by Warhammer
Teclis looked up at Reiner, breathing hoarsely. 'My thanks.' He took a vial from his pouch and drank it down. A shudder passed through him and he closed his eyes, then recovered somewhat. 'Now, where is the stone?'
Across the room, amid the weary soldiers, Manfred raised a bloody sword. 'Well done, men of Talabheim! Well done, Reiklanders!' he cried. 'But there is further work to be done.' He turned toward Danziger. 'We have traitors in our-'
'Followers of Tzeentch!' cried Scharnholt, interrupting. 'Kill the unbelievers! The stone will be ours!' He turned to von Pfaltzen, who stood beside him, and cut his throat from ear to ear.
TWENTY-ONE
The Gate Is Open
Von Pfaltzen turned uncomprehending eyes on Scharnholt then crumpled, crimson jetting from his neck. At this signal, all of Scharnholt's followers, and some men of the other companies, turned on those next to them. Cries of shock and pain came from all over the chamber. Then, while the men of the companies tried desperately to defend themselves from those they had thought their fellows, Danziger, too, raised his voice.
'Followers of Slaanesh! Do thou likewise!' he cried. 'Take the stone and Talabheim falls! All glory to our delicious master!'
His men fell on those already fighting the Tzeentchists. As Reiner and the Blackhearts and Teclis watched, stunned, a quarter of the combined companies were murdered before they recovered enough to group together and defend themselves. Many cultists died as well, but as they fell, bloodthirsty cries echoed through the chamber and from the main tunnel burst a mob of masked figures waving swords and axes and spears. Half wore robes of blue and gold, while the others wore purple and red.
Teclis sighed as he stood. 'If it were not a matter of the stability of the world, I would let this city die.'
The companies fell back from the flood of cultists and clustered to the right of the main entrance. Scharnholt and Danziger and their men ran to join their masked comrades.
'Help me to Valdenheim,' said Teclis.
'Yes, lord.'
Reiner and the others carried him through the chaos to where Manfred stood with Boellengen, Schott, Raichskell and Hunter Lord Keinholtz, conferring with Magus Nichtladen. Father Totkrieg was dead. Their troops were close to panic. Their companions had turned on them. The battle they had thought won must now be fought all over again, against more dangerous enemies.
And it only got worse. As the cultists charged the companies, behind their lines, sorcerers commenced chanting. The air around them began to warp and shimmer.
'Magus!' called Manfred to Nichtladen. 'Protect us!'
The magus called orders to his few remaining initiates, and they began intoning warding spells. They appeared to be having difficulty. They stuttered their invocations. Their hands jerked and twitched. All at once one screamed. His eyes exploded, and he dropped, blood pouring from his mouth. Another began tearing the flesh from his face with his fingers. The air was tingling. Flames flickered around the feet of Boellengen's handgunners. They cried out in fear and fell back. The cultists advanced.
Teclis shook as he summoned his strength. 'The warpstone amplifies the cultists' powers,' he said, then spoke a single word and swept his hands apart.
At once the flames winked out around the handgunners' feet. The remaining magi recovered themselves.
Teclis was near to collapse. 'Your men and magi must slay the sorcerers,' he said wearily. 'I have only enough strength to keep them at bay.' He touched his chest where Valaris's arrow had pierced it. 'Naggaroth may have slain me after all.'
'Yes, Lord Teclis,' said Manfred. But even as he turned to order the men, columns of smoke began to rise within the circles of the Slaanesh and Tzeentch sorcerers.
'Quickly,' croaked Teclis. 'Attack them! Disrupt their ceremony!'
The troops pressed forward and the magi wove their spells, but they were too late. Things were moving within the columns of smoke, and the chamber filled with strange choking odours.
From the Tzeentch side came a smell like sour milk, and from the Slaanesh side, an intoxicating perfume. Then things came out of the smoke. Reiner's eyes were repelled by the one and drawn by the other.
The Tzeentchists' conjuration literally hurt to look at. It was a shapeless, constantly changing pink mass. Horns and limbs and slavering mouths pushed out of its skin and sank away again like fish-heads bubbling to the top of a stew. It sweated pus, and moved by extruding a new leg before it and retracting an old one. Reiner wanted to run from it, to tear his eyes out.
