by Nathan Long
‘What nonsense is this?’ rumbled Grand Master Raichskell. ‘We heard no attack. We did not see the count leave.’
‘The assassins were very silent m’lord,’ said Reiner. ‘And we removed Manfred as quietly as possible, so as not to alert any spies among the household staff.’
‘I see,’ said Boellengen, sceptically. ‘And where is the count now?’
‘Er, forgive me, m’lords,’ said Reiner. ‘But the count has asked that I keep his new quarters a secret, even from his allies. He has reason not to trust the walls of Talabheim with the knowledge.’
Boellengen and Schott and the others exchanged looks. Boellengen said something to an attendant, who hurried away, then he turned back to Reiner. ‘We begin to suspect, Hetzau,’ he sniffed, ‘that you have abducted Count Manfred. You and these others will turn over your weapons and surrender to our custody.’
‘M’lord,’ said Reiner. ‘I assure you, we have done nothing to Lord Manfred. We are, in fact, entirely concerned with his safety.’
‘Be that as it may,’ said Boellengen, ‘we will hold you until you agree to bring us to Count Manfred and he tells us that all these peculiarities were by his command.’
‘But, m’lord…’ said Reiner, desperately. Sigmar! If they were locked up, it was over. The dark elf’s deadline would pass and they would be found in their cells twisted and dead by Manfred’s poison. His foolish wish to end it all would come true.
Boellengen interrupted him. ‘I am disappointed that we cannot question you immediately, but a crisis has arisen that requires our immediate action, and we must go.’
Men in Boellengen’s colours appeared at his shoulder. More men came up behind them on the back stairs. Jergen put his hand on his hilt.
Reiner shook his head. ‘Save it, lad. We’ll end up fighting the whole Empire.’
‘Shaffer, Lock them and the rest of Manfred’s “servants” in the cellar,’ said Boellengen. ‘And place a guard, for these are cunning men. Then join us at the Shallyan temple. We must go.’
Reiner’s heart jumped. ‘The Shallyan temple, m’lord?’ he said as a soldier laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘So you discovered Lady Magda’s trick too? And know that the waystone has been stolen again?’
Boellengen turned back sharply. ‘What do you know of this?’
‘We saw the thieves take the stone, m’lord,’ said Reiner. ‘We pursued them.’
Lord Schott stepped forward. ‘You are the men the sisters spoke of? Who came before the city guard? You know of the… creatures?’
‘The ratmen, m’lord?’ said Reiner. ‘Aye. We had learned of Lady Magda’s treacherous attempt to hide the stone, and went to recover it, but the vermin were there before us. We tried to stop them, but alas—’
‘Never mind your excuses,’ said Boellengen. ‘Did you pursue them to their lair? Do you know where it lies?’
‘We followed them to its entrance, m’lord,’ said Reiner. ‘But were attacked by mutants and were forced to retire. I could lead you to the spot.’
‘Lord Boellengen,’ said Raichskell, aghast. ‘You would trust this villain?’
‘With a rope around his neck and a sword at his back?’ said Boellengen. ‘Aye.’ He gestured to his captain. ‘Collect the rest of his companions and make them ready to depart. I want them before us, to spring any traps they might lead us into.’
AS HE WAITED with the Blackhearts in the courtyard of the barracks of the Talabheim city guard while the Reikland and Talabheim companies assembled for a massive expedition into the ratmen’s domain, Reiner pieced together from scraps of overheard conversation the events that had led to it. Shortly after the Blackhearts had followed the ratmen out of the Shallyan temple, the city guard had arrived. They had lost the trail, but found the bodies of ratmen in the vault. These bodies and the story of the theft of Lady Magda’s ‘gift’ were eventually brought to the countess, who quickly added two and two together and ordered a full scale search for the waystone in Talabheim’s underground.
Five hours had passed while the various parties had wrangled over who should go and who should stay, but the grand coalition was now nearly ready to get under way. Seven hundred armed men stood in ordered rows waiting for the signal to march, each company carrying coils of stout rope, lanterns and ladders. In addition, Magus Nichtladen had provided each company with a mage, charged with keeping the emanations of the warpstone from affecting its men.
