Dead Winter

by C. L. Werner

  ‘Look, I don’t have time to argue or wait for you to finish fondling the help,’ Bremer said, peering over Walther’s shoulder at Zena. ‘You either get this idiot to shut up, or we’re through!’

  Walther stared hard at Bremer. Something was wrong here, he could feel it in his bones. ‘Why can’t Hans and Schultz handle this?’ he asked, menace in his voice.

  Bremer backed away, all the bluster draining out of him. ‘What are we going to do?’ he wailed. ‘That idiot is going to drive away business!’

  Walther stalked past the taverneer, his anger rising with each step. ‘If his argument is that that thing I killed isn’t real, then I’m going to make him eat his words! Whoever he is!’

  The rat-catcher brushed past the cook and kitchen boys who were peering into the tavern from the cracked door. The patrons had fallen silent, all conversation stifled by the agitated cries of a single shrill voice. Walther could see the crowd backing away from the oak stand. Suddenly no one wanted to be close to the dead giant or rub its charmed fur.

  ‘This abomination is a cruel fraud!’ the voice wailed. ‘A hoax to gull fools into debauchery and licentiousness! You people should be ashamed of yourselves to be tricked away from your homes by such an absurd jest!’

  Walther’s anger swelled as he heard the sceptical words and sneering tone, all the humiliation of his appeals to the scholars returning to him. He reached behind the bar, retrieving one of the cudgels Bremer kept there to cosh drunks. The feel of the heavy club brought a vicious leer to his face. The patrons around him must have noted his demeanour, clearing a path for him without a word leaving his lips.

  ‘Who says the giant is fake?’ Walther snarled as he emerged from the crowd. There was a man pacing before the mounted monster. At Walther’s challenge he turned. The rat-catcher groaned when he saw who the giant’s detractor was. Captain Hoffmann Fellgiebel of the Freiberg Hundertschaft, that element of Nuln’s city watch charged with policing the district. Suddenly it was very clear to Walther why the two bouncers wanted nothing to do with this particular trouble-maker.

  Fellgiebel looked the surprised rat-catcher over. The captain’s face was lean and hungry, his eyes close-set and with all the charm of a snake about them. One of his gloved hands caressed the pommel of the sword sheathed at his side, the other gripped a bundle of fresh posies, a safeguard against the plague. He shook the flowers in Walther’s direction.

  ‘You must be the charlatan himself,’ Fellgiebel said, his voice like an audible sneer. ‘I charge you to confess to these people the imposture you have committed so that they might return to their homes and turn their minds to more righteous pursuits.’ The captain’s eyes gleamed with malice. ‘You will accommodate me,’ he stated. A pair of men wearing leather jacks and the dagged black and yellow sleeves of the Hundertschaft came stalking forwards from their posts at either side of the tavern’s entrance. Each of the men had a fat-bladed halberd in his hand.

  The rat-catcher’s anger faltered for a moment. Then the thought of how close he had come to dying, of Hugo and the man’s suffering, poured fire back into his veins. Standing his ground, Walther glared back at Fellgiebel. ‘I’m the man who killed that monster and had it stuffed, if that’s what you mean.’

  Fellgiebel blinked in shock. In this place, in this district, his reputation did not fail to precede him. Nobody stood up to him. They knew what would happen if they did. The captain’s eyes became even colder and more reptilian. ‘I think I heard you say it’s fake.’ He turned and cast his gaze across the crowd. ‘I think they heard you say so too. Why don’t you say it again so everybody can agree?’ His thin lips pursed into a menacing grin. ‘Say it while you still can.’

  The two watchmen came marching towards Walther, their weapons lowered. A single gesture from Fellgiebel and they would use those weapons. Not to kill, Fellgiebel wasn’t so crude as that. All of his men were quite good at using their halberds to maim and cripple. One living wreck of a man was worth more as an example to others than a dozen graves in the garden of Morr.

  ‘He said it’s real and he killed it.’ The words were spoken with a gruff Reikland accent. Walther was no less surprised than Fellgiebel when a big blond-haired man stepped out from the crowd and slapped down the halberd of the nearest watchman with the bared sword in his hand.

  ‘That was a mistake!’ Fellgiebel hissed. The captain started to pull his own sword when the sound of steel scraping against leather sounded from all across the room. The big Reiklander, it seemed, had quite a few friends.

  ‘Was it?’ the Reiklander demanded. ‘I think it is you who’ve made the mistake. That rat looks pretty real to me.’

