Tales of the Old World (125 page)

And then he was there, standing in a street amidst countless throngs of men
and women. The mass pressed in closely, and Heinrich watched as they engaged in
degenerate acts of evil as told in the annals of that terrible night in Mordheim
many years ago. People dousing themselves with lantern oil and lighting candles,
long, haggard lines of old thieves and beggars, chained at the neck, being led
up stairs and into the sharp axe of the executioner; village idiots holding
pistols to their heads and pulling triggers in a Kislevite game of chance;
drunkards and barmaids, priests and parishioners, sharing one and all in an orgy
of Chaos that thrust Heinrich’s mind into madness. Severed heads danced around
him.
“Turn back… turn back… turn back,”
they whispered. Heinrich closed
his eyes. A tug at the bottom of his coat;
“Have you seen my mama?”
A
young girl looking up with tears in her eyes, a deafening blast and Broderick’s
chest exploding in blood and green powder, Sisters huddled in prayer deep within
their abbey. These things invaded his thoughts.

He tried to run. His legs were stiff. He looked down. The street opened and
sucked in his feet. Cobblestones leeched up his legs and turned flesh to stone.

A flash of light appeared in the sky. He looked up. The Hammer of Sigmar
burned brightly. The twin-tailed comet, barrelling down, a mighty rock of flame.
His skin boiled, little bubbles dancing across his hands and arms, while people
nearby burst into fire or shattered into ash, leaving dead silhouettes upon
walls. Down and down, the comet hurled.

He screamed.

The world around him collapsed, and Heinrich was ripped from the street. He
found himself once more on the mausoleum floor, shaking his head to drive away
the fog. The fight still raged around him. He looked up. The sorcerer and the
Heart were gone, and in their place the terrifying glare of a rat ogre, its
foaming jaws mere inches from Heinrich’s face. Hot spittle dripped on his chin,
rancid breath burned his eyes. Obviously, the sorcerer wanted to give his pet a
taste of man-flesh. But not today, Heinrich thought, as he drew his pistol. He
didn’t even know if it was loaded, but he pushed the barrel into the chest of
the mighty beast and pulled the trigger.

The impact of the shot tore the pistol out of his hand. A white flash, a
plume of black powder, and bits of flesh and fur smothered Heinrich as the rat
ogre roared in pain and fell back. The shot had blown a crater into the
monster’s chest. Heinrich pulled up on feeble arms and tried to focus on the
death throes. The rat ogre thrashed and scraped at his ribs, clawing away the
burning shot, but a swift sword out of the shadows halted its efforts.

Bernardo jumped onto the beast’s broad back and plunged his blade through its
ribs. The rat ogre wavered in place for a moment, then fell hard. The impact
shook the floor.

Heinrich tried to close his eyes and catch a breath, but the floor continued
to rumble and pop as a web of black cracks worked their way out from under the
rat ogre and across the granite. Heinrich’s face grew pale as he realised what
was happening. He tried to roll away but it was too late.

The floor collapsed.

He didn’t remember hitting the ground, but when he came to, he was smothered
in grey dust and rubble. Heinrich sat up and wiped away the grime from his eyes
and focused on the shapes around him. Human shapes.

“Is everyone with me?” he asked, coughing.

A brief pause, then men began to answer: Father, Roland, everyone.

“Is Bloodtooth with us?”

“Yes,” said Bernardo. “Shaken by the fall, but well enough.”

The Estalian walked up and handed over the dog. Heinrich smiled and patted
his resilient friend on the muzzle. “It’s good to see you safe, good sir,” he
said, using Bloodtooth’s back for support.

He gained his feet and picked through the piles of rocks to find his sword.
He found it half buried in the back of a ratman, pulled it out and wiped away
its blood on his tattered breeches. Where are we, he wondered? He found a torch,
waved it in the air for a moment to let it catch a better flame, then lifted it
high.

It was a cave. Like the hallway above, its crude rock walls were covered in
gruesome skaven script. Heinrich now realised what those symbols represented.
This was not just an old, forgotten cave, but a temple to the twelve skaven
lords and to their abominable horned god.

