Tales of the Old World (124 page)

Bernardo chuckled. “I guess you’re right. A weapon like this requires a
delicate touch. Stocky fingers like yours would just get in the way.”

Heinrich’s eyes glazed in anger. “Now see here…” he began, moving forward.
But Father, standing close, shook his head and silently implored his captain to
remain calm. Heinrich halted immediately. “We will take this up later,
Estalian,” he said. “Right now we need light.”

Six torches were laid on the floor. Albert lit them and handed them out. Fear
spread through the men as shadows were thrown back and terror revealed.

The hallway that lay before them was as tall as four men and immeasurably
deep. Along the walls were rows upon rows of crypts embossed with the holy
symbols of Morr and Sigmar, the words of ancient prayers and the murals of
glorious battles. Though grey dust covered it all, the names of the honoured
dead defiantly stood forth from the granite: Siebel Gottard, Hera Ruekheiser,
Stephan Voelker…. Names meaningless to Heinrich, but somehow possessing great
power, as if the mere utterance of them filled the heart with strength. These
people had been laid here in glorious praise to their makers. They did not
deserve what the skaven had done to them.

“Oh, my holy Sigmar,” Roland said as he shook in fear beside Heinrich. “What
are we going to do about this? How do we stop such madness?”

Heinrich gnashed his teeth. “Kill them… every last one of them.”

Hundreds of the crypts had been ransacked, seals penetrated and ripped apart.
Piles of skeletons lay on the floor of the hallway, and even more hung out of
caskets like twisted scaffolding. The hair of dead matriarchs cascaded down like
vines, harbouring nests of baby rats.

With torches raised high, they picked their way through the vandalism.
Bernardo passed a nest and set it aflame and watched the embers devour the
screeching young. The stink of burning hair and rodent flesh filled the hall.

“That’s a mistake,” said Heinrich.

“How so?” asked Bernardo.

“You’ll see.”

Stepping over bones and splintered coffins, Heinrich noticed that the walls
were suddenly alive with a thousand tiny eyes. Rats everywhere, scampering down
the garden of old bones, leaping to the ground amidst the maze of death. One
dropped on Heinrich’s back. He smacked it off and yelled, “Run!”

They bolted down the hall, dodging and bounding over a deluge of ripping
teeth and claws. “This is what happens when you set fire to nests,” Heinrich
snapped at Bernardo as he ripped a plump one from his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Bernardo screamed.

“You did not ask.”

Through the shadows a massive postern appeared, and within it stood a
mahogany door reinforced with iron bars. “There is the doorway,” said Bernardo.

Someone at the rear screamed. Heinrich looked back and saw Karl covered in
rats. The ex-swordsman howled and fought madly, but the weight of the host was
too great. He disappeared beneath them. Heinrich wanted to stop and help, but
kept running. If he turned now, he too would be taken down.

They reached the door ahead of the advancing rats, which had stopped
momentarily to feast on the downed Marienburg. Heinrich slammed his shoulder
into the wood. He cursed. “It’s locked from the inside. We’ll need to find
another way in.”

“There is no other way in,” Bernardo said, keeping one agitated eye on the
rear. “It’s here or back to the rats!”

“I can open it, captain.” Father appeared with hammer in hand, its iron head
pulsing white with power.

“Your magic alone will not break the seal, priest,” Bernardo said. “We’ll
have to do this together.”

“And quickly,” Heinrich said. “The horde is upon us.”

The men gave Father room. The priest raised his hammer and brought it down.
The black wood splintered. Heinrich wedged his sword into the seal between
granite and door and pried as Father delivered a second blow, then a third and a
forth. Bernardo and Albert were answering the priest’s hammer blows with firm
shoulders into the ever-cracking wood. A fifth hammer strike and the door gave
way.

“Move!” Heinrich yelled, waving the men through the door and into
pitch-black. One after another, they leaped through the doorway as Bernardo and
Roland conducted a fighting withdrawal against the relentless swarm. When all
were through, Heinrich—feeling the tear of claws upon his legs—slammed the
door shut.

The door bowed under the weight of rats and then it stopped as a cold silence
set in. Through the smoky torchlight, Heinrich could hear the men gasping for
breath. He leaned against the door and said, “Praise Sigmar. That was close.”

