Thrashing against the rough hands that bore him, Kreyssig was carried over to the pyre, dumped with all the ceremony of a sack of rubbish next to the trussed figure of the baroness. Auernheimer gestured with his flanged mace again, motioning several of his mob towards the fire blazing away in the hearth. The witch-taker’s eyes reflected the flames, shining with the chilling fanaticism of the true zealot. He cocked his head to one side, his brow knitting as a sudden thought occurred to him. Swinging his mace around, he waved a few of his peasant followers back into the kitchen. ‘Remove the last of the witch’s minions,’ he commanded. ‘All must be consumed in the holy flame.’
Kreyssig watched the men shuffle away, dread pounding in his heart. Once they recovered the body, added it to the base of the pile, the witch-taker would order the pyre put to the torch. He rolled his eyes, managing to meet the panicked gaze of the baroness. For all her vaunted mastery of charms and enchantments, her magic hadn’t preserved her against her enemies. She was trussed like a Sigmarsfest goose and just as helpless. There was no help to be had from that quarter, and he cursed himself for thinking there could be. His relations with the witch were the root of his destruction, not the source of deliverance. He had come here in secret, even his Kaiserjaeger didn’t know his destination. There was no prospect of rescue, no one to deliver him.
Only a miracle would prevent the Protector of the Empire from the mob justice of the rabble.
Sometimes, however, miracles did manifest. It was a dark miracle that delivered Adolf Kreyssig from his doom.
Soon after the peasants Auernheimer had sent to retrieve the steward withdrew into the kitchen, there arose chilling screams. The men tried to flee up the steps and back into the dining hall, but not one of them managed the attempt. They were struck down from behind, pierced by jagged spears and slashed by rusted swords. The mangled peasants pitched and fell, their shrieking bodies dragged back into the darkness of the kitchen.
A moment of horrified silence followed, a silence that was broken by an explosion of inhuman chitters and growls. From the blackness, a grotesque swarm of verminous shapes flooded into the dining hall. The muck of sewer and cellar clung to the ragged strips of cloth they wore and the mangy brown fur that covered their lean, hungry bodies. Their hand-like paws clutched a motley confusion of swords and axes, spears and knives. Long scaly tails whipped behind them as they charged, and froth bubbled from the fangs of their rat-like heads.
The mob stood stricken with a paralysis of superstitious terror as the bestial swarm descended upon them. Only Auernheimer was unfazed, unperturbed in his stalwart zealotry. Swinging his mace overhead, snatching a brand from the nearest of his followers, the witch-taker roared his defiance of the monstrous horde. ‘Daemons of the witch! Rejoice, brethren, in this test of our sacred conviction!’ He added deeds to words, bringing his mace smashing down into the snout of the first ratman to draw near him. The monster squeaked in agony, collapsing in a shivering mess at his feet.
The witch-taker’s rabble rallied, charging at the oncoming monsters, meeting them at the middle of the hall. Swords clashed, knives slashed and screams human and inhuman echoed through the house. Some of the combatants broke away, fleeing down passages, hotly pursued by vengeful foes. In the space of only a few heartbeats, a dozen bodies littered the floor.
Auernheimer seared the eyes of another ratman, blinding it before bashing its skull with his mace. The witch-taker looked beyond his collapsing foe, watching with grim fatalism as more of the monstrous vermin swarmed up from the kitchen. ‘Ernst! Andreas!’ he shouted. ‘Light the pyre! These daemons shall not save their mistress!’
The peasants Auernheimer called out to broke away from their enemies. Alone among his rabble, these two had been soldiers, Dienstleute that had survived the massacre of Engel’s Bread Marchers. They had the skill at arms and the martial discipline to carry out the witch-taker’s command. What they didn’t have was the opportunity.
Ernst and Andreas snatched glowing brands from the hearth, but as the men rushed towards the pyre, their destruction climbed the kitchen steps. A tall, wizened ratman dressed in black robes, its visage a confusion of scars and metal, tubes and wires dangling from its face and jaw. The monster’s eyes were enormous rubies that bulged from its sockets. The fangs in its mouth were metal, and blue sparks crackled from them as the strange creature snarled at its minions.
The robed ratman raised one of its withered paws, displaying a brilliant green jewel embedded in its palm. The creature pointed the jewel in the direction of Ernst and Andreas. More sparks crackled about its fangs as it squeaked an incantation.
A bolt of coruscating energy burst from the ratman’s jewel, searing a path through the hall. Vermin and human alike were caught in the path of that beam, burning fur, charring skin and boiling blood. The robed ratman cared not for these incidental casualties, and upon Ernst and Andreas it directed the full malignity of its magic.
The two Dienstleute weren’t burned, weren’t charred or singed. Their bodies seemed to simply evaporate within that beam of unholy power. In that searing flash, their chests turned to vapour, leaving the extremities to crash to the floor. The brands they carried fell from dead fingers to smoulder on the bloody rugs.
The obscene sorcery shattered the fragile courage of Auernheimer’s mob, their zealotry unequal to this display of magic. The ratmen fell upon the terrified peasants, dragging them down and butchering them where they fell.
Only the witch-taker himself maintained some measure of composure. Smashing down three ratmen as they lunged at him, Auernheimer turned and threw himself straight into the stained-glass window that fronted the hall and offered a prospect of the street outside. The fanatic’s plunge brought him through the window in a shower of shattered glass and fractured lead. For an instant, he lay crumpled in the street, but then he was on his feet and fleeing down the lane.
Some of the ratmen rushed to the broken window, eager to cut down their wounded prey, but a sharp bark from their robed leader brought them slinking away from the window.
Kreyssig could only marvel at this incredible escape. He had berated these mutants for keeping tabs on him, but now he was almost prepared to forgive them their audacity. Almost, for his relief was mitigated by a new, fearful appreciation for the abilities of his verminous agents. The display of magic executed by their leader was more intimidating than anything he had seen from Baroness von den Linden or even old Fleischauer, the Emperor’s pet warlock.
Some of the mutants began to turn away from their butchery of the zealots. With hungry squeaks, they approached the pyre, dragging away the bodies of dead servants. One of the ratmen scrambled nimbly up the pile and crouched over Kreyssig. Deftly, the creature brought its knife slashing across the ropes binding him.
‘Kreyssig-man free-safe!’ the vermin squeaked, its muzzle flecked with blood from some peasant it had killed.
Painfully, Kreyssig reached one of his numbed arms to his mouth and removed the gag. In his joy at being rescued, he was almost prepared to feel gratitude to these ghastly mutants. They had proven themselves far more capable than he had imagined.
Then, he noticed that the ratmen weren’t freeing any of the servants. The creatures were leaving them bound as they carried them down from the pyre. Even Kreyssig’s calloused heart was moved to pity when he beheld the raw horror in their eyes as the ratmen bore them off into the darkness of the kitchen. The partially devoured bodies of Auernheimer’s men left little doubt as to their eventual fate.