Blighted Empire

Chapter X

Middenheim

Brauzeit, 1118

Mandred paced angrily outside the von Degenfeld manse. He’d had everything plotted out so carefully in his mind that he was having a hard time accepting that his plan wasn’t working the way he had imagined. After that day escorting Lady Mirella around the city, he’d realised that perhaps Sofia’s concerns weren’t so unfounded as he’d initially thought them to be. Mirella von Wittmar was a charming, intelligent and exceedingly brave woman, just the sort that would turn any nobleman’s fancy.

To be certain, he’d had dalliances before, but never with anyone he could be serious about. There had never been any real threat to Sofia… until now. Perhaps she had seen it first, some sixth sense of the female that warned her of a rival. Lady Mirella was of the upper strata of the Altdorf aristocracy. Maybe not of the breeding that a prince could marry, especially not with things as confused as they were in Altdorf, but Sofia might not be aware of that. What was it she’d said? ‘Add him to her collection of princes?’ It was only now, with the stirring of emotions in his heart, that Mandred appreciated the import of those words, the undercurrent of fear behind them. Sofia wasn’t as resigned to losing him as he’d believed, as they both had professed over the years. Lady Mirella might have been only a consort to the Prince of Altdorf, but in her fear Sofia had imagined she might do much better with the Prince of Middenheim.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Mirella asked him.

Mandred hesitated before answering, his resolve wavering when she asked the question. They’d discussed it, of course. Been quite blunt, actually, in their discussion of their mutual regard for one another. At the same time, he still held Sofia in his heart. Decorum and simple decency demanded he make a choice between the two women. It had hurt him deeply to make that choice, but he felt chivalry called for him to stay true to Sofia. As he’d explained to Mirella, there was every chance that her regard towards him was simply gratitude for saving her from the Kineater. He felt it wasn’t fair to exploit an affection built upon such traumatic soil.

No, the thing to do, he’d decided, was to bring Mirella to see Sofia, to tell her that there was nothing between them. It was a dangerous ploy, but they had Brother Richter to act as chaperon. Mandred was hoping that the presence of a priest, even a Sigmarite one, would at least restrain Sofia’s temper.

‘I am sorry, your grace, but Burggraefin Sofia is indisposed.’ It was the second time the major domo of the burggraefin’s manse had come back with that answer. Mandred directed a glowering gaze upon the servant. He wasn’t about to be balked at this stage by some peasant.

‘You can move aside,’ Mandred told him, ‘or I can have you moved aside.’ He nodded towards Beck. The bodyguard dropped a hand around the hilt of his sword when the servant looked in his direction. ‘I’ll let you make the decision.’

Swallowing a knot that had suddenly formed in his throat, the major domo stepped aside and bowed the prince in. ‘Please forgive me, your grace. I was simply obeying the orders given me by my mistress.’

Mandred waved aside the servant’s apology. ‘Where is she?’ he inquired as he stepped into the hall.

The servant demurred for a moment, even at this stage trying to figure out some way to preserve the burggraefin’s privacy. Beck noticed the man glance towards the broad oaken stairway at the left. Brushing past the major domo, he marched to the stairs. ‘This way, your grace,’ the knight said.

Mandred glowered at the servant one last time and followed Beck. The major domo was close behind, his tongue still stumbling over an assortment of appeals that did nothing to dissuade the prince. If anything they only made him more determined to see Sofia.

The von Degenfeld manse was an old haunt of the prince’s, and Beck knew the way to Sofia’s chambers almost as well as Mandred himself. Many had been the cold night the bodyguard had spent outside that room. Now, however, he strode boldly to the engraved panel of dark Drakwald timber. Beck knocked once, waited a moment, then looked to his master.

‘I told you, the burggraefin is indisposed,’ the servant declared. Mandred frowned and nodded at Beck. The bodyguard stepped away from the door and brought his boot smashing into it. The first impact merely rattled it on its hinges. The second kick sent the door slamming inwards. His hand falling instinctually to the hilt of his sword, Beck stormed into Sofia’s bedchamber.

An instant later, the knight was back in the hall, a hand clasped around his nose and mouth. His eyes were wide with fright. Mandred felt his pulse quicken as the fear in his guard’s eyes infected him. Hurriedly, ignoring the protests of the major domo and the puzzlement of Mirella, he rushed to the room. Beck caught at him, trying to keep him in the hall, but he pulled free of the knight’s clutch.

