[Warhammer] - The Wine of Dreams

by Brian Craig - (ebook by Undead)

  Albrecht shook his head slowly and sighed. “Such is the nature of the wine of dreams,” he said. “Its promises always lead to nightmares in the end. Go back, Reinmar, as fast as you can, and make what preparations you can for the battle. It will be fierce, I think. Von Spurzheim and the Reiksguard will have to draw on every last vestige of their might and endurance.”

  Reinmar would not have obeyed the injunction to leave immediately had his ears not caught the sound of hoofbeats, but he knew that he did not want to be standing in Albrecht’s house, watching the old man clutch a flask of the wine of dreams, when soldiers burst in, seeking revenge for the wounding of their comrade.

  “Bar the door behind me,” he said, and immediately went out to meet the approaching troop.

  He was very glad to see that the newly-arrived party was led by Matthias Vaedecker rather than some Reiksguard knight. The dozen men who were with him were all von Spurzheim’s followers—a rather motley crew, although Reinmar did not doubt that they knew their business very well indeed.

  “It was the two monks who attacked the sentry,” Reinmar told the sergeant. “They came to meet a woman—a sorceress, I suspect. If you have not been tracking her from Marienburg, she has been tracking you. She was old until they gave her dark wine to drink, but she is younger now.”

  “Did you put up a fight?” Vaedecker wanted to know.

  “No,” Reinmar confessed. “Had they threatened my life, I would have done, but they took me by surprise. I had time to draw my weapon, but I was outnumbered, and they had no time to spare for a fight in which my great-uncle would surely have supported me.

  Vaedecker had not dismounted, and he was looking about him as he listened to Reinmar’s reply, clearly uncertain as to what to do next. “Damn their insolence!” he said. “They’re taunting us—but if we ride after them, we’ll probably ride into a trap. Your great-uncle refused to go with them, you say?”

  Reinmar had not said anything of the sort, but he had no objection to the sergeant leaping to that conclusion. “He’s an old man,” Reinmar said. “He can’t fight. He has no desire to do anything but wait at home for whatever transpires. He cannot see that anyone has any reason to hurt him.”

  “I have not,” Vaedecker agreed. “But the enemies we have to face are not the kind to need reasons. Beastmen would rip him apart and dine on his flesh whether they were hungry or not. The best of their allies are no better, and the worst are far worse. But it’s not my job to defend him, or yours. You’d better come back to town with us. Von Spurzheim would not like me to leave you to walk unprotected. He thinks you might be useful to him—and the horses you’ve just lost weren’t his to begin with, although we might have made good use of them tomorrow.”

  “You think the battle will begin tomorrow?” Reinmar asked, as he came forward to join the troop, ready and willing to walk between their two ranks if Vaedecker would not let him ride two-a-back.

  “It has already begun,” the sergeant said, reaching down after only a moment’s hesitation to draw Reinmar up behind him.

  “From now on, its fury will only increase. I doubt there’ll be an all-out assault today, but our adversaries will be busy nonetheless, and so shall we.”

  Once Reinmar was safely installed, though, and the drumming of four dozen hooves on the dry ground had set up a secure screen of privacy, Vaedecker changed his tune.

  “What went on in there, Master Wieland?” he whispered over his shoulder. “Why did they come to fetch her, when they could not have known that the sentries would be so ineffectual? Why didn’t they take you with them?”

  “I don’t know,” Reinmar answered, knowing that it sounded weak, although it was only a little short of the whole truth. “Perhaps they did know that the sentries would be off their guard. Perhaps the sorceress had power enough for that, even when she seemed older. As for me—they still think of me as a pawn in their game, fit for baiting traps and running errands. So do you, it seems.”

  “Not I,” Vaedecker contradicted him, implying that there were others who might. “I’ve seen you in action. Who is she, Master Wieland?”

  “Her name is Valeria,” Reinmar told him. “My great-uncle knew her in Marienburg.”

