Zavant Page 6

  'It is mocking us,' Konniger agreed grimly. 'And Graf Otto was right. Its purpose is something far greater than simple bloody slaughter. Where is our huntsman, Steiner?'

  'Checking on the patrols in the vicinity of the palace. I have sent word-'

  The witch hunter was silenced by the sound of alarmed shouting coming from somewhere across the other side of the square. A panicked guardsman came running towards them out of the misty gloom. 'It's struck again! Two more dead in Luitpold Strasse... and they're both still warm!'

  Van Sandt drew his sword and turned to Konniger. 'The creature must still be close. Come, Herr Konniger, we have no time to waste! We'll cut around through Dietrich Alley and Rasenplatz. If we hurry we may yet come upon it unawares!' The witch hunter followed the guardsman back into the chill mists, calling for Konniger to follow him.

  Vido looked in confusion at his master, who had conjured parchment and quill from somewhere inside his volumi­nous robes and was frantically scribbling something down. "We aren't going with him?'

  'I am - but you're not,' Konniger said, pressing the folded note into Vido's hand. 'Find Steiner and make sure he reads this. If he's coming from the palace then you'll probably be able to catch him at the Ostlander Bridge. And hurry, Vido - I am delivering my life into your hands!'

  Vido stared at the folded note, a feeling of uneasy realisa­tion growing within him. When he looked up a scant second later, his master had already disappeared into the gloom after the witch hunter.

  'Van Sandt!' Konniger started visibly as the witch hunter suddenly loomed up before him from out of the murk. The witch hunter's cloak was torn, and the sage-detective saw blood seeping between van Sandt's fingers where they clutched at the wound on his arm.

  'I saw it, Konniger!' van Sandt gasped, indicating with his sword blade-towards a nearby narrow alley. 'It came out of the darkness at me and then disappeared down there!'

  'Where are the guardsmen?' Konniger asked, noting the oppressive silence all around them. They were in the heart of the most populous city in the Old World, and yet it was as if the rest of the inhabitants had simply melted away into the darkness and the mists.

  'I lost them in this damnable mist. But then I sensed something nearby, something stalking me. You don't spend a lifetime hunting the servants of Evil without being able to know when one is close by, Konniger! It came at me - per­haps I struck it with my sword, I don't know - but it fled down this alley. Come, we can only be seconds behind it!'

  Van Sandt ran down the alley, the sage-detective just a few steps behind. Konniger knew the area. The Reikerbahn: a

  maze-like sinkhole of cheap beer halls and bordellos, beg­gars' hovels and thieves' dens clustered behind the main waterfront area of the docks, but the mist was at its worst this close to the river. Now even Konniger, whose knowledge of I he tumbledown back alleys and hidden byways of the city was near unparalleled, quickly lost his bearings in this mist- choked warren. But the witch hunter ran unerringly on, lollowing the invisible trail of the creature he had now H acked across half the Empire.

  It was only when the mud and human filth of the back alleys of the Reikerbahn gave way to ancient worn cobble- si ones that Konniger realised just where they were surely heading. The Necropolis, the abandoned Old City cemetery which lay on the far side of the Reikerbahn. The history of the Old World was full of tales of the ravages of necro­mancers, vampire counts and armies of the undead, and it was little surprise that in every human city, the areas surronding cemeteries were naturally shunned by all but the poorest and most desperate.

  Or creatures of Chaos, thought Konniger, who would find i he perfect lairs in such places. Close to their prey, but where lew would willingly venture to seek them out.

  The two men made their way through the broken and unguarded gates. The place had been abandoned centuries ago, and there was nothing left here to interest graverobbers or bodysnatchers. The necropolis had been built on a rise overlooking the Reikerbahn, and was mercifully above the reach of the river-mists. Up here, the night sky could be dearly seen and the Red Moon dominated the heavens, cast­ing its strange light down upon an eerie and lifeless landscape of tumbled gravestones, empty looted tombs and tangles of thick thorny undergrowth. Ahead of them loomed Ihe dark shape of some large pillared sepulchre at the centre of the necropolis. As they drew nearer, van Sandt paused, pointing his sword blade towards it.