From the Reikland came Lord Schott’s greatswords and Lord Boellengen’s handgunners, as well as Grand Master Raichskell’s Templars, augmented with Manfred’s Nordbergbruche Knights, and Father Totkrieg’s Hammer Bearers. From Talabheim came Hunter Lord Detlef Keinholtz, leading four hundred Talabheim city guard, von Pfaltzen with forty of the countess’s personal guard, as well as companies of swordsmen from both Lord Danziger and Lord Scharnholt. They filled the barracks courtyard from wall to wall, waiting for their masters to finish arguing.
‘I fail to see,’ Lord Scharnholt was saying, ‘why m’lord Danziger is allowed to join us.’ The minister of trade was outfitted in a brilliantly polished breastplate that might once have fit him, but now could barely contain his overflowing figure. Reiner wondered if he could even reach across his belly to draw his sword.
‘It was not I who stole the stone, but Lord Untern,’ said Lord Danziger, haughtily. ‘I wonder why the Minister of Trade, who hasn’t seen fit to step onto the field of battle in fifteen years, decides to join us. Not even the invasion of the Kurgan was enough to stir him from the dinner table.’
‘Battles are won not only on the field, Danziger,’ said Scharnholt. ‘I stayed behind to ensure the provisioning of the troops.’
‘Ha!’ barked Danziger. ‘Perhaps that is why half of them starved on the return from Kislev.’
‘And where is Lord Untern?’ asked Lord Boellengen, his skinny neck sprouting from his breastplate like an asparagus from a flowerpot. ‘And Lady Magda, his wife? Have they been apprehended?’
‘We intend to find them directly after the waystone has been recovered,’ said von Pfaltzen, then shot a cold glance at Reiner. ‘Now, if m’lord’s terrier is ready to lead us to the rat hole, we will get underway.’
‘He is ready,’ said Boellengen. ‘Wither away, ratter?’
Reiner bowed his head, hiding fury behind a mask of servility. ‘To the Tallows gate, m’lord. I will direct you from there.’
Von Pfaltzen signalled, and the companies got underway.
Despite Boellengen’s threat, Reiner hadn’t a rope around his neck, but his breastplate had been removed, and his wrists were securely bound together and two of Boellengen’s men walked behind him with drawn swords. The other Blackhearts hadn’t been bound, but their weapons and armour had been taken, and each had a minder watching their every move.
Reiner felt less like a ratter than a piece of cheese before a rat-hole.
The small army marched through the dark streets of the city, the weird twisting aurora in the sky above the crater casting odd highlights on their weapons and helms. Reiner shuffled forwards in a fog of fatigue. The other Blackhearts were no better. They had been up before dawn, and chasing ratmen and fighting mutants ever since.
When they reached the Tallows barricade, the massive logs were walked aside, and the army streamed through. Reiner shivered as he stepped once again into that nightmare realm. He almost wished Boellengen had blindfolded him as well as bound his wrists, so he wouldn’t have to see it again. Mercifully, he was spared. Though fires flickered in the broken windows of some of the tree-tangled tenements, and shadows shambled in the distance, the denizens of the lunatic quarter had enough sense still to stay well away from so large a force of men. The army met no one on its way to the collapsed building under the lee of the crater wall.
Reiner led Boellengen and von Pfaltzen and the other lords into the blackened cellar and pointed to the beam that lay over the grate in the floor. ‘There is a narrow tunnel leading down from here to the attic of a buried tenement.
There are several blocks of buried streets down there, m’lord. Dug out like tunnels. The rift the ratmen went into is in an alley.’
‘Buried streets?’ Boellengen scoffed. ‘What tale is this?’
‘He speaks true, m’lord,’ said von Pfaltzen. ‘A century ago there was a mudslide after a heavy rain. A portion of the crater wall broke away and an entire neighbourhood disappeared. Thousands died. It was decided that it would be too expensive to dig out, so it was built over.’
‘It was only tenements,’ said Scharnholt.
‘A callous thing to say, sir,’ said Danziger, drawing himself up. ‘My grandfather owned those tenements. He lost five years’ rent to that disaster. Not to mention the expense of building new structures.’