The room, luxuriously appointed in the best Middenland style, seemed indistinct to Mandred’s gaze. It was as if his vision were blurred by the foul, sick-house stink in the chamber. Like Beck, his first action was to cover his face. Unlike his guard, however, he didn’t retreat into the hall but swept towards the canopied bed. Dreading what he would find, he reached for the embroidered curtain and drew it back.

A pale, wizened figure stared up at him, and somewhere beneath that nest of black boils a face squirmed into the semblance of a smile. ‘I’m afraid I’m not receiving… today… my prince.’

‘She has the plague, your grace,’ Beck called from the doorway. The knight had failed to keep Mandred from the room, but he was more successful in keeping Lady Mirella from the chamber.

Mandred didn’t need Beck to tell him what hideous affliction had descended upon Sofia. He’d seen the Black Plague at work in Warrenburg. He knew its stink, he knew the marks it left upon its victims. He knew even breathing the same air as the afflicted was to tempt Grandfather Pox.

A hundred thoughts stampeded through his mind, but only one roared so loudly as to command his body. Clenching his jaw tight, Mandred reached down and bundled the pathetic scarecrow-figure in a heavy blanket. Ignoring Beck’s frantic warnings, the prince rose from the bed, Sofia in his arms. ‘How long has she been like this?’ he snarled at the major domo.

‘Three… No… Four days, your grace,’ the servant answered.

‘Then there’s not much time,’ Mandred growled back, marching from the room with Sofia.

‘Ulric’s sake, your grace,’ Beck cried. ‘The woman’s going to die anyway. You can’t jeopardise yourself like this!’

Mandred stared at his guard, at the frightened cast of Mirella’s features. ‘This time mine will be the only life I risk,’ he said, thinking back to that fateful ride when he’d led brave men into the plague’s domain. ‘Take Lady Mirella back to the Middenpalaz.’

‘Where will you go?’ Mirella demanded, tears forming in her eyes.

The prince looked down at Sofia’s wasted frame. ‘There’s an alchemist who has taken over the old hospice of Shallya. He’s reputed to be something of a wonder worker. I’ll take her there.’

Beck stepped forwards, blocking the prince’s way. ‘I can’t let you risk yourself. Give me the girl. I’ll take her.’

Mandred shook his head. ‘This is my burden,’ he said. ‘You’ve always been a loyal knight. Do as you are ordered.’

Reluctantly, Beck stepped aside. Along with Mirella and the major domo, he watched Mandred walk away, eighty pounds of plague swaddled in his royal arms.

Mandred could think only of the draconian quarantine measures his father had undertaken the last time plague had threatened Middenheim. Great and small, Graf Gunthar had spared none who bore the marks of the Black Plague on their skin. He’d banished all those who’d even come in contact with the disease from the Ulricsberg, condemning them to the squalor of Warrenburg. Virtually the whole of the Shallyan sect had perished because of that edict. They’d refused to abandon the plague-stricken refugees and so had decamped en masse for the shanty town at the foot of the mountain. Most had died there, victims of the plague or marauding beastmen. The few survivors had remained in their little wooden chapel down below, resolute in their determination to stay where they felt most needed.

Graf Gunthar’s cruelty had been the salvation of Middenheim, Mandred knew that. An ugly truth was a truth all the same. Because it was truth, he knew how his father would react if he were to learn the plague had returned. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to spare the city, to honour what he felt to be a sacred trust between ruler and ruled.

No, Mandred corrected himself, guilt gnawing at his belly. There was one thing that would make his father forsake that trust. The graf wouldn’t sacrifice his own son, no matter who was at risk.

The stone walls of the hospice seemed to exert a preternatural chill, an atmosphere of desolation. The humble folk of Middenheim shunned the place: nobles complaining that it was in disrepair, peasants claiming that when her priestesses deserted the hospice, Shallya’s beneficence departed with them.

Mandred prayed that such wasn’t the case. Forgetting the dignity of his position, he bent on one knee and begged the goddess to intercede on Sofia’s behalf. The alchemist, a silver-haired Nordlander named Neist, ignored the prince’s lack of decorum as he examined the sick woman. It wasn’t long before he rose from beside the pallet and replaced his tools in the little leather bag he carried. Mandred sprang to his feet as the alchemist started to leave the tiny cell.

‘Where are you going?’ Mandred demanded, his fist tightening about the capelet fringing the alchemist’s cloak. ‘You have to make her well!’

