She screamed and threw herself to the side. Fearful that the serpent’s blazing mass was about to slam down on top of him, Dieter rolled.
Fierce heat swept over him and receded just as quickly. He looked up and saw that the snake, after missing its initial strike, had pulled out of its dive and was spiralling skyward once more. Its lack of wings notwithstanding, it flew with an agility no terrestrial creature could match.
The cultists bolted from the forsaken little garden. Proceeding more warily, Dieter rose and peeked out into the alley—
—to see that his erstwhile captors’ flight had accomplished nothing. The serpent could fly faster than they could run and had manoeuvred to cut them off. At the moment, it hovered in the air ahead of them.
Its behaviour suggested it was more interested in Jarla and her ally than in Dieter. Was it possible that if he simply stayed put, it would kill the cultists and go away? It seemed worth a try.
Except, what then? He wouldn’t be any closer to accomplishing his task. Indeed, if he allowed Jarla to perish, he might be forfeiting his only hope of ever succeeding. Whereas if he saved her…
That, of course, was assuming he could. His training had included some battle magic. Afterwards, serving the Empire as a journeyman wizard, he’d even fought in a few skirmishes. But never without a rank of soldiers standing protectively in front of him, and never against a foe like this.
Still, he decided to try. He stepped out into the alley, and, as the serpent whipped itself around and dived at Adolph, raised his hands to the heavens and rattled off an incantation.
Power shivered through him, and despite his desperate circumstances, he thrilled to its exhilarating touch. He thrust out his right arm parallel to the ground, and a dart of blue light streaked from his fingertips.
Down the alleyway, the serpent’s fangs clashed shut in a burst of flame, and Adolph threw himself flat to avoid them. The creature dropped on top of him, and probably didn’t need to do anything more to kill him. If it stayed where it was, and he couldn’t struggle out from underneath the weight of its coils, its mere proximity would roast him alive.
Except that at that moment, Dieter’s luminous missile struck it at the base of its wedge-shaped head. It hissed and turned to glare in his direction.
When he met its gaze, he shuddered, for its blank eyes somehow conveyed infinite malice and the promise of savage retribution. He yearned to run, but quashed the impulse, instead conjuring a second dart. When that one pierced the spirit, it sprang back into the air. Adolph rolled and slapped at himself to extinguish the flames now nibbling at his clothing.
The serpent hurtled straight at Dieter. He rattled off the first words of another spell. Dangerous to work so many in succession, dangerous to cast them so quickly, but, as was always the case of late, he had no choice.
He felt the heat of the onrushing creature’s body. He recited even faster. Disembodied voices howled and gibbered, a warning of botched casting and magic twisting awry.
It didn’t, though. Despite his haste and the fear gnawing at his concentration, he’d evidently got the spell right, or near enough, because a great wind roared, smashed into the serpent and tumbled it backwards. It shrieked, caught itself and, its aura of flame blowing out behind it like a comet’s tail, attempted to struggle forwards once more. So far, though, it wasn’t having any luck.
Dieter pierced it with another glowing dart. On his feet once more, black, charred patches on his clothing but essentially unharmed, Adolph snarled a spell of his own. Dieter couldn’t make out the actual words above the scream of his conjured wind, but they had a vile, rasping quality that made his skin crawl.
Swirls of inky shadow writhed into existence around the serpent’s body. Adolph grinned, then scowled when the black bonds vanished as abruptly as they’d appeared, and without seeming to trouble the spirit in the slightest. It was as if the aura of flame had burned them from existence.
Meanwhile, Jarla threw stones. Unfortunately, unlike arcane attacks, the rocks fell short or flew wild, deflected by the same wind that kept the snake away from Dieter.
Although it wouldn’t hold it back much longer. The creature had started slowly but was steadily gaining ground, and the artificial gale would subside in a few more heartbeats anyway, when the enchantment ran its course. Once again, Dieter struggled against the panicky urge to flee.
