Hammer and Bolter 8

by Christian Dunn

  Visscher moved to stop the frightened sailors. He had no affection for Gustav, only the sort of pitying contempt a man might show a feral dog, but the riverwarden was not about to stand idly by while the helpless lunatic was slaughtered. His stern eyes glared at each of the seamen.

  ‘I’ve had it with that madman’s screams!’ a broken-nosed sailor growled. He fingered the fat-bladed knife in his hand and glared back at Visscher. ‘Get out of our way!’

  With one smooth motion, Visscher drew the sword sheathed at his side. The blade licked out in a blinding flash of steel, whistling past the broken nose. A bead of blood dribbled from the tiny cut left by the riverwarden’s steel.

  ‘Make me move,’ Visscher said. ‘But make your peace with the gods first.’

  The sailors looked anxiously at each other, glancing at the short knives in their hands and the long sword in the riverwarden’s. They knew Visscher’s threat wasn’t an idle one. Their numbers might prevail against Visscher’s sword, but not before the blade had claimed a few of them. Frightened as they were, none of the seamen wanted to be the first to die.

  Oblivious to the drama playing out only a few feet away, Gustav’s entire body contorted against the deck as the madman’s lungs gave voice to a howl of pure terror. The sound reminded the sailor’s of their own fears.

  ‘Keep that mongrel quiet!’ one of the sailors demanded. ‘Shut him up, or we will!’ The outburst brought angry mutters from the other seamen, pouring back into their veins the murderous determination Visscher had hoped to quell.

  ‘You have more important things to worry about,’ Seeckt’s calm tones intruded upon the scene. The agent stood beside the rail, gesturing with his gloved hand at the roiling fog which now surrounded the ship. Every man gasped in fright as he saw the weird green lights flashing through the mist, bobbing and weaving across the marsh. Whispers of daemons and spectres passed among the crew.

  A final shriek rose from Gustav, accompanied by the sound of snapping chains. Laughing maniacally, the lunatic lunged across the deck, his broken chains dangling from wrists and ankles. Visscher tried to intercept the madman, but the cunning of insanity gripped Gustav’s crazed mind. Whirling about when he saw the riverwarden, Gustav dove for the portside rail. He leaped onto the rail, perched upon it for a moment, insane laughter shuddering through his body. Then, the moment passed and the madman lost his balance. He hurtled overboard, vanishing into the grey fog with a splash and the rattle of his broken chains.

  Visscher reached the rail just after Gustav’s fell. The riverwarden’s eyes scoured the fog, trying to find any trace of the madman. Having taken it upon himself to protect Gustav from the sailors, he felt a sense of guilt that he had failed to protect the lunatic from his own madness.

  Visscher was still staring into the fog when he felt Seeckt’s gloved hand close about his shoulder. The agent’s face was hidden behind the weird leather mask, his eyes just visible behind the tinted lenses. Seeckt pointed to the riverwarden’s own mask, motioning for Visscher to put it on. ‘Like I told them,’ the agent said, his voice distorted and muffled by the mask, ‘we have bigger problems to worry about.’

  The riverwarden glanced across the Shakerlo’s deck. The crew and officers had donned their own masks and were huddled close against the sides, watching the green lights moving through the fog. Every man clutched a weapon in his hand, his body tensed for action. There were no more frightened whispers. The dread clinging to every man’s heart had silenced talk of daemons and ghosts.

  ‘Keep a careful watch,’ Seeckt told Visscher. ‘The attack will come soon. When it does, drop to the deck and play dead. You’ll know when to stop playing.’

  Visscher gripped Seeckt’s arm. ‘Attacked? By who?’

  A sardonic chuckle rose from Seeckt’s mask. ‘Marsh daemons, of course.’ He turned away, pacing across to the forecastle to issue final orders to the captain.

  Visscher wondered what Seeckt’s plans were. Again, the riverwarden felt suspicion twisting his gut. Seeckt had been just a bit too assured that the ship would be attacked, yet even at this late hour he preferred to play coy regarding the nature of the menace threatening them. And what possible sense could there be in playing dead when these unknown enemies attacked?