  “Ah,” the sergeant said. “We have heard of her. Von Spurzheim will probably be glad that she is here. He wants the battle to be conclusive as well as to win it. This has been a long and arduous campaign.”

  “You don’t seem to be in wholehearted agreement,” Reinmar observed.

  “Life is a long and arduous campaign,” the soldier told him. “I have always found it better to fight little battles, one at a time. Given that we never run out of enemies, it seems unnecessary and unwise to fight too many at a time. There’s more pleasure and profit in an endless series of small victories than in a single costly blaze of glory, believe me.”

  Reinmar did believe him, but knew that the choice that Vaedecker had outlined was not his to make, and might not be von Spurzheim’s either.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  When Matthias Vaedecker helped Reinmar down from his horse on the edge of Eilhart’s market square Reinmar found himself on the outskirts of a seething crowd. The anxiety in the air was palpable, but he did not see the cause of their consternation until he had pushed his way through the crowd to the focal point of its attention.

  Laid out in open view on the steps of the corn exchange were six corpses. Not one was fully human. All of them had two arms and two legs, but in all cases but one of these limbs were brutishly thickened and shortened. Three of them had only one hand, the other being replaced by a claw, and two of these had feet like massive taloned paws. Their heads were the worst parts, not one of them being even approximately human. One had a head like a bull with heavy horns, another like a bison and a third like a monstrous cat. The fourth head was wolf-like, more hideous than that of the beastmen that he, Godrich, Sigurd and Vaedecker had fought; the remaining two were like snakes save for their awful compound eyes.

  Reinmar had no need to ask why these bodies had been put on display, but his neighbours, seeing that he had only just arrived, were more than enthusiastic to tell him.

  “Creatures like these are pressing forward from Holy Hill, west of the Schimel Farm,” Aloys Walther the baker’s son informed him. “They’ve attacked Vitway and Konigmuell. The town is cut off to the south and west, and at least two of the locks on the river have been smashed. Barges can no longer get to Eilhart Pool, and any rowboats that contest the river’s faster flow are deluged with arrows at the Heiligergap. An army of monsters is massing, pressing forward all the while, and they say we’ll get no more reinforcements for at least two days. It’s too late for anyone else to flee, though—we all have to report for assignment to the defences.”

  “We’ve strength enough,” Reinmar assured him. “I’ve fought the beastmen once, and they’re far less powerful than they are horrible.”

  Long queues of men were already winding halfway around the square, waiting to be interrogated as to the weapons they possessed and the training they had had in their use. Although they were orderly they were far from silent; rumours were flying in every direction. Reinmar had only to walk back to the stable to which Vaedecker’s men had taken their horses to hear half a dozen more reports like the one Aloys had poured into his ear. The place-names were sometimes different, but the import was always the same. The town was cut off, or would be within a matter of hours. The flow of military reinforcements had slowed to a trickle, and Eilhart was certain to be attacked before another contingent of the Reiksguard could be mobilised to reinforce its defenders.

  All of this had seemed to be a relatively distant prospect when Reinmar and Albrecht had left the town, but it was palpably imminent now and it no longer seemed so odd that the enemy had come to Albrecht’s house. Any outlying dwelling, it seemed, was ripe for invasion now. Thanks to the flood of refugees flocking into the town with tales of horror, and the similar flood whose northward routes would soon be cut off
, there could be no one within twenty miles of Eilhart who did not know that the town was effectively under siege, and that it would soon have to be defended against a fierce and massive assault.

  The town crier was busy in front of the tower that housed the market bell, but it was not his job to put out the call for conscription. Reinmar paused to listen to him, but only for a minute. The proclamations that he was repeating, probably for the tenth or fifteenth time, were to do with the conservation of water—the waters of the river had apparently been fouled and were unfit to drink even after boiling—and the powers of requisition that had been granted to the Reiksguard and the followers of Machar von Spurzheim for the building of barricades.

