‘No tracks,’ Talorcan declared, turning away from his inspection of the sands. He might have tried the Kharadron far-glass he carried, but he knew that the haze rising off the dunes would make it difficult to interpret what the duardin tool might show him.
‘Do we go back to the last sign you found?’ The question came from the rider who followed close behind the dismounted tracker. Like Talorcan, she wore a voluminous white cloak and displayed the emblems of Sigmar God-King. Where his skin was dark, hers had a creamy complexion, and the hair that drifted from under the folds of her hood had a golden quality. The saddle of his steed was laden down with sacred scrolls, while the other witch hunter’s had an immense silver great sword strapped to it, a weapon that had been anointed and blessed by no less an authority than High Priest Crautreic himself. Only the most formidable of the brotherhood’s warriors were afforded such an honour and Esselt the Braelander had earned that distinction many times over.
Talorcan met his companion’s gaze, taking pride from the confidence he saw in Esselt’s eyes. He knew she respected his skills as a hunter. He knew she was concerned about what had already proven a very difficult trail to follow. The scintillating sands of Droost’s vast desert created an eerie vision under the moon’s glow. The strange dunes of tiny metallic scales undulated slowly across the land, the light they reflected creating the illusion of a great ocean moving sluggishly towards the horizon. Though the semblance of waves and water was deceptive, the dunes were possessed of actual motion. Drawn by unfathomable forces, the scaly sands crawled across the desert, creeping to the far horizon. Caprices of action caused them at times to churn themselves into great pits that sucked down anything unfortunate enough to be crossing their shimmering surface – maelstroms of sand, leagues across, hungrily devouring those bold enough to brave the desert. Even at their calmest, the crawling dunes presented their hazards, shifting and undulating in time to the seasons, creating a fresh vista to greet the eyes of a traveller with each rising dawn. The reflective scales cast a mirrored haze into the air, a panoply of mirages by day and a villainous distortion of stars and constellations by night.
Only the most skilled could follow a trail across such a land. Though pride was counted a vice within the Order of Azyr, Talorcan felt it just the same, to know he was one of the few who could boast such ability.
‘Not yet,’ Talorcan decided. His accent was coloured with the deep, deliberate tones of the desert. He looked past her, towards the other demigryphs that made up their small flock. The first was a simple beast of burden carrying skins of water to sustain them in the wilds between Droost’s scattered oases. The second had a rider, a small man wearing a hauberk of reinforced lizard-hide and a dun-coloured burnoose. An ugly weapon, partway between maul and goad, hung from his belt alongside a vicious assemblage of knives. A set of iron manacles jangled against his hip as he caught Talorcan’s notice and set his steed trotting forwards. Keeping close to its master, a lean creature that looked part falcon and part jackal loped across the ridge of the dune.
‘Domech, here is work for you,’ Talorcan said, pointing at the ground ahead of them. The witch hunter eased his demigryph to one side as the small man dismounted and stepped forwards.
‘It is my honour to serve,’ Domech declared with a bow. The little man crouched low to the ground. The falcon-headed jackal came over to him, lowering its head so that he could set his palm against its feathered forehead. For an instant man and gryph-hound were frozen in silent communion. When his intentions were clear to the beast, Domech rose. ‘Find, Kopesh,’ he commanded, waving his hand at the dunes. ‘Find!’
Kopesh loped away, its beaked head swaying from side to side as it inspected the scaly ground. Talorcan watched the animal with almost a tinge of envy. The perfect hunter would be a combination of the gryph-hound’s senses and the trained mind of a man to interpret what it found. It was testament to the mysterious ways of the gods that Sigmar had chosen a simple man like Domech to be bonded to Kopesh rather than a more practised tracker like himself.
‘If there is anything, Kopesh will find it,’ Esselt said, watching as the gryph-hound made a wide circle across the tops of the dunes. She smiled at Talorcan. ‘Anything you missed, of course, my little dove.’
‘Would that it were always so.’ Talorcan closed a gloved hand around the talisman hanging from his neck. ‘Sigmar grant there is something to find. If there isn’t, then all we do is waste time here.’
