Warhammer Anthology 07 Read online

  Way of the Dead

  Marc Gascoigne and Christian Dunn

  Contents

  GLOW

  by Simon Spurrier

  HEAD HUNTING

  by Robin D. Laws

  THE SMALL ONES

  by C. L. Werner

  THREE KNIGHTS

  by Graham McNeill

  THE ROAD TO DAMNATION

  by Brian Craig

  MARK OF THE BEAST

  by Jonathan Green

  JAHAMA’S LESSON

  by Matt Farrer

  A GOOD THIEF

  by Simon Jowett

  Table of Contents

  WHAT PRICE VENGEANCE

  C. L. Werner

  GLOW

  by Simon Spurrier

  AUTUMN IN TALABHEIM. Cloying mists rose languidly from sultry canals, stretching ethereal tentacles along streets and alleyways. Wind-banked leaves withered in papery necrosis and fat crows sulked on wet roof tiles, cawing their hungry indignation at the carrion-free cobbles below.

  Autumn too, in the slums. A time of shadows and footsteps, rippling puddles and the drip-drip-drip of ill-weathering architecture. A time for unwelcome visitors.

  ‘Should I knock first, captain?’

  ‘Mm. Knock hard, Kubler, if you know what I mean.’

  Wood splintered with a resounding crack! Echoes from the blow flitted through the mist; startled crows launched from the rooftops. Dark figures tumbled through a shattered doorway.

  ‘Up! Up! Get up, scum, or by Sigmar’s wrath I’ll-‘

  ‘That’ll do, Hoist. Our host seems positively catatonic… No sense in dirtying one’s boot.’

  The invaders’ ebony forms seemed almost unreal beside the tattered rags of the building’s solitary inhabitant who lay curled uncomfortably on the sagging floorboards, snoring in intoxication. The tallest of the black cloaks, crowned with an austere wide-brimmed hat, squatted athletically to examine the sleeper’s mud-smeared countenance.

  ‘Drunk, captain?’ another dark figure enquired.

  ‘No… No, I should say not.’ The gloved hand rummaged briefly within the shapeless rags and reappeared grasping a crude earthen pillbox. A deft movement and the box opened to reveal a cluster of green tablets within.

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Sleep analeptics, captain? My brother swears by ‘em.’

  ‘Perhaps. Apothecary nonsense, of course.’ The tall man stood, examining the room. He sighed. ‘Turn it over, gentlemen. Anything untoward, I want to know about it.’

  Several of the black cloaks stooped to their task, unsettling mould-strewn furniture. Presently another of them turned to the hat wearer with a frown. ‘No sign of a Taint, sir.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘The heretic yesterday practically screamed the address.’

  ‘I daresay the flames of righteousness will do that to a fellow, Kubler… I don’t detect any Dark Powers at work here - just the usual city filth.’

  The slumbering form fidgeted with a guttural groan.

  ‘Captain…’ one of the cloaks quavered uncertainly, ‘h-his eyes!’

  The men drew back from the rag-strewn bundle that was suddenly thrashing with comatose fury. Sure enough, its eyes flickered and wept, an unnatural glow ebbing forth from the lidded irises. Bubble-flecked spittle collected in the corner of the man’s mouth.

  ‘Hmm,’ said the hat-wearer. ‘I stand corrected…’

  The sleeper lurched to its feet, rough skin bulging and twisting, frothing in a paroxysm of internal anguish. The jaw creaked open in a ghoulish smile; serrated canines erupted from writhing gums like impatient saplings, human tongue curling in extended, prehensile distortion. And finally the eyes opened fully, a ghastly light smouldering from their scorched sockets. It fixed its vision on the pillbox and reached out a shaking hand.

  ‘G-give… gg…’

  The thing made an attempt to articulate, pulsating arteries disturbing its swollen larynx, unfamiliar tongue unable to form sounds easily. ‘Give back… guh. Glow. Wwant.’

  But the transformation was incomplete, and already the skin was tightening cadaverously, already the ridges of brow and cheek were ossifying further, bony protrusions appearing with tectonic certainty. With a wet snap of elasticity the skin burst from within, peeling back in reptilian folds, splitting like overripe fruit.

  ‘Want it nowwwww!’ it gurgled, insane eyes rolling. ‘Give Glow or I ki-‘

  Boom.

