“Come in last night, didn’t they?” said Milo, ignoring her. “Stayed with Herr Doktor.” He smiled at her look of alarm. “You think I wouldn’t know? I may not have a nose, but I got eyes everywhere.”
His men laughed at that. Felix noticed that none of them appeared to be starving.
Milo looked from Gotrek’s glowering face, to the gold on his wrists, and finally to Felix. “You and yer mates staying in town long, sir?”
“They’re just travellers going up to Stangenschloss, Milo,” said Kat before Felix could answer. “They’re no concern of yours.”
Milo raised his eyebrows. “Going to Stangenschloss at this time of year? Y’must be hearty men, then. Regular champions, I’ll wager.”
“Leave them alone, Milo,” sighed Kat. “They won’t work for you.”
Milo scowled. “Why don’t let the gentlemen speak for themselves, Kat?”
“We’re not looking for work,” said Felix stiffly.
“Oh come now, sir,” said Milo, smiling. “Stangenschloss is a hard berth in the winter. Likely to be the death of ye, what with all them northers and beastmen running about. Why slog all the way up there when there’s good money to be made right here for a man who can use his fists? Or a dwarf,” he added with a wink to Gotrek.
He shot a sly glance over his shoulder at the walled village just over the bridge. “And promise of even more money very soon, ain’t that right, lads?” He swivelled his ugly head back to Felix as his men laughed evilly. “So, what do y’say, sir? Spend the winter in comfort in lovely old Bauholz?”
“We already have employment,” said Felix. “Sorry. Now please, step aside.”
An angry twitch flickered across Milo’s face for the briefest second at this, but it was covered instantly by a shrug and a rueful smile. “All right, all right, no harm in asking, is there? If change yer minds, Kat knows where to find me.”
He stepped aside and shooed his men back so that the bridge was clear, then winked at Kat as she, Gotrek, Felix and Ortwin passed between them. “Bye now beloved. And if y’get tired of freezing yer tail off at Herr Doktor’s, remember I’ve always got a warm bed waiting for ye if ye want it.” He chuckled, low and dirty. “And all the sausage y’can eat.”
Gotrek growled at that, and Felix’s fists clenched and Ortwin’s eyes blazed. They made to turn around, but Kat shook her head, and they kept walking. She let out a relieved breath as they reached the other side of the bridge and got out of earshot.
“He wouldn’t be known as noseless Milo when I got through with him,” said Gotrek.
“Don’t worry,” said Kat. “I can take care of myself.”
“The villain,” said Ortwin, outraged. “Hoarding sausage when all these poor souls are starving!”
Kat stifled a laugh. Felix blinked and almost said something, then let it go. Why dirty up a pristine mind?
Instead he turned to Kat. “What did he want to hire us for?”
Kat looked back over her shoulder. “Milo wants to run all of Bauholz. He is trying to get enough men and arms together to drive out Ludeker and take over. He makes the same offer to every able-bodied man who comes through town.” She turned to Gotrek. “Be careful, Gotrek. They were looking at your bracelets.”
Gotrek snorted. “They can look all they want, little one.”
She grinned at that, and Felix saw lines appear at the corners of her eyes and mouth. He looked her over again, as if seeing her for the first time. He had been thinking of her as a young girl, and with her shyness and her small frame she had appeared so under the shadows of the forest last night. But in the morning sun he could see that she was no longer in the first blush of youth. She would be twenty-six or twenty-seven now, he calculated, and though they looked good on her, they had not been easy years.
They paid another eight pfennig foot tax to get back through Bauholz’s village gate, and then they were inside, where everything was a bustle of soldiers and boatmen and wagons being loaded into Ludeker’s warehouse.
Kat told Gotrek, Felix and Ortwin that she knew some people in the village who she could ask about the Templars of the Fiery Heart, and it would be better if she went alone. She suggested they ask around in the Powder and Shot, the tavern that had once been the Sigmarite temple. It was always full of soldiers, either coming north or going south. “But watch out,” she said as they parted at the intersection. “Ludeker’s men will try to get money out of you any way they can. And they don’t take no for an answer.”
