[Warhammer] - Zavant Read online

  They would dredge the riverbed, he would see to it, but he already knew that there would be nothing there to be found. The older the vampire, the less remained of it when it was destroyed, and if she was as ancient as the evidence suggested, then the swift-moving waters of the Reik would leave little trace of her. All that remained would be dust, and even that would be swept away by the river’s current. Thousands of years of undead existence had ended, and all that was left of her would most likely end up mixed in with the silt deposits anywhere all along the hundred league length of the River Reik between here and Marienburg.

  For a brief moment, Konniger considered the possibility that she might have survived the effect of the river waters on her unnatural flesh. After all, the sunbox would have almost certainly destroyed one of her minions, and since she survived that, could she not also have…

  No, it was impossible. She—no, it, he reminded himself—was dead, of that there could be no lingering doubt. He spared the surging river current one last glance and then turned and walked back towards the near shore, ignoring the growing clamour around him as the troops of the Reiksguard and City Watch moved across to quell the last few struggles of the still-continuing battle there.

  Even before the battle was over, Klasst and his surviving army of mercenaries and rogues were already starting to slip away, abandoning the fighting and its bloody aftermath to Altdorf’s forces of law and order, and vanishing into the welcoming shadows of surrounding alleys and backcourts, from where they could disappear unobtrusively to any other point in the city. Vido was with them too, but he had a purpose other than simple flight.

  He was looking for something. He found it in a short, dismal alleyway just off the bottom of the Volker Weg.

  It was Scholke. The crimelord’s chief henchman had been injured early in the battle—partially disembowelled by the blade of a falchion sword clumsily if effectively wielded by one of the black-cloaked servant things—but had managed to crawl away to here to escape further harm. Now he had been abandoned and forgotten by his employer and his comrades in their rush to escape the attentions of the City Watch. For now, they probably thought that he was lying back there amongst the many other corpses that lay strewn along the quayside. Later, when they were back safe in their dens and able to take stock of the situation, they might realise their mistake, but Vido was in no hurry to tip them off too early.

  “Who is it?” Scholke called out in fear as he lay there in a pool of his own blood, hands buried in his own flesh as he sought to prevent his innards from spilling out. “A kid? Come here, boy. I need you to carry a message and go fetch me some help. There’ll be gold in it for you if you serve me well, and a world of trouble for you and your family if you don’t, that much I can promise you.”

  He was already half-dead, Vido realised, his vision dimmed by pain and blood loss. In the darkness of the alley, he had mistaken the diminutive figure standing before him for that of a child. Vido was in no hurry to disabuse him of this notion.

  Vido remembered what Scholke had said to him once before, about how Klasst always collected in the end on any unpaid debts still owed to him. Well, Vido reckoned that he had an unpaid debt owed to him, and now was the right time to collect on it. Unhurriedly, he drew his dagger and moved in on the helpless figure lying at the end of the alleyway.

  He thought of his old mentor Hergabo lying there stiff and cold with his brains bashed in. After that, what came next was easy.

  Konniger found the halfling a few minutes later, sitting on a pile of barrels on the quayside beside a moored line of river barges, whistling to himself as he wiped clean the blade of his dagger on a ripped shred of a dead man’s cloak. Konniger, exhausted by the night’s events and still secretly troubled by the head wound he had suffered only a few days ago, was in no mood to wonder why his manservant seemed in such ebullient spirits on a night when dozens must have died in terrible, pitiful ways.

  “We’re done here now, yes?” asked Vido.

  Konniger looked around them, seeing the corpses of Klasst’s men, the scattered, burning remnants of at least one of Khemalla’s vampire minions and the motionless forms of her more mortal servants. The City Watch were taking no chances, however, and Konniger saw groups of them gathered round the black-cloaked corpses, pummelling and hacking at them with their weapons until there was little left of them but blood-soaked black rags.

  There would be much to do tomorrow: written notes to make, more than a few loose ends to be sorted out, the lair in the Reikhoch to investigate, probably a summons to the Imperial palace to give a truthful account of everything that had happened here. Or, at least, a version of the truth which would satisfy the palace officials.

  Yes, there would be much to do, but, as he had already reminded himself, all of it could wait until tomorrow.

  “Yes, we’re finished here. Let us go home, Vido, or at least to as much of a home as that fire in my study may have spared us.”

  “Did we do well on this one, then?” asked Vido, with uncharacteristic brashness. Konniger considered the question. His alliance with Klasst was thankfully over, but being thrown into such close proximity with his old adversary had given rise to several troubling questions. For too long, Konniger had allowed the crimelord too much free rein. He countered Klasst’s worst schemes and deprivations as and when he could, but there were always so many other problems and events elsewhere calling for his attention.

  Now, he decided, that unsatisfactory situation would come to an end. “Once this business is concluded, there will still have to be a final reckoning between us one day,” he had told Klasst.

  So be it. That time would come, Konniger decided. But, like the aftermath of all else that had happened here tonight, it would have to wait for another day.

