The goblin's screams turned to a gargling sound as it choked on its own blood. The great moon reappeared in the sky outside, shedding just enough light for Tomas to see the creature impaled on his sword, squirming in its last death throes. Tomas jerked the blade free - then stopped in dismay. The tip of the blade had snapped off where it had plunged through the goblin and struck the rock beneath.
There was a scuffling sound. Tomas whirled around. Two more goblins were running toward him with their teeth bared.
He leaped quickly to one side, avoiding the first. He swung the sword, using the sense of timing he'd learned from juggling in the village square. The blade caught the second goblin in the side of its neck.
It was a heavy blow, but the sword's edge was dull. The creature screamed and fell, but it was still alive.
Tomas spun around just in time to grapple with the first goblin as it returned and threw itself at him. He stumbled backward.
It screeched and tried to claw his face. Tomas turned as he fell, so that he landed on top of the creature, squashing it against the rocky floor. Momentarily, it was stunned. He picked it up by one leg, turned, and swung it. His aim was true: its head smacked into the head of its companion. Their skulls smashed together with a terrible wet crunching sound.
For a moment, the only noise in the cave was of Tomas's laboured breathing and the gushing of goblin blood. Some of the hot, wet stuff was on his hands. He wiped it on his breeches and picked up his broken sword. Cautiously, then, with his pulse thudding in his ears, he crept further into the cave.
The moonlight faded into blackness with each step that he took. At the same time, he began to see a flickering orange glow ahead. He reached a bend in the passageway. Beyond this point, he knew, there was a large cavern.
He sidled around the bend with his back to the wall and his sword raised. Up ahead, two torches had been wedged in fissures in the rock, illuminating a ceiling festooned with stalagtites and a floor cluttered with huge boulders. Near the center of the chamber was a frail, pale figure, tied to a column of rock. "Linna!" he shouted.
The figure struggled and made smothered sounds. Tomas tried to suppress the surge of hope that he felt. He glanced nervously around. Where was the monster?
He saw movement from the corner of his eye - but when he turned his head, he found that the shape had just been a shadow. The whole chamber was alive with dancing shapes created by the flickering light.
He leaped up onto a slab of rock and circled around the edge of the cavern, coming gradually closer to the elf girl. She seemed to be unharmed. But caution held him back from running to her.
He reached for the dawnstone and closed his fingers around it as Brodie had shown him.
The figure of the elf girl shimmered as if he were seeing it through a heat haze. Suddenly, it dissolved. In its place was the beast, lashing its tail. Its bulging eyes were fixed on Tomas, and its fangs were bared.
"Where is she?" Tomas shouted. His voice echoed around the chamber.
The beast made a coughing, gargling sound that almost sounded like laughter.
"What are you?" Tomas demanded, fighting to suppress his overwhelming fear.
The beast's mouth widened in a ghastly grin. "I am a Champion of Slaanesh." Its words were slurred; its voice was guttural and inhuman. It screamed, then, and hurled itself forward.
The wall of the cavern was behind Tomas's shoulders. He gasped in terror and swung his broken blade in a hopeless attempt to slash the creature's body. It seized the sword deftly in its crab-claw, twisted it out of Tomas's hand, and hurled it contemptuously aside. Almost in the same motion, it swept its razor-edged tail in a wide arc, aiming to cut Tomas in two.
Tomas dodged to one side and the tip of the tail grazed his chest, ripping his shirt. He found himself off-balance and falling. Railing his arms, he toppled from the edge of the slab where he stood.
His reflexes saved him. He somersaulted as he fell, and landed hard on his heels. But as he looked up he saw that the beast was already coming for him.
Tomas ran. He scrambled up a series of ledges, then jumped up from one boulder to another. The creature was too cumbersome to match this kind of agility, and its hooves slipped on smooth stone. It roared with anger and lashed its tentacle-arm like a whip, reaching for Tomas's face.
He ducked under it, then jumped higher, till he reached the top of a tall heap of boulders. The last one moved under his weight, and he realized it was precariously balanced. He looked back at the creature and saw what he should do. He turned his back to the wall, braced his feet, and pushed with all his strength.
