[Warhammer] - The Wine of Dreams

by Brian Craig - (ebook by Undead)

“They are pawns in the game,” Vaedecker told him. “As are you and I—but even pawns are sometimes granted an insight into the greater reality that underlies the surface of the world we know. You and I have been granted an insight of sorts today, although I don’t know whether we should count ourselves lucky. We have seen a kind of garden, tended by men on behalf of something far more powerful and far more playful.”

  “Playful?” Reinmar questioned. “You think that a nightmare like that might only be play?”

  Vaedecker’s half-closed eyelids widened for a moment. “Do you take encouragement from a word like that?” he said. You should not. Quite the reverse, in fact. It might not matter so much to a world like ours that there are evil gods, no matter how powerful they might be, were they not playful as well.

  “I have heard the table talk of fat shopkeepers and petty aristocrats, my friend. If there are evil gods, they say, who have the power to snuff out our lives with a breath, why do they not do so? If they can unleash daemons upon the world, why do they not send forth irresistible armies of them? If they have powerful sorcerers at their beck and call, why are such magicians not forever knocking on our doors and demanding tribute? If they delight in turning men into beasts and monsters, how is it that there are men in the world at all, let alone men who eat and drink as well as we do, and enjoy such respect from our servants and our neighbours?

  “The real tragedy, my newly-hatched hero, is not that the evil gods are powerful but that they are playful. I do not know whether they hate us or love us, or which of those possibilities ought to be reckoned the worse, but I do know that they like to tease us and tantalise us and test us and terrify us. Yes, they can send daemons into the world, but they do so with exceeding discretion. Yes, they delight in turning men into beasts and monsters, but they delight even more in confusion. Yes, they have powerful sorcerers at their beck and call, but they delight in letting men of that kind hope and believe, absurdly, that they are the masters, and gods and daemons their servants. They are playful, and that is the most horrible thing about them, for all the terror we experience and all the blood we shed is but play to them.

  “I think you saw today exactly how playful the evil gods can be, even if you did not understand the significance of what you saw. If you think we have escaped the god who made that garden, think again. You might be more securely in his playful grip now than you would have been had you drunk your fill, and more, of the wine the monks tried to sell you.”

  “You did not seem to think so while we were climbing that stair,” Reinmar answered him. “You seemed to think that escape was possible then, and I did not see you pause before seizing the opportunity.”

  “I have been in the game for a lifetime,” Vaedecker said, wearily. “I know nothing else—and I know, too, that once a man has taken arms against the dark gods he had better do everything he can to stay in the game and win what victories he can, else he will suffer more terribly than he can imagine. I am trying to warn you that you will not always find the fight as easy as it was today. All you have really accomplished is to raise the stakes for conflicts yet to come.”

  “Now you sound like Brother Noel,” Reinmar retorted. “I would never have taken you for one of those profoundly solemn men who think that the best thing of all is not to be born, and after that to die young!”

  “I’m not,” Vaedecker said. “I’m a pawn who understands what it means to be a pawn, a fighting man who knows how desperate a real fight is. So far, Master Wieland, you have killed a few old men armed with garden tools—but you’ll find that you cannot stop at that. Even if you had not insisted on bringing the girl away, the powers ranged against us would never let you stop at that. The real fight is yet to come, and when it comes to you, you’ll have to watch out for the enemy within and the enemy behind as well as the enemy before you.”

  Reinmar realised that the soldier was indeed trying to give him the best advice he could, not to frighten him but to prepare him. But he realised, too, that the kind of fight the soldier was anticipating was not the only one he had to look forward to. There would be a conflict of a far more intimate kind awaiting him at home, when his father would want an account of everything that he had brought back with him, and every transaction he had made with suppliers of every kind. That was, for the moment, the prospect that filled him with greater trepidation, for it seemed far more vexatious than any business that could be conducted with a bloodstained sword.

  “If they will not have us in Eilhart,” he murmured in the ear of the sleeping gypsy, far too softly to be heard by anyone else, “then we shall try our luck in Marienburg.”

  He was astonished when Ulick immediately spoke out, as if in reply, but when he heard what was said he realised that the boy had been listening as carefully as he to everything that Matthias Vaedecker had said.

  “You should not have come here, sir,” the gypsy boy said to the soldier. “You should not have followed my sister when she answered the call. This may be a game to you, but it is life and death to us. You should not have interfered.”

  “If we had not interfered,” the sergeant replied, “you and she might be lying dead in the shadow of a barn, beaten to death by louts. If we had not continued to interfere, your throats might have been torn out by wolf-men. And if we had not insisted on interfering till the very end, your sister’s guts would be incubating a monstrous plant while her flesh turned slowly to stone. A little gratitude would not come amiss.”

  “You don’t understand,” the boy said, although he spoke uneasily. “Our kind is not your kind.”

  Your father thinks well enough of my kind to entrust you to my care,” the soldier pointed out. “Whatever he thought before of calls and choosings, he has a different opinion now.”

  “But you have said yourself that it is not finished,” Ulick countered. “Because of what you’ve done, there will be a terrible fight. You’ve brought a curse upon our heads.”

