Daemon Gates Trilogy (19 page)

'You didn't find us, though,' Alaric prompted after a moment. 'Something stopped you?'

Yes' the tracker agreed, 'something.' His face tightened again. 'Or rather, someone.' He took a deep breath. 'I spot­ted another cultist, a little way away. He was hard not to notice: short, solidly built, and immensely hairy, with thick orange hair that bristled like a boar's, despite copious oil. The strangest things, though, were his hands. He was a brute in every aspect, more like an animal wearing clothes than a real man, but his hands... his hands were long, slender, and delicate, almost like a woman's, and utterly hairless, completely smooth.'

'And he had the same mark on his cheek,' Dietz offered, knowing he was right even before Lankdorf s nod.

'Yes. There was no mistaking it. He wasn't fighting, though. He was crouching by the temple, next to what had been the staircase we'd used, but had crumbled into a pile of rubble. He seemed to be talking. Then he reached for something, clasped it to him, rose to his feet, and started running, hunched over and clearly trying to avoid the bat­tle. I took off after him.'

The others were all leaning forward, eager to hear what happened next, even Wilcreitz. Lankdorf seemed to realise that, and showed a certain leaning towards the theatrical as he also leaned in, letting the firelight play across his face as his voice dropped to a whisper. This was far and away the most Dietz had ever seen the former bounty hunter speak at once, but he could tell Lankdorf was just as caught up in the tale as the rest of them.

'I chased him, but he was too quick for me. A pair of Levrellian's men blocked my path, and by the time I had cut down the one and tripped the other, the cultist was almost out of sight. I ran, heedless of my own safety, ignoring everything but the need to catch up with him.' He paused. 'That is probably why Fatandira's mounted warrior was able to run me down.'

Someone gasped. Dietz thought it was Alaric, though he wasn't sure. None of them could tear their gaze from the tracker's face.

'I heard his horse at the last second,' Lankdorf contin­ued, 'and managed to twist to one side. One hoof clipped me in the side, and another caught me in the temple, send­ing me sprawling. That probably saved my life. It knocked me out of the rider's reach, and before he could adjust his course several cultists crashed into him, tiying to swarm him and pull him from his steed. He fought them off and lost interest in me completely.' Lankdorf shrugged. 'It took me several minutes to catch my breath and get my head to stop spinning. Then I pulled myself back to my feet. I was near a hole in the wall, caused by the ballistae, no doubt, and pulled myself through it and back out of the town. Then I finally remembered what I had been doing before I was attacked, and I looked around, but the cultist was long gone.'

'And you couldn't track him?' That outburst came from Wilcreitz, surprisingly enough. 'You are a tracker, aren't you?'

Lankdorf shook his head, not at all insulted. 'I am,' he said proudly. 'My father taught me to read the tracks and trails of animals when we would gather herbs in the woods, and the army taught me to apply those skills to men as well as beasts, but there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people there. The ground was a mess. No one could track through that. I did look, of course, but there was nothing.' He gave them a tight grin. 'So I back­tracked. I returned to the rubble where I'd first spotted him, and found another cultist pinned half-beneath it.'

'That's who he was talking to?' Alaric asked.

'It was.' Lankdorf s smile turned nasty. 'I asked him a few questions, before ending his suffering. He was most forth­coming. He told me the other cultist was heading for a small town called Heinzkit, back here in the Empire.' He took a deep breath. 'So I followed him.'

Dietz desperately wanted to ask if Lankdorf had caught the man, and was sure the other listeners were equally

curious, but he waited, knowing that his friend would tell them in his own time.

'He had a decent head start,' Lankdorf explained quietly, 'and that kick to my side slowed me down some. I knew where he was going, though, and probably knew the Bor­der Princes better than he did, so I figured I could shorten his lead. I thought he was simply going to some bolthole he knew, perhaps some hideout the cult had established, and I would take him when he went to ground.'

The tracker paused again, and Dietz stopped to consider the enormity of his friend's determination. To have chased the man from one country into the next! But then he thought about how he would feel if someone had mur­dered his parents, or his sister, and he knew he would have done the same. No distance would be far enough for the killer to run from him.

'I caught up with him in Heinzkit,' Lankdorf was saying, 'and there he stopped. I thought at first the town might be a cultist stronghold, so I scouted it before going in, but it seemed placid enough. The people there were farmers and labourers, and I could not figure out why this man thought he could take shelter there, unless it was simply because the town was so small and unassuming that no one else would ever bother to visit it.' He straightened. 'Except that someone else had.'