The boulder teetered ponderously under him, then started tumbling. It dislodged other rocks beneath it, creating an avalanche. There was a rumbling sound, and the whole cave seemed to shake.
The monster vented an inarticulate cry. It stumbled backward as the rocks rolled down toward it. It had fierce strength but seemed to lack intelligence, Tomas thought. Perhaps all it knew was how to inflict pain and death.
The first boulder hit its legs, and the creature fell. With inhuman strength, it pulled itself out from under the rock - but its legs had been crushed, and it could no longer stand. It screeched in pain and tottered helplessly, raising its claw-arm in a futile effort to protect itself as two more boulders tumbled down. One hit the claw and smashed it into fragments. The other landed squarely in the creature's hairy chest.
It bellowed in agony as it fell beneath the rock. Blood spurted out and it writhed, lashing its tail. It vomited up a foul mixture of foaming, steaming, pink-and-brown sludge, and shouted again. Its struggles were gradually diminishing.
Tomas was shaking so badly, he had to crawl down the tumbled pile of rocks on his hands and knees. When he reached the bottom he stood for a long moment, trying to regain his equilibrium as he stared at the creature. It glared back at him through eyes that were growing dull and dim. Its tentacle twitched in little spasms. It made a guttural, croaking noise, then gasped, coughed, shat convulsively, and finally died.
Tomas rested against a nearby rock, taking slow, deep breaths. He checked the gash on his chest and found that it was bleeding, but was not deep. His leg throbbed with pain where the goblin had bitten him, but that too was not a major wound. He wiped sweat out of his eyes, blinked, and looked around.
He saw the stone column where the beast had disguised itself as the elf girl. "Linna," he exclaimed in a whisper. A pile of tattered clothing was lying there, and the rocks were slick with blood. Further back, where the creature had made its lair, there was an ugly heap of bloody bones and chunks of pale flesh.
Tomas clenched his fists. He willed himself to be strong. With a sense of hollow dread, he forced himself to go and take a closer look.
Some of the shredded clothes were Linna's. He remembered hanging them up to dry in the heat from the fire in Brodie's cabin. Other garments were also elfin in style, but seemed cut for a man. She and her brother had died here, there was no possible doubt. Tomas cursed himself for having come too late to save her.
He turned away, feeling sick with guilt. His father had been right: it did no good to hide. So long as people gave in to their fear, more innocent victims would die, and the dark creatures would multiply and grow stronger. The only way was to match their strength with greater strength.
Tomas turned and walked shakily back past the creature lying with its chest crushed beneath the boulder. The bulging eyes stared up blindly, and the mouth gaped in an ugly, silent scream.
Tomas paused. He saw something that gleamed in the flickering light. Trying to suppress his revulsion, he squatted down beside the corpse. Almost lost in the beast's thick furwas a shiny black object. He reached out, took hold of it, and dragged it into view. It was a dawnstone, just like the one that Brodie had given him.
With a trembling hand, he took the stone from around his own neck and held it beside the one that the creature wore. There was no doubt: they were identical. A matched pair.
He stood up suddenl
y, and felt himself swaying. What had Brodie said about Richard Crowell? Some say he succumbed to the evil forces. And: The beast you just saw was once a man. And: He promised to come back if he could.
Tomas clutched his stomach, nauseated by the idea that the corpse in front of him had once been his father. He took slow, deep breaths, trying to regain control. Part of him simply could not believe it; and so, again, he kneeled and compared the dawnstones.
They were identical in every detail.
In a sudden spasm of anger, he ripped the creature's dawnstone loose and thrust it into his pocket. Nothing but revenge, he realized, could take away the outrage that he felt. Whatever person or entity had concocted this travesty should surely be made to pay in some way.
He turned and started toward the exit from the cave, feeling a fierce new determination. Maybe he was being foolish; he was, after all, at the beginning of his manhood, and he had survived his first battle more by luck than skill. Nevertheless, he would go back and find Brodie, and ask the Halfling for his help.
To search for vengeance in the Sea of Claws would be an enormous undertaking. It would require courage, resources, trained warriors, and expert seamen... not to mention the services of a good ship's cook.
