by Nathan Long
‘Now pass it up,’ said Reiner.
With grunts of effort, the Blackhearts passed the four stone-laden poles hand to hand up the shelves. At the top, Pavel and Hals handed the first pole to Rodick’s men and took the second from Dieter and Rumpolt. Jergen and Augustus, having passed the last to Reiner and Gert, stepped to the sides of the shelves and pushed against them, trying to hold them together.
Rodick’s men took each of the poles in turn, and the shelves groaned in relief as they were relieved of the weight. Finally, Rodick took the fourth pole from Pavel, bracing his foot on the unsteady granite boulder. As he lifted, his foot slipped and the boulder toppled down, smashing through the shelves and glancing off Jergen’s right shoulder, knocking him to the floor. The other Blackhearts crashed down in a rain of splintering wood as the shelves disintegrated.
Rodick gasped. ‘Count! Forgive me! What an unfortunate accident.’
‘Accident my arse,’ growled Hals, picking himself up. A horned mutant threw itself at him. Hals elbowed him in the eye, groping for his spear. Reiner drew his sword and stepped between two of the spearmen, cutting and thrusting. There were only three Nordbergbruchers left, and they were sorely pressed. Manfred was bleeding from a dozen small wounds.
‘Blackhearts, hold the line!’ Reiner shouted.
The others caught up their weapons and faced out, limping—all but Darius, who cowered against the wall as usual, and Jergen, who sat dazed, his right arm limp at his side.
The count snarled up at Rodick. ‘You did that deliberately.’
Rodick saluted him as he lifted the stone with his men. ‘Hold them, Valdenheim! And fear not. We will get the waystone to Teclis!’
‘Curse you, Untern!’ shouted Manfred, as the young lord and his men disappeared into the sewer with the stone. A mutant gashed Manfred’s arm with its claws and he turned back to the fight, hacking left and right. ‘Hetzau,’ he said. ‘We must get after him. Get us out of this hole.’
‘Aye, m’lord.’ Reiner backed out of the line and looked around. One of the side panels from the shelves was still whole. He propped it against the wall under the hole, next to where Darius was examining Jergen’s useless sword arm.
‘Up you go,’ said Reiner. ‘Both of you.’
Darius tottered up first as Reiner braced the plank with his shoulder, then Jergen. Reiner grunted under his weight.
‘Ready to retire, m’lord!’ he called.
Manfred glanced back. ‘Very good, Hetzau. Bows and guns back to cover the rest.’
Franka, Gert and Rumpolt dropped out of the line and clambered up the plank. When they reached the hole. Gert and Franka turned and fired down into the mutants while Rumpolt loaded his gun.
‘Baerich, Nordbergbruchers!’ said Manfred. ‘Fall back.’
The captain and his last two spearmen stepped back from the fight, grateful, and pulled themselves wearily up the plank.
Now only Pavel, Hals, Augustus, Dieter and Manfred stood against the horde, and the mutants were beginning to edge around them toward Reiner.
‘The rest will have to run back all at once, m’lord,’ called Reiner. He hacked down a mutant who pawed at the plank.
‘On your command, then,’ said the count.
Reiner cut down another mutant, then waved up at the others, watching anxiously from the hole. ‘Pull up the plank and hold down your hands!’
Darius hauled up the plank, then got on his belly with Jergen, Rumpolt, Baerich and the Nordbergbruchers, and stretched down his arms, while Franka and Gert continued to fire at the mutants.
‘Now, m’lord!’ said Reiner.
‘Fall back!’ shouted Manfred.
Reiner had to give Manfred credit. Conniving manipulator he might be, but coward he was not. He was last to turn from the mutants, slashing about wildly to protect the others while they disengaged, then running and springing for the wall like a man half his age.
The men in the hole caught the hands of the men on the ground and pulled for all they were worth, and Hals, Pavel and Augustus scrabbled with their toes. Dieter needed no help. He flew up the wall like a cat, then turned and added his arm to Darius’s and dragged Manfred into the sewer tunnel.
Reiner had caught Jergen’s left hand and he could see the swordsman’s grim face turn white with agony as he braced himself with his wounded arm. Franka dropped her bow and grabbed Reiner’s other hand. The fear for him that he saw in her eyes sent a thrill through him. Maybe he hadn’t lost her after all.