  “No,” Reinmar said. “That isn’t so. What I did, I did in order to lift a curse—and if I must fight again to save us, I shall do it. And again, and again, and again. I have found something worth fighting for.”

  Mercifully, Vaedecker did not challenge him as to whether he had indeed lifted any curse, or who might be included in the word “us’. Instead, the sergeant let his heavy eyelids descend all the way. Even though the cart was rattling more than it usually did as it raced down a slope and the rain beat relentlessly upon the cloth that covered his shoulders, the soldier let his head fall forward upon his knees.

  Reinmar knew that the sergeant could not possibly be any more tired than he was himself, but his own thoughts were too confused and restless to allow him even to contemplate sleep—so he sat where he was, keeping very still for Marcilla’s sake, and tried with all his might to think of the future, and all the possibilities it held. When his right hand began to tremble, he told himself that it was only the chill of the rain, but he knew that it was a lie. He did not feel cold at all.

  So what if I have killed a man, he said to himself? And if there were three, how is that any worse than if there were only one? Would they not have killed me, had I paused to think of mercy, however weak and badly armed they were?

  But the hand continued to tremble, and would not stop no matter how he hugged it to his breast.

  It was a long way home, and it seemed much longer. He fretted in this manner through every tedious inch of it—but in the end, he did come safely into sight of the lights of Eilhart. Reinmar knew that he would find his father worried and anxious, and not at all prepared to welcome a gypsy as his son’s beloved, and he knew that the battle of wills that lay ahead of him at home would be long and hard—but that was a battle he knew how to fight. As for the others of which Vaedecker had warned him, there was nothing he could do but wait until they began, and learn to fight them as he went along, as best he could.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It had been dark for an hour when the cart finally rolled to a halt outside Gottfrie
d Wieland’s shop. The horses should have been rested long before, but Godrich had kept them up to their work, on the assumption that they would have plenty of time to recover from their extraordinary exertions. Their load had been lightened for the last few miles because Reinmar and Vaedecker had walked with Sigurd. Vaedecker had not ridden in the cart since sleeping for thirteen hours after their escape from the valley, having recovered his strength easily enough.

  Reinmar had not been so fortunate; although his exertions had taken a far greater toll of his limited strength he had hardly been able to sleep for more than an hour at a time during the days and nights following his adventure in the underworld, waking as soon as uncomfortable dreams began to disturb him—and it seemed that he had lost the knack of finding any kind of dream that was other than profoundly uncomfortable. Marcilla had slept far longer, far more deeply—and, if appearances could be trusted, far better—but she seemed to be in a perpetual daze whenever she awoke.

  They had not been attacked while they were on the road, either by men or by monsters—but sometimes, when they looked behind them as they rested, they had seen shadowy figures lurking in the woods or on the ridges of the hills. As if to combat this ominous sign, however, the further they descended from the hills the more benign the weather had become. The kindness of the daylight and the increasing familiarity of the terrain had brought a little peace of mind to all of the travellers.

  Matthias Vaedecker had taken the first opportunity to wash the clotted blood and other stains from the clothes he had worn when he entered the valley, and Reinmar had followed his example, but neither of them put those clothes on again when their replacements became soiled. Neither of them was able to think of the clothes they had worn in the underworld as clean, no matter how thoroughly they were scrubbed.

  Gottfried Wieland was waiting in the street to welcome the cart, having received advance notice of its approach from a watchman. He had three labourers ready to convey its cargo to the cellar, and the waiting crowd was swelled to more than twice that number by other anxious faces. Machar von Spurzheim was with them, with two attendant men-at-arms. Godrich’s wife and son were also there, and so was Marguerite. The reactions of these individuals were as varied as might be expected, even though none of them could have had any advance indication of what had befallen the members of the expedition.

  While Godrich took Gottfried aside to whisper a report, and Vaedecker did likewise with the witch hunter, Reinmar found himself face-to-face with Marguerite, who seemed very enthusiastic to hear a full account of his adventure. He, for his own part, was anxious to know what had happened in the town while he had been away.

  “We brought these two gypsies away from a village where they were attacked by farmhands,” Reinmar said, allowing Ulick to take responsibility for putting a protective arm around Marcilla’s shoulder. “Then we were attacked in our turn. But as you see, we are all alive and unhurt. Had the soldier not been with us it might have been different, but he and Sigurd make a fine team. What news is there of my great-uncle?”

  “He is still in prison,” Marguerite told him. “More soldiers have been arriving in the town every day—and others who certainly are not soldiers, though they may be fighting men of some sort. Three warehouses by the quays have been converted into barracks, and there are officers billeted in every inn and lodging-house. There are men sleeping in stables and storerooms, and their quartermasters are acquiring provisions on a massive scale, although they seem very reluctant to pay a proper price. The market has become a battleground. Some of the townsfolk are sealing their houses and moving their entire households downriver; others are sending their wives and children away but keeping their menservants at home, fearful that their houses might otherwise be requisitioned or looted. No one knows when or whether the soldiers intend to move on again, or where they will go if they do. What is happening, Reinmar? Is there really an army of monsters gathering in the hills?”