The Slaaneshis' summoning, on the other hand, was so alluring Reiner found himself uncomfortably aroused - a lavender-skinned beauty with lush red lips and graceful horns. Her perfect, naked breasts swayed hypnotically with each sultry step and her almond eyes seemed to look at no one but Reiner. He took a step toward her, unlacing his doublet.
'He's beautiful,' said Franka. She too was stepping forward, her eyes glazed with lust.
'He?' said Reiner, dully. For the briefest second, Reiner saw something else where the purple wanton stood - still purple, but hard and chitinous. What he had thought were red lips was a mouth like a remora's. The almond eyes were black holes. Then the vision of beauty reasserted itself, but he could fight it now.
The companies were reacting as he had, backing away from the Tzeentch nightmare, and stepping toward the Slaaneshi temptress. The cultists cut down both the terrified and the mesmerised in droves.
Teclis groaned, then redoubled his chanting. The influence of the daemons lessened at once. Recovering, Manfred stepped forward, raising his sword.
'Hold fast, my Reiklanders! Hold fast, men of Talabheim!' he shouted. 'Steel your minds! Have we not faced these creatures before, and prevailed? Did we not push them and their filthy kind back to the Chaos Wastes? Fear not! The mighty Teclis will protect us! Kill the men and the horrors will fly! Now fight!'
The men fought.
On the left, Keinholtz and the Talabheimers charged into the Slaaneshi with renewed vigour, roaring, 'For von Pfaltzen and the countess!' While on the right Schott and Boellengen and Raichskell led their men against the Tzeentchists crying, 'Karl-Franz! Karl-Franz!' Even Reiner, who knew that Manfred had less honour than a common pimp, was stirred by his words. Whatever else he is, he thought, the old scoundrel is a leader.
But inspired as the men were, they were pitifully few, and they had just fought a pitched battle. The cultists were fresh. And the daemons, though their mental influence was diminished by Teclis's wards, slew all who stood before them with their claws and teeth and tentacles.
'I cannot protect them for long,' wheezed Teclis. 'If you cannot slay the sorcerers, we are finished.'
Manfred turned to Reiner. 'Hetzau! Add your men to the line. Cut through to the circles!'
'No, m'lord,' said Reiner. 'I've a better idea. This way, lads.'
As Manfred squawked, Reiner led the Blackhearts left to the cluster of shacks that ran around the chamber's wall. He gripped Darius's elbow.
'Listen, scholar,' he said as they ran. 'This is your moment. This is where you prove your worth.'
Darius gulped. 'What... what do you want me to do?'
The Blackhearts crept through the shacks, circling the Slaaneshi flank.
'Cast a spell at the fellows who called up the thing with the mouths,' said Reiner. 'It matters not what, so long as they know they are being attacked. Something with lots of flashes and smoke.'
'I am not a witch, curse you!' whined Darius. 'I've told you a thousand times.'
'And a thousand times I haven't believed you,' said Reiner.
They were behind both the Slaanesh and Tzeentch armies now, looking out from the hovels. The cultists had tightened their ring, and the companies' numbers were shrinking fast. The purple beauty raised a man on the tip of her sabre-like claw and flung him into Schott's greatswords. Two fell, and the cultists cut them to pieces before they could rise. The pink horror was gulping down three bodies with three different mouths.
'But it is true,' said Dariu
s. 'I am a scholar. I know only theory. Not practice.'
Reiner shook him. 'Liar! Manfred chose you for a reason. He could have found a better surgeon anywhere. You're just too much a coward to do what he bade you. Is that it?'
'I... No, I cannot! I dare not!'
'So you do know something!' Reiner cried, triumphant. 'I knew it! Use it! Hurry!'
'No! I can't!'
'Damn you! Speak!' Reiner hissed. 'What is it? What can you do?'
'Nothing! It's useless. A way to make plants grow faster. I told him, but he wouldn't listen...'
'And you have plants in your pouch, I shouldn't wonder, though I told you to throw them away,' said Reiner. 'Make them grow.'
'I daren't!'
'Fool! Are you still afraid of our scorn? We need your skill!'
'It isn't that!' said Darius miserably. 'I am afraid of it! I... I nearly lost myself the last time. That is how I was caught. I was found by my landlady unconscious amongst my circles and braziers, and-'
'So you are afraid of death?' asked Reiner.