Neist favoured the prince with a tired, indulgent smile. ‘It’s the Black Plague,’ he explained, not quite managing to keep his tone from possessing a patronising quality.

‘I know what it is,’ Mandred retorted, tightening his hold. ‘Make her better.’

The alchemist laughed, a bitter and cheerless sound. ‘If I knew how to do that I’d be the richest man in the Empire!’ He held his hands out for the prince to inspect. Mandred automatically released the man, recoiling when he saw the pox-scars all along Neist’s skin.

‘It caught me six years ago in Wolfenburg,’ Neist said. ‘I don’t know how I survived when so many didn’t, but I know it wasn’t anything of my doing.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Mandred asked, despair almost choking his voice. The alchemist beckoned to the prince, motioning him to withdraw into the corridor. Glancing one last time at Sofia’s bed, staring into her wide, fearful eyes, Mandred forced himself to follow Neist.

The alchemist closed the door when the prince had withdrawn. Sighing, Neist removed a piece of chalk and scratched a crude cross on the panel. ‘I’m sure,’ he said, gesturing with his arm to the rest of the long hallway. Both sides were lined with similar doors. Once this place had acted as a dormitory for the priestesses and their servants. Now it provided a refuge for Neist’s patients. As the alchemist pointed, Mandred found his attention riveted by a detail he’d been too distraught to notice when he was bringing Sofia here. Dozens of the doors were marked with the white crosses that indicated plague.

‘I’ve had ample opportunity,’ the alchemist declared. ‘First in Wolfenburg, then in Talabheim, then in Nuln.’ He wiped his scarred hand across his brow. ‘It seems if you somehow live through it, the plague can’t touch you again. A horrible feeling, to watch a city dying around you, knowing you’ll be the only one left.’

Horror was coursing through Mandred’s veins. ‘When?’ he managed to ask.

‘Three weeks ago, the first ones came. Two little boys.’ The alchemist shook his fist. ‘They died. Then there were more. They died too. I had to burn them in the old garden. Couldn’t risk dumping them over the Cliff of Sighs, Morr forgive me.’

‘How many?’ Mandred pressed, feeling his fear swell with each heartbeat.

Neist scratched at his beard. ‘Nearly a hundred now. I’m not surprised they haven’t noticed in the Middenpalaz, though.’ He jabbed a thumb at the door to Sofia’s cell. ‘She’s the first Von to catch it. The rest have just been peasants.’

Almost at once, Neist regretted his choice of words. More than most nobles, he knew Prince Mandred’s reputation for helping his people regardless of class. ‘I apologise, your grace,’ he said. ‘That was an unjust thing for me to say. I saw the city of Carroburg put to the torch by nobles afraid of the plague. That isn’t an easy memory to forget.’

‘Manling quack!’ a gruff voice bellowed through the hall. ‘A beardless grave for all your clan!’

The alchemist flinched when he heard the cry. Mandred followed Neist as he hurried down the corridor. ‘That was a dwarf? I understood they couldn’t catch the plague.’

Neist didn’t look at the prince as he answered, too busy rummaging in his bag for a slim bottle of blue glass. ‘Kurgaz Smallhammer’s affliction is quite different, I assure you.’ Another bitter laugh as he hurried on. ‘It is quite an honour for a human to be allowed to treat a dwarf. Though in hindsight I think a seasick troll would have made a more pleasant patient.’

Altdorf

Brauzeit, 1114

A brisk autumn breeze wafted through the narrow streets of Altdorf, bearing upon it the infamous stink from the riverfront slums that had caused Emperor Siegfried to curse the city as ‘the Great Reek’ and remove his throne to Nuln. Emperor Boris had returned the throne to Altdorf, but that hadn’t changed the odour that crawled up from the river, slinking into the manses and palaces of the Empire’s great and good.

Walking along the cobblestone lanes winding between the half-timbered residences of the nobility that clustered around the Imperial Palace, Adolf Kreyssig dipped his hand beneath the folds of the heavy cloak he wore, fishing the silver pomander from his pocket and inhaling its perfumed vapours. It was more than a concession to discomfort — one of the prevailing theories about the origins of the Black Plague had it emerging from noxious odours. A pomander stuffed with cinnamon was, supposedly, a sure-fire preventative. Kreyssig scowled at the pomander as he tucked it back into his pocket. The fact that only the wealthy could afford cinnamon might have had more to do with the prescription than any medicinal value. Physicians were a special kind of thief, stealing more with a gloomy word than any cutpurse could with a knife.