‘Perhaps our quarry found a patch of starve-sand,’ Esselt suggested. ‘He could have been dragged down by the desert, Tal.’
Talorcan followed Kopesh’s progress, seeing the gryph-hound tighten the range of its circles. ‘It would take a very deep hole to swallow something so foul with corruption that it could vanish without some trace.’
Esselt set her hand on Talorcan’s shoulder. ‘It was a sound gamble,’ she said, gentleness in her voice. ‘You did what had to be done. There was no surety torture would have forced truth from his lips.’
‘It was still a risk,’ Talorcan warned. He thought of the caravan, the grotesque disease that had brought down so many of the pilgrims accompanying it. Pious souls from across Arlk leaving their homes to do homage to Sigmar God-King in one of his mighty temples on the River Chael. Instead of the holy sanctuaries they had found the filthy plague of Chaos. Among the true pilgrims had been a clutch of diseased cultists spreading their corruption to the unafflicted. Between them, Talorcan and Esselt had brought judgement upon six of the heretics. The seventh had been allowed to escape with one of Talorcan’s bullets lodged in his arm.
‘The ones who infiltrated the caravan are nothing, Tal,’ Esselt retorted. ‘How many caravans, how many villages and camps, have been stricken by this plague? You know it is the work of more than a single coven. There is a larger cult behind this blight. Finding them is what matters, and if that means following this wretch to the Varthian forests then we stick to his trail.’
Talorcan managed a smile and nodded. ‘I can always trust you to put things into perspective.’ He watched as Kopesh continued to circle the dunes. ‘Sigmar grant there is a trail to stick to.’
‘There will be,’ Esselt declared. ‘Sigmar will not allow this evil to go unpunished. If we keep faith, if we have the determination to persevere, then we will find the heretic and his pestiferous ilk.’
The circles the gryph-hound had been describing tightened. At last the animal stopped. Throwing its head back, Kopesh uttered a piercing shriek and began clawing at the scaly sand. Domech hurried forwards, drawing his beast back before it could dig down to what it had found.
‘Master! Mistress! Kopesh has found something!’ Domech cried out.
Talorcan hurried to Domech, leaving Esselt with their demigryphs. The moment Kopesh was pulled away from the hole, the witch hunter took up the animal’s labours. Hastily he scooped away sand, finally exposing a grotesque creature. Bloated and hairy, the insect was almost the size of his gloved hand when he took it out of the ground. More than half-dead, it did little more than wag its antennae as it was captured.
‘Kopesh, stay!’ Domech snarled, losing hold of the gryph-hound. The beast bounded forwards and began to rake the sand with its powerful claws.
Talorcan moved aside as the animal deepened the hole. He held Domech back when the little man would have pulled Kopesh away.
‘Leave him,’ he said. ‘There is something more here to be found.’
The two men watched as Kopesh exhumed a second bloat-moth and then a third. Each insect was quite dead when the gryph-hound dug them up. The animal delved deeper, finally reaching the object. Talorcan could see it was the carcass of a nomad. There was little subtlety about how the man had died. A knife was embedded in the side of his neck.
Domech started for the corpse, but Talorcan drew him back. The little man’s soul was more mercenary than pious. His loyalty was more aligned with gold than gods. It was
a mindset the Order of Azyr would utilise but one that could never be fully trusted. There were times when Talorcan could almost like Domech, and then the houndmaster would do something unsavoury and remind him of the reality of their association.
‘Leave it,’ Talorcan warned Domech. ‘The taint of Nurgle may be upon the body.’
‘What have you found?’ Esselt called out.
‘The heretic was here,’ Talorcan announced as he brought one of the flies over for Esselt to inspect. She scowled down at the bug. ‘Note what is different about this one.’
‘There are still fragments of the wings,’ Esselt observed, prodding the fuzzy back and exposing a sliver of translucent membrane.
‘A bloat-moth’s wings burn in sunlight,’ Talorcan stated. ‘This one must have dug down into the sand after dawn.’ He raised his finger to emphasise the more important point. ‘But not so late in the day that it was too weak to dig for shelter.’