“I’m sorry for torching the nest,” Bernardo said, “but you could have saved
us all a lot of trouble
and
Karl’s life if you had just spoken up.”

Heinrich started to say something harsh to put the foreigner in his place,
but he refrained. There was nothing that could be said, in effect, to correct
the error. Why didn’t I warn him, he wondered? Am I so blind with grief for
Broderick that I’d risk us all just to humiliate this man? Looking into
Bernardo’s waiting eyes, Heinrich was ashamed. This was not the behaviour of a
good leader. “You are right,” he said. “I should have warned you. Will you
accept my apology?”

Fighting his anger, Bernardo said, “Well, it can’t be fixed. At least the
rest of the men are fine, although we’ve taken wounds. The hound is cut up, his
legs are bleeding.” He leaned in close and whispered. “I’m worried about the
priest, though. He’s old and this has been a difficult run. I don’t know if—”

“Do not fret for me, Bernardo,” Father interrupted. The priest gave the
Estalian a rare wink and a smile, and hefted his hammer in steady hands. “I may
be old, but I’ll live.”

Father’s confidence quickened Heinrich’s blood. “It’s settled then,” he said.
“Where do we go?”

“A stairway leads down here, captain,” Roland said, pointing towards rugged
steps winding downward.

Heinrich nodded and reached for Bloodtooth and pulled him close. The dog was
performing splendidly, albeit taking the brunt of bites and cuts. With so much
enemy flesh for the taking, it was hard for the hound to keep its hunger at bay.
Heinrich ruffled his friend’s ears. Sadness clutched his chest. Eventually, he
knew, the taint of Chaos would take the dog down. It was inevitable in the City
of the Damned. A price had to be paid. Bloodtooth would eventually pay that
price with his life.

Heinrich moved to the top of the stairs and looked down. The air was cold and
clammy and heavy with the smell of rotting wood, rat faeces and blood. It would
be madness to go down these steps, he realised. Traps and ambushes surely
waited, but perhaps not. What did it matter? A Sigmarite lives to die in the
service of his god. Today is as good a day to die as any, he thought to himself.
No turning back.

“Did your scout give any clues as to what lies at the bottom of these
stairs?” Heinrich turned to the Estalian.

Bernardo shook his head. “She’s a good scout, but she’s not an idiot. She
would not venture any further alone.”

“I see.” Heinrich grabbed the torch out of Albert’s hand and held it high. He
drew his sword and started down the steps. “Let’s go and find out.”

Bloodtooth kept at his side and the men followed, torches raised high,
weapons ready. They stepped carefully, placing their boots on steps lousy with
cobwebs, rat carcasses, and human bones. Heinrich kicked as much filth out of
the way as he could, but the going was difficult. With each step, the air grew
stale with the sickly sweet smell of the grave, that pungent odour of death and
decay for which the skaven were known. Some of the men began to cough and
Rupert’s torch flickered out. This was the air of the diseased, the breath of
mutation and of rot.

They reached the bottom. Before them lay three passages and Heinrich raised
his torch and studied their options. The centre passage contained the same
architecture as the mausoleum: finely wrought granite, smooth and lined with
blind arches. The other passages were crude and misshapen, mere holes carved
into the rock. These were skaven tunnels, Heinrich knew, and they undoubtedly
linked directly to the maze of passages that ran beneath Mordheim.

“Which one should we take?” Bernardo asked.

“I’m not in the mood to get lost in the skaven underworld,” Heinrich said.
“Let’s take the centre one.”

And so they did, slowly and quietly. It was enough that they carried torches,
the smell of smoke and the light would sound the alarm anyway, but why tempt
fate? Even Bloodtooth, his jowls dripping foamy red-white muck, padded gingerly
through the panoply of human remains and skaven waste. Heinrich expected to see
more coffins ripped open and strewn along the way, but what he found was even
more disturbing.

The walls and barrel-vaulted ceiling were blood-marked in runes and symbols
that writhed like twisted souls in the flickering torchlight. The hair on
Heinrich’s neck stiffened as Bloodtooth pulled on the chain in sputtering yelps
and growls.
What have we walked
into?