Gotrek snorted again, and Felix smiled.
“Don’t worry, Kat,” he said with a chuckle. “We can take care of ourselves too.”
“Aye,” said Ortwin, puffing up his chest. “We can take care of ourselves.”
Felix and Gotrek exchanged a private look at that.
“How much?” asked Gotrek, with a dangerous rasp to his voice.
“A shilling a mug, herr dwarf,” said the barman.
Felix blinked as he fished in his belt pouch. “Even the best dwarf beer in Altdorf only costs half that,” he said.
“Well, this ain’t Altdorf, mein herr,” said the barman, pouring two pints. “Costs an arm and a leg to get it up here — sometimes literally. One of our suppliers was just in here, said he lost three men last night trying to bring a shipment in. Now he’s hired a cart and some bullies to fetch it out of the woods. You know he’s going to add that to the price.”
Felix reluctantly put three shillings down on the bar, and he and Gotrek and Ortwin drank deep from the mugs the barman set in front of them. Felix made a face. It was flat and thin, as if they’d been mixing it with water.
Gotrek choked and set the mug down like he’d found rat droppings in it. “How much is the good beer?” he asked.
“That’s the only beer there is, herr dwarf,” said the barman.
Gotrek pushed the mug back towards the barman, stone-faced.
Felix did the same. “We’ll wait until Reidle brings the fresh barrels,” he said.
Ortwin kept drinking.
As they stepped away from the bar, two soldiers staggered past them and called for two beers. Felix shook his head as he heard the barman say, “Here you are, gents. Already poured. I saw you coming. That’ll be a shilling each.”
Gotrek and Felix surveyed the taproom. It still retained the shape of a temple of Sigmar, but trestle tables with little three-legged stools around them lined the nave, and the bar was where the altar had once been, with kegs lined up against the back wall, under the place where the golden hammer should have hung.
This early in the morning, the tavern wasn’t terribly busy, only about a quarter full, with as many eating food as were drinking. Felix didn’t like to think how much the food must cost if the beer was so expensive. He was glad they still had some of their road rations, or they would be broke before they left on the morrow.
On the left a crowd of young men in the colours of the town of Schmiedorf were talking animatedly amongst themselves as they drank and looked around with excited eyes. Beyond them were some rivermen talking in low tones to a man in the same uniform as the men who had stopped Felix and the others at the gate the night before. He dismissed both groups. The soldiers were new recruits, just come north, and would have no information, and the river men would know of nothing north of Bauholz.
On the right side of the room was a more promising bunch. Spearmen of Wissenland practically asleep in their seats, with more scars and bandages among them than a Shallyan hospital. These men had been in the north. They might know.
Gotrek was already heading to them. Felix followed him, with Ortwin tailing behind. They sat down beside the weary men at one of the tables and Felix smiled at their sergeant, a red-headed man with only one ear.
“Heading home, sergeant?” he asked.
The sergeant nodded. “Aye, sir, as soon as there’s space on a boat. Damned harbour master says it’ll be a week.”
“Where were you fighting?” asked Ortwin eagerly. “Did you kill many Kurga
n?”
The soldiers turned dead eyes on him, staring in dull wonder.
“Aye,” said the sergeant. “Plenty. From Middenheim to the Howling Hills. Chased ’em like hounds. Not that it made any difference. There was always more.”
His men murmured in agreement.
“Always more,” repeated one.
“Did you pass by Stangenschloss on your way here?” Felix asked.
The sergeant nodded. “We were sent home from there. Service done. Pay coming. Go home and wait.”
“Did you by chance happen to see, or to hear of, a group of knights called the Order of the Fiery Heart on your travels?” Felix pressed. “Their insignia is a heart with a halo of flame.”
The sergeant frowned and turned to his men. “Any of you lot remember?”
They shrugged and muttered amongst themselves.
“Them jaggers at the Middenstag, was that them?”
“Nah, that were the Knights of the Silver Fist.”
“How about them fellows that got torn up by orcs in the hills?”
“I never heard their name, but they had a bird, didn’t they?”