After a detail of thirty men had lifted away the beam and cleared the bodies of the trapped mutants, Reiner led the way into the slanting tunnel to the attic, then down the tenement’s spiralling stair, stumbling and falling against the walls because Boellengen refused to untie his wrists. Reiner saw nothing but fleeing shadows as they descended.
It took more than an hour for all seven hundred troops to march down the stairs and then form up in the buried street, then Reiner took Boellengen and the other lords into the alley behind the tenement and showed them the rift in the ground. ‘They went down there m’lord, but we were attacked by the mutants and could not follow. I know nothing beyond here.’
Boellengen took a torch and dropped it into the dark hole. It bounced down a vertical chimney for a few yards then spun through open space to land a way below that. ‘Then you shall explore,’ he said. He turned to Reiner’s minders. ‘Put a rope down there, and another around his neck.’ He smiled smugly at Reiner. ‘If all is clear, give one tug. If you are in trouble, give two, and we’ll pull you out.’
‘By the neck, m’lord?’ asked Reiner. ‘That will end my troubles indeed.’
‘Oh, we’ll free your hands. You look strong enough to hold yourself up.’
‘Your confidence in my abilities is inspiring, m’lord.’
Reiner’s minders secured two lengths of rope to a gate post. One threw one coil down the hole, while the other, who must have been a hangman in his spare time, made a very competent noose with the second.
He grinned as he snugged it around Reiner’s neck. ‘Don’t let yerself down too fast. Y’might come up short.’
He untied Reiner’s hands. Reiner took up the first rope and began to back down into the hole, bracing himself with his feet against the rough walls. Two body-lengths down, the chimney ended in open space and he had to lower himself hand under hand. He looked down, half-expecting to see a sea of ratmen looking up at him, fangs gleaming, but the area illuminated by the torch was empty—a narrow, sandy-floored tunnel with dark, glittering walls.
When his feet touched he picked up the torch. The shattered remains of the statue of Shallya lay around them. It had been hollow, as he suspected. The ratmen’s footprints led left into darkness. Reiner walked a little way in each direction, making sure there were no hidden dangers, then tugged the rope once.
Three more ropes dropped down, but the rope around his neck began to pull taut and he went up on his toes to keep from choking.
‘All clear, curse you!’ he shouted. ‘All clear!’
‘Aye, we heard,’ came Boellengen’s voice from above. ‘Just don’t want you getting any ideas about slipping your leash.’ He giggled.
Reiner cursed silently as his toes cramped and his throat constricted—arrogant coward. Did he truly think Reiner would run in this labyrinth of horrors?
Boellengen’s captain and three of his men slid down and faced the darkness, swords out.
‘Come ahead,’ called the captain, then turned grinning to Reiner. ‘Practising yer hangman’s hornpipe, villain?’
‘I’m practising dancing on your grave, whore-son.’
The captain kicked him in the stomach and Reiner swung, gagging and clutching at the rope, before his toes found the floor again.
‘That’ll learn ye,’ said the captain, chuckling, and undid the noose, but not before he had retied Reiner’s hands.
Reiner added him to the list.
The Blackhearts followed Boellengen’s men down the ropes, and then came all the other companies, four men at a time. They lined up three abreast down the tunnel in the direction the ratmen had taken. It took another hour and a half. If there were any ratmen in the vicinity they would have decamped long ago, thought Reiner, or attacked.
At last they got underway, the long snake of men twisting away into darkness. The tunnel was a long-dry riverbed, at some points so narrow the company had to go single file, at others so steep they had to use ropes to descend.
After a time it levelled off, and the walls showed signs of having been widened.
Shortly after this, Franka shivered. ‘The light,’ she said.
Reiner looked around him. It was almost invisible in the blaze of the company’s torches but he could see it in the shadows; the weird purple light that lit the ratmen’s world. Reiner shivered too, memories of the ratmen’s filthy encampment under the gold mine, their terrifying weapons, the vivisectionist ratman in his surgery where Reiner and Giano had found Franka caged and lost to all hope. It must strike Franka even worse than he, he thought, and reached out unconsciously and squeezed her hand.
She squeezed back, then, realising what she was doing, took her hand away.
