CHAPTER NINETEEN

“No!” Dietz hadn’t reloaded yet so he tossed his empty crossbow aside and raised his mace, intending to club the man down before matters got any worse. Then Braechen glanced at him and Dietz felt his arm go weak, the mace dropping to the floor beside him with a dull clatter. His eyes!

Lankdorf had apparently not been affected. A crossbow bolt flew towards Braechen’s head, and was knocked aside by the gauntlet. Dietz wasn’t sure what Alaric was doing in the meantime. He could see his friend off to one side, but most of his attention was trapped by the spectacle before him.

The gauntlet had been hideous when Dietz had seen it back in Fatandira’s tent and here he had a clearer view, too clear, in fact, as if the artefact had somehow come into sharper focus than it should. He could see, for example, that the armour was constructed of some strange, murky stone, the light causing bands of colour to shimmer across and through each plated segment. Between the runes were small carvings, which he could see were faces, eyes open wide with horror, mouths pleading for release. He was sure he saw several of them move. Vicious barbs curved out along the edge of each plate and from the fingertips and over the knuckles. It was a thoroughly nasty piece of work.

That had been before, but now it was worse. As he watched, unable to turn away, he heard something like the click of a key in a lock, only quieter but repeated many times. Braechen’s entire body tensed, and then shuddered, and Dietz saw the gauntlet flex and tighten as if it was swallowing his hand and arm whole. Blood began dripping from beneath the gauntlet’s edge, thin rivulets all around, and somehow he knew it had pierced the man’s flesh many times within.

As if fuelled by this bloodletting, the gauntlet’s appearance shifted slightly. Instead of flat stone the plates seemed more like living scales or armoured hide. The barbs writhed as if alive. The runes glowed with a black nimbus that burned his eyes.

The gauntlet was growing. It had extended over most of Braechen’s forearm, leaving the area around the elbow free for mobility, but now it ran right to the elbow, the mail there vanishing somehow, replaced by another row of barbed, rune-etched plate. His elbow was already changing appearance, darkening and stretching to match.

Nor were those the only changes in Braechen. He seemed taller and fuller across the chest and shoulders, yet his legs had somehow changed stance, moving farther apart at the hips and resembling a horse’s or bull’s more than a man’s in their conformation. The man’s skin had mottled along his face, neck and other hand, darkening with strange splotches that moved of their own accord, and his eyes… Dietz knew better than to look into that gaze again.

He finally managed to tear himself free by glancing at Alaric. The young nobleman was right beside Braechen, having crept closer during the transformation, and as Dietz watched Alaric lunged, his rapier piercing the man through the throat. Braechen gurgled once and staggered back a pace, the blade pulling free with a wet sucking sound, blood trickling from the wound.

As Dietz watched, horrified, the blood flow increased. The wound widened, becoming a deep cleft all the way around Braechen’s neck, and the blood that poured forth turned darker, almost black. It spilled down over his chest and stuck there, solidifying, raising bumps and grooves that made Dietz think of diseased animal flesh.

Then the tear in Braechen’s neck widened further. The edges curled outwards, thickening, and within the gap shreds of flesh poked out and hardened, into what were unmistakably rows of teeth.

Braechen laughed through his new second mouth. A laugh that Dietz remembered all too well, even though he had been busy fighting off cultists and smashing a statue the last time he had heard it. It was a laugh that could never have come from a human mouth, a laugh that did not belong in this world: the laugh of the daemon.

“It’s coming through!” Alaric shouted, falling back and tugging Dietz with him. Lankdorf was already behind them, having stayed back to attack with his crossbow. He sent another bolt into Braechen, and it struck him dead centre on the chest, and sank in with an odd ripple, as if the man’s torso had turned liquid. “The daemon is using him as a living gate!”

“What can we do?” Dietz asked, letting his friend and employer pull him back until they were almost out of the ruins.

“I don’t know,” Alaric admitted, his eyes wild. “Last time we destroyed the gate. This time it is the gate!”

“We have to do something,” Lankdorf pointed out, already loading another bolt despite the uselessness of his last attack.

“I know!” Alaric shouted.

A movement behind the young nobleman caught Dietz’s eye and he turned, just in time to duck an axe swing that would have removed his head. The man screamed and swung again, and Dietz drew his knives reflexively, blocking the axe with one and driving the other deep into the man’s stomach. The blade entered with a gratifying thunk and the man shuddered and collapsed, blood frothing from his lips. At least this attacker had been human!

