Daemon Gates Trilogy (20 page)

their previous encounters with Chaos, showing that they had been marked, not by choice, but by proximity.

Kleiber and Wilcreitz were different. They had no Chaos taint to them, quite the opposite. Whereas the elves had looked no different to Alaric's strange vision, the two witch hunters glowed, a pure white light limning their faces and figures. The light was bright, but not blinding, and Alaric found it strangely comforting, even though it made his head throb painfully. He also realised that Kleiber had been right about Wilcreitz; whatever personality flaws the junior witch hunter might have, his intentions were pure, and he did indeed carry Sigmar's blessing.

'Herr Lankdorf' Kleiber said, 'we must locate once more the tracks of our quarry. If you please.'

Lankdorf nodded, dashed the last of his tea into the fire, handed Dietz the mug, and walked away, scooping up his gear as he went.

They came down the cliff somehow'Kleiber explained to Alaric and Dietz. 'We were unable to follow that way.'

"We saw that as well/ Alaric agreed, 'but without their claws and talons, and whatever else, we had to find a dif­ferent path.'

Kleiber nodded. 'Yes, of course. I forget that you were on the same trail and only just ahead of us. Herr Lankdorf assures me he can locate the place where they reached the ground, and can then follow their tracks from that point on.'

'I'm sure he can' Alaric said. 'He's an excellent tracker.'

They joined the rest of the group, walking beside Kleiber and Wilcreitz with the mercenaries behind them. Lankdorf was up ahead, just barely in sight as he retraced his steps to the cliffs base and began to make his way around it. After an hour or so, he slowed, walking a little farther before finally coming to a halt.

'Here' the tracker called out as Alaric joined Dietz and the two witch hunters by the cliff face. 'They came to

ground right here.' Even Alaric could see the marks on the ground and on the stone beside it. They went that way.' Alaric had worried that Lankdorf would be pointing west, back into the forest, but he was indicating the north, fol­lowing along the mountain's edge.

'They must have a camp somewhere nearby,' Kleiber said softly, and the others nodded.

'We do not know how far away it may be,' Wilcreitz cau­tioned. 'If it is close, we could stumble upon it before we have readied ourselves for battle.'

Alaric saw Kleiber open his mouth, ready to reply, and knew the broad-shouldered witch hunter would say some­thing about always being ready, and about needing nothing more than faith in Sigmar. Fortunately, Dietz saw the motion too.

'We should scout,' he suggested. 'Leave everyone else here, just in case.'

'I'll take Dietz and Jarl,' Lankdorf offered. 'We'll go on ahead and stay out of sight. That way we'll still have the element of surprise once we do attack.'

'With knowledge of their location and defences,' Wilcre­itz added, 'we can strike more effectively.'

Kleiber nodded. 'Yes, these are good points,' he agreed finally. 'We must know our enemy before we can smite him.' He turned to Lankdorf. 'Go, you may take Dietz and Jarl with you, as you asked. Find the beastmen's lair. Get as close to them as you dare, but do not fight or draw their attention unless necessary.

Lankdorf nodded and tapped Dietz on the arm. 'Let's go.' Together, they walked back towards the mercenaries, and a moment later they were passing Alaric and the witch hunters by, the mercenary named Jarl right beside them. Alaric watched the trio vanish around a bend in the rock, and then turned back to Kleiber and Wilcreitz.

'What do we do now?' he asked. In reply, Kleiber held up a small book, while Wilcreitz pulled out a needle and

thread. Behind them, one of the mercenaries already had a deck of cards out, and several of the men were hunkering down and preparing to play. Others were sharpening blades, and a few were leaning against trees or rocks with their eyes closed, displaying a career soldier's ability to nap anywhere at any time.

'We set a guard, of course,' Wilcreitz answered, nodding towards several of the mercenaries, who immediately rose to their feet and began pacing the edges of the camp, weapons in hand. 'And we wait.'

'Quietly,' Lankdorf warned
as the three of them crept for­ward. 'They could be close by.'

Dietz nodded, as did Jarl. Neither of them spoke.

They had been walking for perhaps an hour. The tracks led to an old, worn trail and continued along it, growing heavier and more numerous, showing that the beastmen clearly came this same way often. It was hard to say how many there were, but Dietz was sure it was at least a dozen, and there were only three of them, so stealth was critical.