  ‘Stitched together from scraps,’ Fellgiebel snarled back. ‘I can get witnesses who will testify to that.’

  Walther’s anger swelled as he heard the captain speak. He could well imagine how Fellgiebel would get such testimony. The Reiklander clearly didn’t have any idea what he was getting himself into, but Walther was going to put a stop to it. This was his fight and he wasn’t going to let anyone fight it for him.

  ‘Fake!’ Walther shouted, slapping the cudgel hard against his palm. ‘Stitched together from scraps!’ He marched past Fellgiebel and to the oak stand. His arm trembling with fury, he raised the cudgel and brought it slamming down against the stuffed monster. The verminous fur tore beneath the blow, the bits of copper flying loose and clattering across the tavern. The bleached skull of the rodent crashed to the floor, bouncing once and landing so its fanged grin faced the watch captain.

  ‘Tell me who made that for me!’ Walther yelled.

  Fellgiebel stared at the rat skull, colour rushing into his cheeks. Angrily, he turned away, whipping his cloak over his shoulder. As he stalked towards the door, a chorus of jeers and taunts followed him out.

  Walther frowned as he considered the damage his anger had caused. The damage to the monster was one thing, but the humiliation of a man like Fellgiebel was another.

  ‘It does me good to see that cur walk out of here with his tail between his legs.’ The speaker was the big Reiklander. There was a beerstein in his hand. Walther was grateful when the man offered it to him.

  ‘You shouldn’t have interfered,’ Walther said. ‘It was my fight.’

  ‘You looked like you needed the help,’ the Reiklander said. His jaw clenched tight as he stared after the departed Fellgiebel. ‘Besides, I didn’t like his arrogant tone. It reminded me too much of the Kaiserjaeger back in Altdorf.’

  Walther nodded his understanding. Even in Nuln, news of the Bread Massacre and the Kaiserjaeger’s role in the slaughter had spread. The rat-catcher looked at the Reiklander with a new appreciation. Maybe he had been one of Engel’s Marchers. He might even know Meisel. He certainly had the look of a dienstmann about him.

  ‘Walther Schill,’ the rat-catcher introduced himself, laughing as he watched Bremer come racing from the kitchen to scoop up the rat skull before anyone could step on it.

  ‘Heinrich Aldinger,’ the Reiklander said, extending his hand. The smile faded from his face as he turned his eyes once more to the door. ‘I worry that perhaps I did you no favour just now. That seems like the sort of man who will bear a grudge.’ He sighed, a note of bitterness in his voice. ‘That is the trouble with being a soldier. You are taught to fight and ignore the consequences.’

  ‘Let me worry about the consequences,’ Walther said, trying to force some levity into his tone. It wouldn’t do to upset Aldinger. The man had meant well and, as the rat-catcher had said before, Fellgiebel was his fight.

  However uneven that fight might be.

  Skavenblight

  Ulriczeit, 1111

  Poxmaster Puskab Foulfur stared down at the quivering ratman, indifferent to the creature’s agonies. Using a long brass rod, the plague priest poked and prodded the skinny skaven, lifting his arms and turning his head. A satisfied hiss rushed past Puskab’s rotten fangs. Ugly black buboes clustered about the skavenslave’s throat and armpits, syrupy trea
cle oozing from the swollen sores. The slave’s breathing came in ragged, uneven gasps, flecks of blood staining his nostrils and whiskers.

  ‘Good-good,’ the plague priest pronounced. He withdrew the brass rod he had thrust into the slave’s cage. Stalking over to one of the flaming braziers which flanked the entrance to the laboratory, Puskab thrust the end of the instrument into the fire. He held it there until the tip glowed and any trace of disease had been purged.

  ‘The Horned One favours me,’ Puskab declared. ‘New-better fleas. Carry-bring plague fast-quick!’

  The skaven assisting Puskab in his diabolical labours glanced anxiously at one another. Somewhere beneath their protective leather cloaks, glands tightened and the reek of fear-musk oozed into the air. They had been warned by Wormlord Blight what their fate would be if Puskab’s experiments were to fail, but now they wondered if perhaps success wasn’t even more terrifying.

  Puskab scowled at the frightened ratmen. Unbelievers! Hedonistic little heathens! To be infected by one of the Horned One’s holy plagues was a fate to be embraced joyously! Only in the fevered fires of disease could the soul of a skaven be judged! The inferior were destroyed, the superior emerged stronger than before, endowed with something of the Horned One’s divinity and ferocity.