Unfortunately he hadn’t been alone. Several more men and a few women charged into the ruins, each wielding at least one blade. They were strangely dressed, so much so that Dietz almost stopped and stared despite the danger. None of the newcomers wore much, just flimsy wisps of cloth and odd leather straps that seemed designed to accentuate their forms rather than for any defence or other practical purpose. They all had long hair, although several had theirs braided while others wore it loose, and he noticed idly that at least one of them had painted nails. Jewellery glistened from fingers, wrists, arms, ears, and other areas where Dietz didn’t normally see such adornments. They were also all bare-chested, even the women.

“Die for the glory of our lord!” one shouted as he lunged at Lankdorf with a nasty looking short sword and caught the crossbow stock in the jaw for his troubles.

“The Prince of Pain welcomes your suffering!” A handsome blonde woman declared, stabbing at Alaric with an ornate longsword. He parried the blow easily and disarmed her, although her naked chest seemed to distract him slightly. He had to sweep his blade free when she lunged at him again, her empty hands tensed into claws. He knocked her out with his sword pommel and turned to Dietz.

“Cultists!”

“I thought cultists were all ragged, filthy people, like the ones in the pass?” Dietz asked without turning, his hands already full with two more. Someone from the town must have noticed them as they rode towards this place, or perhaps this band had simply been set to patrol the area. Not that it mattered.

“Different gods,” Alaric explained, sidestepping an attack from a man wielding a pair of long daggers and covered in thin strips of ribbon and gauze that danced around him as he moved. “These worship a god of pleasure and pain. They believe in beauty and style, or at least their version of it.”

Not all of the cultists were attacking the three of them. Several had brushed past and charged Braechen, who was still somewhere behind them near the building’s surviving corner. One of the cultists who had darted past screamed, a high-pitched wail of sheer terror. He must have seen the daemon-mutated man clearly, Dietz guessed, remembering the cultists in Middenheim whose sanity could not withstand even a partial view of the very champion they had summoned. The others either did not get as good a look or were less susceptible, because they continued to shout about their own god and the pain they would visit upon these intruders. Dietz heard the sounds of blades striking flesh. Then there was a sudden silence, followed by gasps of surprise. He didn’t have time to turn around and look, and was glad of that.

Then the screams began.

Fortunately they did not last long.

Unfortunately, the daemonic laughter began at the same time, and continued to echo after the last of the cultists had fallen forever silent.

Dietz, Alaric and Lankdorf had dispatched the rest, although one ducked Lankdorf’s blade, stumbled back out of the ruins, and turned back towards the nearby town.

“To arms, my brothers!” he shouted. “Strangers have entered our realm! They seek to usurp our lord with their own foul creation, but we will teach them the error of their ways and the primacy of our Prince.” Dietz wanted to protest that last part—what, the man thought they were allied with the daemon?—but it didn’t matter. The cultists’ cries were drowned out by a new sound rising up from the field below the hill: the sound of battle.

Dietz knew it far too well to be mistaken. He heard horses charging, men bellowing and war horns sounding. Then he heard the grinding of a massive gate, and answering shouts and screams. Close behind them, he heard the sound of clashing metal.

Clearly the Border Princes had arrived, and the cultists of Vitrolle had come forth to meet them.

The remaining cultist paused, surprised, and Lankdorf used the opportunity to knock the man out with his crossbow. Another sound reached them as the man dropped, and Dietz recognised this one too.

It was the sound of stone shattering.

The armies must have reached the town’s outer walls. He had noticed battering rams and ballistae among the armies when they had looked down towards the town earlier, and had seen similar weapons in Haflok’s camp. Clearly one or more of the local rulers had unleashed these weapons, and judging by the sounds they’d done so to good effect. Vitrolle’s defences were caving.

Dietz glanced at Alaric but the younger man looked as uncertain as he felt. They couldn’t fight an entire army, let alone four, and getting into the town would be impossible with all those warriors running around, just looking for targets. Not that they wanted to enter Vitrolle anyway. They had only been going there because they thought it was Braechen’s destination, but now he was wearing the gauntlet and the daemon had taken hold. They had no idea what the daemon would try to do next, nor how they would stop it, even in this partial state. So what could they do?

He was about to ask Alaric when they all heard Braechen laugh again. It was different this time, more liquid, horribly reminiscent of blood draining from a gaping wound, complete with bubbling gasps, and, although he hated himself for knowing it, Dietz could tell that it was a sound of pure joy. The daemon inside the man was thrilled.

Dietz wasn’t sure he wanted to know why.