  The tomb of Gottlieb the Stern, Konniger!' the witch hunter breathed. 'It was his wish that his spirit be laid to rest here, watching over the citizens of the Empire in death just as he had watched over them in life. That is where the fiend has made its lair, defiling it just as it did the statue of Magnus the Pious. It is close now, waiting for us there!'

  'Indeed...' Konniger murmured. 'Perhaps far closer than we realise. I must say, your knowledge of the alleyways and older parts of the city continually surprises me, Herr van Sandt. I thought Graf Otto said that you were a stranger to Altdorf?'

  'Then the Graf must have been mistaken,' came the witch hunter's cold reply. 'Although admittedly it has been some time - many years, in fact - since I was last here.'

  The witch hunter turned, until he and Konniger faced each other amidst the desolation of the crumbling tombs.

  'Ah, that is what I thought,' Konniger nodded, as if to him­self. 'I am still curious, though: the two warm corpses in Luitpold Strasse - how did you manage to kill them when you were still with me in Konigplatz at the time?'

  The thing which called itself Marius van Sandt smiled, its lips stretching too wide across its face and displaying the rows of extra teeth now pushing through its bloody gums. 'Of course, I had killed them hours before. It is a simple spell to keep the blood warm in their veins, and only a slightly more taxing one to keep them hidden from sight until their "discovery" suited my purpose. One picks up many such tricks when one has lived as long as I have.'

  Keep it talking, Konniger thought, trying to push the idea from the front of his mind. Don't let it know what you are thinking. Who knows how far its supernatural senses may extend? 'And the real van Sandt?' he asked casually, his level voice giving no hint of the turmoil of his thoughts.

  'Months dead,' the were-beast grinned, its voice coarsening as its face stretched to accommodate the new shape of its emerging wolf snout. 'I allowed him to think that it was he who was actually the hunter and I the hunted, but I grew weary of the game and brought it to an abrupt end in the Drakwald. He was a dull opponent, if truth be told, but it amused me for a while to assume his form and pretend to pursue myself until I could find some worthier prey.'

  Konniger gave a mock bow of his head, surreptitiously reaching into the folds of his robes. 'Then I suppose I should be honoured. Am I to assume that, as with poor van Sandt, you intend to consume not only my flesh but also my iden­tity?'

  'But of course,' the wolf-thing snarled, drooling in plea­sure. 'Few doors are barred to the famous Zavant Konniger.

  Perhaps tomorrow I shall visit the palace to pay my respects

  tomy old mentor, Graf Otto. Or maybe even the Emperor himself will grant me a private audience to hear the truth of how I hunted down and destroyed the daemon-creature which was stalking his city!'

  Konniger had been bracing himself for the moment of full transformation. He hadn't quite known what to expect - a ill awn-out metamorphosis as man-shape altered into that of wolf, or a bloody and savage rebirth as the beast within burst out of its human prison - but the moment, when it came, was shocking in its suddenness. Van Sandt stepped forward, his outline momentarily blurring and then there was only the wolf-thing, leaping hungrily towards Konniger as the witch hunter's now-empty cloak and vestments fell to the ground behind it. Konniger was almost fatally caught by sur­prise.

  Almost, but not quite.

  Powdered silver was a vital component in many spell workings - the wolf-thing was not the only one who knew a lew spell tricks - and Konniger habitually carried a small pouch of the stuff with him. He had used it befor
e to cast wards of protection, but this was the first time he had used

  itas a weapon directly against evil, drawing open the pouch and throwing its contents full into the were-beast's eyes.

  The effect was instantaneous. The creature howled in agony, clawing bloody lumps out of its own face as the silver burned like acid into its magic-altered flesh.

  Konniger turned and ran, gratified that the tales of were- beasts' vulnerability to silver had not been wrong, but knowing that he had at best only bought himself a few more seconds' time.

  Where are you, Vido? he wondered desperately, praying that his servant's wits had not deserted him on this of all nights.

