by C. L. Werner
Every plan he started to formulate quickly collapsed as his mind recalled the ferocity and power of the vampire, as his mind’s eye saw Gregor Klaussner standing triumphant above the mangled bodies of the Wyrmvater assassins. Streng chided himself for his terror. Thulmann would not have allowed his fear to control him. The witch hunter would have found a way to prevail against the vampire, to turn panicked retreat into victory, but Streng was not Thulmann.
The mercenary tightened his grip on his knife. There was an uncanny silence in the woods; no bird song, no scurrying of squirrels through the brush, not even the soft rustle of a winter breeze. It was as if the entire world was holding its breath, trying like Streng to remain silent, waiting for some awful thing to pass.
Then the silence was shattered by the harsh, ugly croak of a crow in the branches of a nearby birch tree. Streng fell onto his rump as the sound pounded against his strained senses. He picked himself up angrily, staring murder at the stupid bird that had so unnerved him. Fury turned to fright as the dead, rotting thing stared back at him with white, lifeless eyes. The thrill of terror raced through his veins.
He had been found.
Streng turned to run, to force his battered frame to new effort. If the filthy carrion crow had found him, how much longer before the horror that it served would too? He certainly didn’t want to linger and find out. He pushed his way back through the brambles, fighting his way clear of their clawing, clutching thorns. Then he froze, colour draining from his body. It was already too late.
‘Gregor,’ Streng rasped through lips gone numb with fright. The vampire stared back at him, eyes the colour of old blood, talon-like hands still crusted with gore from his massacre of the assassins. Gregor’s pale visage pulled back in a toothy smile, the oversized fangs of the vampire gleaming in the sparse light beneath the trees.
‘Come with me,’ the vampire said, the stink of the grave in his voice. Gregor extended one of his pallid hands towards Streng, beckoning to him. Streng felt the vampire’s will reaching out, clouding his thoughts and smothering his defiance. It would be so easy to just obey.
With a roar, Streng launched himself at the vampire, slamming his knife into Gregor’s chest. He’d never allowed himself to be dominated by anyone, not his drunkard father, not the bullying road wardens in his native Stirland, not even the officers in the Count of Ostland’s army. Even the gods didn’t command his life. He was his own man and he wasn’t going to submit to some grave-cheating parasite. The thug’s knife dug deep into Gregor’s breast, tearing the vampire’s unclean flesh, crunching through its rancid ribs.
Gregor snarled, flinging Streng aside with a swipe of his hand. The mercenary slammed into the ground, stunned as all the air fled his body on impact. It was like being kicked by an ox, such was the impossible power within the vampire’s withered limbs.
The vampire reached into his chest, pulling Streng’s blade from the deep wound the mercenary had dug there. Streng groaned in disgust – he’d missed the monster’s heart by mere inches. Gregor lifted the weapon to his face, studying it for a moment before hurling it away in anger. The wound in the vampire’s chest wept a sickly thick liquid that was unlike the blood of a mortal man. If the injury impaired the vampire, there was no sign of his pain as he strode towards Streng.
‘I don’t want to hurt you, Streng,’ Gregor said. ‘I need you to help me. I need Thulmann to help me.’
Streng struggled to rise from the ground. It felt as if a rib might have cracked when he’d landed, filling his entire side with burning pain. ‘Sure,’ he wheezed, ‘let me get my knife back and I’ll help you.’ The vampire snarled, pouncing on the injured man, smashing him back to the earth. Streng gagged as Gregor’s decayed breath smothered him.
‘Sell-sword scum!’ Gregor hissed. ‘You owe me! You and your master allowed me to become this… this… obscenity. Now you will help me. You will redeem me.’
The mercenary smashed his fist into the vampire’s face, breaking Gregor’s nose. ‘Piss off!’ he growled, bringing his other fist cracking against Gregor’s cheek. The vampire roared back, seizing Streng’s wrist and wrenching it with a savage twist of his hand. The vampire’s other hand smacked against Streng’s face, breaking teeth and tearing skin. The thug cried out in pain, rolling his head and spitting blood and bone into the grass.
