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It is after dark and the earth smells of wetness, evening dew and wood smoke wafting up from the boarded windows.
Two hours ago, we arrived from our last clandestine mission. An hour ago we ate, and now it is past midnight and still exceptionally bright. Morrslieb’s sickly glow flits around the corners of the windows’ arches, and they are transformed by it, taking on a second life in the sway of skewed shadows and rustling grass -- it is a life of impermanence and a twisted, fey wildness whence the stone seems to melt into a chaotic tide. Outside. Within the walls, the deceptive shine is warded off by the flicker of tallow candles, golden, not green.
I get to work while the specimens are fresh, their bodies cold, but still malleable -- before rigor mortis sets in and the muscles become immovable husks, before the blood pools on the bottom like one large bruise, congeals and blackens. A clan rat, then a skavenslave. The grey-furred carrion of the first lies on the examination table with the same expression of animosity it wore when it died; I take the knife to hand, strip away the rags, then exchange the blade for a sharpened piece of charcoal as I set about capturing the creature’s anatomy on a yellowed page. Rodent incisors, though the rest of the dentition suggests an omnivorous diet. Thin and mobile limbs; the joints are very flexible. This I already know. I know, too, that Skaven are of diminutive stature in comparison with men, but possessed of a restless agility that allows them to squeeze through the slightest crevice and dart away from danger, for they are also excessively cowardly (although that is hardly a feature of their anatomy), that their eyes are well accustomed to twilight and their bodies, covered in a motley skin of bald patches and oily fur, are resilient to pestilence like a plague itself. More often than not, in the stomach lie the teeth and bones of sapient creatures as well as their own kin. The only strange part of this entire examination is to see the cadaver in perfect stillness, without twitching and spiteful chittering -- it lies there, with its limbs inert and unseeing eyes. Grey. Dirty. Supine and as though waxen in the early stages of decay, it poses no danger, but in its motionless state I realise I should not recognize this thing for its true nature if I hadn’t killed it myself.
I feel no pity for the wicked and wretched enemy, for the Heretic and the Foe. The cold sensation that trickles down my spine is merely an unsettled curiosity that must have something to do with Morrslieb’s light worming its way onto the windowsills.
This here is an unempirical carcass. It exists -- it lies upon my table, its visage is immortalised on no less than four pages of my sketchbook -- and a body should be the clearest proof conceivable in the eyes of even the most sceptical Templar. Nothing about it is false, from the sharp teeth to the dirty claws. It breathed and ran, it wore some ruddy rags, I killed it with a lunge that severed the carotid and it died very quickly of exsanguination. But I could take this very corpse to any Witch-hunter General and I would be denied belief in spite of all the carrion flesh upon the weight of the world, I would be rebutted without hesitation. Even if there were twenty or twenty hundred of them, Skaven would not exist. Everyone knows that.
There have been attempts to convince me of this undeniable truth even after one of them took my eye, and they continued regardless of all accounts to the contrary I collect, transcribe and present; all are swept under the rug with an arrogant belligerence that scarcely belongs to men sworn to protect the Empire. Yet I know the truth and I continue to make these studies, no longer for my own advancement -- I am intimately familiar with the weak points of a Skaven body, it doesn’t necessitate these continued examinations and sleepless nights -- but with the faith that they will turn the tide of unbelievers and thus the one of our doom as well.
"Skaven? Nonsense! Skaven don’t exist. A race of overgrown ratmen living underneath our feet for generations in a mock empire of their own, a twisted imitation of the honest and honourable imperial citizen -- Victor, you suffered a head wound, and severe exsanguination beside. Delirium is no reason for shame.” Engel tries to assume a grimace that, to him, no doubt signifies the height of pious piety and distinguished sympathies, but on his burn-scarred face this whole theatre looks grotesque and stiff -- at this moment, I have a hard time considering this sanctimonious thespian a colleague of mine. I don’t accuse him of this only because I am too exhausted.
My faith is without doubt and exception and my life belongs wholy to the Order, yet I am accused of delusions, fed the belief of my own ineptitude, ridiculed and threatened. I don’t need two eyes to see the farce for what it is. And no one listens -- I demand no promotions, only trust, for this evil is terrible and vast and too hungry for a single Witch-hunter to stem -- at most I receive side-eyed glances or restrained scenes of pity that quickly turn to words of unsolicited advice telling me to stop pestering men of authority with ratmen if I don’t want to be stripped of status and burned on the stake. Righteous fury, for once, does not aid me. Then I discover that neither does concrete evidence.
Now, I take up the scalpel instead. It’s light. The scabby hide is thick and doesn’t give easily to disruptions, but I have on my side practice and confident hands; in two diagonals leading from the shoulders to the bottom of the sternum I expose the pectoral muscles, then continue down the navel to the pelvis to access the abdominal cavity. What tough muscle covers the stomach is sinewy and stringy like a piece of jerky -- and reeks something terrible the more one cuts into it -- but I give myself no pause, singular in purpose and intent.
Everything is recorded, of course. The musculature. The deformation of the ribs from a past injury. Afterwards, as I make an incision in the peritoneum and flip back a couple of well-thumbed pages, I can clearly see the difference between the slivers of yellow fat that line the viscera of the clanrat and its lack in the thin bodies of skavenslaves which had lied on this same table in the past weeks -- something I must mention in my observations. Sigmar wills, it will be of use in the future.
