“Confess! You are the lap-dog of your Chaos masters. Confess! Confess everything!”
The screams of his denials echoed alongside the accusations.
He had been able to do nothing else. He had been tied to the torturer’s blood-stained table, with his hands bound, so there was no way that he could have used his magic. Anger boiled inside him, hot enough to melt metal.
But his resolve had been great and before he cracked, the witch hunter had brought the agonising proceedings to an end.
Gerhart knew what his fate would be and while it rested in the hands of the cold-hearted witch hunter, there was nothing he could do but wait. But if the witch hunter thought his prey would go quietly, he was sadly mistaken. The Sigmarite would rue the day he had earned the enmity of Gerhart Brennend.
* * *
Gerhart slept fitfully and when he awoke the grey half-light of dusk was descending beyond the tiny barred window.
Every part of his body ached, he was hungry and cold, and the rope binding his hands was chafing his skin. Barely-contained anger bubbled just beneath the surface, waiting for an opportunity to be released in a furious outburst of vengeance.
Hearing keys rattling in the lock Gerhart cautiously craned his neck to see the same orange glow outside the door as he had before.
This time the two men entered the cell without their master. Gerhart didn’t speak and did not struggle as they brusquely lugged him to his feet and hauled him from the dungeon again.
Instead of taking him to the torture chamber, the two guards led him along different passageways and up through the sturdy stone-built building. He noticed that the torches held in iron brackets and stone sconces throughout the tunnels were unlit. The twilight coming through narrow arrow-slit windows was enough for them to see by.
Before he knew it, they were outside the village’s gaol-cum-gatehouse and making their way through the silent streets down towards a mill. Its huge groaning waterwheel creaked as it turned in the steady flow of the stream that had been diverted to power it.
Gathered at the edge of the millpond was the entire population of the village, waiting in eager anticipation.
Gerhart studied the circle of wards around him. Three concentric rings of esoteric sigils had been inscribed in the packed earth, the runes and markings picked out in coloured powders. They were quite beautiful to look at and whoever had created them knew what he was doing. Gerhart could feel the magical power throbbing from them in numbing waves. He could see the sparkling rainbow-coloured tendrils with his enhanced wizard’s vision, and he could understand their purpose.
Once again he had to admit to having a grudging respect for the witch hunter. He was no mere paranoid fanatic. No, he was an educated and intelligent man who applied as much knowledge and learning to his work as he did a zeal for punishment.
Not only did the wards isolate Gerhart from the winds of magic, they also prevented him from crossing the barrier they formed. The witch hunter’s men had placed him inside the wards but he knew it would not be easy to leave their confines.
Even if he could somehow break through, his bound hands would mean he could not escape. The witch hunter’s men would run him through before he could get five yards. They were standing now between the villagers and the imprisoning circle.
Gerhart would have to bide his time and wait for an opportunity to present itself. While he waited, with his back to the millpond, he began to work at the knots binding his hands with long, dextrous fingers.
“You see before you the perpetrator of crimes against the good people of Ostland. He has the blood of innocents on his hands and has caused devastation in his rampage across the Empire,” the witch hunter declared, addressing the crowd. He was pointing to Gerhart as if there might be some doubt as to who he was talking about.
“Rampage?” Gerhart interjected, unable to contain himself any longer. “I’ve never heard such balderdash!”
“You see at my feet the wicked tools he used on his trail of death and destruction,” the witch hunter said, still ignoring Gerhart. “His fell sword and sorcerous staff.”
Cries of shock and appalled anger rose from the crowd. Gerhart could see his sheathed sword lying at his accuser’s feet, along with the knotted rod of his oaken staff.
The witch hunter had come to the climax of his “trial” of the sorcerer. Frustrated anger seethed and boiled beneath the wizard’s grim-set expression. The crowd that had been silent at his arrival were now no better than a baying mob, hungry for blood—his blood.