Gregor stared down at his prone victim, watching as the bright glowing warmth trickled from Streng’s torn face and bleeding mouth, throwing rich vibrant light into the cold, chill grey of his vision. The vampire could feel the hunger thundering through his veins, the primal urge clawing at his mind. In response to the hunger, he could feel the fangs in his mouth shifting, elongating, and anticipating the swift strike to come. The vampire reared back, opening his mouth in a hungry hiss.
Streng saw Gregor’s mouth open, the dagger-like fangs pointing down at him, ready to rip and tear at his throat, ready to drain the life from him. The mercenary struggled to free himself from Gregor’s grip, but it was like a rabbit struggling in the jaws of a wolf. Desperately, his good hand groped along the grass, trying to find a stone, a rock, anything that he might use to defend himself. Eyes locked on the murderous, bloody orbs burning within Gregor’s face, Streng’s questing fingers at last closed around something slender, round and wooden. When he had struck the ground, the quiver he had stolen from the dead assassin had ruptured, spilling broken arrow shafts all around him.
Even as Streng’s fingers closed around the arrow, the vampire’s head shot downward with the speed of a striking cobra. Streng shuddered, expecting the sharp, diseased bite of the vampire as his throat was torn open and the living corpse drained his life away.
Streng froze as the vampire paused, its deadly fangs only inches from his skin. Suddenly, Gregor recoiled, a look of mortal horror and disgust on the vampire’s pale features. A groan of terror rasped from the vampire’s body at what he had nearly done, at what he had almost let himself do. He was a man. His mind was his own. He was not Sibbechai. He was not some foul thing of the night. So long as he maintained control, so long as he denied the unclean urges of the corruption within him, he was still Gregor Klausner, not the vampiric fiend the necrarch had damned him to become.
Streng saw the guilt and confusion on Gregor’s face. He did not know what strange thoughts tortured the vampire, nor why the monster had relented at the last instant. Nor did he care. He was an old soldier, a veteran of many battles. He knew a prize opportunity when he saw one, and he seized it before it had a chance to escape from him. With a bestial roar, Streng forced himself upwards, using every muscle in his body to drive the arrow into Gregor’s chest. He sank the wooden shaft into the still dripping knife wound, twisting his improvised weapon so that it dug deep into the vampire’s left breast, skewering the unclean heart.
A wail of anguish shrieked from the vampire’s lips as Streng’s weapon was driven home. The wracking death rattle trembled through Gregor’s body as he collapsed to the ground. Streng pushed the suddenly weak and powerless monster aside, leaving it to thrash out its death agonies on the grass beside him. Streng delivered a savage knee to Gregor’s skull when he had struggled back to his feet, the arm the vampire had twisted cradled gingerly against his chest.
‘Consider yourself helped,’ Streng spat at the expiring abomination. He watched Gregor writhe in agony a few moments longer and then started to hobble back through the woods. He still needed to reach the baron and get Thulmann the troops he would need to purge the skaven lair.
More importantly, after coming inches from death, after being tossed about like a rag doll by an undead horror fresh from the grave, Streng needed a drink, perhaps even two.
Skilk was poised behind the altar, daubing his black paws into the tiny body strewn across the ground before him. Red droplets fell from the monster’s hands as he reached to the bones lying on the altar, gingerly painting the symbols Skilk saw depicted in Das Buch die Unholden on them.
Thulmann whispered a prayer to Sigmar and
charged towards the skaven. If they could strike while the grey seers were occupied, while they were unable to call upon the hellish sorceries of their daemon god, they might have a chance. But it was a forlorn hope, even if the skaven did not hear the witch hunters approaching, their keen noses caught the scent of their new foes.
The first ratman to close upon Thulmann found itself slashed from shoulder to groin. The witch hunter pushed the shrieking thing from his path, engaging the second as it leapt towards him, opening its throat. He saw a pair of armoured stormvermin hurled back, their bodies broken and twisted as they flew through the air. He was not surprised to see Ehrhardt’s armoured bulk beside him, skaven blood already drenching his blade. Haussner and his fanatics crashed into the main body of the melee, striking out wildly with axe and flail. Krieger and Gernheim were closer at hand, fighting to repel the onslaught of skaven warriors swarming towards them.