  When Reinmar rejoined Matthias Vaedecker he asked the soldier whether he ought to join one of the queues to await the attention of a recruiting sergeant. He was told that he had already been assigned.

  “To you?” Reinmar asked.

  “Aye, but don’t thank me for my generosity,” Vaedecker told him. “We’re at the upper neck of the river, commissioned to stop and sink anything that comes down.”

  “The river above Eilhart is supposed to be unnavigable,” Reinmar observed, although he knew perfectly well that whatever the enemy cared to set upon the waters would float well enough. They would not come in heavily-laden barges but in skiffs and rafts—and they would be very difficult to stop. Vaedecker’s men would undoubtedly cast nets and booms across the watercourse, but such barriers could be cut or broken, and while they were being hacked, sawed and smashed the enemy vessels would pile up, discharging missiles to either side. It was impossible to guess which of the many barricades placed across the roads into the town would be the most heavily beset, but one thing that was perfectly certain was that the neck of the river would see fierce and crucial fighting. Once that entry-way was breached, the enemy forces would have a vital artery to carry their assault deep into the town’s heart.

  “Don’t be afraid, either,” Vaedecker added. “You’ll have some of the best infantrymen this side of Middenheim around you, and many of the townsfolk in the rank will be men who know their business. The crossbows and pikes will do the donkey-work at first. Your people will not be forced to go hand-to-hand unless and until they storm the shore, and we’ll do everything in our power to make sure they can’t outnumber us.”

  “What time shall I report?” Reinmar asked.

  “You’ve already reported,” Vaedecker told him. “You’re under my command now, though I’ll have to trust you to go to von Spurzheim and tell him everything you can about what happened at the house. When he’s satisfied, you must come back to me so that I can show you your position. After that, you can go home to eat and gossip—but the moment you hear the clamour of the bell you must come running, and if no clamour sounds you must listen for the hours. Even if all is quiet you must be at your post by six o’clock, and you must keep watch till two in the morning. If nothing has happened by then… well, we’ll know that when it does, it’ll be even worse than it would have been had they come more hurriedly.”

  Reinmar nodded, then set off to look for the witch hunter while Vaedecker went to see to the organisation of his men.

  Von Spurzheim was by no means hard to find, having stuck hard to his base in the town hall, but he was busy with his maps and surrounded by men, including four Reiksguard knights. Von Spurzheim’s estimate of the likely time of the attack had been hastily revised, and everything was now being organised in haste. The knights and the witch hunter’s lieutenants all seemed to be busy quarrelling, although Reinmar assumed that they would have preferred to describe their argument as a tactical discussion. He had to wait for an opportunity to signal his presence to the witch hunter, and then had to wait far longer for von Spurzheim to find an opportunity to break away. When he did manage to disengage himself, the witch hunter immediately took Reinmar into another room and closed the door behind him.

  “If they only spent as much energy in fighting the enemy as they do in trying to secure and increase their own authority,” von Spurzheim said, “the banks of the Reik would be a better and happier place. They all know full well what the situation is, and how urgent it has now become. They know that I have the warrant of the Grand Theogonist himself, but even if they were kneeling before the War Altar and the Staff of Command they would be bickering over trifles. When the fighting starts they will be heroes all, but they do not know how to be single-minded about anything but violence. Who injured the sentry I could ill afford to lose, Reinmar?”

  “Two monks from the valley—the two who tried to sell me dark wine while I was there. They probably had others with them, but it was Brother Noel whose sword was red with blood.”

  “Why did they come? Surely not for the housekeeper?”

  “The woman in the house wasn’t Albrecht’s housekeeper,” Reinmar told him. “She was a sorceress by the name of Valeria.”

  Von Spurzheim looked up at the ceiling, annoyed that no one had been able to tell him that while he still had time to react. “The lady scholar!” he exclaimed. “I thought she’d be half way to Middenheim by now. What a thirst she must have to make her put her head into the lion’s mouth! Did she exercise power of command over the monks?”