The witch hunter let the crowd express resentment of all things sorcerous. When he felt they had had long enough to express their dissent, he raised his hands and spoke, his words cutting clearly through the shouts of the crowd.
“Good people of Hochmoor, the Lord Sigmar will look upon you with favour, in both this life and the next, for your part in the persecution of this heretic. I have seen the wanton destruction wrought by this sorcerer. You may sleep peacefully this night, knowing that you have saved your own homes from sharing the fate this murderous mage dealt Keulerdorf and Grunhafen. I, Gottfried Verdammen, witch hunter, swear it!”
“This is ridiculous!” Gerhart shouted. “I am a licensed wizard of the colleges of magic, renowned fire mage of the Bright order. And I will not be bound by any verdict of this mockery of a trial! You should show me respect. Do not aggravate me. I’m a dangerous man when I am angry!”
“Drown him!” a gruff voice shouted and others took up the cry.
Death by drowning. Of course, that was what the witch hunter had in mind for him. Gerhart could think of no worse an end for a fire wizard.
“This man is evil! He is a practitioner of the sorcerous arts, and he has gone too far. There is no return for him. He must be stopped. If he is allowed to live, his mere existence will encourage the growth and spread of Chaos.”
The crowd gasped.
“Prove it!” Gerhart bellowed. “Where is your evidence? Your words are nothing but hearsay.”
Then, for the first time, Verdammen, the self-styled judge, jury and would-be executioner, addressed the wizard directly. He turned on him like a striking snake. The look in his steely eyes was cold enough to burn into Gerhart’s very soul.
“So, tell me what happened in Keulerdorf!”
“That was… unfortunate,” Gerhart said, his voice suddenly quiet. He cast his eyes to the ground.
“Unfortunate?”
“You know nothing of what happened in the foothills of the Middle Mountains.”
“Why don’t you tell me then?”
“What, tell you of the beast that had terrorised that village for so long? How I rid the people of their curse, and almost died? How, after all I had done for them I was hounded out of Keulerdorf by its ungrateful populace? What difference would it make? You have already decided I am guilty.”
“And how do you explain what happened to Kozma Himmlisch and the destruction of the celestial wizard’s observatory-tower?”
“Will you hear my story? Listen to what I have to say?”
“He can have nothing to say that we want to hear!” a heckler cried from the crowd. “Drown him!” Others took up the cry again.
“If you believe you have anything to say that may exonerate you, then say it. This is your chance to clear your name,” the witch hunter said over the crowd’s protests.
Gerhart scowled at the man who had been so ready to believe he was a servant of Chaos and who tortured him to have his suspicions confirmed.
“I will tell my story but not so that you may judge me, but so that these good people of Hochmoor may hear it before they declare their sentence.”
The crowd jeered and bellowed in disgust, so effective was the witch hunter’s rhetoric.
Verdammen calmed them with a wave of his hands. “Go ahead then, sorcerer,” he said, fixing Gerhart with his steely gaze, and smiling coldly, “tell your story.”
“Until his unfortunate fate befell him, I would have considered Kozma Him
mlisch a friend.”
“A friend, you say?” the witch hunter interrupted. “What about the fate that befell him?”
“Listen and I will tell you!” Gerhart snapped angrily.
When I arrived at his tower, Kozma welcomed me inside and led me up to his observatory. A huge, arcane conglomeration of brass tubes and polished crystal lenses dominated the glass-domed chamber. I noticed that the telescope was pointing to the north. I also saw a table there covered with star charts, open books and scrolls, as well as sheaves of notes Himmlisch had made. These, it turned out, concerned the appearance of the comet, as well as Kozma’s observations about the flow of the currents of magical energy coming from the north.”
“How do you know this?” Verdammen asked the wizard.
“Because I took the notes from the tower and studied them later.”
A glint of delight appeared in the witch hunter’s steely eyes. “So I must add the crime of theft to your list of charges!” he said with delight, turning his smile to the gathered villagers.
“I am no thief,” Gerhart growled like a caged bear.