These were the same men who had told him he would be crippled, Kreyssig reflected. He flexed his arm, feeling the powerful muscles ripple beneath his doublet. Ignorant charlatans! Fortunately he had found a better way to heal his wounds. If the Black Plague should try to take him, he would know how to beat it back.

Kreyssig stopped in the street, alarmed by the turn his thoughts had taken. All of his life he had learned never to rely on anyone. The beneficence of a master, the loyalty of a friend, the fidelity of a servant, none of these could be trusted. Yet he was becoming dependent on the magic of a witch, an ambitious noblewoman at that. He was too clever to be taken in by her intrigues, or deceived by her amorous attentions. She was using him, exploiting him to get closer to the Imperial throne. Even knowing this, however, he couldn’t escape the fascination she held over him. At times he felt like a fly caught in a spider’s web, every effort to escape only drawing the trap tighter about him.

He cast a wary glance at the street around him. At this hour, the lane was nearly deserted. The days of early-morning productivity were long past, casualties of a rumour that held the plague was most active during the threshold hours of twilight and dawn, those moments midway between night and day. Only the harshest stewards were able to rouse their households at such times and even then to little effect. Those shops that still had wares to peddle wouldn’t be open until well past the dangerous time.

What companions Kreyssig had as he ventured through the streets were those too dejected or desperate to cling to shelter. Beggars rummaging in the gutters, muck-rakers shovelling night-dirt, rat-catchers clearing out their traps before hungry cats or even hungrier peasants did the job for them. By rights, such rabble should be restricted from the districts of the rich and powerful, kept to their shanties and hovels beyond the walls and across the river. But, like so much since the plague had struck, the diligence of the Altdorf city guard, the Schuetzenverein, had diminished. The Schueters were suffering the same shortages as the rest of the city, losing men to plague, murder and outright desertion. Most of their best had been drawn away by conscription into the army Duke Vidor had used to chase the traitor Boeckenfoerde, the confused horde Altdorfers alternately called the ‘replacement army’ or ‘Vidor’s Graues Haufen’. What was left were the old, the young and a thuggish rabble too undisciplined for soldiering. Given the choice between beggars and patrols of the Schueters, most of the nobles had brains enough to risk catching disease from a tramp over a knife from a guard.

Even in such lowly company, Kreyssig was careful. The shabby cloak he wore enveloped him from head to foot, making him seem just another peasant scavenging in the streets. No armed escort, no panoply of attendants, nothing that would make anyone suspect that the Protector of the Empire was abroad. A few Kaiserjaeger in the nearby streets watching for spies was the only entourage he needed. The best defence, he had always felt, was to be inconspicuous.

With a last look around, Kreyssig shifted direction, darting into the cramped alleyway between two houses. He had passed this spot several times already in his circuitous ramble through the neighbourhood, allowing his Kaiserjaeger ample opportunity to catch any tails he had acquired. Now he would delay no longer.

Reaching an iron-banded door set into the wall bordering the alley, Kreyssig fished a key from his pocket. The portal groaned as he opened it and slipped into the shadowy environs of a small wood room. Piles of logs, heaps of kindling littered the floor — and something more that came to his attention only as he locked the door and started to walk towards the opposite entrance. It was a curious object to find, a single leather shoe sitting in the middle of the room. It was enough for Kreyssig to puzzle over, but not enough to alarm him.

In the kitchen beyond the wood room, Kreyssig found the other shoe. It was still attached to the foot of a liveried servant, the steward of Baroness von den Linden’s household. The man was lying sprawled before the brick oven, his head mashed into a red paste. From the way the rug he was sprawled upon was curled, it looked as though the man had been struck down in the wood room and dragged here.

Kreyssig’s fist closed about the dagger he wore beneath his cloak, dragging the blade from its sheath. He spun around, intending to retreat back through the wood room, but even as he started to move, the route was cut off. The door of the pantry exploded outwards, disgorging a trio of tatterdemalion figures with drawn, starveling faces and a vicious gleam in their eyes. Each of the men held a cudgel in his hand.

The men from the pantry blocked the entrance to the wood room. As Kreyssig turned towards the other doorways leading out from the kitchen, he found more antagonists rushing towards him. Some were less ragged than the three from the pantry, some weren’t quite so haggard and sickly in condition, but there was the same rage smouldering in each eye.

