Tales of the Old World (103 page)

Thulmann forced himself to meet that inhuman gaze, to stare into the swirling
fires that burned from the pink face, forced himself to match his own faith and
determination against the daemon’s ageless malevolence. Thulmann could feel the
orange light seeping into his mind, clouding his thoughts and numbing his will.

With an oath, the witch hunter tore his eyes from those of the daemon. The
horror snarled, no longer amused by the novelty of the witch hunter’s defiance.

The daemon launched itself at Thulmann, its mouth still wet with the
warlock’s blood. Thulmann dodged to his left, the quick action sparing him the
brunt of the daemon’s assault, but still resulting in the unearthly creature’s
claws scraping the witch hunter’s ribs. Clenching his teeth against the painful
wound and the daemon’s icy touch, Thulmann lashed out at the beast as it
recovered from its charge.

A grip of frozen iron closed around the wrist of Thulmann’s sword arm even as
the heavy butt of the witch hunter’s pistol crashed against the leering head of
the horror. The daemon glared into Mathias’ face and uttered a sinister laugh.
Again, the witch hunter dealt the monster a blow that would have smashed the
skull of any mortal creature. As Thulmann brought his arm back to strike again
at the grinning daemon, his nightmarish foe swatted the weapon from his hand,
sending the pistol hurtling down the stairway.

The daemon’s gibbering laughter grew; it leaned forward, its grinning jaws
inches from Thulmann’s hawk-like nose. The witch hunter pushed against the
daemon’s frigid shape with his free hand, desperately trying to keep the
ethereal jaws at bay, at the same time frenziedly trying to free his sword arm.
Thulmann’s efforts attracted the daemon’s attention and, as if noticing the
weapon for the first time, it reached across Thulmann’s body to remove the sword
from his grasp. Luminous pink claws closed around the steel blade.

The smell of burnt metal assaulted Thulmann’s nostrils as the keening wail of
the daemon ripped at his ears. As the horror’s hand had closed about the witch
hunter’s blade, the daemon’s glowing flesh had started to burn, luminous sparks
crackling and dancing from the seared paw. The daemon released its grip on
Thulmann and scuttled away from the witch hunter, a new look in its fiery eyes.
A look Thulmann recognised even in so inhuman a being:
fear.

The daemon’s left hand still gave off streams of purplish smoke, its very
shape throbbing uncontrollably. The daemon looked at its injured paw then
returned its attention to its adversary. The daemon could see the growing sense
of hope, the first fledgling seed of triumph appearing in the very aura of the
witch hunter. The sight incensed the daemon.

Thulmann slowly advanced upon the beast. The witch hunter had gained an
advantage, he did not intend to lose it. But he did not reckon upon the
creature’s supernatural speed, or its feral rage. Before Thulmann had taken more
than a few steps towards it, the daemon sprang from the floor as though it had
been shot from a cannon. The monster crashed into Thulmann sending both man and
fiend plummeting down the stairs.

Mathias Thulmann groggily tried to gain his feet, ears ringing from his
violent descent. By some miracle he had managed to retain his sword. It was a
fact that further infuriated his monstrous foe. The daemon scuttled toward the
witch hunter. Thulmann struck at it, but the attack was a clumsy one, easily
dodged by the luminous being. The horror responded by striking him in the chest
with a powerful upswing of both its arms. The witch hunter was lifted off his
feet, hurled backward by the tremendous force of the daemon’s attack. Thulmann
landed on the final flight of stairs, tumbling down them to lie broken and
battered in the foyer.

At the foot of the stairs, the witch hunter struggled to rise, groping feebly
for the sword that had landed beside him. He watched as the giggling pink daemon
capered down the stairs, dancing in hideous parody of the revellers of
Kleinsdorf. Mathias summoned his last reserves of strength as the daemon
descended toward him. With a prayer to Sigmar, the witch hunter struck as the
daemon leaped.

A shriek like the tearing of metal rang out as Thulmann’s sword sank into the
daemon. The blade impaled the horror, its body writhing in agony before bursting
apart like a bubble rising from a fetid marsh. A squeal of venomous rage rose
from the daemon, shattering the glass in the foyer’s solitary window. Tiny
sparks of bluish light flew from the point of the daemon’s dissolution. Thulmann
sank to his knees, thanking Sigmar for his deliverance.