“But your own words condemn you!”
“Let me finish and you will see!”
The witch hunter looked back at the wizard and indicated that he should continue.
“As I was saying,” Gerhart went on, “Kozma’s magnificent telescope had been angled to the north. This was the reason for his uncharacteristic behaviour.”
“What ‘uncharacteristic’ behaviour?” the witch hunter interjected again.
“If you did not keep interrupting me, I will get to that part of the story,” Gerhart fumed, becoming more and more troubled by the witch hunter’s continual butting in.
“The longer I spent in Kozma’s company, the more unsettled I became by his peculiar behaviour. He seemed agitated and kept talking to himself, and muttering unintelligibly under his breath. While Kozma was distractedly shuffling through the charts on his desk I snatched a glance through the eyepiece. I was horrified to see the leering face of the Chaos moon Morrslieb and I looked away immediately.”
There were anxious murmurs in the crowd when he mentioned the Chaos moon and many people crossed themselves with the sign of the hammer. It was clear that these simple-minded peasants did not fully understand the details of his story. They were merely cowering in fear and horror at the evil-laden words.
Verdammen, however, did nothing to interrupt Gerhart this time. The wizard must have piqued the witch hunter’s interest for he seemed happy to allow him to continue with his story.
“As he chattered on, Kozma started to talk about a time of great change coming to the Empire, but he avoided the questions I put to him. Instead he just kept ranting on like some insane prophet of the End Times!”
The crowd gasped again and some began to shuffle back from the proceedings, as if Gerhart’s story would damn them.
Gerhart was relieved to be able to finally relate his version of events.
“I detected a connection between Kozma’s unsettled behaviour and the incessant rain outside. The heavier the downpour, the more deranged he became. Eventually the severity of the weather increased until it gave way to a sky-splitting thunderstorm.”
The witch hunter could hold his tongue no longer. “You would accuse a member of an Imperial kommission of being deranged?” he hissed under his breath.
“An Imperial kommission? That makes no difference. He was like a man possessed!”
More gasps from the crowd.
“Then my old friend lost what reason he still had, and began howling about a rising storm of Chaos that would engulf the Old World. Then he attacked me.”
“He attacked you?” the witch hunter uttered in disbelief.
“That is what I said,” Gerhart railed.
“Then you are a liar, as well as a thief and a murderer!” Verdammen challenged.
“What? This is preposterous!”
“How could a fire wizard overcome a sorcerer of the Celestial order in the middle of a thunderstorm? I know something of the ways of spell-casters. Tempests and thunderstorms are anathema to a fire mage such as yourself, whereas they are the very source of an astromancer’s power.”
“Everything I have told you is the truth!” Gerhart exploded, his rage consuming him.
The people thronging the banks of the millpond gasped and shuffled further back. Even Verdammen’s men seemed somewhat perturbed to see such an outburst of furious anger. The only person who seemed unconcerned was the witch hunter.
“It is just as I suspected,” Verdammen said calmly.
“What is just as you suspected?” Gerhart fumed.
“You have gone too far with your magic. You have been corrupted by the very power that you seek to control. Chaos has your soul.” Verdammen went on. “Wasn’t it some Tilean statesman who said that all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Isn’t that what your powers give you over us mere mortals? Absolute power?”
“What? That’s nonsense!”
“Then answer me this: Chaos is the root of all magic, is it not? The mystic winds that blow from the broken gate of heaven at the heart of the Chaos-corrupted Northern Wastes provide you with power to create your spells.”
An anxious, heavy silence descended over the mob with these words. They were eager to hear how the wizard would answer.
Gerhart, his face red with anger, a vein pulsing on his forehead, took a long, deep breath. He held it for a moment, and then let it out again in a rasping huff.
“The winds of magic do indeed blow from the north but what I employ in my art is not the raw stuff of Chaos,” he explained, keeping his voice as calm and even as he could.