Claws grabbed Reiner’s ankles. He screamed, thrashing and kicking his leg. ‘Pull, curse you!’
Jergen and Franka redoubled their efforts and Reiner inched up, then came up all at once as he caught the mutant who held him in the teeth and it let go. Reiner landed face first on the rubble-strewn sewer ledge and rolled away, panting as Pavel, Rumpolt and Dieter hurled stones down at the leaping mass of mutants and stomped on their fingers.
Manfred brushed himself off and looked in the direction Rodick had gone. ‘Enough. We must catch Untern,’ he said. ‘The pup needs a lesson.’
The Blackhearts and the Nordbergbruchers backed away from the hole, then lit fresh torches and followed Manfred down the hall, limping and groaning.
Reiner fell in beside Franka. ‘Franka…’
Her face hardened as she caught the look in his eyes. ‘Yes, captain?’ she said, loud. ‘You wish to speak with me, captain?’
Reiner cringed. ‘Never mind, never mind.’ Damn the girl.
They reached an intersection of tunnels. There was no torchlight in any direction.
Manfred cursed. ‘Where has he got to? Did he fly?’
Dieter took a torch and examined the floor and walls around each of the four corners. ‘This way,’ he said at last, pointing to a scrape on the bricks of the right-hand passage. ‘They touched the wall with the stone.’
‘Excellent work,’ said Manfred. ‘Lead on. Is this the way we came?’
‘Aye,’ said Dieter, and started down the tunnel, eyes on the ground. But as the others followed, Jergen looked behind them.
‘Captain,’ he said to Reiner. ‘They come again.’
Manfred heard and cursed. ‘Double time, trailbreaker.’
Dieter grunted, but picked up his pace. After a bend, the tunnel straightened out.
Manfred shook his head when he saw no torchlight before them. ‘How could they have got so far ahead?’
Fifty yards along, Dieter stopped abruptly. ‘Hang on,’ he said. He turned back, looking at the floor, then paused at an iron ladder bolted into the brick wall. He examined the rungs, then looked up into a dark chimney. ‘They went up.’ ‘Up?’ asked Manfred, incredulous. ‘With the stone?’
‘Aye,’ said Dieter, pointing. ‘Scrapes on the rungs. Rope strands. Footprints.’
‘Then we must go after them,’ said Manfred. ‘Come.’ He mounted the ladder and began to climb. A black arrow whistled out of the dark and glanced off the wall next to his face. Manfred flinched back with a cry.
‘Climb another rung and the next will find your heart,’ said a voice.
Everyone turned. Limping out of the shadows, surrounded by a crowd of blank-eyed mutants, was a tall, pale-skinned elf, a black longbow in his left hand, an arrow on the string.
Reiner heard shuffling behind him and looked around. More mutants were pushing into the torchlight from that direction as well. They were surrounded.
SEVEN
The Hand of Malekith
AT FIRST REINER thought the elf was one of Teclis’s guard, for he had the same proud, cold features and regal bearing, but he wore no armour, and his beautifully made doublet and leggings were black, not blue. It was in his glittering dark eyes, however, that the difference was most evident. Though they were as distant and alien as those of Teclis and his guard, there was a malevolence there that went beyond mere uncaring indifference to the fates of lesser beings.
‘I am grieved to hear,’ he said in a pleasant voice, ‘that the stone has eluded me. B
ut at least I have you, and that may yet win me the stone. Surrender your weapons to my slaves and come with me.’
Manfred sneered. ‘We have beat back your “slaves” before, sir. We can again.’
A black shaft sprouted from Captain Baerich’s chest and he collapsed at Manfred’s feet. The arrow pierced his breastplate and stuck out his back. Reiner hadn’t seen the elf move, and yet he was laying another arrow on his string. The other Nordbergbruchers cried out and started forward, spears lowered. They were dead before they had taken a step.
‘It isn’t my slaves you should fear,’ the elf said, coolly ‘They are only to keep you from running. Now, need more die?’
Manfred looked down at the corpses of Baerich and his men, his face pale. At last he licked his lips and looked up. ‘Surrender your weapons,’ he said.
‘M’lord!’ protested Augustus.
‘Obey my orders,’ barked Manfred.