'There was another visitor?' Alaric asked. 'Besides you, you mean?'

'Yes, besides me,' Lankdorf replied. 'I had not even shown my face in town, but I saw a man walking, and something about him struck me as strange, so I stayed hid­den and watched. He was tall, this man, and dressed oddly, in long robes over dark clothes. He wasn't fancy enough to be of the lade Sceptre, but I suspect he was also a follower of the Dark Powers.' Out of the corner of his eye, Dietz saw Kleiber's jaw tighten, and Wilcreitz's too.

What did he want, this stranger?' Kleiber asked softly.

The cultist' Lankdorf answered. 'Or rather, to meet with him. I watched from a small ledge that hung over the back of the town. The two men met, and the cultist I'd been fol­lowing handed something to the stranger, who gave him a heavy pouch in return.' He grimaced and glanced at Alaric and Dietz. 'I was too far away to see much detail, but that package was the size of a baby. It was as long as a man's forearm, and perhaps as wide or wider. He'd wrapped it in cloth, but either he'd done a poor job or its shape was irregular, for there seemed to be odd bumps all along it.'

'You think he delivered a child to this man?' Wilcreitz sounded horrified, and outraged, and Dietz decided per­haps there was some hope for the short witch hunter after all.

The tracker shook his head. 'No, he had not had time to steal any children from the village' he replied, 'and they would have noticed immediately and fought back. We had been travelling for weeks, and he'd been carrying the wrapped package the entire way. If the stranger only wanted a small corpse he could have found one far more easily.'

'What was it, then?' Alaric asked, but Dietz already had an idea.

'The gauntlet.' The others turned to look at him, and he continued. 'It was in that cavern when we fled' he reminded Alaric. That place collapsed soon after, but a cultist could have reached it, and brought it out safely, or at least far enough to hand it to someone else nearby.'

Lankdorf was nodding. 'I suspected the same' he admit­ted. 'It was of a size with that accursed piece, and the cultist held it with reverence, from what I saw. The pouch was heavy, as well, so it must have had great value, at least to the robed stranger.'

Alaric glanced at Dietz, and Dietz met his friend's gaze, seeing the shock and horror, and concern on his face. They had thought the gauntlet destroyed, or at least buried

forever. It was incredibly dangerous and if it had entered the Empire, matters were grave indeed.

'The same relic you spoke of?' Kleiber asked, rising to his feet. 'An object like that cannot be allowed to remain on the loose. It must be found and destroyed at once.' Wilcre­itz was right beside him.

Where is it now?' the shorter witch hunter demanded. 'What became of it, and of the man who purchased it?'

'I don't know,' Lankdorf answered, although he did not look happy with his reply. 'After they parted ways I... paid the cultist a visit. He was not expecting it, and I dispatched him easily. Then I searched for the other man's tracks and followed them.'

'Good man,' Wilcreitz said, clapping Lankdorf on the shoulder and then looking surprised at his own commen­dation.

'I tracked him to Altdorf,' the tracker continued, 'but there I lost him. There were simply too many people, too much movement, to keep one set of footprints in sight.' He sighed. 'I was debating what to do next, and whether there was any way to find him again or learn of his whereabouts, when I heard you were seeking a tracker.' He shrugged. 'Since I had no way of pursuing the man, and no other prospects, I applied.'

'And you have been invaluable,' Kleiber told him. 'Indeed, without your help we would never have come this far, or have discovered our friends here in time to rescue them.' He gestured at Alaric and Dietz. 'Surely Sigmar has guided you to us, and to them, and all of us together.' The witch hunter rubbed his hands together. 'He has brought us this news that we may be his instrument, and rid the world of this foul taint once and for all.'

Even Wilcreitz looked startled by this announcement. 'We have a mission already,' he reminded his superior care­fully. 'We must deal with these beastmen and the blackpowder weapons they have stolen.'

'I have not forgotten,' Kleiber assured his subordinate. 'Our mission here takes precedence, certainly, but once this matter is settled, we must return and notify our supe­riors of the gauntlet's existence, and of the mask as well. Surely they will dispatch us to ensure that their threat is ended and their taint cleansed from this world.'