  The plague priest stalked past his trembling assistants, peering at them with his rheumy eyes. Soon there would be only two kinds of ratmen in the world. The true believers and their slaves. Clan Verms would help to bring about that change. Willing or unwilling, they were now instruments of the Horned One’s design.

  The clatter of armour warned Puskab that he had guests. He turned away from the tables and faced the entrance to his laboratory. A pack of burly warriors marched through the doorway. Behind them the twisted shape of Blight Tenscratch lounged upon the platform of a velvet-draped palanquin. Breeder-scent wafted from the curtains and the smell of goat-cheese and blood-wine was strong. From the smells lingering about the Wormlord and the vicious expression in his posture, it seemed some pleasant interlude had been disturbed.

  ‘I am told your work has succeeded,’ Blight snarled, baring his fangs.

  Puskab gestured towards the cage where the infected slave struggled to suck breath into his lungs. ‘Early-soon, but look-smell good-good,’ he explained.

  Blight’s malformed body contorted at a grotesque angle, his claws wrapped about a lead goblet. Furiously, he flung the cup at the cage, spattering the slave inside with blood-wine. ‘Not-not this test-meat!’ the Wormlord snapped. ‘What about the others? The ones outside?’

  Puskab’s heavy frame wilted under Blight’s enraged glare, assuming a posture that was both abased and alarmed. ‘None-none,’ he squeaked, pointing again at the cage. ‘This one first! Swear-tell by Horned One!’

  ‘Bring the traitor-meat!’ Blight growled. Before Puskab could act the armoured ratmen pounced upon him, seizing his flabby arms in their powerful claws. The plague priest’s assistants watched in excitement as their fearsome master was dragged away into the darkness of the Hive.

  Puskab was carried to a vast cavern far beneath Skavenblight. The air was moist and musty, stinking of mildew and pond scum. His keen ears could hear water dripping from the roof overhead, each drop landing with a soft plink upon some loamy surface. The cavern was dark, its blackness so perfect that even the eyes of a skaven couldn’t penetrate it. A snarl from Blight caused a green glow to gradually form. Puskab could hear the crackle of electricity and the laboured breath of panting ratmen. The first thing he saw was the bronze pillar and crystal cage of a Clan Skryre warp-lamp, a nest of cables leading back to an enormous treadmill.

  The irony of Clan Verms employing one of Clan Skryre’s warpstone-powered lamps wasn’t lost on Puskab. The clan stood to lose a fortune in the trade of worm-oil should use of warp-lamps become widespread. Verms spared no opportunity to criticise the upstart warlock-engineers and argue against the safety of their erratic inventions. To find them using one of the very devices they were so vehement in denigrating brought an uncontrolled bark of laughter rushing past his fangs.

  ‘Blind-worms not like smell-scent of worm-oil,’ Blight explained, his face sheepish, his tone embarrassed. His lips pulled back in a vicious grin as he remembered who he was talking to and why. Imperiously, the Wormlord pointed across the cavern.

  The floor of the cavern was, as Puskab had imagined, covered in a loamy surface, a mass of moss floating upon a great pool of foetid water. He could see things slithering through the sludge, just beneath the surface. Scrawny skavenslaves were wading through the muck, chasing after the things swimming around them. Sometimes they would dive into the morass to emerge with a writhing mass of slimy white flesh clenched in their paws.

  Puskab knew the snake-like things to be blind-worms, an observation validated when he saw the slaves drag their catch to a floating workstation where a brawny brown overseer wrestled the flailing worms into a suspended harness. Other slaves equipped with wicked metal probes crawled under the hanging worms to tease milk from the soft tissues between each segment of the worm’s body. The stinking ooze was collected in a motley assortment of buckets and bowls.

  The plague priest had only a few moments to observe the procedure. His attention was forcibly diverted when Blight’s guards shoved him into the pool. Puskab sank to his waist in the muck, thrashing about wildly until he appreciated the fact he couldn’t sink any deeper.

  ‘Explain,’ Blight growled.

  Ahead of him, floating some distance from the platform, was a pair of bodies. They were skaven, their lean frames still draped in the tatters of leather cloaks. Unmistakably, they had been Puskab’s assistants. The way they had died was also unmistakable. Ugly black buboes clustered about their throats.