They rounded another bend, and Dietz studied the cliffs before them. Back near the river, the mountains tapered off into foothills. Mere they simply rose from the ground fully formed, towering above the land that ran to meet them and the occasional small valley trapped between them.

'How well do you know beastmen?' Lankdorf asked softly, his eyes scanning the area ahead.

'I've run into several,' Dietz admitted, 'including two vil­lages full of them.'

His friend nodded. 'Good, then you know what they look like. Watch for dwellings, or anything else out of place.'

Dietz looked around. The mountains swung away, creat­ing a wide clearing between them and the forest beyond. The massive old trees created a wall of their own, looking every bit as solid and as sinister from this distance, and

between the two Dietz saw only open ground. Then he noticed something and looked again.

Most of the mountains they'd seen in this area were smooth and sharp-edged, with clean flat surfaces and tight angles. Yet across the clearing the rock wall seemed lumpier, rougher, as if pieces of it had been chipped away, or as if the cliff had simply been scored deeply, great fur­rows carved into it at various heights.

Then he realised that he was seeing protrusions, not depressions, shadows and not furrows, and the sight slipped into the proper focus.

'Morr's blood,' Dietz whispered, taking a step back so he could take it all in.

'What?' Jarl asked, a hand on the heavy sword at his side.

'Look,' was all Dietz could manage. He gestured towards the far wall, and saw both Lankdorf and Jarl stare at it, obviously confused.

Lankdorf had the sharper eyes, and after a few seconds, Dietz heard a sharp intake of breath from his friend as the short tracker no doubt saw what he had seen. A minute later, Jarl muttered something that sounded like a curse, apparently noticing the scene at last.

What Dietz had seen weren't shapes carved into the cliffs, but rather piled up against them, tall shapes, far too regular and level to be natural. It was a mass of stones, most likely hewn from the mountains behind it, which explained why he had not been able to see it at first. The stone was exactly the same shade and so it blended back into the cliffs. Now that he knew they were there he could see them clearly, and the more he studied them the more obvious it was that those stones could be nothing else but a building, or several buildings.

Dietz considered the stones carefully, trying to gauge size based upon his distance from them, and shook his head after a moment, awed. The slabs looked small, but they were still two hundred feet away if they were an inch, and

possibly a good deal more. That meant they had to be massive, and he had been underestimating both the size of the stones and the expanse of the structures. He was star­ing at a city, or at least a small town. The stones formed high walls and gracefully slanting roofs, with smudges across the front that might have been balconies once. He caught a glimpse of similar structures along the sides and towards the back. Tall, narrow windows pierced the stone in several places, although he could see that shutters the same colour as the walls covered some of them, and here and there along the ground, doors broke up the surfaces of the walls. The ground seemed to be a matching grey, and Dietz suspected it was paved.

'They must be in there,' Lankdorf whispered. 'The tracks lead straight to it.'

Dietz nodded, still studying the place.

'I didn't think beastmen were that intelligent,' the tracker continued. 'I thought they were barely smart enough to handle weapons, let alone chisels and hammers. Could they have made this place?'

Dietz was wondering the same thing. He had seen a fab­ulous temple carved by beastmen, but that had been in Ind, and the beastmen there were very different. All the beastmen he had encountered in the Empire were savages, barely more intelligent than animals, and lived in crude huts or rough camps. He thought about the carnage he and Alaric had seen back in Nuln, and shook his head.

'They didn't make this place,' he told his two compan­ions, keeping his voice low. 'Most likely they found it and claimed it.'

'It looks old,' Jarl said, staring, and Dietz nodded. Yes, those stones looked as if they could have been carved cen­turies ago. He was curious what they looked like from a closer vantage, but all thoughts of investigating fled as he spotted movement among the buildings. He froze. So did Lankdorf, who had clearly seen the flicker as well, and they

both gestured at Jarl to stand still. The mercenary obeyed at once, and all three of them stayed motionless as they squinted across the distance, searching for movement.

There; Dietz saw it beyond one of the buildings and tried to pierce the shadows there. He was sure he had seen... yes, there it was again. Something was definitely moving among the stone structures. Then it shifted, came forward, and he saw it more clearly.