  He could hear the creature's snarls of rage right behind him, and the scrape of its claws as it launched itself at his unprotected back. Reaching out to anchor himself against a nearby gravestone, Konniger pivoted and lashed out with one leg, aiming a blow at the creature in that strange but highly effective fighting style he had learned years before from a travelling sage from Cathay. The blow connected

  solidly with the creature's midsection and would have crip­pled any normal opponent. The wolf-thing barely noticed, striking out with its claws and savagely back-handing him across the face.

  Konniger flew through the air, connecting heavily against the stump of a broken grave marker. The salty taste of his own blood filled his mouth; the sharp pain of something broken inside him flared up from within his ribcage; his vision swam and he knew he was close to blacking out. He looked up, the bright disc of the Red Moon swelling to fill up the night sky above him. Its unnatural light bathed the scene, seeming to slow down time itself as Konniger strug­gled to fight off unconsciousness.

  As the wolf-thing prowled the last few steps towards him.

  And as the gaunt figure of Vaul Steiner glided out of the shadows, red moonlight reflecting brightly off the silver- bladed throwing dagger held ready in his hand.

  The dagger flew through the air, burying itself into the wolf-thing's chest, piercing its heart. The Chaos creature fell without a sound, a life that could be measured in millennia ignominiously snuffed out in the blink of an eye.

  'Master!' Konniger heard Vido's voice. He felt his servant's hands upon him, raising him up, and dimly saw the torch­lights of what seemed to be most of the city militia closing in from all sides of the cemetery.

  'A dangerous game you played, Herr Konniger,' the Imperial assassin noted, planting his foot on the chest of the wolf-thing and pushing the dagger hilt-deep, further into its heart. 'And too much of a near thing, at the end. When you sent your servant to me with that message, how did you know the were-beast would seek to lure you here?'

  'A... a hunch, nothing more,' Konniger managed to strug­gle out, gratefully accepting the brandy flask which Vido pressed into his hand. 'Call it a moment of prescience, inspired by the words of a madman.' Konniger shared a sig­nificant glance with his manservant. Vido knew - and strongly disapproved - of some of the more extreme meth­ods his master employed to divine the ways of the servants of Chaos, but if he could guess at the true source of Konniger's prescient insight, then the halfling wisely kept his silence.

  Helped by his servant, Konniger struggled to his feet and looked down at the remains of the wolf-thing. Its jaws were set in a final snarl and its golden yellow eyes were open, its dying gaze fixed forever on its unholy patron moon over­head. Konniger leaned forward to look into those eyes, remembering the conversation between himself and the thing that had been van Sandt when they first met.

  How old was it, truly, he wondered? What sights had those eyes witnessed over the path of so many centuries? What would he give, to be able to know even just a few of the memories stored behind those eyes? But if the answer lay in those dead eyes, then he did not find it, seeing only the twin, dim reflections of the Red Moon staring mockingly back at him.

  He turned his back on the remains of the wolf-thing and walked away without looking back. Vido walked beside him, offering his shoulder as support for his injured master to lean on. Overhead, dark clouds flitted across the night sky, eclipsing the fading light of the now waning Red Moon.

  PART THREE

  The Politics of Shadow, or The Case of the Tilean Widow

  Author's Note. We enter now one of those frustrating periods in Konniger's life when documentary evidence on his deeds and even whereabouts seems disappointingly thin on the ground. Following the conclusion of the events of The Case of the Morrsliebnacht Murders, it is known that he spent some time recuperating from his injuries and, when he had sufficiently recovered, travelling outside the environs of his usual Altdorf haunts.

  I have established with some considerable degree of certainty that it was during this period that he again visited Bretonnia, where he became involved in the events of The Case of the Moussillon Bard, A Scandal in Gisoreux and The Affair of the Purloined Banner. It was presumably at some point during this time that Konniger engaged in that famous battle of wits at the court of King Louen with his Bretonnian arch-rival and counter­part, the dandyish Flaubert de Maupassant, a meeting which the Bretonnian satirist and playwright Marcel Volpaire would later dramatise to great comic effect in his masterful Les Deux Erudites. Volpaire's tale may however be apocryphal, since other sources place Konniger in Marienburg during that same period, although his successful but highly controversial solution to The

  Mystery of the Alderman's Twin must surely have been the event that precipitated his final return to Altdorf. There he indulged himself in a period of scholarly research and uncharac­teristic inactivity, before becoming involved in the events you are about to read of.