The Blackhearts reluctantly handed their swords and spears and bows to the drooling mutants, who then hemmed in their prisoners in a stinking wall of diseased flesh. Reiner was in full agreement with Manfred. Surrender was the only option, but to give in to such pitiful foes felt wrong, even to a Blackheart.
‘Now, my slaves,’ said the elf to the mutants, ‘Take me to your deepest, most fortified hole. I require a residence.’
He limped forward with a wince, and Reiner noted for the first time that the elf had the broken-off shaft of a white arrow sticking out of his jerkin, a handbreadth above his left hip-bone.
‘We will move slowly,’ he said. ‘For while Teclis’s guard are poor archers, they are extremely lucky.’
THE MUTANTS LED them down into the earth by means of abandoned cellars, airshafts, and what appeared to be an ancient tin mine, until they reached natural caverns, the walls of which glittered in the torchlight as if they were embedded with glass. There was a faint roaring in Reiner’s head as they entered, which he first thought was air moving through the caves, but when he focussed on it he wasn’t sure it was a sound after all, more a babble of random thoughts bubbling beneath the surface of his consciousness, like a fly buzzing inside his skull. He fought the urge to swat it. He could see that the others were affected as well, shaking their heads and twitching. Darius had his hands to his temples, moaning.
‘All right, scholar?’ asked Reiner.
‘Fine. I’m fine.’ Darius snapped.
Reiner wasn’t so sure.
They came at last to an enormous, roughly circular cave, its walls encrusted with pitiful rag-and-stick tents, out of which crawled more mutants, even more twisted than those who held them. It soon became obvious, however, that the mutants were not the first visitors to this underworld. A massive arch was carved into the wall to the left of the main entrance, and straight ahead, where a deep chasm cut through the floor, a stone bridge had been built, beyond which Reiner could see more tunnels in the far wall. Both arch and bridge were aeons old, their geometric designs nearly worn away by time.
The elf limped through the stone arch, the mutants following with the captives. Inside was a high, round chamber, in the centre of which was a circle of black stones, twice the height of a man, surrounding a flat, round altar. Cut into the walls around the stone circle were a score of iron-barred cells.
The elf nodded approvingly. ‘An aspect of Khaine was worshipped here. A more fitting home for a son of Naggaroth than a sewer.’
Manfred’s eyes went wide. ‘You are a dark elf?’
‘I am Druchii,’ said the elf, raising his chin. ‘That other name is a slander invented by our treacherous cousins. Now listen well. Today is a great day. The despised Teclis is dead, and one of Ulthuan’s precious waystones is within my—’
‘How can you be certain Teclis is dead?’ interrupted Manfred.
The elf turned cold eyes on the count. ‘Because,’ he hissed. ‘I struck him with an arrow poisoned, diseased, and enchanted with magics created just for his murder. My dear mother may have named me Valaris, but I am nothing but Teclis’s death. I have trained since my birth, seven hundred years ago, to do one thing and one thing only—kill the great mage of Ulthuan. It was said that no assassin could defeat Teclis’s magics, and no mage could penetrate his defences, so I was made to be both. I learned the ways of the slayer at the knee of the master of shadows, and spent a hundred years in servitude to the sisterhood of Khaine to be allowed to study their mysteries, all that I might defeat the “fair one”.’ He snorted. ‘And so that he is dead, I care not whether I survive. I am but the hand of Malekith. My death—my pain—means nothing.’
Reiner stared at the elf. He had been told that Teclis was thousands of years old, but the knowledge had the quality of myth about it, and was hard to think of as a reality. Here was a being who had lived fourteen human generations in the pursuit of a single goal.
Valaris eased his weight to his unwounded side. ‘However,’ he said, ‘with a chance to destroy a waystone and undermine the foundations of our treacherous cousins’ stranglehold on the world within my reach, I am thankful I was spared, though I am frustrated that my wound makes it impossible for me to accomplish the task myself.’ He sighed. ‘At least I have a tool that will do what I cannot.’
‘You speak of us?’ asked Manfred. ‘We are not your slaves.’
‘And I am glad of it,’ said Valaris, looking around at the mutants. ‘They would be unsuited to the task. The warpstone taint has destroyed their minds, making it possible for me to control them. But it also makes them unable to think for themselves. And I have no doubt it will take cunning to win the stone.’
‘And what makes ye think we’ll do what ye want, y’chalk-faced twig?’ said Hals.