Daemonic laughter broke into Thulmann’s prayers. The taste of victory left
the witch hunter as he saw the two daemons dance towards him from the darkness
of the foyer. They were blue, goblin-sized parodies of the larger daemon
Thulmann had vanquished, and they were glaring at him with looks of utter
malevolence.

The foremost of the daemons opened its gigantic mouth, revealing the
shark-like rows of serrated fangs. The blue horror laughed as it hopped and
bounded across the foyer with frightening speed. Holding the sword before him,
Thulmann prepared to meet the monster’s attack.

Thulmann cried out as a torrent of pain wracked his body. Swift as the first
daemon’s movements had been, the other had been swifter still, circling the
witch hunter as he prepared to meet its companion’s attack. Unseen, the blue
horror struck at the witch hunter’s leg, sinking its fangs through the hard
leather boot to worry the calf within. The intense pain made Thulmann drop his
weapon, his only thought to seize the creature ravaging his leg.

The blue thing gave a hiccup of mock fright as Thulmann’s hands closed around
its scintillating form. The witch hunter tore the creature away from his boot
and lifted the daemon over his head by its heals, thinking to dash its brains
against the floor. In that instant he realised the trickery the beasts had
employed. Scuttling across the floor, its over-sized hands dragging the sword by
the hilt, was the other daemon. The monsters had taken away his only weapon.

The horror in Thulmann’s hands twisted out of his grasp with a disgustingly
boneless motion, raking its claws across his left hand as it fell to the floor.
Giggling madly, the blue daemon danced away from the witch hunter’s wrath,
capering just beyond his reach until its companion returned from secreting his
sword.

The two monsters circled Thulmann, striking at him from both sides at once,
slashing his flesh with their claws before dancing away again. It was a slow,
lingering death, like a pack of dogs tormenting a tethered horse because they do
not know how to make a clean kill. Thulmann bled from dozens of wounds. Most
were only superficial, but the pain caused by their infliction was intense.
Every nerve in his body now writhed at the slightest touch from one of the
daemons.

Thulmann’s eyes fell upon an object lying upon the floor, its metal barrel
reflecting the unearthly bodies of his tormentors. The pistol their unholy
parent had taken away from him. If it had not discharged or otherwise been
fouled by its violent descent, perhaps the witch hunter could find escape from
his agony. Trembling with pain, Thulmann reached for the gun.

One of the daemons slashed the man’s cheek as he stooped to retrieve the
weapon. Dancing away, the creature laughed and brayed. It licked its fanged
mouth and turned to rejoin its comrade in their amusement. It did not see the
figure emerge from the darkness, nor the brilliant steel blade that reflected
the light of its own glowing body.

The second monster sank its teeth into Thulmann’s wrist. How dare the human
think to spoil its fun? The blue fiend kicked the pistol away, turning to rake
its claws through the shredded cloak that covered Thulmann’s mangled back. The
daemon leapt away in mid-stroke, turning to the source of the sight and sound
that had alarmed it. In the darkness, the sparks and spirals of luminous smoke
rising from the death of the other blue horror were almost blinding. The beast
scrambled toward the being it sensed lurking in the shadows, eager to rend the
flesh of this new adversary who had vanquished its other half. A rusted wooden
hatchet sailed out of the darkness, smashing into the snarling daemon.

“The sword,” gasped Thulmann, again reaching for his pistol. “Use the sword.”

The remaining fiend rose swiftly, its fiery eyes blazing. The daemon lunged
in the direction from which the attack had come. It was a fatal mistake. The
small creature’s hands closed upon the naked blade, sparking and sizzling just
as its parent’s had. As the blue horror recoiled from its unpleasant surprise,
its attacker struck at its head with a sweep of the blade, finishing the daemon
in an explosion of sparks and shrieks. Unlike the pink monster, no new horrors
were born from the deaths of its lesser offspring.

“You are mine to kill, Thulmann,” a cold voice from the shadows said. “I’ll
not lose my vengeance to anyone else, be they man or daemon!” The witch hunter
laughed weakly.

“You shall find your task much simpler now, avenger. My wounds prevent me
from mounting any manner of capable defence.” A venomous note entered the witch
hunter’s voice. “But you would prefer butchery to a fair duel. That is your idea
of honour?”