Darius wailed. 'Of course I-'
'Good.' Reiner put dagger to his throat. 'For I will kill you if you do not obey this order. And this is no game as with Augustus. You can risk death and save a city, or you can die now. Which will it be?'
Darius cringed from the blade. 'I - I will do it.' There were tears in his eyes. 'I wish Manfred had never found me.'
'Then you would have swung weeks ago,' said Hals. 'And saved us all a lot of whining.'
'Hush, pikeman,' said Reiner. 'Now listen. This is what we will do.'
Moments later, Reiner and Darius crept on their bellies as close to the Slaaneshi rear as they dared. The Tzeentchists were to their left. Reiner looked beyond them and saw Franka and Gert getting into position in the shadows. Reiner prayed his gambit wasn't too late. It seemed the Reikland and Talabheim lines must break any second.
'Ready?' he whispered.
Darius shrugged. His face was blank.
'Then go!'
Darius sat up and took a handful of plant cuttings from his pouch. He muttered over them, moving his hands in complicated patterns. At first nothing happened, but then Reiner heard a tiny pop, and watched amazed as the cuttings began lengthening and sprouting tendrils. Darius's words grew more guttural and the plants blackened and twisted. He swayed as if dizzy. The words came hard and harsh.
'Now?' asked Reiner.
Darius nodded and staggered up, hurling the rapidly growing plants at the Tzeentchists with all his might.
'Come, plants!' cried Reiner at the top of his lungs. 'Do the bidding of thy master Slaanesh. Strike down these treacherous Tzeentchist heretics!'
Of course, thought Reiner, as he pulled Darius down and hid, the whole plan would collapse if the cuttings grew into daffodils and cabbages. He needn't have worried. The shoots had been cut from the mad plants of the Tallows, and under the influence of Darius's spell and the presence of so much warpstone, they exploded in rocketing spurts of mutated growth. Creepers undulated across the floor like serpents toward the Tzeentchists, sprouting questing tendrils and dagger thorns. Roots thrust into the hard ground and shot up like trees, branches bursting from their trunks and bearing unwholesome fruit in the wink of an eye.
Panting flowers drooled sap as they sniffed toward the cultists. Vines wrapped around ankles. Men were crushed in verdant embraces and impaled by foot-long thorns. Men who fell were instantly swarmed by the breathing flowers, which sucked at them like leeches.
The Tzeentchists chopped at the vines and looked for the culprits. Those who had heard Reiner's invocation pointed angry fingers at the Slaaneshi. Then an arrow shot from behind the Tzeentchists and buried itself in a Slaaneshi's neck.
'Slay the Slaaneshi scum!' bellowed a voice that sounded suspiciously like Gert's. 'See how they turn on us? Betrayers!'
Another Slaaneshi fell, clutching an arrow in his arm. His companions turned, looking toward the Tzeentchists, who were running toward them shaking their weapons. Cultists fell upon one another and the brawl began to spread. Reiner watched, gratified, as they turned from fighting the companies to fight their rivals. A Tzeentchist with an axe charged the circle of Slaaneshi sorcerers. He could not pierce their wards, but the sorcerers looked around at the confusion. The Tzeentchist sorcerers were turning as well, and the thing they had summoned began to pale. A rope of fire shot from the Slaaneshi to the Tzeentchists, burning all it touched. The Tzeentchists retaliated with a yellow cloud that caused men to choke and fall. The summoning circles broke in confusion, and with a thunderclap of displaced air, the pink horror and the purple beauty winked out of existence.
The Talabheimers and the Reiklanders cheered and renewed their attacks on the squabbling cultists.
'Well done, scholar!' cried Reiner. 'We've done it. Let's away.'
Darius lay whimpering on the ground, staring at his hands as if he'd never seen them before. Blood seeped from his nose and his tear ducts.
'Lad?'
Darius didn't respond. Reiner caught him under the arm. The scholar came up like a sleepwalker. Reiner led him back toward the shacks, joining Gert and Franka, who were creeping back as well.
'Good work!' he said.
'Hetzau!' cried a voice behind them. 'I might have known!'
Reiner turned. Danziger glared at him from behind a pile of rubbish where he and his men had taken refuge. He called toward the battle. 'Stop! Stop fighting! Manfred's dogs have duped us!'