  “Yes, we did well,” he finally relented. “We survived to live on to see at least another day, and there are many who would judge that enough to be satisfied with. We also drove a great evil out of the city, although in doing so we have allowed, at least for now, a lesser evil to survive to flourish anew. But, most importantly, we know that, after tonight, the world will mercifully be troubled by at least one less servant of darkness.”

  Or perhaps even two, thought Vido, casting a casual glance towards the mouth of a certain alleyway as they strode on up the Volker Weg towards home.

  Epilogue

  The first of the scrolls arrived several months later.

  It was delivered by a standard Imperial messenger, who reported that it had been delivered to him by another messenger. Who this other messenger was, he was unhappily unable to provide any details of, and the trail seemed to end there.

  The scroll itself was of the finest vellum, tied with a silk, crimson ribbon and marked with a strikingly distinctive black wax seal. The crest upon the seal was that of a crowned desert serpent entwined round the long, thin blade of an elegant, archaic-looking dagger.

  Konniger declined to break open the seal and read whatever message the scroll might contain.

  Thereafter, the scrolls arrived at an intermittent rate of one every several months. Konniger refused to open or read any of them, and so they sat piled up on a shelf in his study, the pile growing as each new, unread scroll was added to it.

  Occasionally, Vido would catch Konniger brooding over them. He would see him sitting at his desk, deep in thought, holding one of the still-sealed scrolls and turning it end over end between his long fingers. Afterwards, Vido would find the unopened scroll lying in some dusty corner of the room, where Konniger had presumably finally thrown it in angry disgust.

  Each time Vido would put the discarded scroll back with the others. Not one time did his more inquisitive halfling instincts get the better of him as to what message the scrolls might contain, although once he held one of the scrolls close to his face and took a cautious sniff at it. He fancied he could detect the faint scent of some distant, hot and arid clime, and, beneath that, the even fainter scent of something else: a sickly sweet corruption,
like the scent of rotted desert orchids.

  But that would be impossible, he told himself, and after that he tried not to think about the scrolls and what they might contain.

  It didn’t matter, of course. Even if there was nothing written inside any of them, even if all of them were blank, both he and Konniger already knew the real message that each of them had to impart:

  I have survived. I have eternity to practise my patience, but there shall come a time when we shall surely face each other again.

  PART FOUR

  The Horror at Alt Krantzstein, or

  The Case of the Twisted Man

  Author’s note. “When a man is tired of Altdorf, he is tired of life.” So wrote that great chronicler of Altdorf life, Herr Zammal von Anselm, more than half a century before Konniger’s birth, although the now famous remark is often mistakenly attributed to Konniger himself. An understandable mistake, perhaps, given that the great and majestic Imperial capital and its renowned gentleman sage-detective inhabitant seem to go so splendidly hand-in-hand in our imaginations.

  Certainly, we know something of Konniger’s sojourns elsewhere: his involvement with courtly intrigues in royal Gisoreux; his Tilean adventures and interventions in the vendetta-disputes of feuding merchant princes; the investigations and field expeditions that took him to places as far afield as Kislev in the cold north to the deserts and oases of Araby in the far south. But, still, it was always to Altdorf that he would finally return, and when we think of Zavant Konniger, we think too of dark, mist-shrouded Altdorf streets, and the unravelling of strange mysteries and the unmasking of hidden enemies there at the very centre of Imperial power.

  For those impatient readers who complain that I concentrate too much on Konniger’s Altdorf adventures and not enough on those cases which took him to the more remote and less civilised corners of the Empire, I now offer up my researches into The Case of the Twisted Man. There are, no doubt, other readers who would point out that Konniger’s investigations—as reconstructed by your humble author—do not accurately reflect the real face of the foes of mankind and the servants of darkness, at least as they are known by those more ordinary of the Emperor’s subjects. The Empire remains a dark and dangerous place, its forest depths home to many savage and bestial creatures and inhuman horrors. This was even more true in Konniger’s day. And so where, you may ask, are the details of Konniger’s entanglements with foes less genteel and erudite than well-mannered were-beasts and noble, aristocratic creatures of the undead? Alas, my researches have yet to turn up any incidents of orc slaying and dragon fighting, but those readers in search of a darker, bolder kind of tale will, I hope, find much to please them here.

  One

  The young novice, a ward of the Church almost since the moment of his birth, knocked loudly at the door again, anxious about the consequences if he failed to rouse the occupant in time for matin prayers. The room was occupied by a distinguished and senior member of the cathedral’s scriptorium, who would merely receive a few questioning glances and askance looks at morning repast should he fail to appear for the customary devotions. For the novice who failed to rouse him, however, any chastisement would be far more severe.

  He knocked again, with a note of frantic urgency. “Honoured brother,” he hissed into the woodwork of the bolted door, “the matins bell has sounded. It is time to rise for morning prayer!”

  “What’s this? Who is making such a Sigmar-damned cacophony at this blessed early hour?”

  The voice was thin and withered—no more than a weak, scratchy whisper—but to the young novice it sounded like the final knell of doom itself. With a rush of anticipatory dread, he turned round. There in the passageway behind him loomed old Comnenus, the temple-monastery’s chief lector-priest, terror of several generations of holy brethren of the Church of Sigmar, including, it was rumoured, the Grand Theogonist himself when he was merely a young novice priest. No one was quite sure how old Comnenus was—“older than Lord Sigmar himself” was one popular if rather blasphemous view—but none doubted his devotion to the service of Sigmar, no matter how the infirmities of age might have affected his abilities.