  The beast’s twisted features dissolved beneath a grisly haze of airborne ichor. A pistol crack shuddered angrily about the room, acrid smoke oozing lazily from the hat-wearer’s outstretched weapon.

  Time stagnated for one long moment, then returned explosively as the chaos-thing tumbled downward, ruptured skull spewing viscous fluids that splattered and coagulated across the dismal room. It thrashed and jerked.

  ‘In the name of Sigmar I purge thee,’ the hat-wearer intoned, fingers tracing the Holy Hammer in the air.

  Reality coalesced. The other Templars, aghast at the suddenness of the creature’s transformation - and grateful for their leader’s adroit response - breathed again. The corpse twitched then laid still, a sludge of liquefying tissues dribbling from its wound.

  A deep silence settled.

  One of the witch hunters mumbled, nodding at the pillbox in the hat-wearer’s hand, ‘Y-you… uh… you still think they’re sleep analeptics, captain?’

  ‘On balance, Heinrich… I suspect not.’

  Witch Hunter Captain Richt Karver squinted at the tablets in his gloved hand and pursed his thin dry lips in thought.

  RAIN UNFURLED ACROSS the city like the casting of a vast net. All across the poor quarter it pelted, shivering along the merchant streets, dousing what scant illumination had been created against the drawing in of the night. The mist dissipated beneath the barrage, puddles formed and ran together, rusted gutters overflowed, cascading their moss striated contents earthwards.

  The crows ruffled themselves in self pity, beady eyes scowling at the indignity of such bedragglement.

  Even the mighty Temple of Sigmar, implacable in its domination of the brooding skyline, was forced to surrender a fraction of its haughty demeanour to the torrents that assailed its towers and buttresses. And yet deep, deep below that drenched edifice existed a world of stale air and flickering light that no rain could penetrate.

  Richt Karver cast off his hat with characteristic aplomb and sank into a straight backed chair. His well polished pistols were hung casually across the furniture’s wooden frame, intricately decorated powder bag dumped unceremoniously upon a tabletop and his ebony walking cane - never absent from his side - was twiddled distractedly in his perfectly manicured hands.

  ‘Bring it in,’ he muttered after a moment’s thought.

  The other hunters entered in a gaggle, dragging with them an awkward bundle. Wrapped in stained sheets and bound with what few scraps of crude twine could be plundered from the slum, the oily fluids of the mutant’s body were already blemishing the linen.

  Karver rubbed his chin for a moment, a habitual motion that his acolytes had learned to recognise as a sign of deep thought, and took pains not to interrupt. ‘Let’s see what we can find out about this… what did he call it?… ah - ”Glow”, shall we? Hoist, you cover the slums. Loose talk in taverns, that sort of thing. You have the face for it, old boy. Lars, the estates in the west quarter. I daresay these things are equally at home amongst affluence as effluence. Heinrich, see if the militia’s heard anything - oh, and take Spielmunn with you, he might learn something. And Kubler, you can find me that little worm Vassek. If anyone knows anything about this it’ll be him, you can count on it.’

  ‘Keep your eyes and ears open, gentlemen. Whateve
r this stuff is, I want it out of my city. Report back when you have something.’

  Kubler nodded and hefted the corpse. ‘What about this, captain?’

  ‘Little point in burning it in the platz, I suppose.’ Karver grumbled. ‘Nobody wants to see the Righteous Flames of Purity claiming a heretic who’s already dead… Not that we could start a fire in this weather anyway-‘

  Spielmunn, the youngest of Karver’s Templars, piped up nervously. ‘A spike at the city gates, captain? Haven’t been many heads up there recently.’

  ‘Mm,’ Karver grunted. ‘The displaying of a head does rather require that the body has one. Our unfortunate subject is somewhat lacking in that respect.’

  Kubler resettled the shape on his wide shoulder. ‘The Heap then?’

  Karver nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so. Seal it carefully, mind you. I think in the spring we’ll have to see about clearing it out down there. There must be - what - a dozen bodies festering away, now?’

  Hoist frowned, ‘Don’t see why we don’t just dump ‘em in the river.’

  ‘Because, you idiot,’ Kubler snapped, ‘we’d end up with a water supply full of tainted flesh. Would you drink it?’