I know the procedure perfectly, neither the stench nor the image of death disconcerts me, I do not fear the green moon with churlish superstition, and yet I am not calm. It’s the absurdity of dissecting a carcass that should not exist which stays and stills me, and only faith is bastion enough to ward against futility; against despair.
By all accounts, I am an unflinching man. Why, then, do accusations of lunacy sway me? This hatred, is it a self-absorbed obsession, opium to nurse a wounded pride, to make it feel less like losing?
“...that’s what they say about them in Tilea. And that it was a magician, denied his payment, who cursed the people of that ancient city to either turn into giant murderous rats -- or be devoured by them. Talk about disproportionate punishment.” Sienna scoffs; the legend of the bell, the one that tolls for thirteen times, seems improbable even to a wizard. Yet there’s speculation in her stare that speaks of more than ridicule and in her hair, sparks burn brighter than before.
I cannot speak of excitement or an inclination to believe it, but I listen. Then, I am quiet.
For once, I don’t think to question the incentive that made her confide it in me -- I did not ask, the story seemingly welled out of semi-belligerent small talk in the courtyard after she had joined me in target practice. It’s often like that, as though she was warming up to the idea of a jailor. Crossbow lowered, I turn to look at her with my good eye, but I see no traces of a smirk. While I pondered upon the reasons for her sudden talkativeness, she retrieved her staff and is now once again embroiled in striking effigies of straw with bolts of fire.
I don’t hate the witch. Make no mistake, I am not fond of her -- I could never become fond of a wizard, magic is always fouled with at least a wisp of taint -- but I do not detest her for her nature alone, as perhaps wading through an ocean of heretical carrion warms you up to the strangest individuals. She is still a threat, only not in the way I initially suspected; her own fire blinds her with a mad obsession that devours the sanity of man as magic is wont to, encroaching upon her with mincing steps and candlewick flames but very steadily, so enticing she fails to notice that her mind is the very timber it feeds on. If she was any less caustic, and not a witch to boot, it would have been something to pity.
My fingers seem to quiver upon diving into the abdominal cavity; I steel my will, tighten my grasp and slice into the mesentery in order to separate the small intestine -- it slithers through my grasp as though this was its last attempt at an escape -- then swiftly, mechanically follow up with the large intestine, the still half-full stomach, the kidneys, the bloated liver. Of course, the viscera is worm-ridden all throughout (the white ribbons of worms aren’t even dead yet), and I quickly wash my hands in the basin prepared beside. The cold water brings me back to the present in an instant.
Nothing about the digestive system is particularly odd, so I move on to cut the cartilage of the ribs that anchors them to the sternum like the arches of a cathedral. Sawing through the ribcage is nothing like a clean cut -- this is laborious, the skeleton resists my attempts to wrench through it and the bone saw’s teeth vibrate as they eat into it. While doing my research, I lose track of time and only realise that more than an hour has already passed when I notice my fingers are no longer becoming awash in blood as I peel the left lung aside to expose the heart.
This, I separate from its scarlet cradle. It’s undamaged. About the size of a fist, it rests in my hand, for the moment without the burden of permanence imposed on it by a charcoal sketch made in its image; it’s not much smaller than a human heart would be. There are the same veins, the muscle wreathed in coronary arteries acts and looks much alike. To the untrained eye, it would be indistinguishable.
That is why I hesitate to draw it, but instead deposit it in a bowl on the desk and turn my back to its deceptions -- it is heresy, it is godless and warped, only more proof that the foe we face is deserving of no quarter when its wretched form makes a mockery of imitating ours! But rats should not possess molars reminiscent of human ones, nor opposable thumbs whose joints and fascia mimic those of men. If I try to reaffirm that, the dissections become pointless; I will lie. To admit that the mangy hide of a ratman has anything in common with the civilised man, however, will only condemn me in the eyes of the Order.
Bowed over the table, I stare the dead thing in the eye. All the hatred, indignant fury and frustration seem to well out from within me as though thawing from my composed facade and becoming torrents, open to the storm that rages beyond our constructions of order and readily presented answers to every question of existence, even those dictated by Sigmar himself. I realise it all of a sudden, in excess of my conviction and efforts, in spite of them -- Sigmar forgive me my resentment, but the fools garlanded with authority at present will not believe words and records, and they will not believe a corpse. The compendium of notes gathered across multiple dissections of skaven cadavers combined with my body of knowledge in purging them was supposed to be the cornerstone upon which I would convince the Order of the truth, and in it are the minute details of the Skaven’s bodies; their hovels and tunnels under the Empire’s holds; their weapons, their armies and ranks; their foul machinery and sickening fleshcraft; everything is there and it isn’t enough. All the conclusions I made are damning.
I'm fuming -- I toss the scalpel away and it skids across the desk, then disappears among my notes -- I can't present this to the Witch Hunter General under any circumstances, not under the threat of ridicule, but under one of excommunication and execution!
But perhaps that is precisely why I have to. The devout man is led by righteousness; where blind eyes, men’s eyes, cannot see, Sigmar guides me. The first tenet of faith is duty and the last is perseverance. Perseverance is my duty.