Then he noticed that the laughter was growing fainter, its hideous sound swallowed up by the battle beyond.

“He’s getting away!” Alaric shouted. He dashed around the edge of the ruins, looking down the hill and towards the town. Dietz followed him, shaking his head. Lankdorf was right behind him.

Sure enough, they saw Braechen striding away from them, heading right towards Vitrolle. He had evidently stepped through one of the gaps in the shattered building.

Past him, Dietz saw a massive battle to match the sounds he’d already heard. He couldn’t tell much, beyond the fact that there were people everywhere, some on horseback and some on foot, and weapons were swinging wildly. He saw the glint of sunlight off metal here and there, suggesting heavy armour, but beyond that it was all a blur: a blur that the daemon-infested warrior was heading straight for.

“After him!” Alaric said, breaking into a jog.

“Why?” Dietz asked, although he only paused for long enough to reclaim his mace before catching up with his friend. “What can we do?”

“I don’t know,” the young nobleman admitted, “but we have to try something. Anyway, I want to know why he’s going towards the town. What does he need there?”

That was a fair point, Dietz thought. Besides, he didn’t have any better ideas. So he and Lankdorf flanked Alaric, and all three of them sprinted after the daemon-possessed soldier. He was moving slowly but purposefully and they caught up before he had reached the base of the hill, or the battle that raged just beyond. They slowed perhaps ten feet behind Braechen and then stayed far enough for him to be unable to reach them easily, but close enough to follow.

Not that Braechen paid them the slightest attention. He lumbered onto the field and towards the town, cutting a swathe through the raging battle.

“Stay close!” Lankdorf shouted, taking the lead. The bounty hunter had his crossbow slung on his back, his dagger in one hand and his sword in the other, and charged into the battle without looking back to see if they were following. For a second, faced with the daunting prospect of entering that wild melee, Dietz considered backing away. Let the daemon reach the town, assuming it wasn’t killed in the process. Let Lankdorf die at the hands of the four clashing armies. He and Alaric could walk away and never look back. Who cared if the Border Princes fell?

Unfortunately, he did care, and so did Alaric. That was the problem. That was why, with a sigh, Dietz checked to make sure Glouste was secure inside his jacket, hefted his mace in one hand and gripped one of his knives in the other, and plunged after Lankdorf. Alaric was right beside him, rapier at the ready.

It was utter madness. Dietz had been in fights before. He’d even fought a pitched battle before, back in the Black Fire Pass, but that had been only two forces, the Empire armies against the orc warband. There were four separate groups here, and only one could claim the victory.

Warriors from the three armies were everywhere, as were the cultists. Dietz was amazed at how many people must have been packed inside that one town, and, as best he could tell, no one was worrying about who was fighting whom. He saw one of Fatandira’s men battling a soldier wearing the garb of Levrellian’s troops, while another of her warriors fought a cultist only feet away. One of Haflok’s knights charged past, cutting down both the cultist and his opponent without pause. It was a free-for-all, a complete madhouse.

Dietz sidestepped a blow from someone, he didn’t even see whom, and struck back, feeling his mace connect with a body and the resulting crack of bone. Someone else swung at him just beyond the first assailant and he blocked with his knife, hitting again with the mace and shattering an arm. Then he grabbed Alaric and yanked him forwards, his long strides carrying them both to Lankdorf’s back. With the bounty hunter close by, they were better able to defend themselves and Dietz was able to concentrate on their left flank, knowing that Alaric had the right and the bounty hunter the front. He swung at anyone who approached them, knowing that everyone else on the battlefield would do the same to them.

They marched their way slowly through the fighting. Dietz had a handful of small nicks and bruises where something had got past his defences, and his head swam from fatigue, tension and trying to focus through the tumult. The town walls were growing closer, however. He just hoped they’d survive long enough to reach them.

Surprisingly enough, the possessed soldier’s own focus helped them immensely. Braechen, whom Dietz had half-expected to stop and revel in all the confusion and bloodshed, continued on without stopping. He dispatched anyone in his path, ripping warriors limb from limb, snapping blades with his gauntleted hand, sending battle-hardened men screaming or dropping them to the ground in quivering balls with a mere glance.

Dietz could see that the changes were continuing: Braechen’s back had some of the same bumps and lumps and discoloured patches that had appeared on his arm. His boots had merged into his legs and sprouted both claws and flattened appendages like fins, and two small protrusions had sprouted from above his shoulder blades and were rising higher and curving in slightly, forming the unmistakable base for a pair of wings. Still he kept going, not hurrying but never turning aside, straight towards Vitrolle’s walls. Dietz and his companions marched in the creature’s wake, taking advantage of the carnage he’d created to keep pace with him.