Bolted along the walls were human skulls containing low-burning candles.
Interspersed between the skulls were wooden casks wherein smouldering wyrdstone
sent green mist swirling into the chilly air. Heinrich caught his breath; he
didn’t want to breathe. Wyrdstone could fester in the chest and corrupt the
flesh… and the spirit. Though many believed the green substance possessed
healing powers, Heinrich knew the truth. Small quantities of the alloy used as
currency in the thieves’ dens and shantytowns around Mordheim was fine, but if
they stayed here much longer, ingesting the fumes, they would change and mutate.
But where could they go?

There were many exits. Several tunnels led from the room, large enough for
human form, but Heinrich had no desire to test them. They would eventually lead
to the surface, but at what risk to the men? Besides, the job was not finished.
They had come here for the Heart. He had now seen it, experienced its power and
he would not leave without it. Retreat was not possible.

“Heinrich?”

He turned and faced the Estalian. “What is it?”

“We have to retreat. Despite his courage, Father is wounded and so are
others. Look at yourself. We’ve survived this round, but I don’t know how much
longer we can go on. We have to retreat now before—”

“Retreat to where, Estalian?” Heinrich glared into the foreigner’s dark face.
“Through these tunnels? Not for a moment. I will not stop until this is
finished. Until the white one—”

“Listen to me!” Bernardo hissed, grabbing Heinrich’s shoulders and holding
tightly. “This is not a fight we can win. More are coming and I—”

“What happened to your death ground stance?” Heinrich said, pushing the
Estalian back. “Where is your spine?”

“I’m no fool, sir. Valiant rhetoric is fine when the muscle is there to
support it. But our muscle is gone. The enemy is too abundant, and we are not on
death ground. We
can
retreat, and we must. There’s enough wood and rock
around here. We can pile it to the ceiling and—”

“If you have no stomach for this fight,” said Heinrich, “then I suggest you
start piling. I doubt you’ll succeed. I’m staying… with or without you and your
Marienburgers. No more running! No more retreating! They attack, they retreat,
and we die. Enough. I yield no more. And I’ve seen the Heart.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sigmar’s Heart. I’ve seen it. The sorcerer had it, and I looked into its
core. The things I saw… the things I felt. We must get it.”

Bernardo shook his head. “I’m not going to die for a silly artefact. Forget
about it!”

“No!” Heinrich screamed. “I told you to learn respect for this city,
Estalian, and the things within it. And now I’m telling you plainly: I’m not
leaving here until the Heart is mine. Until I’ve killed them all. Until
Broderick is avenged. Be a man and fight… or be a coward.”

Bernardo spat on Heinrich’s boot. “I’m finished with you, Reiklander. Stay
and die like a fool, but we’re pulling out.”

“Captain!”

Heinrich pulled away from the Estalian and joined Roland in the centre of the
cave.

“Hold your torch up, captain, and look at this.”

Heinrich raised his torch high. The bright flames threw back the shadows,
revealing a monstrosity of bone.

It was the most terrifying thing he had ever seen. A massive idol of bone
stood in the centre of the cave. Bits and pieces of old leather, plate and
chainmail covered its arms, chest and legs. Its feet were wrapped in strips of
human entrails and oiled cloth. Were these the bones of a giant, Heinrich
wondered? No, its body was constructed of human remains, stitched together with
twine and sinew, its joints fused by dark sorcery. Human ribs and clavicles,
hipbones and femurs, teeth and knuckles pieced together like some daemonic
puzzle. On its broad shoulders perched a minotaur’s skull, but its horns were
coated in sediment that had dripped down from stalactites and had sealed the
idol to the ceiling. Heinrich’s blood boiled. It wasn’t enough that the skaven
had disrupted the eternal sleep of the occupants of this crypt, they had to
desecrate their memories further by shaping their remains into an unholy
reflection of the Horned Rat.

“Enough of this!” Heinrich shouted, letting his voice echo down the tunnels.
“We are here, and we are not leaving. Face us now!”

“You will die, man-thing,” a scratchy, feral voice rang out of the darkness.
“Pink-skins will all die, yes. Leave Mordheim, yes. It is ours.”

“I think not,” Heinrich replied. “My men and I will reclaim it for the
Empire.”

A white, twin-tailed skaven appeared at the opening of a tunnel to their
right. A confident snarl spread across its sharp fangs and black gums. It waved
a warplock pistol. “Maybe, yes. But not today.”

