by William King
‘I heard that Litzenreich was thrown out of the university for his experiments and that the Guild of Alchemists withdrew his license. There was quite a scandal. In fact, the last I heard he was an outlaw.’
‘There is always malice among academics. Litzenreich was simply a man ahead of his time. I mean, look how long it took Eisenstern’s theory that the sun goes round the earth to become commonly accepted. He was burned at the stake for claiming it originally.’
‘Regardless of the philosophical merits of your argument, Herr Kryptmann, warpstone is a highly illegal and dangerous substance. If a witch-hunter was ever to hear–’
Kryptmann seemed to shrink in on himself. ‘That’s exactly what Wolfgang Lammel told me – though how he found out about my experiments is beyond me. I purchase the warp… the substance from a very small, very discreet emporium in Nuln. Van Niek’s. I told him I didn’t want to do anything illegal with it. All I wanted to do was learn how to transmute lead into gold – and warpstone is the very essence of transmutation.’
‘So Wolfgang is about to find out, it would seem.’ Try as he might, Felix could not keep an unseemly note of gloating from his voice. It was perfect. He would unmask the decadent swine as a mutant in front of the whole town. Thus would he repay him for the beating he had taken, and for what he had done to Greta too of course.
‘You won’t report me to the authorities, will you, my young friend? After all, I did treat your wounds. I promise that if you don’t report me, I’ll never have anything to do with warpstone again.’
Felix glanced at the scared alchemist; he had nothing against him and Kryptmann might well have learned his lesson about dealing in illegal substances. But there was still the problem of the man’s bodyguards to deal with. Still, he had the answer to that too.
‘Herr Kryptmann, if you can cure my associate, I assure you that I will forget all about what you’ve done.’
Felix toyed idly with the pestle and mortar while Kryptmann proceeded with his work. The pungent fumes filled the laboratory, rising from the pot in which the alchemist had reduced the sunblossom to a yellow sludge.
The cool stone of the pestle was somehow comforting. The tang of the sunblossom perfume was noticeable even through his blocked nose. He had taken another two of Kryptmann’s healing lozenges and he felt slightly distanced from everything. He wished his head would clear, that all of the aches and pains would go away.
‘Felix?’ a soft voice said, bringing him back to reality.
‘What, Greta?’ He was still snappish. Human contact closed the distance between himself and the world, broke the barriers around him that Kryptmann’s medicine had built against the pain. It brought his anger back into focus.
‘What will Wolfgang’s men do if they find me here?’
‘Don’t worry about it. Soon Herr Wolfgang will have worries enough of his own.’
‘I hope so. It’s good of Lothar to hide me from him. It’s at terrible risk to himself. You know what Wolfgang’s bodyguards can be like.’
Privately, Felix thought that the alchemist had hidden the girl simply to spite Wolfgang. He had no reason to love the merchant’s son. Or perhaps it was guilt for providing Wolfgang with the warpstone which had altered him. Had he always been a sadistic monster, Felix wondered, or had that transformation only come recently, with the mark of Chaos?
Other questions flickered through his dulled mind. Why did his enemy feel the need to use warpstone in the first place? And what about the sinister rumours Greta had claimed to have heard about him? He pushed them away. He would probably never know the answers. One thing was clear, though; he would be doing everyone in town a tremendous favour by disposing of the fellow.
‘No! Put that down. That’s acid!’ Kryptmann shouted at Gotrek suddenly.
The Slayer stopped rooting about amidst the various jugs and beakers on Kryptmann’s bench. He looked as if he were about to drink from one large silver flask. Gotrek shuffled his feet and returned the container to its proper place.
Felix glanced around the laboratory. He had never been in one before. It all looked so very arcane and incomprehensible. The benches were covered in intricate structures of pipework and beakers. Distillation equipment covered nearly half of one table. Several racks of stoppered glass tubes were stacked against one wall. Each contained liquids of cobalt blue or lime green or blood red. Some contained many layers of multi-coloured sediment. On one wall hung a framed certificate. Even at this distance Felix recognised the crest of the University of Middenheim, famed throughout the Empire for its schools of magic and alchemy.