  Visscher set aside his questions when he heard something crash against the deck not three feet from where he stood. Through the lenses of his mask, he could see little fragments of what looked like glass scattered about the deck, a mist of vapour rising from the shards. He turned his head as he heard the sound of more glass breaking somewhere towards the stern. Again, he could see shards and smoky vapour.

  The riverwarden couldn’t begin to guess the kind of weapon that had been set loose against the Shakerlo, but he knew enough to recognize it as a weapon. Clearly, Seeckt had anticipated just this sort of thing, issuing the weird masks to protect the crew from the undoubtedly poisonous vapour. Recognizing that much of the agent’s plan, Visscher thought he could guess the rest. Slowly, he dropped to the deck, stretching himself out in what he hoped was a convincingly dead attitude. He kept his hand closed about the hilt of his sword.

  Once their attackers were satisfied their poison had done its work, they would board the ship in search of plunder. But this time the murderous pirates would be due for a surprise. Any fear of ghosts and spectres was gone now. Only something mortal would hurl glass globes filled with poison gas to kill an enemy. There was nothing supernatural about the fiends who had been preying upon the river trade.

  Visscher was quite eager now to meet Seeckt’s marsh daemons.

  Lying upon the deck, Visscher trained his senses upon the sounds around him. He could hear the creaking of the Shakerlo as she drifted through the water. He could hear the crackle of glass breaking as more globes crashed down upon the ship. Slowly these sounds abated, replaced by the splash of oars cutting water. Boats, many of them from the sound, were closing upon the Shakerlo. Visscher felt the tremor of the boats as they bumped against the ship’s hull. He smiled as he heard the scratch of grapples being thrown over the ship’s rail.

  The scratch of the grapples was soon followed by the sound of feet scrabbling against the hull, the mutter of muffled voices whispering to each other. There was an unpleasant quality about those voices, unpleasant enough to make the riverwarden’s skin crawl. Despite the risk, he had to see what sort of men these pirates were. Visscher rolled his head against his arm, turning his eyes towards starboard.

  What he saw brought every childhood story of fog devils and marsh daemons roaring back through his mind. The things crawling over the rail weren’t men at all, but were creatures straight out of hag-haunted nightmare! The flabby green skin, the single glowing eye, the floppy snout dripping down from the bloated face… how many times had he heard the old folk of the Wasteland warn against these horrors, these malignant denizens of mist and shadow!

  The daemons dropped down onto the deck, their cyclopean eyes shining across the ship as they looked over the Shakerlo. Smothered laughter wheezed from their grotesque faces, laughter that made Gustav’s ravings seem beatific. More and more of the monsters climbed the rails until there were nearly two-score of the fiends prowling about the deck. Visscher could see the amphibian horrors shuffling towards the forecastle, their flabby paws closing about ugly bludgeons and rusty swords.

  As the daemons approached the forecastle, they passed Seeckt’s prone body. The cyclopean monsters paid the seemingly dead agent scant notice. It was the last mistake they would ever make.

  Seeckt’s lean body jolted upwards, a dagger clenched in each of his gloved hands. He drove one of the blades into the slimy throat of one of the daemons, slashing the other across the belly of its nearest comrade. Both of the monsters reeled back, black blood jetting from their wounds. The daemon with the transfixed throat crumpled without a sound, crashing to the deck, its body twitching, long tail drumming against the planks. The other daemon gave voice to a shriek and fell to its knees, its flabby claws pawing a
t its ghastly injury.

  Seeckt threw the bloodied dagger full into the face of a third daemon, piercing one of its black nostrils. The fiend dropped to the deck, dead even before Seeckt drew his sword and slashed it across the monster’s neck.

  The Shakerlo’s crew lunged into action at that moment. Seeckt had told them to wait for the right moment – the moment when the enemy was aboard and battle was joined. The sailors, emboldened by Seeckt’s violent display, attacked the fiends with a ferocity born of shame and outrage. To a man they had really believed these creatures to be some supernatural horror of the swamp. But Seeckt had shown them that these were no daemons, only mortal beasts that could bleed and die.

  Visscher sprang onto his feet, tackling the monster closest to him. The cyclopean beats crashed onto its back, kicking and flailing at the riverwarden. The thing’s slimy skin made it as slippery as an eel, but Visscher clung to its shoulder and drove the point of his sword full into the creature’s glowing eye. The eye exploded in a burst of gas and glass, glowing vapour sizzling across the monster’s slimy face.

