“Once I understood that, it was easy to figure out that you were actually a follower of the Purple Hand, your pledges were worthless, and you’d deem it expedient to kill me as soon as I outlived my usefulness. If I wanted to survive, I needed a way of forcing you to honour our agreement.”
Krieger swallowed. “So you pretended to have a seizure.”
“Exactly. Do you remember how I flailed and scratched at you? I did it to obtain a bit of your blood, hair and skin. I needed them to make this talisman.”
“Which is supposed to do what, exactly?”
“If I so choose, it will hurt you. I confess, I can’t say precisely how. You might go blind. Or mad. Or catch the plague. You might suffer one calamity after another for the rest of your days. Suffice it to say. Celestial wizards understand the ways of destiny—that was why you chose me, remember?—and I’ve bound your fate inside this figure. Don’t make me blight it.” Dieter spoke a word of command and pressed his thumb down on the doll’s chest.
Krieger gasped and staggered. Dieter would have been happy to continue the torment for a considerable time, but he suspected that if he tried, the other cultists would shake off their uncertainty and move to interfere. So he stopped squeezing after only a moment or two.
“That was just to prove that you and the doll truly are connected,” he said. “Don’t make me do something that will have permanent consequences.”
His eyes wild, Krieger sucked in a ragged breath. “I won’t! I promise I won’t! I’ll proclaim your innocence as soon as we go back up into the city! I’ll declare it right now, in writing! There must be ink and parchment down here somewhere…” He turned as though casting about for them, and his form divided into multiple images superimposed on one another.
The phantom moving ahead of all the others whirled back around with a small pistol in its hand. Evidently Krieger kept it concealed on his person as a weapon of last resort, and he was gambling that he possessed the speed and marksmanship to kill Dieter before his adversary could exert the power of the doll.
But thanks to Dieter’s ability to glimpse the future, the ploy was doomed to fail. He waited another instant—dodge too soon, and Krieger might realise and adjust his aim—then sidestepped.
The several Kriegers collapsed into one. The little gun in his outstretched hand spat fire and banged just as Jarla threw herself in front of the muzzle. She thought she needed to endanger herself to shield Dieter, and since he’d been too busy watching the witch hunters to keep an eye on her as well, he hadn’t discerned her intention.
She grunted and flopped backwards. Dieter tried to catch her, but, with the talisman filling one hand, couldn’t grab hold. Jarla fell down on her back with a neat little hole above her heart.
He stared down at the body in astonishment. He’d mastered the tainted side of himself and refused to kill Jarla when she lay atop the altar. Instead, he’d unchained her, and fought the sorcerers of the Red Crown to give her a chance to escape. It seemed impossible that, after all that struggle, she lay dead anyway.
Then, abruptly, stupefaction gave way to fury. He bellowed and gripped the doll as tightly as he could. Responsive to his hatred even without incantations or mystical gestures to compel them, Chaos and some rarefied essence of lightning blended together, poured into his body, surged down his arm and burned in his straining fingers.
The clay figure burst into flame as if it were made of paper, then shattered into half a dozen pieces.
Krieger shrieked and dropped his gun and sword to paw at his face. It was a bad idea, because the flesh there had lost its cohesion, and a touch sufficed to dislodge it from the bone beneath. Gory scraps and viscous liquid streamed down like stew slopping from a ladle.
Krieger tried to extend a beseeching hand to Dieter, and it fell off his wrist. The witch hunter’s left eye collapsed and slipped back into its socket as though some parasite ensconced inside his skull had sucked the optic into its mouth.
Krieger pitched forwards, convulsed twice, and then stopped moving entirely. The corpse bloated instantly, as though it had lain and rotted for days.
It was, Dieter assumed, the end for him as well. The threat to Krieger had been his only hope of forcing the Purple Hand to let him go. Now that he’d already carried it out, the remaining cultists had no reason to accede to his demands. Indeed, he’d given them additional cause to butcher him.
So be it, but, even though, in the wake of that last piece of magic, he doubted he had even a trace of power left, he’d do his best to make them work to avenge their leader. He drew breath, lifted his trembling hands, and only then realised they still weren’t moving to attack him. Was it possible that Krieger’s death, or the gruesome, unexpected manner of it, had cowed them?
Someone cleared his throat. Dieter pivoted to meet the gaze of a man who’d whipped him back in his cell in Halmbrandt. The ruffian had a long, scraggly caprine beard, a missing incisor, and blood from a fresh wound in his right forearm darkening his sleeve. He held a short sword in either hand.
“You said we could have the Red Crown’s books and papers,” he said, the hint of a quaver in his voice.
“Yes,” Dieter replied.
“Then go. Go now, and we won’t try to hurt you, all right?”
Fearing a trick, Dieter edged towards the exit, picking up his cloak and a lantern in the process. The cultists watched with malice in their eyes, but did nothing to prevent him.
It occurred to him that he was abandoning Jarla’s body. The Purple Hand would either toss it in a sewer or simply let it lie and rot in the evil place where it had fallen.
She deserved better, but then, she always had. Dieter had deceived and exploited her from the start, and a proper burial, even if he could have managed it, was scarcely enough to make amends.
He staggered through the reeking sewers as fast as the darkness, slippery, treacherous footing, and his bruises, facial wounds and exhaustion would allow. He glanced back often to see if anyone was following him. As far as he could tell, nobody was.
At the foot of the ladder, wincing at the thought of the agonising headache that would soon follow, he closed his third eye. He pulled up his cowl as well, to obscure the unnatural organ and the bloody punctures on his forehead, cheeks and jaw, then set down his lantern and clambered up the rungs. Twice he nearly lost his grip, but not quite, and finally he crawled back out onto the street.
A spotted dog barked at him. Several boys glanced around in his direction, then resumed their game of kickball.
Dieter lifted his eyes to the heavens.
Even with the smoke, lights and rooftops of the city obscuring it, the beauty of the night sky clogged his throat and brought stinging tears to his eyes. He knew he should keep watching for enemies stalking after him, but as he rose and stumbled onwards, he only wanted to gaze at the stars and forget everything else.
“Well done,” said a baritone voice.
Dieter lurched around, saw the priest, and realised he wasn’t surprised. Some part of him had expected the phantom to reappear.
Which didn’t mean he was glad. “What do you want now?” he wheezed.
The priest smiled. “To congratulate you on your victory.”
Dieter’s guts twisted. “What victory? I just lost a woman who loved me and everything I was fighting to reclaim. Krieger was the only person who could have given me back my life, and I went berserk and killed him.”
“As you were supposed to. It’s all a part of the Changer’s plan. At the end, that was why the Purple Hand feared to fight you. Whether they realised it consciously or not, they sensed that the god would favour you, not them.”
“No!” Dieter exploded. “There isn’t any plan, and even if there is, I’m going to thwart it! I feel as though I’ve lost everything, but I haven’t, not yet. Despite everything, I haven’t lost myself, and by the sun and stars, I won’t. I’ll find a way to purge the sickness inside me and scour your master’s filth from my face.”
“Excell
ent!” said the priest. “Walk your road, learn your lessons, and we’ll talk from time to time along the way.” He turned and disappeared. Overhead, a falling star sliced a long gash across the sky.
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[Warhammer] - The Enemy Within Page 23