And then he heard squeals and shrieks coming from behind them and echoing
down the stairs from which they had come. The men turned and braced themselves,
and Heinrich gripped his sword tightly. “No turning back now,” he said, more to
himself, but the men heard. Rupert fingered the links in his ball and chain, and
Albert, Father and Roland backed away from the growing clamour. It sounded like
a hundred-strong, but that was likely due to the echoes off the walls.
Bloodtooth joined their screeching chorus with a low bass growl. He was angry,
straining on the chain so hard that Heinrich felt his feet slip at the pull.

“It’s not wise to stand here in the middle of the hall,” Bernardo said. “We
should keep moving and find better ground.”

“I doubt we’ll find any of that here,” Heinrich said. But he yanked
Bloodtooth away and they moved, faster this time, trying to stay ahead of the
oncoming mass.

Around a turn and they emerged into a small circular room, with coffins and
bones piled against the walls. A granite pedestal lay in the centre and broken
chairs cluttered the floor. Heinrich looked for a passage out, but there were
none. This was the end of the line.

“So it’s here then,” he said and threw his torch on the pedestal. He sheathed
his sword and drew his crossbow. “Missiles at the ready. Aim straight and true.
Down as many as you can, then finish them with steel.”

Torches were tossed aside and bows were drawn. Bernardo drew Myrmidia and
climbed upon the pedestal.

Skaven burst into the room from the hallway. A buzz of missiles felled the
first rank. The second rank stumbled. That was all the time needed. Blades were
drawn and the battle engaged. Heinrich swung low and tore through skaven chest.
Bodies piled at his feet, but still they came on. There were no slingers in this
group, praise Sigmar, only close quarter weapons: fighting claws, short swords,
clubs, and weeping blades. Though the light in the room was faint, Heinrich
could see the venomous poison dripping from those dreaded blades. He ducked
slashing claws and drove the point of his sword into the tender belly of an
assailant, ducked another slash and severed a limb.

It was impossible to know the number of ratmen in the room, as furry shapes
leaped in and out of shadows at speeds too difficult to gauge. The screams and
shrieks and deep guttural cries of battle were deafening, sounds banging off the
walls and ricocheting back to drown out Heinrich’s shouted orders. It was futile
to direct the fight. No one could hear anything beyond his tiny space of war,
and Heinrich shut his mouth and swung his sword.

The nocturnal ratmen were finding the light of the torches unbearable and
many were fighting to put them out. But Bernardo and Roland held the pedestal,
slashing and crushing every claw and snout that stuck in too closely. Heinrich
smiled and kept killing.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Father fall under a gang of ratmen,
their clubs and spears tearing into the priest’s robe. The old man howled in
pain as a spear jabbed his chest and Heinrich moved to give aid, but something
caught his boot and took him down.

He hit the floor hard, cutting his arms. The impact jarred his sword loose
and it skidded into the shadows. Heinrich reached for it, but a force unseen
held him down. He rolled onto his back and tried to focus on a small silhouette
standing before him. For a moment, he was back on the rocky pyramid outside the
mausoleum struggling with phantoms. But there were no ghosts here, only the
milky ooze of confusion clouding his eyes and blurring his thoughts. As he
struggled to see, the air grew thinner and thinner until a face appeared.

A face belonging to a broken creature, wrapped in a black robe and hood,
loomed before him. One eye patched over with a dirty bandage, the other a bright
red dot set deep within a puffy socket. Its snout, covered in pus, spit and
warts, twitched uncontrollably as its sharp, pink tongue slid across rotten
teeth. The skaven sorcerer cackled madly and drew a medallion from its robe.

Heinrich’s eyes widened as they set upon the medal.
Das Herz des
Kriegergottes.
The Heart of the Warrior God. The Heart of Sigmar. There it
was before him, swinging like a pendulum, its sheer surface catching the
torchlight and warming to a bright green, then red, then green again. Heinrich
tried to raise his hand to touch it, but the invisible force held him down. He
stared into the shifting colours as if lost, the sounds of battle around him
growing faint. The sorcerer moved forward, letting the Heart swing just above
Heinrich’s face.

“Is this what you seek, man-thing?” It said, flicking a spider from its lips.
“Yes, look into it. Look and see…”

He tried resisting, but the colours were too beautiful, too powerful. They
swirled across the surface, one brilliant strand after another forming steeples,
then roofs, then walls, then streets, then a raging river of black, gateways,
guildhouses, temples, and defensive towers. Heinrich’s own heart leaped into his
throat as he realised the city being formed…