He cloaked himself in a bluish shimmer that might, if he was lucky, stop the serpent’s fangs like armour. He then focused his mind and reached high into the sky, where his form of wizardry lived. He needed a storm, and in fact, there was one raging, but unfortunately, well to the north, with only the fringe hanging above the city. But if his skills sufficed, perhaps that would be good enough.
He chanted, and the warp and woof of existence responded to his commands and entreaties. It was like hooking a fish, like seizing clay in one’s grasp and moulding it, somewhat like a hundred mundane actions yet like nothing anyone not a wizard could ever comprehend.
The bellow of the wind started to fade. The serpent lurched closer. Adolph grabbed Jarla by the bodice, spat an incantation into her painted, terrified face, stooped and, to all appearances, tore her shadow loose from her feet. She thrashed, and he set the murky figure standing upright. Portions of its body stretching and contracting as it moved, it charged the creature of Chaos.
But the conjured servitor scarcely bothered the serpent any more than the dark bonds had. A single snap of its blazing jaws destroyed it.
The wind died entirely. The snake shot forwards, and Jarla, apparently at least partially recovered, wailed. Dieter kept chanting as his attacker surged into striking distance.
The shimmering haze he’d conjured to sheathe his limbs kept the serpent’s first bite from penetrating, but it couldn’t block the heat. It was like standing in a furnace, like the air in his lungs and throat had turned to smoke and embers. Somehow he held to the cadence and precise articulation his spell required. The serpent reared to strike again.
Then the world burned white and boomed as lightning, drawn far from its natural course by Dieter’s magic, pierced the creature from above. The serpent vanished instantly. The blast hurled Dieter through the air to slam down on his back.
Gasping, blinking at after images and listening to the ringing in his ears, he knew that by rights, the thunderbolt, striking so close, should have done more than pick him up and fling him. It should have burned or killed him. But he’d had the power under control.
Jarla ran to him and dropped to her knees beside him. “Are you all right?” she cried.
He sat up. “I think so.”
Breathing heavily, looking as if he was starting to feel the sting of his singes and blisters, Adolph approached more warily. “You’re no farmer,” he said. “Those were powerful spells you cast.” Dieter wasn’t sure if the other man’s tone reflected admiration, jealousy, or both.
Nor was he inclined to dwell on the matter. He had something more urgent to figure out: what he needed to say next.
“You’re right,” he said. “Like you, I know some magic, and also like you, I would imagine, I don’t tell people about it until I trust them completely.”
“Right,” said Adolph, “but who are you really?”
“Someone who truly does want to join your cause,” Dieter replied, clambering to his feet. “Can the details wait until we’re away from here? The fight made enough commotion that I doubt it’s safe to linger.”
In addition to which, he could use the extra time to polish his new set of lies and fix the particulars in his memory.
Adolph scowled. “You’re right. We should leave before the witch hunters show up, and we want to go this way.”
They hurried onwards, not quite running, but striding quickly. Dieter struggled not to flag, to deny the weakness and fatigue that inevitably followed so much spell casting. At first Jarla too seemed to strain to keep the pace, as though she was still suffering from Adolph’s mystical violation of her person.
Gradually, though, she appeared to rally, and then she gave Dieter a tentative, inquiring sort of smile.
“I’m sorry I drugged you,” she said, “and sorry we tried to hurt you, too.”
It had terrified him at the time, nor, in his secret heart, was he inclined to take his mistreatment lightly even now, but he forced a grin. “You thought I was deceiving you, and on one level, I was, so I have only myself to blame.”
Forgiveness widened and brightened her smile. “Adolph is right. The way you defeated the daemon”—evidently she wasn’t sufficiently well-versed in Dark Magic to distinguish between true daemons and lesser entities like the one they’d just encountered—“was amazing.”
“He and I defeated it together!” Adolph snapped. “Don’t you remember me casting my spells, you stupid whore?”
Jarla flinched.