Charcoal burners heated flasks and pots containing various substances. Kryptmann moved briskly from one to another, stirring, adjusting temperatures and occasionally tasting with a long glass spoon. He opened a great cabinet and produced a large, padded, white gauntlet covered in scorch marks. He pulled it over his right hand.
‘Not long now,’ he said, picking up a heated flask and pouring it into the central pot. The mixture bubbled and hissed. He put a stopper on the second flask and shook it before uncorking it and pouring it into the mix. A great cloud of pungent green smoke billowed across the room. Felix coughed and heard Greta do the same.
As the smoke cleared he saw Kryptmann carefully emptying the contents of the third alembic into the mixture. With each drop, a tiny puff of different-coloured smoke arose. The first was red, the second blue, the third yellow. Each rose, a tiny expanding mushroom-shaped cloud of vapour reaching upward towards the ceiling.
The alchemist set down the alembic and adjusted the flame under the pot. He picked up a small hourglass and turned it upside down. ‘Two minutes,’ he said.
A sense of triumph filled Felix. Soon Gotrek would be cured and they would visit the Sleeping Dragon. He would take out all of the many tribulations he had suffered on Wolfgang Lammel’s hide.
No sooner had the last grain of sand fallen from the top of the hourglass than Kryptmann removed the pot from the flames. ‘All done!’
He beckoned for Gotrek to come over, then ladled out a measure into a small china bowl.
Felix saw that the inner rim was marked with red circles and astrological signs. He presumed these represented various levels of dosage. He was somehow reassured when the alchemist filled it to the very top, then handed it to Gotrek.
‘Drink it all up now.’
The Slayer swilled it down. ‘Ugh!’ he said.
They stood and waited. And waited. And waited.
‘How long should it take to work?’ Felix asked eventually.
‘Er, not long now!’
‘You said that an hour ago, Kryptmann. How long exactly?’ Felix’s knuckles whitened as his grip on the heavy pestle tightened.
‘I told you that the process was, well, uncertain. There were certain risks involved. Perhaps the sunblossom was not in prime condition. Are you sure you picked it exactly at the death of day?’
‘How. Long?’ Felix enunciated both words clearly and slowly, allowing the measure of his irritation to show in his voice.
‘Well, I – actually it should have worked almost instantly, jolting the mnemonic nodes and humours back into their old configuration.’
Felix studied the Slayer. Gotrek looked exactly as he had done when they entered Kryptmann’s lab.
‘How do you feel? Ready to seek out your doom?’ Felix asked, very softly.
‘What doom would that be?’ Gotrek responded.
‘Per–perhaps we should try another dose, Herr Jaeger?’
Felix let out an inarticulate howl of rage. It was not to be borne. He had endured a severe beating from Wolfgang’s men. He had climbed that mountain along unspeakably difficult paths. He had narrowly escaped death at the hands of hordes of bloodthirsty mutants. He was tired and cut and bruised and hungry. What was worse, he was coming down with a pestilential flux. His clothes were torn. He badly
needed a bath. And it was all the alchemist’s fault.
‘Calm down, Herr Jaeger. There’s no need to growl like that.’
‘Oh, there isn’t, is there?’ Felix snarled. Kryptmann had sent him for the flowers. Kryptmann had promised that he would heal Gotrek. Kryptmann had spoiled Felix’s plans for glorious revenge. He had gone through hell for naught, at the foolish instructions of a foolish old man who did not know his own foolish business!
‘Perhaps I could make you a nice soporific potion to calm your nerves. Things will look so much better after a good night’s sleep.’
‘I could have died getting those flowers.’
‘Look, you’re upset. Quite understandably so – but violence will solve nothing.’
‘It will make me feel a lot better. It will make you feel a lot worse.’ Felix threw the pestle at the alchemist. Kryptmann leapt to one side. The implement smacked into Gotrek’s head with a great crunch. The Slayer fell over.