Esselt shook her head in disgust. ‘The very blood of this wretch is so putrid it draws carrion-eaters to him and so necrotic it makes them keep drinking when they should be flying away to hide from the sun.’
‘And it makes them shun clean fodder. There is a nomad at the bottom of that hole. Some unfortunate this villain came upon and slew. Our quarry likely has mount and water now.’ Talorcan shook his head.
‘It will only prolong the inevitable,’ Esselt said. ‘Once you and I are on their trail, there is no escape.’ She gestured towards Domech as the man once again dragged Kopesh away from the hole it had dug. ‘If the heretic has stolen a demigryph the scent will be even easier for Kopesh to follow.’
Fury crept into Talorcan’s eyes. His fist closed around the dying bloat-moth, crushing it to pulp. ‘The corruption of Chaos spares nothing,’ he swore. ‘Man, beast or vermin, it will consume all unless it is stopped. Unless it is fought at every turn and in every place where it raises its obscene banners.’
‘We will fight, Tal,’ Esselt said. ‘By the grace of Sigmar, we will win. Never again will the lands of Chamon be dragged into slavery and madness.’
Talorcan gazed out across the shimmering wastes of Droost, the harsh and hideous desert that had acted as a bulwark against the hordes of Chaos and a refuge for those fleeing before them. Now the enemy was seeking to corrupt what it had failed to conquer.
‘Never again,’ Talorcan whispered as he wiped the crushed husk from his fingers. He didn’t see the dunes as they now were, but rather as they had been during the height of the Chaos invasion, littered with the bodies of untold thousands. Entire kingdoms driven into flight and devoured by the unforgiving desert.
‘Never again,’ Talorcan vowed, fingers tightening around the Hammer hanging from his neck.
Twilight transformed the desert into an eerie vista of long shadows and fantastical reflections. Dull orange and deep purple, the rays of the fading sun shone across the dunes, leaping off the reflective sands in twisting spirals of colour. More than the heat-haze of day with its watery mirages, or the mirrored stars of night, it was in the brief twilight that Droost was at its most disorienting.
It was the sight of a dark bulk lying sprawled on the side of a dune that brought Talorcan’s senses to full alert. He could see the bloat-moths buzzing about the shape. Too bulky to be a man, it was the body of something much larger. He was certain he knew what it was – the mount their quarry had stolen from the murdered nomad.
Talorcan raised his arm, waving Esselt and Domech to a halt. He gestured to the dark bulk. He motioned for Esselt to circle around to the left of the animal while Domech and Kopesh headed to the right.
The witch hunter drew the pistol from his belt and checked its charge. Talorcan bowed his head and whispered a brief prayer before he dismounted and approached the corpse. As he drew nearer, the disorienting effects of the twilight lessened and he could pick out details of the carcass. It was indeed that of a demigryph, draped in the tasselled harness characteristic of the Carceri tribesmen. There were ugly red boils along its flanks and neck, diseased splotches that echoed those that had afflicted the pilgrims. If there had been any doubt the demigryph had been stolen by their quarry, there was none now.
Talorcan approached the carcass with his pistol upraised and one hand on the grip of the sword sheathed at his side. His eyes struggled against the deceiving flickers of purple and orange, the sinister lengthening of the shadows. He could sense that the enemy was close. With his stolen steed dying from under him, the man was afoot once more. As soon as Talorcan picked up his trail, it would be all over for the heretic.
Then Talorcan’s eyes spotted a detail he hadn’t seen initially. The demigryph was dead, but it had not fallen from exposure or disease. Its throat had been slashed. Beneath the clustered bloat-moths, he could see the jagged slit that had killed the animal. The heretic had deliberately slaughtered his mount. Talorcan spun around, his mouth open to shout a warning to his companions.
Talorcan’s warning was stifled when the ground beside the demi-gryph suddenly burst apart in a spray of sand. Lunging upwards was a gross shape clad in the soiled tatters of a pilgrim’s robe. Only vaguely did the figure resemble the cultist who had fled the stricken caravan. The disease had grown more virulent, swelling the gut and limbs with tumorous growths, distorting the face into a lumpy, featureless mash. Ugly boils dangled from the man’s throat like the wattle of a rooster. Leprous discolourations rendered his skin a patchwork of sun-baked bronze and pallid white. Translucent pus oozed from the broken arm the ambusher cradled against his chest, a limb so swollen with disease that the skin was stretched taut as a drum.