With those words skaven poured from every tunnel and circled the trapped
mercenaries. More vermin than Heinrich had ever seen. They beat spears and clubs
together, scraped daggers against daggers, and slowly, slowly, tightened the
noose. White One stepped to the front waving the pistol, a dagger, and fighting
claws. At his side limped the one-eyed sorcerer, clearly despondent at the death
of his pet, but squeezing Sigmar’s Heart in the bony vice of his hand.
Bloodtooth barked and snapped at anything that drew near, and Heinrich mouthed a
prayer and held his sword high. So be it then, he said to himself. If this is
the way it will be, if I am to die, then I will die for you, Broderick.

White One drew close and levelled its pistol towards Heinrich’s chest.
“Goodbye, man-thing. Your god is a devil…”

Heinrich waited for the shot, but it did not come. Instead, the skeleton
above began to quake and lurch. He turned and saw Bernardo grabbing the Horned
Rat’s legs and pull himself upward. The climb was effortless, as smooth and
graceful as a ratman scaling a wall. The Estalian reached the shoulders and
straddled the minotaur’s skull as if it were a hobbyhorse. He rocked back and
forth.

The skaven horde fell back at the sight of this blasphemy. A pink-skin
climbing their lord of lords as if it were a ladder must have been as terrifying
to them as the very sight of the skeleton to Heinrich. Even White One had
dropped his pistol and had moved aside, glaring up in horror as its god teetered
on the verge of destruction.

“You don’t believe us, White One,” Heinrich said, “when we tell you that this
is our city? Then let us demonstrate our sincerity. Estalian?”

“Yes, captain?”

“Bring it down.”

Bernardo unsheathed Myrmidia and swung her through the minotaur’s horns.
Sparks flew as steel sliced through the hardened sediment. He cut the left horn
then the right. The abomination seemed to hover in the air for a moment, and
then it toppled.

A mountain of bone and chunks of ceiling struck the cave floor and erupted in
a shower of grey-white splinters. Heinrich shielded himself from the impact,
ducked a rib cage, and drew his sword. “Attack!” he screamed, and leaped into a
mass of ratmen trying to flee in the confusion.

Chaos consumed the space, as skaven routed and swords cut them down. Heinrich
prayed to Sigmar that his men had not fallen to flying bones and stone. He
looked for them. Roland and Father were fighting hard to his right. Bloodtooth
was ripping out throats to his left, and the Estalian was fighting in the
centre, holding off a pack of vermin who were trying to recover the minotaur
skull. Albert and Rupert were working together on the other side of the cave,
defending against a pack with spears and shields. It was a good fight. The men
were holding fast.

He worked his way to the centre of the cave, drove his sword through a ratman
who squealed in death, and then joined the Estalian.

“That was a foolish thing to do,” Heinrich said, parrying a spear thrust.

“You ordered it, and it got their attention, didn’t it?” Bernardo replied,
slashing through skaven armour and flesh.

“I thought you were done with me.”

“Well, I changed my mind. I couldn’t leave you Reiklanders here alone, and
well—”

“Admit it. I was right. There was no retreat.” Heinrich found himself
laughing despite the situation.

Bernardo caught a skaven in a headlock, broke its neck, and tossed it away.
“You’re beginning to annoy me, sir. I don’t like someone who’s always right.”

I’m not always right,
Heinrich said to himself. Here he was fighting
defensively when a more important matter needed attention. He looked around the
cave, seeking a black robe and hood. The air was filled with granite and bone
dust, green mist and smoke. It was hard to see. But he found the sorcerer to the
left being escorted through its routing kin. “Hold as best as you can,” he said
to the Estalian. “I have something important to do.”

Bernardo drove his sword through the mailed shirt of a ratman and said,
“What’s more important than saving our skins?”

“The Heart!”

Heinrich ignored Bernardo’s curses and pushed his way through to where the
sorcerer was retreating. He sidestepped a spear thrust and responded with a
sword hilt, driving the ratman to its knees with a cracked skull. He’d lost his
torch, but he didn’t need it as the Heart, lying upon the sorcerer’s chest,
shone bright green and lit the way. The sorcerer tried to drown the glow with
its claw, but Heinrich broke its wrist. Its escort, fearing a similar fate,
leaped away and left its broken master to die.

Heinrich grabbed the throat of the sorcerer. “You have something of mine,” he
said, hitting the beast’s mangled face repeatedly. The sorcerer fell to the
floor, its snout bloody, its eyes glazed over, unblinking and unmoving. Heinrich
curled his fingers around the leather cord that held the Heart to the sorcerer’s
neck and yanked it free.