‘Quick, Greta! Send for the watch!’ the alchemist babbled. ‘Herr Jaeger has gone mad! Help! Help!’
Felix darted round the work bench after Kryptmann, toppling him off his feet with a flying tackle. It gave him a great sense of satisfaction to get his fingers round the alchemist’s throat. He began to tighten his grip, smiling all the while. He felt Greta try to pull him off Kryptmann. Her fingers locked in his hair. He tried to shake her off. The alchemist’s face started to turn an interesting shade of purple.
‘Not that I have anything against senseless violence, manling, but why exactly are you strangling that old man?’
The granite-hard voice was harsh and cracked and held an undercurrent of sheer cold menace. It took Felix a second to realise just who had spoken. He let go of Kryptmann’s throat.
‘And who is he? And where are we? And why does my head hurt, by Grimnir?’
‘The blow from the pestle must have returned him to his senses,’ Greta said softly.
‘I, ah, prefer to think it was the delayed effect of my brew,’ Kryptmann gasped. ‘I told you it would work.’
‘What senses? What brew? What are you talking about, you old lunatic?’
Felix picked himself up and dusted himself off. He helped Kryptmann to his feet, picked up the alchemist’s glasses and handed them to him. He turned to face Gotrek. ‘What is the last thing you can remember?’
‘The mutant attack of course, manling. Some snotling-fondler caught me on the head with a slingshot. Now how did I get here? What magic is this?’ Gotrek scowled majestically.
‘This will take a lot of explaining,’ his companion said. ‘So first let’s get some beer. I know a friendly little tavern just around the corner.’
Felix Jaeger smiled wickedly to himself, and the two of them set off for the Sleeping Dragon.
BLOOD AND DARKNESS
‘After we exposed the cultists of Slaanesh in Fredericksburg, and incapacitated several of their minions, we ventured back onto the road to Nuln, leaving our former tormentors to the less than gentle mercies of their fellows. I have no idea why we settled on that mighty city as the terminus of our travels, other than perhaps because of the fact that my family had business interests there.
‘During one roadside halt in a tavern, Gotrek and I decided, perhaps foolishly in hindsight, that we should avoid the main road. Inevitably, and perhaps predictably, our drunken decision to take a circuitous route through the forest led to disaster.
‘In our desire to avoid any possible encounter with the agents of law, we wandered far from the normal haunts of man, and ended up deep in the forests, in an area long thought to be the site of a Black Altar of Chaos. Little did we suspect when we set out that we would soon meet with startling proof of that dire fane’s existence, and also that we would soon do battle with the most powerful of all of the followers of Darkness we had yet encountered…’
— From My Travels with Gotrek, Vol. II,
by Herr Felix Jaeger (Altdorf Press, 2505)
When she heard the approaching footsteps, Kat concentrated on making herself smaller. She squeezed even more tightly into the tiny space between the stone blocks of the tumbledown building, hoping that the beasts had not come back. She knew that if they had, and they found her, this time they would kill her for certain.
She wriggled further into the shadowy recess until her back was against stone. The rock was still warm from the fire which had burned down the inn. She felt a small measure of safety. No adult could squeeze into so small a hiding place, certainly nothing as large as the beasts. But they could always reach in with their spears or swords. She shuddered when she remembered the one with tentacles instead of arms, imagining the long leech-mouthed limbs questing like great snakes to find her in the darkness.
She grasped the hammer-shaped amulet that old Father Tempelman had given her and prayed to Sigmar to deliver her from all snake-armed things. She tried hard to block out her last memory of the priest, fleeing down the street, carrying little Lotte Bernhoff. A horn-headed giant had impaled him with a spear. The weapon had pierced both Tempelman and the five-year-old, lifting them into the air as though they were weightless.
‘Something terrible has happened here, manling,’ a voice said. It was deep and gruff and harsh, but it did not sound like the feral snarling of a beast. The accent was foreign, as if Reikspiel were not the native tongue of the speaker. It reminded Kat of the strangers she had once served in the inn.