Thulmann judged the distance between him and the altar, judged how many skaven were between himself and Skilk. It was not a comforting estimate, not the sort of chances any but a follower of Ranald would care to entertain. Silja and the rifle were their only real hope.
Screams and squeals of agony scratched at the edge of his hearing, the smell of blood, excrement and death pawed at his nose, but Skilk refused to lose his focus. None of it mattered. The ritual was nearly complete. That was what mattered. The door would soon open. Kripsnik’s spirit would be forced back into the world: a creature that had crossed the barrier, stood in the presence of the Horned Rat and been privy to a god’s secret councils. Such a being would be Skilk’s to use, to bend to his will.
The world would change; the skaven would rise from their burrows and consume the weak meat-races of the surface. The underfolk would inherit the dominion promised to them by their god, led not by the squabbling lords of decay, but by one divine underlord, by Grey Seer Skilk, the Prophet of the Horned Rat.
Skilk could feel the power swirling around him; feel the dark energies of the ritual being drawn down from the beyond. He could feel the cavern being infused with power, could see the glyphs it had painted onto the bones glowing with black energy. Skilk could almost hear the barrier between worlds being torn open as the line between life and death was breached.
Then sharp, hot pain exploded within Skilk’s brain. The grey seer struggled to remain standing, but strength was draining from him too quickly. Skilk’s muzzle snapped open to snarl his protest to the heavens, but all that emerged was a froth of black blood. The skaven crumpled and fell, toppling against the side of the altar, scattering the bones of his long-dead mentor.
The report from the Hochland rifle echoed above the roar of battle thundering from the walls. It seemed to resonate forever, creating an unworldly din. The swirling melee faltered as alarm and confusion filled the combatants. Beady skaven eyes looked around the cavern, trying to find the source of the clamour. Then every eye was drawn towards the altar. Skilk’s form lay crumpled against the stone surface, apparently struck down by the gods themselves. The skaven squealed in dismay, stunned that their dread leader should be dead.
Thulmann saw their nervous hesitance, offering up a prayer of gratitude to Sigmar. Silja’s aim had been true. The evil of Grey Seer Skilk was no more. Whatever else happened, they would know that they had won. The witch hunter raised his sword above his head, glaring at the skaven that only moments before had been so eager to spill his blood.
‘No quarter! No mercy!’ he cried, leaping back into the attack. ‘For Sigmar!’ He heard the cry repeated across the cavern as Haussner returned to the fray and as Krieger split the skull of a snaggle-toothed brute still looking in the direction of its slain master.
Thunder roared from nearby and one of the skaven was hurled back, a hole blasted through its face. Thunder roared again and then Silja was at Thulmann’s side, smashing the butt of a pistol into the snout of a stormvermin.
‘You should have stayed put,’ Thulmann gasped as he parried the blade of a slavering ratman.
‘I thought you might be thankful for the help,’ Silja replied, slashing open the belly of a mace-wielding skaven with her sword.
‘I am more thankful for your aim,’ Thulmann said. ‘We die well knowing that scum precedes us.’
Silja might have replied, but at that instant a thrill of horror swept through the skaven. For the second time, the monsters abandoned the attack. This time, however, the cause was not one to celebrate.
‘But he’s dead,’ she shuddered. ‘I killed him!’
The skaven whined in abject terror, dropping to their bellies, their every muscle twitching in fright. They had smelled the death scent, the scent that never lied. Grey Seer Skilk was dead. Yet now, Grey Seer Skilk stood beside the altar, lip curled in a snarl. In his forehead, a smoking hole still drooled a greasy mixture of blood and brain. It was impossible for Skilk still to be alive.
Part of Skilk marvelled at his survival, but why should he? Had Skilk not been exalted by the Horned Rat himself? Was Skilk not its favoured prophet and apostle? Why should Skilk be surprised when the Horned Rat interceded to preserve its own?
The grey seer turned his eyes towards the melee, searching for the one who had thought to slay him. There were agonies beyond contemplation for that creature, the breeder human with the jezzail. She had thought to destroy the greatest mind the Horned Rat had ever vested into one of his children. Worse, she had disrupted the ritual, denying Skilk the secrets it could have torn from the spirit of Kripsnik.