They walked in silence after that, on towards whatever new dangers awaited. Dieter tried to draw encouragement from the fact that at least his situation was less dire than it had been only minutes before. Or several weeks before, for that matter…
CHAPTER THREE
They’d beaten Dieter with their fists, scourged him with a thin black whip, and left him dangling from a rafter with the weight of iron balls and chains hanging in turn from his ankles. Eventually he’d passed out, to wake bound and gagged on the cold dirt floor of a cell.
A rat came creeping, enticed, perhaps by the bloody smell of the lash marks on his back or the galls on his wrists and ankles. He heaved and thrashed as best he could until the rodent scurried away.
“That works for a while,” said a cheerful bass voice, “but eventually the rats figure out a prisoner in restraints can’t really do much to fend them off, and then they take their supper. I’ve seen it happen time and again.”
Dieter hitched himself around to face the bars and the corridor outside, where Otto Krieger stood. With the light of the torch in the wall sconce wavering behind him, the big man was little more than a shadow, but by now, fear and outrage had stamped every detail of his appearance into his prisoner’s memory.
Krieger was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, with a square, pleasant face and a smiling, ruddy mouth. Had he opted to wear something other than the sombre garments and ominous regalia of a witch hunter, a new acquaintance might have taken him for a genial, convivial fellow, with nothing brutal or cruel about him. Unfortunately, the reality was otherwise.
Krieger selected one key on a ring, inserted and twisted it in the lock securing the door, and the mechanism clanked. He entered the cell, bent over Dieter—who struggled not to cringe—hoisted him up and sat him on the wooden bench by the back wall.
“There,” the witch hunter said, “that’s better than the floor, isn’t it? It’s certainly a better attitude for a friendly conversation. Although for that, we need to take the gag out of your mouth. Promise me you won’t try to cast a spell.”
With his back and joints throbbing, Dieter doubted he could have mustered the necessary concentration in any case. He nodded.
“Good man.” Krieger pulled down the knotted kerchief. “You must be thirsty.” He produced a leather canteen and held it to Dieter’s lips.
Until now, the witch hunter and his assistants hadn’t given Dieter anything to drink, and the lukewarm water eased at least one of his miseries. He felt an irrational twinge of gratitude, and tried to quash it.
“Now, then,” Krieger said, “let’s talk about the evidence against you.”
“There isn’t any,” Dieter said. “There can’t be.”
Krieger tapped the satchel hanging with his broadsword and wheel-lock pistol from his broad black square-buckled belt. “I have the affidavits. Testimony sworn in Sigmar’s holy name. A woman named Elfrida never fancied you – I don’t know why not, you look all right—yet one night, she felt compelled to couple with you anyway.”
“‘Felt compelled’? Meaning, I bewitched her? She was drunk! We both were! It was Sun Still!”
“Several witnesses saw you cast spells while in the company of a boy named Berthold—”
“I plucked pennies from his ears to make him laugh. It’s not even real magic, just sleight of hand.”
“—and subsequently, he wandered off alone into the forest, where wolves attacked and killed him.”
“You can’t believe I made it happen!”
“Several miners heard strange whispers in one of the shafts. Then a support gave way. A man lost his arm.”
“A terrible accident, but again, nothing to do with me. Since I settled here, I’ve done nothing but try to help my neighbours. Much of Celestial magic is divination, and I tell the farmers where to dig their wells and when to plant. I help the miners locate veins of ore and coal. I search for lost sheep and cows, and lost children, when necessary. Anyone will tell you! Why would I work to help and harm the village?”
“You do some small semblance of good so the town will tolerate a wizard in its midst. Then, having lulled everyone’s suspicions, you can address your true task: spreading pain and despair to advance the cause of Chaos.”
“That’s insane.”
Krieger rested his hand on the satchel. “Your neighbours say otherwise.”
“Then it’s simply because they have a morbid fear of any magician, and you played on it. Or because you bribed or threatened them.”
The witch hunter chuckled. “I will admit that, once I hinted I might pay a modest fee for pertinent information, several witnesses came forward. While after I made it clear that in my view, only a Chaos worshipper would seek to defend another such, a couple of folk who at first seemed inclined to speak on your behalf thought better of it.”