  The riverwarden stared in amazement at burning wreckage of the fiend’s head. His wonder increased when the creature’s struggles became even more intense and its flabby paw slammed into his face, jolting him backwards. The creature kicked at him with both legs, driving him away, but before it escaped completely, Visscher saw beady eyes glaring at him from the black depths of the fiend’s nostrils.

  As soon as it was clear of the riverwarden, the monster lifted its claws to its face and tore its own head off. The ruined, smoking husk of the cyclopean daemon fell to the deck. In its place, rising from the slimy shoulders, was an even more hideous countenance: the snarling muzzle of an enormous rat!

  Visscher stared at the transformed monster, shocked, gripped with disbelief. The marsh daemons had faded back into the land of legend, but in their stead had come a creature just as fantastic, the verminous underfolk!

  The ratman snapped its long fangs at the stupefied riverwarden, then lunged at him. Before the creature’s fangs could sink themselves into Visscher’s throat, a sword flashed between monster and prey. The slimy flesh of the monster was split open, exposing the furry body hidden inside. Black blood bubbled from a mortal wound and the ratman crashed to the deck, coughing and spitting as it tried to crawl away.

  Seeckt stabbed the point of his bloodied blade into the ratman’s neck, then wiped the sword clean with a scrap of sailcloth. The agent turned away from the dead monster, directing a reproving look at Visscher.

  ‘Don’t worry about what they are,’ he told the riverwarden. ‘Just kill them.’

  The battle was swift and brutal. By its finish, no less than thirty of the ratmen were dead, strewn about the decks in their ghoulish disguises. Four of the ship’s crew had fallen to the monsters. Surprise had thrown the ratmen into complete confusion, but Visscher thought the gods deserved some credit for delivering such a lop-sided victory.

  The ship’s crew kept to the forecastle, watching the fog for any sign of more enemies. They hadn’t been pleased with Seeckt’s insistence that the bodies of the monsters be left on deck and even less happy with his demand that the Shakerlo remain at anchor. Only the threat of the burghers kept the men from throwing Seeckt and the monsters over board. Seamen all, they knew how far the enmity of the burghers could reach.

  Visscher descended from the forecastle. There were enough eyes watching the fog. He was more interested in watching what Seeckt was doing. The agent was prowling among the dead ratmen, giving each a cursory examination before moving on to the next. There was something methodical about the way Seeckt was operating, and Visscher wanted to know the purpose behind it all.

  ‘They’re not beastmen, are they?’ Visscher challenged Seeckt.

  The agent looked up from one of the bodies, a cold smile on his gaunt face. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

  Visscher nodded his head and gestured with his thumb at the forecastle. ‘They don’t believe you either. We’ve all heard the stories. These things are underfolk.’

  ‘And does it make you happy to know the skaven exist?’ Seeckt’s voice dropped into a bitter chuckle. ‘Better to hold onto whatever lies you are told. You’ll sleep better.’ He stooped down over another of the ratmen, pulling away one of the flabby paws and exposing a furry hand.

  ‘They died easy enough,’ Visscher said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘If men knew how easily these things died…’

  Seeckt reached down and lifted a fold of the slimy green costume the skaven wore. ‘They were lumbered down by their vestments,’ Seeckt explained. ‘Unencumbered, a skaven is faster than any man. By the time you can think to stick your sword in its heart, it has its claws in your belly.’

  ‘Then why did they take such a risk? Why make themselves vulnerable just to make us think marsh daemons were taking the ships?’

  Seeckt tugged at the slimy skin, opening it along one of its seams. Visscher could see now that the flabby flesh was a sort of coat, with matching gloves, boots and pants. ‘Protection,’ the agent stated. ‘Not against us, because we should have already been dead, but against the poison gas they were using.’ He stared out at the fog. ‘Somewhere out on the marsh, if we cared to look, I think we might find some sort of mortar or catapult.’

  ‘The glass globes!’ Visscher exclaimed.