NO GOLD IN THE GREY MOUNTAINS
by Jack Yeovil
On the opposite crag, the seven towers of the Fortress of Drachenfels thrust skyward like the taloned fingers of a deformed hand. The sunset bloodied the castle as Constant Drachenfels, the Great Enchanter, had done in life. Joh Lamprecht had heard all the stories, all the songs. He knew of the long-lived monster's numberless crimes, and of his eventual downfall and defeat. Brave Prince Oswald and Fair Genevieve, his vampire ladylove, had ended the horror, and now the castle was untenanted, all but the most earthbound ghosts flown to the beyond. However, it was still shunned. No peasant of this mountain region would dare set his boot upon the path to Drachenfels while the stories were told in whispers, the songs remembered by ill-favoured minstrels. And that was what made the place ideal for Joh's purposes.
Big, slow Freder was too lackwitted to be concerned with superstition, and dark, quiet Rotwang too wrapped up in his own skills to take any notice of the rumoured creatures in the darkness. Which left only young Yann Groeteschele to be frightened by the old legends, the shadows and the night winds. Joh could count on the young bandit's unswerving loyalty for as long as Groeteschele's fear of him outweighed his fear of the name of a dead sorcerer. That should be a considerable time.
Groeteschele had only heard the songs about Drachenfels' Poison Feast and the Sack of Gisoreux, but he had been present when Joh broke the back of Warden Fanck and led the mass escape from the penal quarrypits of the Vaults, to the South, and in the Loren Forest he had held down the writhing body of Guido Czerepy, the silk merchant, while Joh tortured out of him the location of his hidden cache of gold.
In the still air, the rattle of the coach was audible from several miles away. Joh keened like a crow, and Rotwang answered from his position of concealment down by the road. Joh tapped Groeteschele, and indicated the youth's crossbow. The lamps of the coach became visible in the evening haze. Joh felt the old excitement in his vitals, and gripped the hilt of his curved sword. He had taken the scimitar from the corpse of a slain envoy of Araby, shortly after relieving the man of the jewelled tokens of esteem he was bearing to the Imperial Court, and found it a more satisfactory item of killing steel than the common straight sword of the Old World.
Groeteschele slipped a quarrel into his crossbow, and steadied it against his cheek. Joh kept his eyes on the coach. As robberies went, this was simple. Three times last year, he had held up the same coach - carrying gold from the Kautner seam down from the Mountains and through the Reikwald Forest to Altdorf - and the trick had been easier each time. Once the miners had paid their tax tribute to the Emperor's collectors they were hardly disposed to buy guards to escort it to Karl-Franz's coffers and so it was placed on the regular mail and passenger run.
Tonight's plunder would serve to equip Joh and his band for a more daring, more profitable exploit. Joh had a nice little Tilean princedom marked down, its vaults ripe for plundering, but he would need to hire specialists, to buy equipment that could not be stolen, and to make arrangements with a slightly dishonourable banking house to dispose of the accrued funds. A chest of Kautner gold should set the job up perfectly.
The coach was near enough for Joh to see the horses' breath frosting. The coachman sat alone on the box, draped in a cloak. He would be wearing a breastplate under his garments, but killing the coachman never stopped anything anyway.
There was a long, creaking sound and a crash. A tree fell on the road just as the coach had passed. Good. Freder had done his part well. Joh nodded, and Groeteschele stood up, firing and reloading. His first quarrel took the lead horse of the four-strong team in the side of the neck and it tripped. A figure darted into the road, sword flashing. Rotwang drove his blade deep into the animal, and it fell. He leaped aside, and the team continued, dragging its dying comrade a few yards.
Joh made his way down from the rocky mountainside towards the road, Groeteschele following. He had complete confidence in Rotwang's expertise with this manoeuvre. It was tricky. Many bandits were crippled or worse when they got tangled up with the horse they were trying to immobilize. But Rotwang was the best killer Joh had ever seen, trained to it from birth.
When he came out of the trees, all was well. The coach was halted, and Rotwang stood a little way away from it, red sword dripping. Freder held the still-standing horses and glowered up at the coachman. His height, broad shoulders and apish appearance helped to deter many a solid citizen from interfering in the band's business. Joh nodded to Groeteschele, and the young man climbed up beside the quivering coachman and sorted through the luggage, throwing parcels and packages to the dirt road. Someone inside the coach was complaining loudly.