Dieter could scarcely believe what he was hearing. “Then you admit to manufacturing a case against an innocent man.”
“There are no innocent men, my friend, simply varying kinds and degrees of guilt. Certainly there are no innocent wizards. Sigmar teaches that all magic derives from Chaos, no matter how you scholars of the colleges try to obfuscate the fact.”
“That may be your opinion, but we have charters from the Emperor allowing us to practise our arts.”
“Until you get caught abusing them. Let’s discuss the contents of your house.”
“What? My telescopes? My star charts? My staff? A wizard of the Celestial Order is allowed to possess such tools.”
“Arguably so, but what about this?” Krieger unbuckled the flap of his satchel and removed a child’s toy comprised of a wooden cup and handle linked to a little ball by a length of leather string. “Recognise it?”
Dieter did. It had been Berthold’s. But he refused to say the words, as if that would make any difference.
“How about this?” Krieger produced a kerchief. In point of fact, Dieter didn’t recognise it, but suspected it belonged to Elfrida. “Or this?” The witch hunter proffered a little clay figure of a man with one arm missing. “I believe they’re the sorts of items a warlock might have used to lay curses on the folk who have come to grief.”
“You planted them!”
“You’d be surprised how many witches utter such slanders. You probably wouldn’t be surprised that nobody ever believes them.”
Struggling for calm, Dieter took a deep breath. “You must realise, you don’t even have jurisdiction over me. I’m a mage of the Celestial College. If I’m accused of wrongdoing, my order is supposed to adjudicate the matter.”
Krieger shrugged. “Technically, you may have a point, but we’re not in Altdorf. I’ve spoken with the Graf, and, upright, pious child of Sigmar that he is, he’s eager for me to bring this troubling case to a quick conclusion. That’s why he allowed me the use of his dungeon.”
“Damn you!” Dieter said. “What’s the point of this? What is it you actually hope to accomplish?”
The witch hunter grinned and clapped his hands together. The smack resounded in the cramped confines of the cell. “Finally, you said something intelligent. Good. I was beginning to wonder if I had the wrong man.�
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“You do.”
“Now don’t turn thick on me again. Obviously, I’m not talking about whether you really used sorcery to pry Elfrida’s knees apart, or fed poor little Berthold to the wolves.”
“What, then?”
“Have you ever heard of the Cult of the Red Crown?”
“No. I assume you’re talking about a Chaos cult? I’ve heard there are many such groups, but I’ve never bothered to learn about any of them. They have no relevance to my field of study.”
“It’s a society devoted to the Architect of Fate, the Changer of the Ways. My colleagues and I have learned that the cult has a strong presence in Altdorf itself, and we suspect they’re in league with a horde of mutant raiders who prey on caravans and other travellers on the roads leading into the city.”
Bewildered, Dieter shook his head. “And you suspect this has something to do with me, miles and miles away in little Halmbrandt?”
“No, not yet. But I intend for it to. You see, I’ve made it my business to bring down the Red Crown, but it’s difficult, because of the way they’re organised. At the top is a sorcerer called the Master of Change. He only deals with his lieutenants, who aren’t told one another’s real names. Each of the lieutenants leads a coven, and none of the covens has any knowledge of the others. Do you see the strength of such a system?”
“I think so. You witch hunters can identify and attack a single coven and still accomplish relatively little in terms of crushing the entire cult. Because, no matter how you torture them, the members can’t give up secrets they don’t know. Although if you arrest the leader…”
“So far,” Krieger said, “I haven’t managed to take any of them alive. If need be, they turn their magic on themselves. I need a different strategy, and that’s where you come in.”
“I don’t understand.”
The big man grinned. “It’s simple enough in principle. I break you out of this prison. You run to Altdorf. You use your divinatory abilities to find a coven, and then you infiltrate it. Once inside, you ferret out the cult’s secrets, up to and including the identity and hiding place of the Master of Change.”
[Warhammer] - The Enemy Within Page 3