“Aye, a bird, not a heart.”
There was another minute of this, then the sergeant turned back to Felix. “Sorry, mein herr. Don’t think we saw them.”
Felix shrugged. “Thank you anyway, sergeant.”
He and Gotrek were just turning to survey the room for someone else to ask when a big man in a barman’s apron appeared beside them. They looked up. The man was Milo’s height, but thicker in the chest and the arms. He smiled at them.
“Get you gentlemen a drink?” he asked politely.
“No thank you,” said Felix, and continued to look about the room.
The man didn’t move. “Have to have a drink if you want to sit at a table,” he said. “What can I get you?” He was a little less polite this time.
Gotrek glared up at him.
Felix grunted. “We paid for drinks less than five minutes ago,” he said. “We left them at the bar.”
“Still need a drink to sit at a table,” said the man.
“You don’t have any drinks worth the name,” said Gotrek. “Get lost.”
The Wissenland spearmen were starting to take an interest.
“We don’t want a drink,” said Felix quickly, before the man could say anything that would make Gotrek stand up. “We just want to sit here.”
“Then there’s a table tax,” said the man. “Two shillings an hour, paid in advance.”
“A table tax?” said Gotrek dangerously. “What kind of man-nonsense is that?”
“We’re a tavern, sir,” said the man. “Not a refugee camp. Tables are reserved for paying customers.”
Felix looked around the room again. It was still only a quarter full. “There was plenty of room to sit. What if we leave when you need these seats?”
The barman crossed his brawny arms. “I’m not going to argue with you, sir. If you won’t drink and won’t pay, you’ll have to leave.”
Gotrek stood. The man stepped back warily.
“Listen, you clot,” said the Slayer, advancing on him. “I will pay for a beer when you bring me a beer that doesn’t taste like you pissed it into a mouldy rain-barrel!”
Ortwin stared. Felix groaned. The Wissenland spears laughed and applauded.
“That’s exactly what it tastes like!” said the sergeant.
“Get out,” said the barman, stepping back again. “We’ll have no violence here.”
“If you want me out,” said Gotrek, still advancing, “throw me out.”
The barman hesitated, his fists balled at his sides, but then turned and hurried back behind the bar as the soldiers jeered at him. He whispered to the other barman, then disappeared into the back room.
The Wissenland men began to pound the table with their mugs. “Real beer! Real beer!”
“Come on, manling,” said Gotrek, turning away. “There are more to talk to.”
He started across the tavern towards a trio of young pistoliers who had been watching the whole episode with amused eyes. Though they were dressed in the latest Altdorf fashions, Felix could see that their boots and clothes were worn, and had been patched extensively — as had they themselves. One had a parting in his hair that had been made with an axe, and another had a hook for a left hand.
He saluted Gotrek with it idly as the Slayer and Felix and Ortwin sat down at their table. “Well done, herr dwarf!” he said in a noble accent. “I’ve been wanting to express that particular opinion all week.”
“And I as well,” said his scalp-scarred companion. “Damned busybodies won’t give a man a moment’s peace. ‘Fill your cup, m’lord? Another beer, m’lord. Steal your wallet, m’lord?’”
“Damned if I don’t think they hold the boats on purpose so they can milk us for our last few crowns before we sail,” said Hook-Hand. He smiled at them, then indicated his friends and himself. “Abelhoff, Kholer, and von Weist. Now, to what do we have the pleasure?”
“You’ve come from the fighting?” asked Felix.
Von Weist laughed and held up his stump. “I didn’t get this playing euchre, my lad.”
Felix flushed, embarrassed, and a bit irked that a boy twenty years his junior was calling him “my lad”, then let it go. “We were wondering if, during your travels, you met an order of knights known as the Templars of the Fiery Heart?”
The three pistoliers looked at each other, frowning, then the third, Kholer, who hadn’t spoken yet, nodded. He did not appear to have suffered the kind of wounds his companions had, but there was a gravity about him that suggested that he had seen his share of horrors.