"It's not here," Groeteschele said.
"What!" snapped Joh. "Idiot, it must be. Look harder."
It should be in a small chest with the Imperial Crest and a fine Breton lock. It usually was. Groeteschele rooted among the remaining cargo.
"No, nothing," he said.
Joh signed to Rotwang, who walked towards the coach. The coachman was trembling, praying to all the Gods. Groeteschele climbed down, and Rotwang pulled himself up to the top of the coach. He moved like a big cat, with strong but apparently lazy gestures, and he could strike like a daemon. He sat beside the coachman, plucking and throwing away the man's whip, and then did something to the man with his hands. The coachman screamed, and Joh knew Rotwang's inexpressive face would be wearing a slight smile. Rotwang whispered, passed his hands over the coachman's body again, and there were more screams.
Little knives flashed red in Rotwang's hands, and he paid some attention to the coachman's face. Finally, the bandit spat into the road, and pushed the coachman off his seat. The man sprawled, dead, beside his vehicle.
Joh looked up at Rotwang.
"No gold," the killer told him. "The Kautner seam petered out three months ago. No more gold in the Grey Mountains."
Joh swore, calling down the wrath of Morr on this venture. He had blundered badly, and would have to redeem himself or lose position. Groeteschele was young and Freder was a clod, but Rotwang - who had so far displayed no taste for leading the band - could easily take his place.
"What is the meaning of this?"
The coach door opened and a well-dressed man stepped out. His elegantly booted foot landed on the coachman's body and he cringed away. He looked at Joh and Groeteschele and drew a long, fine duellist's sword. He assumed a fighting stance and looked at Joh, waiting for the bandit to strike the first blow. Groeteschele shot him in the head and he staggered back, shaking from the blow. Freder pulled his purse away from his belt and threw it to Joh. It was heavy, but not heavy enough to make this job worth its while. The ill-advised hero slid down the coach and sat, dead, in the road beside the coachman, eyes st
aring either side of Groeteschele's bolt.
Joh went to the open door, and looked into the coach.
"Hello," said a musical female voice, "are you a bandit?"
She had golden curls, and was dressed fit for the Imperial Court in a brocaded dress with pearls worked into the bodice. She was not ostentatiously bejewelled, but her fingers and ears yielded more gold than many a small miner's claim would in a year. Her pale oval face was lovely, delicate and lightly painted.
She sat on the plush seat of the coach like a dressed-up doll, her feet not touching the floor. Joh judged her to be about twelve years old.
"Is there anything worth stealing?" Groeteschele asked.
Joh smiled at the girl, who smiled back.
"I think so."
Her name, she told them, was Lady Melissa d'Acques, and she was distantly related to both the Royal Family of Bretonnia and the Imperial House of the Second Wilhelm. She had insisted the bandits bring her luggage to Drachenfels when they took her there, and from the number, quality and expense of the dresses in her travelling wardrobe, Joh knew her family would be capable of paying a substantial ransom for her return. So far as he could make out, the girl was somewhat simple for her age. She treated her captors as if they were servants pretending to be bandits and this whole episode a game to while away a dull afternoon in the gardens. So far, this had worked to Joh's advantage - she had ridden on Freder's saddle and given them no trouble - but he dreaded the inevitable moment when she tired of play and wanted to be taken home. Typically, she seemed to have found a soulmate in Freder, with whom she was laughing and joking, exchanging nonsense rhymes. If only she knew how many men and women the rough-faced giant had killed with his hands alone.
She didn't complain at the quality of the food they gave her at their camp, which was pitched in one of the courtyards of the fortress, and she tried cheerfully to answer all his questions. His problem was that, in order to convert his stroke of luck into gold crowns, he needed to know more about Melissa's family. How he could get in touch with her father, for instance. But Melissa, although only too willing to expound at childishly tedious length about the minutiae of her family life, was unwilling or unable to give an address where her family could be contacted, and only had the vaguest awareness of anything outside the cloisters of her aristocratic circle. Joh gathered her family maintained households in Parravon, Marienburg and Altdorf, and that several of her male relations could be found in the courts of Bretonnia and the Empire.