  ‘Can’t be worse than Bretonnian ale,’ muttered Karver, dispelling the emerging confrontation with a forced chuckle - but sparing a private nod for Kubler. The boy would go far, Sigmar willing. ‘No, I’m afraid that onto the Heap it goes. Recite the Prayer to Banish Uncleanliness at the doorway and we’ll be fine. The best kind of dead heretic, gentlemen, is one that stays dead.’

  Kubler nodded and dragged the corpse to the head of a convoluted stairway, beginning the descent that would terminate eventually at the vault where the remains of mutants lay putrefying. Karver listened to the gradually fading percussion of the body being manhandled indelicately until the gloomy depths swallowed the sounds of their passage. The other Templars, perhaps sensing Karver’s disquiet, dispersed upon their respective errands in silence.

  Karver paused for a moment, then passed through the heavy doorway to his workrooms.

  THE CREATURE HISSED at his approach, filth-matted hackles rising in a peristaltic wave, short forelimbs bunching with muscular alertness. Its single remaining eye rolled uncontrollably, spastic orbits reflecting the imbalance of the beast’s mind.

  It leapt with a shriek, slavering jaw gnashing, prominent incisors wielded for action.

  Only at the very pinnacle of its lunge, when its jaws seemed inescapable, did the iron chain about its neck jarringly arrest its movement. It lurched to a halt with a pitiable squeal and dropped to the floor, gagging and retching in frustration.

  Richt Karver hadn’t flinched once.

  ‘And how are we today, my little horror?’ he cooed to the vast rat, which scrabbled its dagger claws on the stones as if imagining his hated face within its grasp. ‘Not too hungry, I trust?’

  He’d captured the creature the previous year - an expedition into the unexplored tunnels beneath the city had resulted in an encounter with the repugnant skaven. The nest had been purified, Sigmar be praised, but not before two of his Templars had been carried, screaming, into the nightmare labyrinths below. He’d purged twenty ratmen in Sigmar’s name that day, and captured several more for ”interrogatory purposes”. They’d died, shrieking and cursing, manacled to the walls of the very room that their insane pet now guarded. It gave Karver some small measure of satisfaction to imagine their revolting bodies, defeated and mutilated, rotting away in the Pit far below his feet.

  The witch hunter strolled into the ruddy half-light of his workroom, humming under his breath. He sagged into a chair, fingers rapping on the armrest. Presently, he turned to the rat that lurked silent in the shadows by the doorway. It watched him - as always - with a malevolence compounded by cyclopic asymmetry, its single beady eye glistening. The Templar made a decision.

  ‘Dinnertime, vermin…’ he trilled, reaching into a pocket for the confiscated pills.

  TIME PASSED. WINTER reached Talabheim, an icy breath squalling from the north. The few remaining leaves, already revealing their spidery skeletons to the onset of seasonal decomposition, quit their lofty positions and were borne away by the chill. Puddles crystallised treacherously, the ruts and grooves of cobbled streets no escape from the gathering ice.

  The crows shivered and puffed themselves up, miniature spheres of black indignation. They eyed each other distrustfully, aware that a starving scavenger was just as ample a meal to its brethren as any other.

  In his workroom, Richt Karver warmed his hands over a well stoked fire and ignored the stream of groans and curses from the nearby wall. The whole place reeked of overcooked meat.

  ‘…rrnnn… nnneeed medicine… glow glow glow…’

  Karver sighed, pushing the branding iron back into the fire to re-heat. ‘Spare me, Villhelm. I have a headache.’

  ‘…glow glow glow…’ Muttering, Karver turned to the figure manacled on the wall. A burn mark already blistering across his chest, the man’s contorted form writhed uselessly: swollen muscles spasmed, tumourous growths pockmarking his flaccid skin. A dappled blemish coiled colourfully across his shoulders and chest, just one of the gaudy signs of his Taint.

  Unmoved by such alterations, Karver leaned in close. His expression - far from the contempt one might expect - instead mirrored the countenance of a disappointed parent whose child has been disobedient once too often.

  ‘Now come on, Villhelm. You know I don’t enjoy doing this to you. Just tell me where you bought those tablets, eh? It’s for your own good.’

  Such was the sincerity in the Templar’s voice, such was the element of concern, that the mutant paused incredulously in its cursing to stare at its tormentor.