Reinhardt glared at him, tossing the witch hunter’s sword to Thulmann.
Thulmann shook his head as he gingerly sheathed the weapon with his injured
hand.

“I could not hold that blade with these,” Thulmann showed the enraged noble
his bleeding palms and wrist, “much less combat an able swordsman.”

Reinhardt glared at the witch hunter contemptuously. His gaze studied
Thulmann before settling upon the holstered pistols on the witch hunter’s belt.

“Are you fit enough to use one of those?” the youth snarled.

“Are you skilled enough to use one?” Mathias countered, slowly drawing one of
the weapons and sliding it across the floor. Reinhardt stooped and retrieved the
firearm.

“When you see hell, you will know,” the youth responded. He waited as the
witch hunter lifted himself from the floor and slowly drew the remaining gun. As
soon as he felt the witch hunter was ready, the youth’s hand pointed at Thulmann
and his finger depressed the pistol’s trigger. There was a sharp click as the
hammer fell upon an already expired cap.

“Never accept a weapon from an enemy,” Thulmann said his voice icy and
emotionless. There was a loud explosion of noise as he fired the weapon he had
retrieved from the base of the stairs and holstered while Reinhardt still fought
the last daemon. Reinhardt was thrown to the floor as the bullet impacted
against his shoulder. Thulmann limped toward the fallen noble. The witch hunter
trained his eyes upon the man’s wound.

“With a decent physician that will heal in a fortnight,” the witch hunter
said, turning away from his victim. “If we meet again, I may not be so
restrained,” Thulmann added as he made his way from the house.

Reinhardt von Lichtberg’s shout followed the witch hunter into the street.

“I will find you, Mathias Thulmann! If I have to track you to the nethermost
pits of the Wastes, you will not escape me! I will find you again, and I will
kill you!”

And the people of Kleinsdorf continued to dance and laugh and sing as they
celebrated the triumph of light over Chaos.

The funeral cart made its slow and steady way up the hill towards the
Colaincourt Cemetery. The day was grey and overcast, and a cold wind blew from
the east. The man who drove the cart and the companion who sat beside him both
bore sullen scowls upon their faces, and the two dappled black mares which
pulled it held their heads very low, as if they too had lost all enthusiasm for
the work which was their lot. Behind the cart walked a solitary mourner,
incongruous in his isolation.

The lone mourner was Alpheus Kalispera, High Priest of Verena and Magister of
the University of Gisoreux. When he went about his normal business he commanded
respect and was treated with due deference, but in his present role he drew
hostile glances from all those who watched the cart go by. There were not many;
although Lanfranc Chazal had been an important and well-respected man in his
prime, that prime was now long past, and Chazal’s reputation had been badly
tarnished in his later years.

Kalispera walked rather painfully. He was old and his joints were very stiff.
He kept his hands carefully within the folds of his cloak, for the cold made his
gnarled fingers ache terribly.

When the cemetery gates finally came into sight a company of small boys ran
from one of the side-streets, hurling mud and stones at the coffin which rested
on the cart, crying: “Necromancer! Necromancer!”

Kalispera rounded on them, and would have spoken angrily, but they hared away
as fast as their thin legs would carry them. To abuse an alleged necromancer was
to them an act of great daring, even if the man be dead in his coffin, unable to
answer the charge in any way at all.

A sallow-faced priest of Morr waited by a freshly-dug grave, quite alone.
Even the sexton had taken care to absent himself from the ceremony of interment.
Kalispera frowned—there should have been two priests, at least. He had been
here many times before to see officers of the University laid to rest, and had
been witness to occasions when scholars of far less status had been laid to rest
by three officiating priests, attended by half a hundred mourners.

The magister took up a position opposite the priest, who stared at him while
the two carriers manhandled the coffin down from the death-cart on to the ropes,
then lowered it with indecent haste into the pit which had been made ready for
it. It was all too obvious from the man’s manner that the priest was here under
protest, bound by the vows he had taken—which would not let him refuse to
conduct a funeral service if he were so instructed. Kalispera felt the man’s
stare upon him, full of hostility, but he would not bow his head yet. Instead,
he met the gaze as steadily as he could.