Dietz expected Braechen to batter his way into the town, but that proved unnecessary. He had heard the armies tearing at the outer walls and that had apparently been what had pleased the daemon-bearing soldier because he angled directly towards one of the breaks. It must have been a ballista attack because Dietz saw cracks in the stones up above and a great gouge smashed through several more. Chunks had fallen, littering the ground, but near the base of the wall the cracks widened into a gap large enough for a small wagon to enter.

Braechen walked straight for and then through this gap, into Vitrolle itself. Alaric followed the daemon, with Dietz and Lankdorf right beside him.

“Sigmar’s beard!” Alaric said softly as they passed through a stable and into the town proper. Dietz nodded. He was impressed despite himself, and of course Alaric, with his scholarly tendencies, would be spellbound.

Vitrolle had only a handful of buildings, the ones they had seen from the hill. Dietz had thought there were nine, but he wasn’t sure any more. They all seemed to be built mostly of stone, with some wood, and they were rough but solid. Walkways connected each building, forming a latticework of shade and shelter throughout the town and reinforcing the sense of the town as a single large building.

That, however, wasn’t what had caught his eye, or made his gorge rise in his throat.

From the rumours back in Middenheim and what little Alaric had told Haflok, Dietz knew that the Jade Sceptre cult focused on torture. They were into pleasure and pain, seeing the two as irrevocably linked, and tormented their victims slowly, drawing out each horrible mutilation until the person finally died. He had heard claims that victims might last weeks, even months, receiving just enough medical care each time they collapsed to revive them and let the torture start anew.

He had thought they were only stories, or at least exaggerations.

Now he knew better.

The one thing he had not been able to see from their vantage on the hill was the town’s decorations.

The stable doors they pushed past had been made of skin stretched over a rough wooden frame, a traditional method that Dietz had seen in many farms and small villages. Symbols were scrawled across them in what was clearly blood, however, and recent blood at that. Dietz recognised several of them from Alaric’s notebook and they all seemed to crawl across his vision, shifting even as he stared until he had to turn away for fear of nausea.

Compared to the obscene runes, the bodies nailed across them were nothing, even though he now knew where the blood had come from. Judging by the corpses’ hands, which were smeared with it, these victims had been forced to write the runes themselves, using their own blood, before being crucified across their handiwork.

The entire town was like that, Dietz saw as he shuddered and glanced around. Walls and doors were covered in runes, and bodies—or parts of them—hung everywhere. The town had statuary as well, and the nearest one depicted two beautiful women in the throes of passion. That seemed benign enough until Dietz noticed the man trapped between them, and the sharp little knives they were using to dig at his flesh. Charming, he thought. The rest of the statues seemed much the same, a combination of beauty and torment that left him feeling vaguely unclean.

Everywhere he looked Dietz saw more examples of utter depravity that no daemon had perpetrated, not directly, anyway. These cultists followed the Chaos god Slaanesh and through worship they allowed their master to tap the darkest recesses of their souls. That was what he saw displayed. This was the result of human cruelty. The very worst of the human soul had been dredged up and spewed out upon innocent victims. It sickened him, but the worst part was that some tiny portion in the back of his mind, at the bottom of his soul, understood each and every one of these foul creations. The cultists’ god had taken a side of man that normally hid deep within, never seen or even suspected, and exposed it to the light of day.

“Haflok was right,” Lankdorf rasped. “They all deserve death, and this place must be destroyed.” Beyond even the disgust Dietz heard something else in the bounty hunter’s tone—anger, pure and hard and deep—and he wondered at its source.

“They will be,” Alaric assured them both, “but right now that’s not our problem; he is.” He pointed ahead of them. Braechen had continued on, clearly unaffected by the sights around him.

Apparently, not all the cultists were fighting beyond the walls. Dietz saw several battling soldiers who must have found similar holes in the town’s defences, and others who seemed to be panicked beyond rational thought. Several ran past, apparently not seeing the three men near the stable doors but easily spotting the lone figure walking brazenly through their stronghold. The cultists launched themselves at Braechen, shouting their defiance, and he slaughtered them without even slowing down. As Dietz watched, Braechen entered the town’s central building.

“Quick, before we lose him!” Alaric ran forwards, dodging those few cultists still inside, and Dietz followed, glad of the distraction. He wanted to get the job done and get back out of this twisted place as soon as possible.