  Puskab took a long look at the corpses, then rounded upon Blight, pointing a quivering claw at him. ‘Your work-rats!’ he coughed, spitting a blob of phlegm into the pool. ‘Spy-meat! Traitor-meat! Listen-steal for enemies!’

  Blight scratched at his whiskers, surprised by the violence and rage he saw on display. The plague priest was playing the part of injured party with impressive gusto. Enough so that the Wormlord waved aside his guards, intending to hear more before he had them hack Puskab to bloody giblets.

  ‘Who would dare sneak into the Hive?’ Blight asked.

  ‘Eshin,’ Puskab answered. The assassins were always the obvious choice when it came to infiltrators and spies. But perhaps they were just too obvious. The plague priest bared his fangs as he mentioned another possibility. ‘Skully-sneaks,’ he said.

  Blight’s ears curled back against his skull, his tail lashing the snouts of the slaves bearing his palanquin. A low hiss of hate rasped across his fangs. The murderlings of Clan Skully weren’t so skilled as the killers of Clan Eshin, but they were close allies of Clan Moulder’s beastlords. Of all the other clans, there was particular enmity between Verms and Moulder. The two clans both prided themselves on their ability to breed new and exotic creatures to serve the Under-Empire, but where the power of Verms was beginning to wane, that of Moulder was in the ascension.

  ‘Spy-meat try to filch-steal plague-fleas,’ Puskab explained. ‘Not know-think that extra fleas crawl-hop into fur. Kill traitor-meat quick-quick!’ The plague priest’s corpulent body shuddered with a titter of laughter.

  Blight’s head bobbed from side to side as he considered Puskab’s theory. It did fit all of the facts, but what decided him was that Puskab himself had remained in the Hive, well within the Wormlord’s reach. If the Poxmaster were up to something, surely he wouldn’t be so foolhardy as to linger around.

  Still, it wouldn’t do to let the plague priest grow too secure in his mind. ‘Maybe steal-take for Moulder-maggots,’ Blight mused. ‘Maybe they spy for Nurglitch. Look-fetch Puskab back to the Pestilent Monastery!’ A sadistic grin split Blight’s face as he saw terror flash along Puskab’s spine. The plague priest wasn’t the only one who could think up disturbing theories.

  ‘You need my protec
tion,’ Blight reminded Puskab. ‘Nurglitch kill-slay quick-quick if you leave the Hive!’

  Puskab bowed his horned head, the antlers brushing across the scummy surface of the pool. He turned and pointed a claw at the floating bodies. ‘Stash-hide plague-dead,’ he cautioned. ‘Other spy-meat must not know-find!’

  ‘Let them know,’ Blight sneered. ‘Soon Clan Verms will have the ultimate weapon thanks to you.’ He clenched his claw into a fist, shaking it at the dark ceiling. ‘Soon-soon all skaven grovel before Blight Tenscratch!’

  ‘Or all-all attack-fight,’ Puskab said. ‘Plague-fear great-much. Keep-hide secret until ready-strong.’

  Blight’s eyes narrowed with cunning. The loathsome plague priest was right, it might be disastrous to let the other clans know what Verms was doing too soon. If the other clans rose up before Verms had enough of the bacillus and enough fleas to carry it…

  ‘Fetch-burn!’ Blight snapped at his guards, pointing his claw at the floating bodies. When they hesitated, he leaned out from behind the curtains of his palanquin, his voice a low whisper. ‘Fetch-burn, or I’ll burn you!’

  The threat sent his guards splashing into the pool, stumbling over each other in their haste to reach the bodies.

  Puskab watched them wade out, a sly glimmer in the depths of his yellow eyes.

  Chapter XI

  Talabecland

  Vorhexen, 1111

  Baron Everhardt Johannes Boeckenfoerde, Reiksmarshal of the Imperial Army, tapped his fingers against the scroll of parchment resting on the little wooden camp table. His face was inscrutable, his eyes half-lidded and with a faraway stare. The crackle of the fire burning in his tent’s tin stove was the only sound.

  ‘This is treason,’ the Reiksmarshal said at length, his voice almost a whisper. His eyes fixed upon Konreid, studying the knight’s face. ‘I have sworn an oath to the Emperor. Every man in my army has done the same.’ His hand rose from the table and pointed the golden head of his marshal’s baton at the knight. ‘The Reiks-knecht took the same vow. We obey our Emperor. It is not for us to decide if his rule is good or bad, it is only enough that we perform our duty. That is all.’