  “It certainly seemed that she did,” Reinmar said. “There might have been a fight had she not told them to leave me be. I doubt that was for mercy’s sake. They brought her wine, and she grew young after drinking it—but she did say that the gathering army was nothing to do with her, and that her business was of another kind.”

  “She doesn’t care about Eilhart,” the witch hunter muttered. “It’s Marienburg that’s uppermost in her mind. She may not mean to lend her power to the fight, but she’ll use it in one way or another. I’m sorry, lad—I had no idea that I was sending you into a viper’s nest. What did your great-uncle do?”

  “Nothing,” Reinmar reported, economically. “He refused to go with them, and they seemed to think him irrelevant to their present concerns.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Reinmar said, again. “I had no chance to draw my blade, and had no reason to think that help would come if I called.”

  “But the monks must have recognised you, and they could hardly be of the opinion that you were irrelevant to their concerns,” the witch hunter observed, shrewdly. “They did not know what you had done when they met you with Matthias as you made your escape from the valley, but they must know now. They let you alone, even so.”

  “Because they had more pressing matters to attend to,” Reinmar insisted—but von Spurzheim knew that there had to be more, and Reinmar had to provide a further explanation. “Albrecht and Valeria were lovers once, as you obviously know, and they had a child. Valeria asked Great-Uncle Albrecht if I were one of them. He implied that I might be, although it was a lie, and it was on that account that she told the monks to leave me alone.”

  Von Spurzheim looked at him long and hard before saying: “And what was the attitude of the monks?”

  “They were bitterly angry,” Reinmar told him, uneasily. “They told her what I had done in the underworld, offering it as proof that I am a dangerous enemy. She would not listen.”

  Von Spurzheim might have interrogated him further had he not been in such a hurry, but he shrugged his shoulders then, as if dismissing the matter until a more convenient time. “Your charmed life may be a more valuable asset than I imagined,” he said wryly. “Do you know where to report to Sergeant Vaedecker?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you had best go. By nightfall, every able-bodied man in town must be thoroughly certain of what his role is to be in the coming conflict. It seems to be coming sooner than I hoped, but we can still win it. We must.” Reinmar opened the door to go out, but von Spurzheim decided that he had not quite finished, adding: “We are fighting for our lives, Reinmar. Every one of us. No one here can make a private arrangement with destiny. No one.”

  “I think my Great-Uncle Albrecht knows th
at,” Reinmar said, deliberately misunderstanding the real implication of the witch hunter’s warning—but the last darkly quizzical look von Spurzheim directed at him before the door closed told Reinmar that the witch hunter knew well enough that his threat had not fallen on deaf ears.

  The streets through which Reinmar walked to the neck of the river were very crowded, and everyone he passed was urgently busy. Some were carrying provisions home, or bringing weapons out; others were boarding up windows or strengthening the slots that would hold the bars securing their doors. There were no children out of doors; those who had not been sent away were being kept inside, probably banished to cellars and attics.

  Reinmar had never seen so many unsmiling people, or witnessed such a flush of collective anxiety overlaying the pallor of fear.

  The docks and warehouses of Eilhart’s port were clustered a furlong below the neck of the river, where the waters had been artificially broadened to form a deep pool. The “neck” qualified as a neck because it had two huge storehouses to either side of a narrow gap, through which the water was forced to flow more rapidly, but there were no quays for unloading. Goods were sometimes lowered into boats from the wide and glassless windows of the storehouses, using block-and-tackle systems strung from jutting beams, but the traffic was one-way. The storehouses were used to stockpile grain, turnips and beets from the surrounding farms, almost all of it for local use. Each had three storeys, with holes cut in each floor through which long ramps extended, also equipped with hauling gear. By the time Reinmar arrived, there was at least one crossbowman at every window—and Reinmar had no difficulty in judging that those at the highest would be least likely to get hurt, always provided that the buildings were not fired. Although the shell of each storehouse was brick, the floors and ramps were wooden.