Alaric nodded. 'I know I would welcome your order's help,' he told Kleiber, turning towards Wilcreitz to make sure the second witch hunter realised he was included in the statement. 'It seems our missions already overlap, so perhaps we can aid you with the beastmen and discover the mask's whereabouts at the same time.'

'Then we can all seek out the gauntlet,' Lankdorf sug­gested. 'I would recognise that man if I saw him again, and perhaps other witch hunters know of him. Once I find him, I can track him, and we can take back the gauntlet by force and destroy it.' His face was flushed as he spoke, and Dietz knew their friend was also remembering the events from the cavern temple. They had seen the gauntlet's power, and had barely survived.

'We will,' Kleiber assured him. 'I will contact my superi­ors once we return to Altdorf, and we will put all available force towards discovering the fiend's whereabouts, and putting a stop to whatever foul plans he has devised for that cursed relic.'

'Not tonight,' Alaric suggested with a slight smile, rising to his feet. 'It is late, and I know I am tired. I can only assume the rest of you are as well.'

Wilcreitz nodded. 'Yes, we should rest,' he agreed. 'We must return to pursuing the beastmen in the morning, and it would be best not to confront them while we are fatigued.'

The others agreed, and began making their sleeping preparations. Dietz found he had Lankdorf on one side and Alaric on the other, which certainly seemed famil­iar.

'I feel as if I were back in the Border Princes' Lankdorf said as he stretched out on his bedroll, staring up at the sky, 'although the stars have shifted, of course.'

'I'm glad we found you' Dietz agreed, 'or you found us... or whatever.'

'As am I.' the tracker replied. 'Your witch hunter friend may be right; perhaps Sigmar did bring us all together for a reason.'

Dietz nodded, laying down and closing his eyes. I hope it was Sigmar, he thought as he started drifting off to sleep, and not someone else.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Alaric woke early
enough the next morning, for him, but even so he soon discovered he was one of the last to rise. Dietz, Lankdorf, and several of the others were sitting around the fire and finishing off a quick breakfast when he tossed aside his blanket and rose, stretching.

'Still the late riser, eh?' Lankdorf noted, the half-smile on his face taking the sting out of his comment.

'I see no reason to rush toward the day, when it will still be waiting when I finally reach it,' Alaric countered, step­ping over to the fire and accepting a cup of tea and a hard biscuit from Dietz. Lankdorf snorted and introduced him to the three mercenaries still beside him, Hans, Felix, and Jarl, who looked similar enough to be brothers. Not that the resemblance meant much - Alaric had noticed over the past two years that mercenaries tended to fall into a hand­ful of types, like big and bulky or tall and narrow, and most had a uniformly dusty and worn look to them. The three nodded but didn't say anything, too busy consuming

their own food. They were up and moving toward their fel­lows - Alaric estimated Kleiber had perhaps thirty men in all - before they'd swallowed the last bites, leaving Alaric and his two friends behind without a word.

'Don't mind them,' Lankdorf said after the trio had left. 'They're not big on casual conversation, that's all.'

'Hardly a problem,' Alaric assured him. He remembered the trek he and Dietz had made in search of the Chaos tainted statues, the same quest that had introduced them to Kleiber. The elector count of Middenheim had sent a troop of men with them, professional soldiers, and they had treated him as if he were in command. It had been unsettling at first, but he'd grown used to it after a few weeks, and to being surrounded by quiet, competent fight­ers who didn't care to sit and talk.

'Time to strike camp,' Wilcreitz told them as he approached. Alaric saw at once that the stubby witch hunter was one of those men who managed to always look rumpled no matter what. His uniform was clean enough, but it still looked as if he'd slept in it, which perhaps he had. Kleiber, on the other hand, always looked tidy. He was walking a few steps behind his subordinate, and the difference was that of a careless man to one fastidious by nature.

Alaric had a brief flash, similar to the visions that had been plaguing him of late, but with one significant differ­ence. The land around him was suddenly awash with strangeness: severed limbs and shattered skulls, and pud­dles of what might be blood or other bodily fluids adorning the ground; a strange film, coating the rocks and dirt, like filth solidified or grease left to cool; clouds roil­ing overhead, forming lurid images before breaking apart. The mercenaries Alaric saw scattered around the camp became larger and more brutish, revealing their inner lust for violence. Lankdorf had tendrils of mist curling around him, as did Dietz. Alaric suspected they were vestiges of