  At which point Karver placed the firebrand against the creature’s flesh and pushed. Smoke rose, flesh curled and charred and the Chaos-thing screamed and screamed and screamed. The pain overcame it rapidly; its jagged head sagged forwards in a dead faint.

  Karver returned to warming his hands, grumbling quietly to himself: ‘A bit of bloody quiet, Sigmar be praised.’

  It didn’t last.

  Within moments there came a thumping at the door and a muffled voice beyond. In the gloom of its alcove, the chained rat slunk to its feet.

  ‘It’s me, captain - Kubler!’ came the call. ‘I’ve found Vassek! I’ve got him right here!’

  ‘Very good, Kubler. Send him in, please.’

  The door inched open slightly and unseen hands propelled a small, greasy man into the room. Karver mentally placed himself in the sweaty individual’s unenviable position as first reactions were gauged.

  The smell hit him first; assailing his nostrils, the miasmic stench of charred skin made him gag and spin on his axis, whereupon he was faced with the limp mutant, hanging scarred and smoking from the wall. Attempting to repress the biliousness that rose in his belly at such horrors, the man twisted away and sunk to his knees…

  Coming face-to-face with hissing, snarling death.

  The rat had changed. Since the autumn, when its diet of Glow had begun in earnest, a dreadful transformation had occurred. Now its one eye glowed with an internal fire, no longer rotating with insane misdirection. Its lank fur hung loose and decaying in infected strips, the corpulent flesh beneath glistening in decay. Weird ridges and sores pockmarked its ulcerous skin and its long tail had sprouted a forest of spines in between the weeping lesions that punctuated its length.

  It opened its cadaverous mouth and shrieked in the small man’s face, straining against its chain.

  Vassek DuWurz emptied his bladder and blubbed like a baby.

  Karver hauled him upright and dumped him bodily in an empty chair, where he sat quivering with eyes like dinner plates.

  ‘Hello, Vassek.’ The hunter smiled, his friendliness utterly incongruous with his dismal surroundings. ‘We’ve been looking for you for quite a while. How have you been?’

  ‘D-damn you, Karver! What’s all this about?’

&nbs
p; ‘I just wanted a chat, really. It’s so rare that I get to see old friends, these days.’

  ‘Don’t start that! Don’t start that ”friendly” rubbish! I’ve been down here before. Remember? I know the routine!’

  ‘Oh, come now! I’m too much maligned, old fellow. Surely a conversation isn’t too much to ask?’

  ‘Too bloody right, it is! Unless you’ve a reason for keeping me here, I’m leaving right no-‘

  There was a cold, metallic hiss. Vassek, suddenly frozen, examined the glittering blade that had materialised at his throat. Karver’s ebony cane lay hollow on the floor, its secret contents exposed.

  Karver’s voice was quiet, but no less friendly. ‘How’s that… what did you call it last time we met…. that ”birthmark”, Vassek? Covers half of your back, I seem to recall. Most unusual.’

  ‘J-juhst a… hkkk… buhhthmrrk!…’ the porcine man choked.

  ‘Mm. Maybe. It’s funny, you know, how many of my, ah, ”patients” say that.’

  ‘Whtt d’y wnnt?’ Vassek burbled.

  ‘Ah, that’s more like it…’ Karver smiled happily, releasing the pressure on the quivering man’s throat. ‘That’s much more like it.’ He settled back into his chair, delicately fingering the blade. ‘I know you like to… how can I put this?… ”listen” to things, Vassek. Now that we’re friends again, how about you tell me everything you’ve heard about this.’

  In his hand lay a pile of Glow tablets. Over by the door, the rat-creature began howling and hissing, straining at its chain. Vassek shuddered in horror.

  Karver winked conspiratorially, ‘Oh, don’t worry about him - he just wants his supper. Between you and me… I think he has an addiction problem.’

  KARVER STRODE FROM his workshop purposefully, buckling on his pistol belt. The other Templars jerked to informal attention.

  ‘We have an address!’ he exclaimed, donning his hat with a theatrical flourish. ‘Come, come, gentlemen! We have holy work to attend to!’

  ‘Sir! You trust the word of that maggot?’ Kubler grunted, nodding towards Vassek, who was edging his way past the snarling rat-beast.