  On a hopefully relevant side note, it has recently been brought to your humble scribe's attention that there exists a little-known and privately published pamphlet entitled Portrait of My Undying Lady, author sadly unknown, which purports to be an account of an incident in the early life of the now-renowned Tilean artist Giovanni Gottio. Interested readers are invited to track down a copy of this text and decide for themselves what, if indeed any, significance it has to the personages and events of The Case of the Tilean Widow.

  One

  Vasilly Romanenko Drakhov, Bane of the Dark, Slayer of Wurdolaki, greatest vampire hunter in all the Old World, look another long swig from his hide-leather canteen flask, savouring the strong, peppery taste of his own urine mixed and flavoured with the finest Kislevite vodka. He swilled the fiery brew around the inside of his mouth for a second, rel­ishing the sensation as it washed away the thick, cloying taste of his present surroundings. As a young warrior fighting on the barren Kislev steppes, he had learned the initial skills of his unique craft in battles against the beastman packs and Chaos warbands. In that cold and terrible place he had also learned the importance of maintaining purity of body and spirit.

  On the edges of the Northern Wastes, nothing wholesome grew or flourished and the very air carried the foul taint of corruption. The invisible and deadly spoor of Chaos seeped into everything - a canteen flask filled with water taken from an even apparently untainted stream or drinking hole con­tained enough madness and death to wipe out a good-sized

  township. Those few foolish or hardy souls that dared brave the Wastes quickly learned the brutally harsh survival tech­niques necessary to live and fight in such a place. There could be no living off the land; the only rations and drink­ing water they had were what they carried with them. When food ran out, they ate their pack horses and the steeds of their own casualties - for casualties there most surely always were - and when drinking water ran out they drank both the blood of their mounts and the water of their own bodies, flavouring this diet of horse blood and urine with strong, clear vodka to make it more palatable.

  'Piss-drinkers' was the term of derision that the inhabi­tants of the Empire and even the southern and more civilised parts of Kislev often used to describe their savage and backwards cousins who inhabited the most northern reaches of the Old World. Amongst the fierce bands of war­riors who patrolled and defende
d the far borders against the deprivations of the followers of Chaos, the insult had - per­versely - become a term of pride. The name had become a badge of courage worn by those who travelled deep into the Northern Wastes, beyond the lines of lonely, ancient dolmen stones that marked the limits of what was considered sane and normal, into the beginnings of the territory of the Realm of Chaos. Brave, hardened men who had seen more of the true and terrible face of the Dark Powers than any of the rest of the quivering, ignorant mass of humanity.

  It had been many years since Drakhov had last crossed over into those borderlands - beastman hunting and troll slaying was definitely a young man's job, he thought to him­self with a grim smile - but the taste of the contents of his canteen flask was a welcome reminder of those days. A habit which he would not relinquish, no matter how much it revolted the sensibilities of the soft, southern inhabitants of the so-called 'civilised' nations of the Old World.

  Drakhov wiped his lips clean with one scarred, ointment- smeared forearm, replacing the clay stopper and returning the canteen to its place amongst the clutter of tools and other belongings that hung from the pattern of belts that ran across his hunched, hairy shoulders and criss-crossed over his heavy torso. Then, picking up his axe, the many telltale notches of battle evident on the rim of its silver blade, he

  continued on, deeper into the stinking darkness of the sewer passage.

  The atmosphere in these tunnels was thick and oppressive, the air hot and foetid, and rivulets of sweat ran freely down Drakhov's ointment-covered body, mixing with the filth splashed up from the muck he was wading through and the noxious stuff that dripped down on him from the low ceil­ing. At the same time, he chewed thoughtfully on a wad of raw garlic, the juice dribbling down his chin onto the mat- led mess of his filth-encrusted beard.

  liven here, in the reeking sewers of Altdorf, the Old World's greatest and most populous city, the stench that emanated from Drakhov was enough to make the slime weep from the tunnel walls.