No one heard. There was too much noise, and the cultists were fighting the plants and each other too fiercely.
Danziger cursed. 'Well, at least I shall have my revenge! At them!' He charged at Reiner, his men behind him.
Reiner turned to run with Franka and Gert, but Darius was on his knees, looking at his hands again.
'Damn you, lad! Up!' He grabbed the scholar's arm.
Darius shoved him, screeching.
Reiner fell, surprised, his sword skittering away. Danziger and his men were nearly on top of him.
'Reiner!' shouted Franka.
She turned back to cover him. Gert followed, cursing. Reiner scrabbled for his sword and grabbed the blade, cutting his palm. The rest of the Blackhearts were sprinting toward him from the shacks, but they were much too far away.
Franka lunged for Danziger, but one of his men swung at her head and she dived to the ground. Reiner fumbled for the right end of his sword. Danziger lunged at him. He couldn't twist away in time.
'Captain!' shouted Gert.
Gert jumped before Reiner, slashing at Danziger with his hatchet. The lord ducked and stabbed through Gert's groin. Another cultist gored him in the side. Gert collapsed against Reiner, clutching himself. Reiner thrust over the big man's shoulder and ran Danziger through the throat. The lord squealed and jerked his head, trying to escape the blade, and it tore out the side of his neck. He toppled, fountaining blood.
Gert fell as Franka sprang up, and she and Reiner stood over him, back to back in the centre of Danziger's six remaining men. Swords thrust at them from all directions. Reiner parried two and turned so another took him in his wounded shoulder instead of the heart. Franka dodged one blade, beat aside another, and raked a man's chest with a lunge, but took his riposte in the forearm.
But then the cultists were turning at the Blackhearts' thundering boot steps and they went down like straw before Jergen's sword and the spears of Pavel, Hals and Augustus.
Reiner glanced to the battle to be sure no one else was coming for them, then squatted beside Gert. The crossbowman's breeks were crimson to his boots, and stuck wetly to his legs. 'All right, lad?' he asked, though he knew the answer.
'It's bad, I think,' said Gert. His face was paper-white. 'Captain, I-'
'Not here,' said Reiner. 'Too open. Jergen. Augustus. Get him to the shacks.'
Augustus and Jergen hauled Gert to his feet and put their shoulders under his arms. The big crossbowman looked like the stuffing had been pulled out of him. His face sagged. He
moaned with each step.
Reiner touched Darius on the shoulder. He was still staring at his hands. 'Scholar.' Darius didn't look up, but allowed himself to be led away.
They had just reached the shacks when Scharnholt screamed behind them.
'Stop them!'
Reiner turned, cursing, but amazingly, Scharnholt wasn't pointing at them, but at a cluster of grey-robed figures who were creeping around the edge of the chamber toward the bridge that crossed the chasm. Two in front led the way. The others carried the waystone casket.
'Oh, now who are these?' Reiner groaned.
The thieves stepped onto the bridge. Franka fired an arrow after them. It hit the shorter of the two leaders in the upper arm. The figure stumbled and cried out in a voice Reiner thought he recognised. But the procession didn't slow.
Scharnholt's voice was rising, crying strange words. He thrust his hands forward and a column of fire shot from them and exploded on the bridge. The thieves were enveloped in a blossoming ball of fire.
As it dissipated Reiner and the others saw the casket bearers, mangled and on fire, tumbling into the chasm as their leaders ran into a dark tunnel on the far side, their cloaks smoking. The casket was aflame too, and teetered on the edge of the bridge.
The entire cavern gasped in horror. Tzeentchists, Slaaneshi and Empire men all rushed forward, but before any had taken five steps, the flaming casket tipped up like a sinking ship and slid off the bridge. There was utter silence among the combatants, as the object of the battle disappeared into the depths.
'Sigmar bugger a troll,' said Hals softly.
The tableau broke as a white light shot from the Empire ranks and Scharnholt screamed. He was held in a flickering penumbra of light, his back arched in agony. His skeleton glowed through his skin like phosphorus, brighter and brighter, and then with a blinding flash and thunderclap, he was gone. The Empire troops roared in triumph and fell upon the disheartened cultists.
Augustus and Jergen laid Gert down among the shacks. He was barely conscious. His boots spilled blood. The others gathered around him.