The mob descended upon Kreyssig in a mass. The first to reach him howled as his dagger slashed out, a forearm cut to the bone. A second foeman pitched to the floor, clutching at a stabbed belly. Then they were on him, smashing him down with wooden clubs and the iron hilts of knives.

‘Don’t kill him!’ a commanding voice boomed. From beneath the confusion of kicking boots and flailing clubs, Kreyssig saw a hulking shape in a black cloak descend the half a dozen steps between dining hall and kitchen. ‘This creature must burn with the witch!’

The witch-taker’s words brought fresh savagery to the mob. Brutally, they dragged Kreyssig to his feet, ripping away the concealing cloak in the process. One of the rabble, his tones more cultured than the rest, gasped in horror as he recognised the face of their captive.

‘Commander Kreyssig!’ the man wailed, drawing back in fear. His fright spread to the rest of the mob, who relented in their violence, cringing away from their terrible foe.

It needed but a moment more and the mob should have fractured and fled. But that moment was denied Kreyssig. From the doorway, Auernheimer berated his followers for their fear. ‘Seize this spawn of Chaos!’ he roared. ‘Do you fear a man more than you fear the gods?’

Kreyssig tried to break away as Auernheimer’s oratory poured courage back into his mob. He was too slow. With an angry growl, the rabble was on him again, catching him and pinning his arms behind his back.

‘This is treason!’ Kreyssig raged. ‘Your heads will rot on the palace walls for this!’

Auernheimer sneered from the shadows of his hood. ‘What matter a man’s head when his soul belongs to the gods?’ He pointed at his prisoner. ‘Solkan has guided us here, set us to where we might fight the canker that rots the Empire. You, the so-called Protector! You, the pawn of daemons and witches! The corruption that makes the gods turn their faces! The wickedness that would damn us all to plague and famine!’

The witch-taker swept his hand, waving the mob into the dining hall. ‘Bring this heretic,’ he snarled. ‘Solkan has given us the honour of purging this blight from our Empire. This creature burns with his mistress!’

Struggling against his captors, Kreyssig was dragged up from the kitchen and marched across the dining hall. The great table that had once dominated the room was gone, smashed into kindling and piled along with other pieces of furniture at the centre of the room. The bodies of several servants lay draped about the base of the pile. More servants, bound and gagged, lay higher up on the heap. At the very top, her body fairly smothered in rope and chain, her mouth banded about with choking straps of leather, Baroness von den Linden fixed a despairing gaze upon Kreyssig.

‘There is purity in fire!’ Auernheimer declaimed as the mob began to tie Kreyssig’s arms behind him and lash his legs together. ‘By fire did Great Solkan cleanse the fog-devils from Westerland, by fire were the heathen Kurgan driven into the Wastes!’ The witch-taker brandished a steel mace adorned with razor-edged flanges. ‘By fire will we purge this place.’ He glared into Kreyssig’s eyes. ‘The flames will consume your evil, your pain will cry out to Great Solkan and draw His eye upon our suffering! He will know the justice of our cause when we deliver to him the souls of an arch-traitor and his witch!’

Thrashing against the rough hands that bore him, Kreyssig was carried over to the pyre, dumped with all the ceremony of a sack of rubbish next to the trussed figure of the baroness. Auernheimer gestured with his flanged mace again, motioning several of his mob towards the fire blazing away in the hearth. The witch-taker’s eyes reflected the flames, shining with the chilling fanaticism of the true zealot. He cocked his head to one side, his brow knitting as a sudden thought occurred to him. Swinging his mace around, he waved a few of his peasant followers back into the kitchen. ‘Remove the last of the witch’s minions,’ he commanded. ‘All must be consumed in the holy flame.’

Kreyssig watched the men shuffle away, dread pounding in his heart. Once they recovered the body, added it to the base of the pile, the witch-taker would order the pyre put to the torch. He rolled his eyes, managing to meet the panicked gaze of the baroness. For all her vaunted mastery of charms and enchantments, her magic hadn’t preserved her against her enemies. She was trussed like a Sigmarsfest goose and just as helpless. There was no help to be had from that quarter, and he cursed himself for thinking there could be. His relations with the witch were the root of his destruction, not the source of deliverance. He had come here in secret, even his Kaiserjaeger didn’t know his destination. There was no prospect of rescue, no one to deliver him.