  Seeckt pointed to one of the spots where a globe had crashed. The planking was burned and pitted where the glass had shattered. ‘Without our masks, we should have all been dead before they came near the ship.’ Seeckt stood suddenly, marching across the deck to one of the dead ratmen. He reached down and pulled the cyclopean head from the skaven’s shoulders. ‘Here is your marsh daemon,’ he said. ‘Nothing but a mask to protect them from their own gas. The glowing eye nothing more than a lantern to help them see their way through the fog. With their snouts locked away inside their masks, they’d be unable to pick their way by scent, so they’d need to keep their vision keen.’

  ‘But they look just like the old stories,’ Visscher objected. ‘The ones about the marsh daemons.’

  Seeckt turned away, pacing to the rear of the body. Using one of his daggers, he cut away at the flabby tail, revealing it to be a leathery sheath covering a long naked tail. ‘I grant that to be more than coincidence,’ he said. Reaching to his belt, Seeckt withdrew a little bottle. ‘Their leader must know quite a bit about men, enough to exploit the old legends to conceal his raiders. Just in case somebody like Gustav got away.’ Casually, the agent opened the bottle, upending it and spilling it across the exposed tail.

  ‘Clumsy!’ Seeckt cursed. ‘I’ll have to go down to my cabin and get more.’ Rising, the agent motioned Visscher to follow him. When the riverwarden was close enough, he whispered to him, ‘Keep watching our “dead” friend over there. Don’t stop him, just watch.’

  In a louder voice, Seeckt called out to the crew, telling them that he was done with the bodies. He advised soaking them in lamp oil and burning them on shore.

  No sooner were the words out of Seeckt’s mouth than the ratman he had been examining leaped to its feet and scurried across the deck. Like the Shakerlo’s crew, the skaven had been playing dead, biding its time until the opportune time to escape. Seeckt’s decision to burn the dead monsters instead of simply casting them overboard had forced the ratman into action. Before any of the crew could do more than curse at it, the skaven was across the deck and leaping over the side.

  Visscher rushed after it, feeling stupid for letting the creature escape, whatever Seeckt’s orders had been. The agent was more pragmatic. Calmly, he pointed to a glowing line of splotches that stained the deck.

  ‘I’m afraid our friend has some paint on his tail,’ Seeckt announced. ‘It should be easy for me to follow him back to his lair.’

  ‘You mean easy for us,’ Visscher corrected him. ‘It’s the job of the riverwardens to put an end to this piracy, whoever or whatever is behind it.’

  Seeckt stared hard at Vis
scher. ‘This won’t be like rousting ship wreckers or bullying smugglers.’

  ‘I’m going to see this through,’ Visscher said, his tone brooking no objection.

  Seeckt relented with a sigh. ‘On your head then,’ he said. Turning, he called out to the captain. ‘Keep the Shakerlo here until the fog burns off. If we’re not back by then, I leave you to your own judgement.’

  So saying, the two men lowered themselves over the side. On the marshy shore, a little trail of glowing splotches beckoned them.

  To the two men, the trail seemed almost without end. The little splotches of glowing paint meandered through the muck and mire of the marshes. Fog clung to the soggy earth, the grey mists so thick that Visscher thought they would need a knife to cut their way through. Sucking mud and black pools of stagnant water threatened them on every side, waiting to punish the men for the slightest misstep and drag them down into a nameless grave.

  Quicksand and deadfalls weren’t the only fears preying upon Visscher’s mind. All the haunts and bogies of his childhood were lurking beyond the grey veil, the drowned corpses that lived again, the wailing swamp witches who could suck out a man’s soul with a kiss, the cyclopean marsh daemons who carried their victims into the mist – never to be seen again.

  To these, Visscher now added another fairytale horror, a horror all the more terrible for its awful reality. The skaven, the underfolk of nursery rhyme and nightmare. Seeckt hoped to follow the ratman he had marked back to the thing’s lair, but how many more of the verminous creatures might even now be prowling the marsh looking for them?

  The riverwarden tightened his hold upon his sword. He envied Seeckt’s cool implacable self-assurance. The agent hurried through the marsh, leaping from one splotch of paint to the next, never hesitating, never questioning. He was like a hound chasing down game, his mind utterly fixated upon the hunt.