  Reinmar was saved the trouble of improvising an answer to this question by the intervention of his father, who hauled him away in a peremptory fashion. Gottfried told Marguerite to go home, without bothering to be overly polite. She made not the slightest move to obey, and followed them into the shop so that she could hear what Gottfried had to say, and what responses Reinmar might make.

  “Am I expected to find a room for these gypsies?” Gottfried demanded.

  “We have plenty of rooms, father,” Reinmar said, obstinately. “We gave them protection, and we have good reason to believe that they still need it.”

  “Reason enough to leave the wagon and go haring off into the wilderness? Reason enough to leave Godrich alone when he was hurt and the cart broken? Reason enough, even though you had been attacked?”

  The effect of these questions was to stimulate an anger that Reinmar had long held in reserve, and his replies would undoubtedly have caused more trouble. He had no time to make them, though, because Marguerite was rudely thrust aside for a second time as Machar von Spurzheim strode into the shop.

  “Leave the boy be,” the witch hunter instructed, ignoring the amazement which took immediate possession of Gottfried Wieland’s face. “He has been brave as well as reckless, so my sergeant says, and his bravery may have won considerable gains for our cause. You can welcome him home in your own fashion later—for now, I have need of him and he must come with me.”

  Gottfried opened his mouth to protest, and the words nearly escaped before he remembered who he was talking to, and how delicate his dealings with the witch hunter had been. Had his face been more brightly lit it would probably have exhibited his ire very clearly, but the lamp happened to be placed in such a way that he was in shadow—not that von Spurzheim was watching, for he had already reached out a hand to take Reinmar by the arm, and was already drawing him towards the door.

  “Make the girl comfortable, I beg of you,” was all that Reinmar had time to say to his father before he was hustled out into the street again. “You must keep her safe.”

  “Do as the boy says,” von Spurzheim added, as he paused briefly in the doorway, having positioned himself squarely between father and son. “The boy and girl might be vital to our enterprise. It is in everyone’s interest that you keep them safe.”

  Reinmar could not see how his father reacted to this instruction, but he could imagine it well enough. Given that Gottfried was the son of one man suspected of involvement in sorcery and the nephew of another, he could hardly afford to offend a witch hunter, but necessity would not make the indignity any easier to bear.

  While von Spurzheim marched Reinmar through the streets Matthias Vaedecker and the other men-at-arms fell into step behind them, and Reinmar was uncomfortably aware that it would seem to any onlookers that he had been arrested—all the more so because they were not moving in the direction of the burgomaster’s house, where von Spurzheim had established himself as a guest, but towards the town jail, where Albrecht Wieland was still being held under guard. Reinmar was also uncomfortably aware of the fact that if von Spurzheim demanded the privilege of searching him, the presence of the phial in his pouch might indeed give cause for his arrest and incarceration.

  Although the streets were by no means crowded once they had moved away from Gottfried Wieland’s shop, Reinmar did not doubt that there were eyes aplenty following his course. Every house that had a curtained window, whether glazed or not, had the curtain in question moved slightly to one side, so that the apprehensive dwellers within might keep track as best they could of the trouble that had visited their town.

  “Don’t be afraid, lad,” was all that von Spurzheim said to him while they strode through the streets. “Sergeant Vaedecker has told me what you did, and I’m exceedingly grateful to you, no matter that your motives might not have been as pure as I could have wished.”

  There was no reasonable reply that Reinmar could make to this, so he contented himself with silence, until they reached the blockhouse where the town constables discharged their official duties,
and where felons were kept until the assizes at which they were tried. Once they were inside, von Spurzheim wasted no time in taking Reinmar to the windowless room in which Albrecht Wieland was confined.

  Reinmar was glad to see that his great-uncle did not seem to have been badly maltreated; the old man had no obvious injuries and he did not look as if he had been starved. The pallet on which he had been sleeping was crude but it provided reasonable relief from the hardness of the stone floor and the stink from the iron bucket in the corner was not too awful to bear. Albrecht was obviously startled to see Reinmar in the company of Machar von Spurzheim, but he appeared to be completely in control of his faculties and his only reaction, once the initial astonishment had faded, was to knit his brows in concentration. Matthias Vaedecker closed the door of the cell behind him, leaving the other two men-at-arms outside.

  “Your grandfather’s brother has been helping us, Reinmar,” von Spurzheim said, when Vaedecker had come to stand beside him. “His memory is a trifle vague when it comes to names and places, but he usually remembers his old friends once we have laid their names before him. There is a community of scholars to whom he once belonged, in whose activities we have long been interested—but there is little left of it now. Unfortunately, he does not know what has become of his son, Wirnt, or his former housekeeper. His house has been watched night and day, of course—as has your own, merely as a precaution—but no visitors had arrived when the sentries were last changed. It’s possible that Wirnt is in Holthusen, where a few of the so-called scholars still remain, but he may have gone southwards, towards the place which you recently had occasion to visit. I hope that you will tell your great-uncle all about your adventure, so that he might have a clearer idea of the evil nature of the business in which he has involved himself.”

  The last words were obviously intended to elicit a reaction from Albrecht, but Albrecht was ready for some such move and his expression hardly changed.