaric half-dragged him towards what looked like a ruined fountain near the courtyard’s centre. “The beastmen on the balcony?”
“Deathmaul,” Alaric replied, not slowing down. “We have to keep him away from the mask!”
“The mask is here?” Dietz asked, trying to process everything his friend had said. “Where?” He followed Alaric back over to the fountain. Resting there was something Dietz wished he had never seen before, and fervently hoped he would never have to see again, despite their recent pursuit of it: the mask from Ind. He reminded himself that over there, on the arm of that monstrosity battling the Chaos champion, was the gauntlet: both of them finely crafted, both of them disquieting to look upon, and both of them dedicated to Chaos and its gods. It was too much. “What in Ulric’s name do we do now?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Alaric admitted quietly, resting a hand on the fountain to steady himself. “I saw him, Dietz, in the vision in that valley. That’s who I saw: Deathmaul, and an entire Chaos army, maybe even during the Great War Against Chaos. He was battling a Sigmarite named Talbek.” He shook his head. “Deathmaul won, obviously.”
“We have Sigmarites,” Lankdorf pointed out quickly, “the witch hunters.”
Alaric shook his head. “Not like Talbek,” he explained. “He was blessed, a true champion of Sigmar. He hurt Deathmaul, just not enough.”
Then the nobleman’s eyes widened. “His throat!” he whispered. “Talbek struck Deathmaul in the throat with his shield, damn near took his head off! That’s why his voice is so gruff, the wound never healed.”
“So, what, we need to hit him in the throat again?” Dietz asked. He turned around and saw Deathmaul and the beastman still struggling together. As he watched, the beastman bashed Deathmaul with his forehead, the great horns gashing his armour and denting his helm. The Chaos champion was hurled from his feet, crushing a mercenary and two beastmen as he fell. When he stood, he was laughing, and
in his hands he held the massive twin-bladed axe that appeared to be coated in blood.
“Now you will perish!” Deathmaul shouted, striding unhurriedly across the courtyard. “And I will rip that gauntlet from your dead flesh!” A pair of mercenaries got in his way, and the massive Chaos champion split one in half with a blow from his axe, then swept it sideways and cut the other’s torso from his midsection. Blood sprayed from both men, and the Chaos champion continued on without even glancing at his most recent victims.
“I think so, yes,” Alaric agreed. “That collar, though, the one around his neck, I think… I think the daemon gave it to him after the battle, to protect him. We need to remove that first.”
Dietz groaned. “How? Any suggestions?”
Alaric nodded. “Yes,” he said, “but we have to get closer.”
Dietz and Lankdorf both stared at him as if he were insane—and, judging by the noble’s expression and the strange light in his eyes, maybe he was. “Closer? To that?”
“I know,” Alaric agreed, “but I need to make sure he can hear me.”
“You want Deathmaul to hear you?”
“Not Deathmaul, Bloodgore.” Alaric pointed at the beastman, who was goring an elf and shoving his gauntleted fist through a mercenary’s chest at the same time.
Dietz sighed. He had no idea what Alaric was talking about, but he did trust his employer. “All right,” he said, blocking an approaching beastman’s blow and shooting a crossbow bolt into the creature’s forehead. “Let’s go.”
They fought their way across the courtyard, as did both Deathmaul and Bloodgore. Dietz felt like the two titans were two mighty rivers rushing towards one another, and he and Alaric, and Lankdorf were a small stream being sucked into the whirlpool. Nor was it easy to get there. The courtyard was utter madness. Elves, humans and beastmen were all battling each other, lashing out with little concern for who they hit, and rains of arrows and hails of rifle fire added to the mayhem and bloodshed. Dietz caught another glimpse of the sorcerer, just in time to see him wave his hands and the mercenary before him literally rip in half as if torn apart by some colossal invisible force.
03 - Hour of the Daemon Page 19