They rounded a curve in the tunnel and came upon the source of the light, a glowing purple globe set high in the wall. More lit the tunnel into the distance.
‘What is that?’ asked Scharnholt, pointing.
‘A rat-lantern,’ said Reiner.
‘Eh? They make them?’ asked Lord Schott.
‘Aye, m’lord.’
‘Impossible,’ said Danziger. ‘They are beasts. Vermin. It must be some natural phenomenon.’
‘These are the least of their marvels, m’lord,’ said Reiner.
‘And you know everything about them, do you, mountebank?’ sneered Raichskell.
Reiner shrugged. ‘I have fought them before.’
Boellengen brayed a laugh. ‘Ha! Myths are but mundanities to him. He is a teller of tales, friends. Pay him no mind.’
A distant clashing and screeching made them look ahead. A cluster of hunching figures dressed in scab-brown jerkins ran across the tunnel from a passage fifty yards away. Long furred snouts poked from brass helmets and curved swords dangled from scaly claws. A shot boomed and one fell sprawling as his fellows raced on. Another mob of ratmen, these in jerkins of greyish green, were hot on their heels. Two knelt and fired long-barrelled guns after the first group, then hopped up and ran on, reloading on the fly.
‘Beasts and vermin, m’lords?’ said Reiner as Boellengen and the others gaped at the disappearing ratmen.
‘But… but…’ Boellengen stuttered.
‘They seem to me to have all the trappings of civilization,’ Reiner said dryly. ‘Weapons, uniforms, they fight amongst themselves.’
A little further on Reiner began to hear a sound rising over the tramp and jingle of the companies. At first he couldn’t make out what it was—just an echoing cacophony like people shouting over the roar of a waterfall. Then he began to make out individual clashes and screams and bangs. It was a battle, and not a small one, and it was nearby.
Reiner looked at Boellengen and Schott. They had heard it too, and their eyes darted around, searching for the source.
Von Pfaltzen pushed up to the lords. ‘What is that?’ he asked. ‘Is that a battle? Where is it?’ Lord Boellengen licked his lips. ‘Ahead of us, I think.’ Von Pfaltzen sent scouts forward and they came back white-faced and shaking. Reiner couldn’t hear what they told von Pfaltzen, but the captain paled as well. He and the Talabheim and Reikland commanders clustered together, arguing over strategy. Reiner caught only scraps of it.
‘…thousands of them…’ from von Pfaltzen.
‘…protect the rear…’ from Scharnh
olt.
‘…this blasphemy cannot be allowed…’ from Father Totkrieg.
‘…return with more men…’ from Boellengen.
At last a strategy was agreed upon, and the companies edged around each other in the cramped tunnel, rearranging their order of march, then started forwards again. Reiner and the Blackhearts travelled with Boellengen’s men, now nearly at the rear. Only a hundred paces on, the tunnel made a right turn and opened out into a vast chamber from which the sounds of battle rang sharp and clear.
The companies edged out onto a broad plateau that looked down into a wide, fan-shaped valley over which soared a stalactite studded ceiling. But as big as the cavern was, it seemed hardly large enough to contain the swirling mass of ratmen that warred within it.
TWELVE
Great Magic is Done Here
TWO GREAT ARMIES fought each other in the cavern valley, though the action was so fierce it was difficult to tell them apart. There seemed no order to the conflict, just hordes of spearmen—spear-rats, Reiner corrected himself—fighting hordes of sword-rats, while teams of rats from both armies wandered through the mayhem, shooting flame from brass hand cannons. Explosions of green smoke erupted from all parts of the field, causing all the ratmen near them to collapse, choking. An enormous rat-ogre, like the one Reiner and the Blackhearts had fought at Gutzmann’s fort, waded through a cluster of spear-rats, swinging an axe with a blade as large as a knight’s shield. It left broken bodies and rivers of blood in his wake.
Just below the Talabheimers and Reiklanders, on the slope that descended from the plateau to the valley—so close Reiner could pick out their scars—ranks of brown-clad rat-long gunners fired into the melee. On the far side of the chamber, gunners in green did the same. Ratmen by the score died on every part of the battlefield, but more poured from half a dozen tunnels and passages to join both sides.