Any clean thing would have withered under such affliction. The bullet wound Talorcan had inflicted on the cultist had become infected and festered. Those who embraced the heresies of the obscene Plague God, however, drew strength from disease, becoming more powerful as the corruption spread. For the cultist each new horror that manifested within his flesh was a gift from his god, a manifestation of Nurgle’s cancerous favour. In the blemished eyes that stared from the swollen face, Talorcan found the crazed gleam of the complete fanatic.
In a flare of flame and smoke, Talorcan sent a bullet roaring from the mouth of his pistol. The shot caught the cultist high, smashing through his shoulder in a spray of brownish muck. Such as remained of the man’s face registered no sign of pain, but the shattered bones caused his outstretched arm to flop limply against his side.
Talorcan hesitated to draw his sword, instead reversing his hold upon his pistol. He could hear Esselt and Domech rushing towards him to help in the fight.
‘I want him alive!’ Talorcan shouted, warning them back. Tracking the cultist further was now impossible, but he hoped that if the man was taken alive he could still be forced to reveal something that would lead to his confederates. Gripping the pistol like a club, he brought its heavy grip smashing down against the side of his foe’s skull. An ear was mashed into paste by the blow, the scalp torn open by the silver ornaments fastened to the wooden frame. The brown sludge that bubbled from the wound splashed across the edge of Talorcan’s cloak, turning the white cloth black with its foulness.
The vicious blow staggered the cultist but did nothing to arrest his advance. He plunged down the slope and as he passed Talorcan, the fingers of his dangling arm caught at the witch hunter’s cloak. Snagged in the garment, the heretic’s grip brought Talorcan tumbling down the side of the dune with his enemy.
‘Tal!’ Esselt’s shout sounded impossibly distant to Talorcan’s ears as he came to rest at the bottom of the dune. He spat sand from his mouth and groped about for the pistol that had been knocked from his hand in the fall.
Before Talorcan could pick himself off the ground, a heavy weight slammed into him, pitching him onto his side. The wounded cultist loomed over him, gore and filth spilling from his wounds. Viciously the man drove another kick at the witch hunter’s ribs. Talorcan caught the foot before it
could hit him. Wrenching it to one side, he heard something pop and was rewarded to finally see an expression of agony in the cultist’s diseased visage. Talorcan’s foe staggered back, collapsing to the ground when his savaged foot refused to support his swollen bulk.
Talorcan drew his sword as he regained his own footing. He glowered down at the stricken cultist. ‘It is alright now,’ Talorcan called out when he heard Esselt rushing down the side of the dune. ‘A bit more fight in him than I was expecting, that is all.’
‘The scum was lying in ambush for us,’ Esselt accused. The stars now shining in the sky danced across the silvered edge of her great sword, surrounding the weapon in a blue glow. ‘Was that his plan all along, or did he realise he was not going to throw us off his trail?’
‘A good question,’ Talorcan said, advancing towards the prostrate cultist. ‘I wonder how much persuasion he will take to give us an answer.’
Talorcan was a veteran of the Order of Azyr, having spent many years hunting the enemies of Sigmar. Even so, he was unprepared for the answer the cultist gave. Lurching up from the ground, the heretic glared at him and clamped his jaw tight. The next instant the diseased man spat a tatter of flesh at the witch hunter. It was his tongue.
The cultist uttered a coughing laugh as he heard Esselt’s shock and saw Talorcan draw away from the severed tongue. The laugh collapsed into anguished moans when a bloat-moth suddenly flew down onto the man’s face. The huge insect latched itself to the side of the gashed head, its sharp feet clawing a hold in the leprous skin. Then its razor-edged proboscis was unfolding, stabbing down to drink the filth oozing from the cultist’s wound.
Shadespire: The Mirrored City Page 33