Dwarfs, Old Ingmar – who fancied himself a traveller because he had once been to Nuln – had called them. They had been short, not much taller than herself but far broader and heavier than any man. They had worn cloaks of slate grey and, though they had called themselves merchants, they carried axes and shields. They spoke sadly in low musical voices and when drunk joined the villagers in singing. One had shown her a clockwork bird which flapped its metal wings marvellously and spoke in a metallic voice. She had begged bald-pated Karl, the innkeeper, to buy it for her but, though he had loved her like she was his own daughter, he had just shaken his head and continued to polish the glasses, saying there was no way he could afford such workmanship.
She shivered when she thought of what had become of Karl and fat Heide and the others in the inn who she had called family. She had heard screams as the bestial horde ravaged through the village led by the strange warrior in black armour. She had seen the lines of villagers being marched to the great bonfire in the village square.
‘Perhaps we should leave, Gotrek. By the looks of it, this is not a healthy place to linger,’ said another voice from close by. This one definitely belonged to a human, Kat decided. It was soft-spoken and gentle, with a cultured accent similar to old Doctor Gebhardt’s. A brief spark of hope flickered in Kat’s mind. There was no way a beast could sound like that.
Or was there? Like many other villagers who had grown up in the depths of the wild woods, Kat was familiar with the stories. Of wolves who looked like men until let in by unsuspecting villagers. Of children who looked normal until they grew up into hideous mutated monsters that slew their own families. Of woodcutters who had heard a child’s cry in the deep forest at twilight and who went to investigate and never returned. The servants of the Dark Powers were devilish and clever, and found many ways of luring the unwary to their doom.
‘Not until I’ve found out what happened here. By Grungni, this place is an abattoir!’ The first voice spoke again, unnaturally loud in the silence.
‘Whatever force could do this to a walled village could surely squash us like bugs. Look at the holes in the walls of the keep! Let us be away.’ There was an undercurrent of fear in the cultured voice which echoed the terror in Kat’s own breast.
Once again the memory of the previous night rose before her. It had begun with a great thunderclap of sound although the sky had been empty. She recalled the tolling of the alarm bell and the splintering of the gate. She recalled rushing to the inn door and see
ing the beastmen pouring down the street, torching the village and putting everyone to the sword.
One huge figure with the head of a goat had lifted Johan the miller clean over its head and pitched him into a burning cottage. Little Gustav, Johan’s son, had driven a pitchfork through its chest before being torn to pieces by two deformed creatures in beggars’ clothes whose faces showed wattled crests and lizard-like skin. She wished she could forget the way they tore the gobbets of flesh from the corpse and stuffed them greedily into fanged mouths.
She remembered wondering why Count Klein and his soldiers had not come to defend them but when she gazed at the castle she knew the answer. The towers were ablaze. Silhouetted against the flames, figures dangled from the lord’s gibbet. She guessed they were Klein’s men.
Karl had forced her inside and barred the door, before stacking the tables in front of the entrance. Karl and Ulf the potboy and even Heide, Karl’s wife, had clutched knives and other kitchen implements; a pitiful defence against the foul rabble that whooped and gibbered in the streets outside.
They had stood around, pale-faced and sweating in the flickering light of the flambeaux, while outside the sounds of killing and destruction continued. It had seemed like all their darkest fears had come true, that finally the monstrous, mythical forces lurking in the forest’s heart had erupted forth to claim what was theirs.
For a time it seemed like the inn was going to be left untouched but then the door was knocked from its hinges by a mighty blow and several immense beastmen had pushed aside the piled furniture. Kat remembered so vividly the taste of the smoky air that accompanied the opening of the door.
With a whimpering cry, Ulf had charged the leading monster. It brought a huge club down on his head, splitting his skull and splattering brains about the room. Kat had screamed as the jelly-like material hit her face and slid down her cheek.