Only a miracle would prevent the Protector of the Empire from the mob justice of the rabble.

Sometimes, however, miracles did manifest. It was a dark miracle that delivered Adolf Kreyssig from his doom.

Soon after the peasants Auernheimer had sent to retrieve the steward withdrew into the kitchen, there arose chilling screams. The men tried to flee up the steps and back into the dining hall, but not one of them managed the attempt. They were struck down from behind, pierced by jagged spears and slashed by rusted swords. The mangled peasants pitched and fell, their shrieking bodies dragged back into the darkness of the kitchen.

A moment of horrified silence followed, a silence that was broken by an explosion of inhuman chitters and growls. From the blackness, a grotesque swarm of verminous shapes flooded into the dining hall. The muck of sewer and cellar clung to the ragged strips of cloth they wore and the mangy brown fur that covered their lean, hungry bodies. Their hand-like paws clutched a motley confusion of swords and axes, spears and knives. Long scaly tails whipped behind them as they charged, and froth bubbled from the fangs of their rat-like heads.

The mob stood stricken with a paralysis of superstitious terror as the bestial swarm descended upon them. Only Auernheimer was unfazed, unperturbed in his stalwart zealotry. Swinging his mace overhead, snatching a brand from the nearest of his followers, the witch-taker roared his defiance of the monstrous horde. ‘Daemons of the witch! Rejoice, brethren, in this test of our sacred conviction!’ He added deeds to words, bringing his mace smashing down into the snout of the first ratman to draw near him. The monster squeaked in agony, collapsing in a shivering mess at his feet.

The witch-taker’s rabble rallied, charging at the oncoming monsters, meeting them at the middle of the hall. Swords clashed, knives slashed and screams human and inhuman echoed through the house. Some of the combatants broke away, fleeing down passages, hotly pursued by vengeful foes. In the space of only a few heartbeats, a dozen bodies littered the floor.

Auernheimer seared the eyes of another ratman, blinding it before bashing its skull with his mace. The witch-taker looked beyond his collapsing foe, watching with grim fatalism as more of the monstrous vermin swarmed up from the kitchen. ‘Ernst! Andreas!’ he shouted. ‘Light the pyre! These daemons shall not save their mistress!’

The peasants Auernheimer called out to broke away from their enemies. Alone among his rabble, these two had been soldiers, Dienstleute that had survived the massacre of Engel’s Bread Marchers. They had the skill at arms and the martial discipline to carry out the witch-taker’s command. What they didn’t have was the opportunity.

Ernst and Andreas snatched glowing brands from the hearth, but as the men rushed towards the pyre, their destruction climbed the kitchen steps. A tall, wizened ratman dressed in black robes, its visage a confusion of scars and metal, tubes and wires dangling from its face and jaw. The monster’s eyes were enormous rubies that bulged from its sockets. The fangs in its mouth were metal, and blue sparks crackled from them as the strange creature snarled at its minions.

The robed ratman raised one of its withered paws, displaying a brilliant green jewel embedded in its palm. The creature pointed the jewel in the direction of Ernst and Andreas. More sparks crackled about its fangs as it squeaked an incantation.

A bolt of coruscating energy burst from the ratman’s jewel, searing a path through the hall. Vermin and human alike were caught in the path of that beam, burning fur, charring skin and boiling blood. The robed ratman cared not for these incidental casualties, and upon Ernst and Andreas it directed the full malignity of its magic.

The two Dienstleute weren’t burned, weren’t charred or singed. Their bodies seemed to simply evaporate within that beam of unholy power. In that searing flash, their chests turned to vapour, leaving the extremities to crash to the floor. The brands they carried fell from dead fingers to smoulder on the bloody rugs.

The obscene sorcery shattered the fragile courage of Auernheimer’s mob, their zealotry unequal to this display of magic. The ratmen fell upon the terrified peasants, dragging them down and butchering them where they fell.

Only the witch-taker himself maintained some measure of composure. Smashing down three ratmen as they lunged at him, Auernheimer turned and threw himself straight into the stained-glass window that fronted the hall and offered a prospect of the street outside. The fanatic’s plunge brought him through the window in a shower of shattered glass and fractured lead. For an instant, he lay crumpled in the street, but then he was on his feet and fleeing down the lane.