  “It’s Brother Vallus, revered Comnenus. I have been sent to summon him to attend matins, but he is not answering my knocks!”

  The old priest made a noise of angry indignation at the back of his throat. His eyes were milky and clouded with cataracts, but he did not need vision to find his way around the cathedral-fortress where he had dwelled for decades. Without hesitation, he strode up to the closed door where the boy stood, and banged sternly on it with the end of the gnarled wooden cudgel which he used as a walking stick and, occasionally, as a means of painfully reminding young novices of the solemnity and importance of their duties.

  “Brother Vallus!” he shouted, all trace of aged weakness now gone from his voice. “It is past the matins hour. We are not in some remote, Sigmar-forsaken outpost in Nordland or Ostermark. This is the great cathedral of Altdorf, the very seat of the Holy Church, and here we observe the proper marks of devotion to the Lord Sigmar!”

  There were more doors opening now, as other priestly brethren emerged to see the source of the disturbance that was echoing through the stone halls and passages of the scriptorium dormitory. Comnenus continued hammering on the door for a minute more, then paused and sniffed the air suspiciously as his blind man’s keen senses detected an odour from within. Whatever it was, it caused him to look sharply at the boy.

  “Go quickly, and fetch the brother smith,” commanded Comnenus, gripping the boy’s shoulder in stern urgency. “Tell him to bring any tools he needs to break down a door.”

  By the time the smith had been summoned, a crowd of nervous, agitated priests and novices had gathered. The blacksmith set about the noisy business of breaking down the door. A big, hirsute Middenheimer, he had once been an Ulric-worshipping mercenary who had broken men’s skulls for gold before he had seen the light and devoted his energies to hammering horseshoes in the service of Sigmar. A few stout blows with a hammer and chisel and it was done. Priests and scribes crowded round the open doorway to behold the scene within the room…

  And then retreated in horrified dismay at the sight that greeted them. Many of them retched or held the collars of their habits to their faces to stifle the overpowering stench that wafted out of the small, stone-walled room.

  Only Comnenus did not react, even though the smell must have been almost overpowering to his more developed senses. He stood resolutely in the doorway, needing no eyes to know what the others must have seen. The very air was filled with it: the stench of death. And of evil-doing.

  “Summon the scriptorium high priest,” he commanded.

  The high priest came, took note of what had transpired, then summoned the Cathedral Guard… who summoned the cathedral’s master-of-arms…who notified the offices of the Grand Theogonist. The word passed up through the multitudinous layers of Church officialdom, leaping from office to office and scribe hall to scribe hall, until, at some late point in the process, someone with sufficient authority made the necessary decision and ordered that word be sent to be the most obvious person of all.

  “Has the cadaver been moved or disturbed?” asked Zavant Konniger with trademark curtness. Standing in the doorway, he had taken in the scene beyond with a single, dispassionate glance.

  “Not… not to my knowledge,” the high priest answered hesitatingly. A thin, nervous man, it was common knowledge that he owed his prestigious rank as head of the scriptorium at the main cathedral of Sigmar more to his family’s political connections than to any real abilities of his own. Another idiot younger son of some ancient and honourable aristocratic clan, Konniger sighed; the Church was full of such men, especially here at its centre of power in Altdorf. With the barest nod of polite acknowledgement to the priest, Konniger knelt down to begin his inspection of the corpse. He knew that the figure of the venerable old Comnenus standing silently nearby was the true source of authority in the place.
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br />   Blanching slightly, Vido moved forward to join his master, bringing the box of instruments and materials that the sage-detective might need in his work.

  It was as if some great hand had picked up the corpse and twisted it, remaking its form, altering and reshaping the body as if it were nothing more than a child’s wax doll.

  The body was that of a human male in his late middle years: the unfortunate Brother Vallus, Vido guessed. His back was arched at an impossible angle that must have agonisingly wrenched and broken every bone in his spine. His limbs were stiffened and wracked in equally improbable positions, his death-frozen hands clawing at the air in a pose of unmistakable and perpetual agony. His priestly vestments were ripped apart, claw wounds striping the flesh of his face and torso. Bloody marks on the corpse’s head showed where parts of its hair and scalp had been torn away.

  The dead man’s face was a frozen mask of pain and fear, his glassy-eyed gaze fixed eternally on some great and unknowing terror. His jaw was dislocated, and his mouth hung open inhumanly wide to reveal the gruesome mess within. Vido had seen a mouth with its tongue ripped out once before; it was not a sight that he relished seeing again.

  The room—a typical scribe’s cell—had been wrecked, its few modest furnishings smashed. There were clear signs that a violent and bloody struggle had taken place: blood splashes on the walls; more of the strange claw marks gouged into the surface of the wood flooring, all mixed with a crushed and trampled carpet of ripped parchment pages, smashed glass and earthenware jars and bottles, and the spilled powdered and herbal contents of the broken containers.