“But you agree that the source of all magic is Chaos, do you not?” the witch hunter persisted.
“As the mystic winds blow south they separate into their component colours. They in turn are attracted to those parts of the physical environment that share part of their nature,” Gerhart explained, like an impatient temple-school teacher. “Hence the wind of Aqshy. The source of my wizardry is drawn most readily to the hottest places of the world: fiery, smoke-wreathed mountains, the deserts of Araby or a sun-beaten battlefield in the middle of a drought-laden summer. But a man of your obvious learning and experience concerning the ways of wizards knows this, surely?”
“But do you not agree that all magical power has the capability to corrupt those who wade too deeply in the currents of the sea of dreams?”
Gerhart was quiet for a moment again. “Yes. I have seen it happen,” he admitted, his shoulders sagging.
“To yourself!”
“No! To others, too many times recently. And one of those was Kozma Himmlisch!”
“You would condemn a dead man? A man you murdered?” Verdammen roared, obviously incensed by Gerhart’s words.
“A man I killed in self-defence.”
“So you claim!”
The witch hunter’s cold calm had returned and infuriated Gerhart still further.
“It was the astromancer who had been corrupted by the malign influence of Morrslieb. His constant observations of its course through the sky made him mad.”
As he talked, Gerhart continued to worry at the knots behind his back. Contorted muscles, weak from the torture, were now full of the stabbing pains of cramp. He desperately tried to focus and put the pain out of his mind, so he could find a way out of his dire predicament.
He recalled the witch hunter’s reaction to his accusation concerning Kozma’s state of mind. Perhaps that was something he could use to his advantage? Perhaps he and the witch hunter had something in common. He knew that his own temper was bad but judging by Verdammen’s outburst, maybe his anger was also his weakness.
All he had to do was goad the witch hunter into breaking the circle of his wards. Gerhart would be able to do the rest.
He could see the red-orange flickering energies buffeting at the invisible barrier around him.
Then he remembered what else
the witch hunter had said.
“I had not realised that you knew Kozma Himmlisch so well… that you had been working alongside him. So you have worked with a practitioner of the very arts you now condemn me for.”
Gerhart glanced from the witch hunter to the crowd and back again to judge the effect of his statement. In the growing gloom of dusk he was just able to make out the disconcerted looks some members of the throng were throwing Verdammen’s way.
“Yes, I worked alongside the astromancer,” the witch hunter retaliated, sensing the unease of the crowd, “as part of an Imperial kommission set up between the colleges of magic in Altdorf and the holy Church of Sigmar, to battle a common enemy. The enemy of all right-minded people—Chaos.”
Gerhart felt the rope loosen.
“But the Kozma I fought was not the same man: he was run mad. What is to say that the corruption he suffered was not shared with those he had been working with?” Gerhart asked innocently.
There was muttering amongst the villagers. These superstitious country folk would believe almost anything, given the right encouragement. They feared witch hunters almost as much as they feared practitioners of the magical arts.
“Watch your tongue, wizard,” Verdammen hissed, taking a step forward, and shaking an accusing finger at Gerhart, “or I’ll have it cut out!”
The wizard glanced down and saw how close the toe of the witch hunter’s boot had come to scuffing the edge of the circle of wards. His foot only had to break the circle…
“There is a madness at work here,” Verdammen hissed. “I have seen signs of it wherever you have been before.”
Gerhart’s fingertips tugged at the dangling end of hemp and the knot shifted again.
“I too have seen insanity throughout this province but nothing more insane than this mockery of a trial!”
It was then that Gerhart got the reaction he had been hoping for. But it came much more easily than he had thought, and from a totally unexpected quarter.
The fire mage was suddenly aware of a man running towards him.
“Show some respect!” the henchman bellowed as he rushed over to the bound wizard and struck him across the face with his fist. His stamping feet ploughed through the dirt, scuffing the symbols of warding that had been so carefully inscribed on the ground.
[Warhammer] - Magestorm Page 8