Some of the ratmen rushed to the broken window, eager to cut down their wounded prey, but a sharp bark from their robed leader brought them slinking away from the window.

Kreyssig could only marvel at this incredible escape. He had berated these mutants for keeping tabs on him, but now he was almost prepared to forgive them their audacity. Almost, for his relief was mitigated by a new, fearful appreciation for the abilities of his verminous agents. The display of magic executed by their leader was more intimidating than anything he had seen from Baroness von den Linden or even old Fleischauer, the Emperor’s pet warlock.

Some of the mutants began to turn away from their butchery of the zealots. With hungry squeaks, they approached the pyre, dragging away the bodies of dead servants. One of the ratmen scrambled nimbly up the pile and crouched over Kreyssig. Deftly, the creature brought its knife slashing across the ropes binding him.

‘Kreyssig-man free-safe!’ the vermin squeaked, its muzzle flecked with blood from some peasant it had killed.

Painfully, Kreyssig reached one of his numbed arms to his mouth and removed the gag. In his joy at being rescued, he was almost prepared to feel gratitude to these ghastly mutants. They had proven themselves far more capable than he had imagined.

Then, he noticed that the ratmen weren’t freeing any of the servants. The creatures were leaving them bound as they carried them down from the pyre. Even Kreyssig’s calloused heart was moved to pity when he beheld the raw horror in their eyes as the ratmen bore them off into the darkness of the kitchen. The partially devoured bodies of Auernheimer’s men left little doubt as to their eventual fate.

‘Those people are not my enemies,’ Kreyssig told his rescuer, pointing at the bound servants.

The ratman’s ears wiggled and its body shivered with an amused chitter. ‘See-know much-much,’ the creature explained with a wave of its paw. ‘Never say-tell what they see-know!’

Kreyssig spun around as more of the ratmen swarmed up towards him, his heart going cold as he considered that they might bear him away to their lair along with the doomed servants. Instead, the creatures reached out with their paws for Baroness von den Linden.

Kreyssig saw the witch’s eyes go wide with raw terror, compelling him to action. Heedless of their numbers, he dived at the ratmen, pushing them away. The mutants leapt back, their tails lashing and their fangs bared.

‘You will not have her!’ he shouted at the vermin, the leg of a broken chair clenched in his fist.

The ratmen glared back at him, their whiskers twitching, fangs glistening. The ratman who had cut his bonds circled him, waiting until it was behind him before pouncing. Kreyssig felt the rusty edge of the knife press against his throat.

The ratmen surged upwards once more, closing about the helpless baroness. One of them, a crook-backed thing with sores across its muzzle, leaned over her, snuffling loudly as it nuzzled her body with its nose. A moment of this loathsome action and the ratman reared back, chittering in a bestial approximation of laughter. It squeaked something in what might have been a language of sorts, bringing similar snickers from the rest of the verminous throng.

‘This is your breeder?’ the mutant holding a knife to him asked. Kreyssig was struck by the calm directness of the question, devoid of the fawning excitement with which the creatures usually treated him. He wondered how much of their ignorant subservience was merely pretext.

‘She is my woman,’ he told the mutant. Again the ratman laughed.

‘Kreyssig-man take new breeder,’ the ratman declared. The baroness screamed into her gag as the vermin began to lift her from the pyre. Kreyssig tensed, mustering himself for a desperate rush against the ratmen.

‘Leave breeder-meat,’ a raspy voice snarled from below. The ratmen carrying the witch dropped her instantly with a frightened squeak and scampered back down the pile. The mutant with the knife withdrew with similar haste.

Kreyssig rushed to the baroness’s side, fumbling at the knots that bound her. He paused when that grisly voice called out again. Turning his gaze downwards, he wasn’t surprised to find that the speaker was the ghastly rat-sorcerer.

‘Kreyssig-man may keep his breeder,’ the monster said. ‘He will remember-know his friends. He will do when he is told what to do.’

It didn’t take a flash of the creature’s sparking fangs to drive home the threat in its words. Kreyssig kept his eyes on the grotesque monster until it shuffled off into the kitchen, withdrawing back into the cellars and sewers and whatever black burrows the vermin made their lairs. The rest of the ratmen did not linger after their leader, slinking after him in a bestial procession.

Only when the monsters were gone did Kreyssig think to remove the baroness’s gag. When he did, the witch’s dry mouth could cough only a single word, a word she invested with every ounce of horror her voice could command.

‘Skaven!’