It was a beastman, and then another one, and then sev­eral more. There were at least six of them, walking towards the buildings' front, armed with spears, clubs and axes.

'They may be a patrol,' Lankdorf whispered. He gestured behind him, indicating that Jarl and Dietz should back away, and he followed, moving slowly and without a sound. Dietz kept his eyes on the buildings, and saw that his friend had been right. The beastmen were marching to the left, cutting in front of the buildings, and would prob­ably turn and head the other way once they reached the far end. They were standing guard. Dietz had no doubt they would come running, weapons at the ready, if any of them spotted him or his two companions.

It seemed to take forever, but at last Dietz backed around a bend and the buildings vanished from view. Jarl was already there, leaning against the cliff and shaking his head, and a few seconds later Lankdorf also joined them.

'We need to get back and tell the others,' the tracker said. 'We were expecting a band of beastmen, possibly a small encampment, but that place is a bloody fortress. There's no telling how many they've got burrowed away in there, and we'd have to cross that clearing to reach them.'

They've probably got rifles, too' Dietz reminded him. All three of them shuddered at the thought of beastmen using blackpowder weapons and holed up in a stone fort.

'Keep it quiet,' Lankdorf urged, although Dietz didn't need reminding, and he suspected Jarl didn't either. 'We don't want them catching wind of us and coming after

us before we can get back to camp.' They all turned and began stalking away, moving as carefully and quietly as possible. It was several minutes before Dietz stopped feeling like a beastman was sighting down a rifle at the back of his head.

Alaric was writing
in his journal when Dietz, Lankdorf, and the mercenary Jarl returned. They had been gone two hours or more, judging by the sun, but Alaric had lost track of time as he jotted down notes about this and that, and scribbled shorthand versions of their recent encounters. He capped his ink vial and tucked it and his quill away, as the three men approached.

'Did you find them?' he asked, rising to his feet. Kleiber and Wilcreitz had approached as well, and it was to them that Lankdorf gave his answer, but not before Alaric saw Dietz's answering nod, and the frown that meant the news would not be good.

'We've tracked the beastmen to their lair,' Lankdorf explained. The mercenaries were all listening as well, since what the tracker had to say would most likely effect their tasks in the near future. They are holed up in what looks like an old city or fortress, roughly an hour north of here and nestled up against the mountains.'

'A city?' Alaric stared at them. 'What sort of city? What did it look like? Did you find any markings to indicate age, or origin, or-'

'I'm sure the beastmen will be happy to give you a tour if you ask nicely,' Wilcreitz snapped, and Alaric stopped, remembering the reason they were here.

'Ah, right. Sorry, I just got carried away,' he apologised.

'It's made from stone,' Lankdorf answered, glancing over at him and then back at Kleiber, who frowned, but nodded for him to continue. 'Looks to be taken from the mountain.' He shrugged. 'I've no idea who built it or when, or why.'

Alaric looked to Dietz, but the older man shrugged. 'We didn't get too close,' he explained, 'but I doubt they made it. It's too finely crafted, and it looks old.'

'Old?' Alaric was already running through what he knew of the area's history in his head. 'Could be human,' he muttered to himself, 'or perhaps dwarf, though why it would be exposed and not dug in... Could they be elf ruins?'

'How many did you see?' Kleiber asked, cutting off Alaric's train of thought.

'Half a dozen or so,' Lankdorf replied. They were just a patrol, however. We've no idea how many more are in there.'

Kleiber nodded. 'A stone fortress or city, up against the mountains,' he repeated, 'with an armed guard and an untold number of beastmen hidden within, some with blackpowder weapons.' The witch hunter glanced around, and then smiled grimly. 'Sigmar has presented us a mighty challenge indeed,' he declared, 'but I say if we are steadfast in our faith we will prove equal to the task.'

'Faith isn't the problem,' Dietz muttered as he stepped over beside Alaric, speaking softly, so that only Alaric heard him. 'It's bullets and claws and good shelter that concern me, and how all three are on the wrong side.'

'What sort of place was it?' Alaric asked, still focusing on the idea of an ancient ruin. 'Describe it to me.'