By J. Starke
I did not see the first of my men die, nor even the second. Two more were dead by the time I had drawn my heavy sword from its scabbard and turned to face my attackers. I heard the sergeant cry out to me – “Captain Verborgen! Look out!” – and ducked in time to avoid a small projectile of some type. As it whizzed past my head I lunged forward and drove my blade into the body of one of our assailants. It crumpled and fell with a high-pitched shriek, such that I knew my enemies to be the hated rat-men that dwell in dark places below our civilised lands.
The battle lasted only moments. When it was over, four rat-men lay dead amongst the bodies of all my men, ten in all. Only the sergeant and I remained, grim and alert, reaching out with every sense for the tell-tale signs that a fresh attack was imminent. After a short while, the sergeant retrieved the powder keg that one of the men had carried. After checking that it was undamaged, he set it down again and spoke to me.
“Captain, the situation here is worse then we were told. Should we not set the fuse now and withdraw?” His voice was unsteady, like that of a man on the brink of surrendering to his terror.
“This is not the proper place sergeant. We must place the keg at the assigned point, and nowhere else.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but instead his eyes rolled upward and he keeled forward like a marionette whose strings are suddenly cut. As he fell, he revealed his killer crouched behind him – another of the rat-men, this one faster and better-armed than the rest. He came at me with two razor-edges blades that dripped death. I sidestepped, bringing my pistol up to fire, yet the creature was too fast. One blade sent the pistol skittering from my grip; the other cut into my leg.
The old fury descended on me then, as it had so many times before, and I fought like a mad man. My opponent was swift and skilful, but I was unmindful of defence and careless with my own life, and I think it was this that gave me the edge. These creatures we face are vermin, though they walk as men, and cowardice is as integral a part of their consciousness as hope is to humanity’s. He cut me a dozen times or more, but I needed to strike him only once. My sword swept through his neck with the strength of my true master, he whose name I despise even as I follow his desires. His body stood upright for a moment, his filthy blood fountaining from his severed arteries, before falling to the ground. It twitched once, then lay still. I stood, also, for only a moment before my legs failed me and I joined his corpse upon the ground.
I was dying. The cuts he had dealt were not deep, but they were many; worse yet, I could feel the spreading foulness of a poison within my blood. My sword lay on the ground a few feet away – had I been able to reach it I could not have lifted it again. This assassin was dead, but there were many more. If a mere handful of the creatures had been enough to slaughter a patrol of the finest soldiers, what horrors could they bring to the city above if they came with numbers?
When I was a young man, I stood on the university bridge in Nuln and looked out over the river. I saw a sailing vessel making its way downstream to Altdorf, and perhaps ultimately to Marienburg and the sea beyond it. Such freedom I saw represented by that ship, such adventure! I remember that I promised Isabelle we would one day leave the city on such a ship as that, go where the wind and the tide willed us. She laughed at my foolishness, though not harshly, and led me away from the bridge before the ship had moved out of sight. I looked back over my shoulder as we walked on, and I think at that moment I had known I would never fulfil that promise. Isabelle and I drifted apart after that. I entered the holy order of the Templars of Sigmar; she married into a wealthy family. I have not seen her since.
It was the action of the poison that awakened these memories in me. As soon as I became aware of that fact, I fought them back and returned to my current predicament. The rat-creatures were coming, though I could not hear them, and I could not hope to fight them off. There remained only one thing left for me to do. The powder keg lay a dozen paces from where I lay, resting against one of the columns that held up the roof above me. If I could detonate it, the passage would be blocked off as we had originally intended. I could not stir myself to crawl to the fuse, but I had my second pistol, yet unfired. I drew it out and cocked the mechanism. There was a good chance, though no certainty, that a bullet fired into the keg wound be sufficient to generate an explosion. I raised the weapon and aimed, and found that my hand shook and my eyes ran with tears.
The old catechisms I had learned at the chapter house came to me, beguiling sureties framed in awkward words. ‘Sigmar rewards the fallen with His eternal beneficence. His strength is the strength of the ages; His wrath the tearing down of nations.’ I had chanted them along with the other initiates, but I wonder if any of them had found the deeper meaning that was forever hidden to me. Instead I thought of Isabelle, and tried to recall what she had meant to me; but she had been a cipher then, and was now only a confused memory. Even so, it was with her name on my lips that I raised the pistol and fired. As the shot pierced the barrel and ignited its contents, I turned away my head; so that death would not look upon my face and know me, at last, for a coward.
copyright JRT 2007, all rights reserved