Valaris raised an eyebrow. ‘Hark, hark. The dogs do bark.’
A mutant behind Hals raised a cudgel and bashed the pikeman on the back of the head. Hals clutched his head and cursed.
‘You will do what I want,’ continued the elf as if nothing had happened, ‘because I will hold the count hostage, and will kill him if you fail to bring the stone to me in three days.’
Reiner’s heart jumped. By Ranald! Was this the chance for which the Blackhearts had waited so long? The dark elf might be able to control the minds of the mutants, but it was clear he couldn’t read thoughts. He had no idea that Reiner and the others would leave Manfred to die in a heartbeat—all but the spy, of course. Reiner grunted. Always it was the spy who ruined every chance. But if they could discover and kill him while Manfred was still Valaris’s prisoner, they might escape the count’s insidious poison at last.
Reiner saw Manfred had come to the same realisation. His face was nearly as white as the elfs. ‘Sir,’ he cried, trying to look noble, though his brow was wet with sweat. ‘If you think such a scheme will work, then you do not know the men of the Empire. The restoration of the stone is the salvation of our land, and my men know that I would gladly sacrifice my worthless life to that end. If you send them on this errand, they will not return, and I will applaud them for it.’
The elf smiled. ‘I believe I know the men of the Empire well enough. Did I not just see them leaving each other to die in order to appear the hero that rescued the stone? I believe, count, that you try to trick me into letting you go. You are too fond of your life, and your position, and your wealth, to make so noble a sacrifice, and your men are no doubt greedy animals like all their kind, and will bring the stone back to me for the rewards you will heap upon them for your salvation.’
Reiner rejoiced in silence. The dark elfs prejudices were going to free them. They would walk out of the catacombs and, once they found the traitor, they would walk out of Talabheim and disappear into the world with no one left alive to order the poison loosed into their veins.
Manfred pursed his lips. ‘Then send them and you will see. But I ask a small mercy of you. That if they do not return, you grant me a few moments to pray.’ The count said, turning cunning eyes on Reiner. ‘Blessings for the brave men who join me in sacrificing their lives f
or the good of the’Empire.’
The elf looked up, his eyes darting from Manfred to Reiner. ‘Blessings you say?’
He frowned, then stepped to Reiner and took his wrist, circling his left hand over it. A throbbing pain pulsed through Reiner’s arm and he tried to jerk away.
Valaris held him in an iron grip, then let him go laughing. ‘I have underestimated the cunning of men,’ he said. ‘This is almost Druchii. Bound by poison.’ He smiled at Manfred. ‘You shall be allowed your prayers. Now,’ Valaris waved a hand at the mutants and they herded the men toward the cages in the wall. ‘I have gifts I must prepare for you. I will return.’
He turned away and limped out of the room as the mutants pushed the men into one cramped cage.
As the mutants locked them in, Reiner turned to Manfred. ‘So, m’lord. It is your wish that we do not return for you, and do not bring the stone to the dark elf? Your sacrifice is truly worthy of the great heroes of the Empire’s golden age.’
‘Don’t be an ass, Hetzau,’ said the count. ‘If you fail to bring the stone here in three days, you will not see a fourth.’
Reiner gasped, feigning shock. ‘But m’lord. Do you mean that you lied? That you are not willing to sacrifice your life for the good of the land? Do you fear death?’
‘I fear nothing,’ spat Manfred. ‘And if it would save the land, I would welcome death, but the Empire needs me, Hetzau, as much as it needs the waystone. Even more, now that Teclis is dead. For with him gone, the waystone is useless until another elven mage can be brought from Ulthuan to reseat it. I will be needed to keep order and negotiate with the elves. I must stay alive, you see?’
Reiner saw that Manfred was afraid. Strange that a man who showed no fear in battle would prove such a coward in captivity. Perhaps it was that a man with a sword in his hand always felt there was a chance, while a caged man felt powerless. Whatever the reason, Reiner had seen mercenaries and engineers face their fates with more heart.
‘I see, m’lord.’ Reiner said. He didn’t bother to hide his sneer. ‘But your humble servants have many fewer reasons to live. In fact they grow weary of life under the yoke, and might feel that the Empire would be better off keeping the waystone and getting rid of you, and would be willing to sacrifice their lives to that end.’