“Aye,” he said. “We met them. They were at Stangenschloss when we came through, about a month ago. Not many of them left as I recall. Lost half their number at Middenheim and Sokh, their bugler told me.”
“Were they still there when you left, m’lords?” asked Ortwin eagerly.
Abelhoff, the one with the scarred scalp, shook his head. “They got wind of a village on the edge of the Howling Hills being threatened by some great herd of beastmen and went out to defend it.” He shook his head. “Mad of course. All templars are. Took no support. No foot troops—”
Ortwin stood up hotly at this. “I am a novitiate of the order, sir. We are not mad!”
“Easy, lad, easy,” said von Weist. “No offence meant We’d have been with ’em like a shot if we weren’t all returned to store for want of parts.” He grinned like a cat. “That kind of madness is our bread and butter.”
“And they didn’t return?” asked Felix. Kholer shook his head. “Not before we continued south. Haven’t heard what became of them. Sorry.”
Felix nodded. It looked like a trip to Stangenschloss was inevitable.
“I say,” said von Weist, turning to Gotrek. “You’re a trollslayer, aren’t you?”
Gotrek looked at him with his single eye. “And if I am?”
Von Weist smiled. “Oh, nothing. Just an interesting coincidence, that’s all. We saw three of your sort at Stangenschloss.” He laughed. “They were mad too!”
“Aye,” said Abelhoff. “Fiery fellows. Fight you as soon as look at you.”
“Except the one with the nails in his head,” said von Weist. “He just drank, mostly.”
Felix and Gotrek both looked up at that.
“Nails in his head?” asked Felix.
Von Weist held up his stump. “I swear to you it’s true. He wore them like herr Slayer here wears his crest.”
Gotrek and Felix looked at each other, then Felix leaned forwards to question the pistoliers further, but just then there was a commotion in the street and a handful of men ran into the tavern.
Felix, Gotrek and Ortwin looked up with everyone else. Standing inside the door were a half-dozen men in the uniform of Ludeker’s men, and with them stood the burly barman who Gotrek had menaced.
“There!” he said, pointing directly at Gotrek. “Those are the ones! They
threatened me and didn’t pay the table tax.”
The leader of the guards nodded and swaggered forwards, his men spreading out behind him. He was a big man, with a bulging belly that spoke of three meals a day, with an occasional snack in between. In a starving town like Bauholz, Felix found that obscene.
“These tables are reserved for drinkers, lads,” he said. “Buy a beer or go.” His men began to surround them.
“We bought a beer,” said Felix.
“And it wasn’t a beer,” said Gotrek.
“You’ll have to buy another,” said the guard. “And while you’re digging in your purses, there’s a fine for disturbing the peace. Two shillings each.” He held out his hand.
Gotrek growled in his throat.
Felix and Ortwin shot him a nervous glance.
“Easy, Gotrek,” said Felix. “We can’t make trouble. We’ve got to stay here another day, and I want to talk to more people about the templars.”
“Then get him away from me,” said Gotrek.
Felix turned to the leader of the guards and opened his belt pouch. “All right, we’ll pay. Four shillings for the fine, and two for two more ‘beers’.”
“It’s six shillings for the fine, mein herr,” said the guard.
Felix frowned. “You said two each.”
The guard pointed a stubby finger at Ortwin. “Ain’t he with you?”
“But he didn’t do anything. It was only us.”
“Still a member of your party,” said the guard.
Gotrek stood and faced the guard. “Take the four shillings and get out, before I throw you out.”
The guard stepped back. His men laid their hands on their truncheons.
“Threatening an officer of the law,” said the guard. “That’s an eight shilling fine.”
“And he’s got a naked blade, sir,” said one of his men pointing to the axe on Gotrek’s back.
“Why, so he does,” said the leader. “That’s five shilling—”
Gotrek took a step forwards. “I’ll feed you your shillings at the end of my—”
“Gotrek!” yelped Felix.
“Threatening again!” cried the guard, backing away. “The fine’s doubled for the second offence. Sixteen shillings! That’s… that’s…”
[Gotrek & Felix 11] - Shamanslayer Page 7