Skilk’s eyes narrowed as he spotted Silja. The sorcerer-priest began to draw the heavy winds of magic into its verminous frame, weaving the ethereal forces into an extension of its murderous will.
The grey seer’s body was wracked by violent spasms as the sorcerous energies flowed into it. Skilk felt a mind that was not his own hissing within his brain. The skaven could feel its evil, malicious presence, mocking Skilk as it consumed the energies the ratman gathered. Skilk tried to cut off his conjuration, tried to stop the flow of magic, but it was too late. Something else was in control.
Skilk cast his eyes down, meeting the empty grinning stare of Kripsnik’s painted skull. Understanding thundered through the skaven’s brain. The ritual had not been a failure. The ritual had been a success, but the soul of Kripsnik had not been content to infest the tired old bones it had worn in life. Kripsnik had demanded a fresher vessel to inhabit.
The presence within Skilk’s mind exploded into scratching laughter as the grave mistake Skilk had made was finally realised. Kripsnik had been more powerful than Skilk in life. In death, the lord of Skrittar’s power had grown even greater.
Skilk opened his jaws, shrieking his defiance into the uncaring darkness at the fickle favour of his capricious deity.
Thulmann watched in amazement as Skilk began to draw sorcerous energy into his wretched body. The witch hunter slashed at the nearest skaven, trying to fight his way through them, trying vainly to reach the resurrected grey seer before he could unleash his deadly magic. Even as he stabbed and slashed at his foes, Thulmann knew he would be too late.
Then Skilk started to scream, a sound so filled with agony and horror and the despair of the damned, that even Thulmann felt himself go numb as he heard it. He saw the screaming grey seer’s body wracked by spasms, his bones twisting and writhing beneath his skin. Then a jagged, bleeding crack began to spread from the bullet wound in his forehead, snaking down across the grey seer’s face, widening as it descended towards its toes. Black stinking blood sprayed from the ghastly stigmata as it widened. Skilk’s scream ended in a wet gurgle as his jaws fell apart, hanging limp and ruined from the debris of his face.
Blacker than sin and midnight, two great horns began to rise from the gory ruin of Skilk’s head. Straight as lances and twisted like unicorn ivory, the horns rose and rose, until they were nearly as tall as a man. Beneath the horns, a mammoth head thrust its way from the disintegrating rubble of Skilk’s body. It was a great rotting visage, mangy fur strung taut across t
he long-snouted face of an enormous rat. Chiselled fangs the size of swords hung from the abomination’s muzzle, while cold, merciless eyes twinkled within the depths of its skull.
Shoulders as broad as the length of a draught horse followed the diabolic head, powerful arms reaching upwards in exultation as they emerged from the puddled refuse of Skilk’s carcass. Strange glowing runes were scratched into the pox-ridden skin, large chunks of radiant warpstone pounded deep into its flesh. Torcs and amulets swung from black chains sunk into the beast’s chest, exuding their own malefic energies. From the waist down, the apparition was covered in coarse grey fur, its crooked legs ending in monstrous cloven hooves. A scaly tail, yards long and thick as a python, squirmed behind the brute as it howled its malevolence across the cavern.
Vermin lord! A daemon of the great dark, an emissary of the obscene Horned Rat himself! Such things had been recorded seldom by scholars, and even then passed on as perverse myths. Even in his sickest nightmares, Thulmann had never allowed himself to imagine such a malignity. He wondered if even Skilk had imagined the horror he was summoning into the world.
The daemon howled again, stepping out of the gory husk of Skilk as a lothario might step from his discarded breeches. As its cloven hoof crunched against the rock floor, the stone steamed and slithering, rat-like shadows scattered from where it stepped, vanishing into grey vapour as they scurried away from the vermin lord. All within the cavern stood transfixed by the awful presence the daemon exuded, unable to move or even cry out before its aura of dread. The skaven seemed caught between abject terror and grovelling devotion, recognising in this horror the handiwork of their terrible god.
The choice between flight and slavery was decided for them when the hulking beast stretched its clawed hand and closed its talons around the spindly shape of one of the Skrittar. It lifted the squeaking grey seer from the ground and, like a child cracking nuts in his fist, crushed the horned ratman into a black paste.
