Swords of the Emperor

by Chris Wraight

  Fromgar lapsed back into a state of fear.

  “Yes!” he cried, his voice rising. “It can have the effect, in the beginning. It depends on your strength of mind to start with. Some don’t take to it. Some do. That’s just how it is.”

  Verstohlen paused. That was interesting.

  “Strength of character?” he mused. “Did you mean to say that? Perhaps you’re referring to physical strength?”

  Fromgar shook his head. His shirt was sodden with sweat.

  “It’s their minds,” he said, looking warily at the bundle in Verstohlen’s palm. “It’s all in the mind. How virtuous, or not how virtuous. It makes a difference.”

  Verstohlen nodded, filing the information away. That might prove useful.

  “Very well. You’ve been most helpful.”

  Fromgar’s eyes lit up.

  “That’s it? Can I go?”

  Verstohlen gave an ice-laced smile.-He felt his own heart begin to beat a little faster. Here came the real experiment. This was where his suspicions would be allayed or confirmed.

  “Go? Oh no,” he said. “You see, I brought you here for another purpose. I’ve purchased some of this joyroot. It might have even come from your own stock. It’s very interesting. I’ve had it ground down. Now, though I’ve some alchemical knowledge, I’m no expert. I have a feeling I know what its powers are, but of course I’m not stupid enough to try it myself.”

  Fromgar began to struggle against his bonds. He wasn’t entirely stupid either.

  “You can’t!” he said. “Once you’re hooked—”

  Verstohlen reached up to the man’s face and grasped his nose with his left hand, closing the nostrils. Being so close to the gutter-rat made him feel slightly nauseous. The stench was now acute.

  “I’m aware of the effects,” he said coldly. “Just as you were aware when you peddled it.”

  Fromgar struggled for breath. His head lashed one way, then the other, but Verstohlen kept the grip tight. Eventually, the man had to open his mouth. As he did so, Verstohlen slapped his other hand over it. Fromgar immediately coughed the powder back up, gagging on the plume of pink vapour.

  Verstohlen withdrew, placing a silk handkerchief over his own mouth. The man had managed to splutter some of it out, but he’d taken in enough. Verstohlen sat back against the chest and waited.

  For a moment, nothing much changed. Fromgar breathed heavily. He said nothing, though he continued to sweat profusely. His skin was an unhealthy pallor, but that could have been through fear as much as anything. The remains of the powder streaked his shirt, turning an ugly purple where it soaked up the moisture.

  Then, it started working. Verstohlen watched intently, his body taut with expectation. Fromgar’s muscles began to relax. The grip of terror left his features. His fingers went limp in their bonds. His breathing slowed and a gentle sigh escaped from his lips.

  “Feeling better?” asked Verstohlen.

  Fromgar nodded listlessly.

  “Heh,” he gurgled. “This really isn’t so bad.”

  “Tell me what you’re seeing.”

  Fromgar looked like he was having trouble concentrating. “Ah, well, I’m not really seeing anything. I’m just feeling a lot better. Sigmar, I’ve not felt this good since…”

  He drifted off into unintelligible mumbling. A childlike smile spread across his face.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  Fromgar nodded. “In the Averburg.”

  So he retained some sense of the real world. The root could just be a harmless relaxant. There was always that chance.

  Verstohlen stood up again and went to the chest for a final time. There was one more item he needed to deploy. Of all of them, it was the most proscribed. It was why Kraus couldn’t stay in the room, and why the interrogation couldn’t be disturbed. If the witch hunters knew he had it, he ran the risk of facing interrogation himself. He retrieved it and went back to Fromgar.

  “Can you hear me, Herr Fromgar?” he said, quietly but firmly. He clasped the object in his hidden hand carefully. The metal felt hot against his skin already.

  Fromgar’s head was beginning to loll. With some effort, he looked up.

  “I can see you,” he drawled.

  “I am going to show you something. You must look into it. Do this last thing for me and I’ll leave you alone with your dreams. Do you understand? This is very important.”

  Fromgar nodded. The joyroot seemed to make him both suggestible and benign. There was no resistance.

  Verstohlen took a deep breath. There were dangers associated with this. He drew out the object. It was an amulet. On the silver surface the design of a serpent had been inscribed. On the reverse face a script had been engraved. There were none now who could read it. It belonged to a realm that had long since been scoured from the face of the world. But Verstohlen knew what it had been made for. And he knew what power was still bound within it.

  He thrust the amulet before Fromgar’s eyes.

  The change was immediate. The benign smile was replaced with a malignant leer. Fromgar’s tongue flickered across his exposed teeth. His body went rigid again, his fingers scrabbling at their bonds. Flecks of spittle flew from his mouth.

  “Ach!” he cried, writhing against the rope that held him. “Herself! Ah, so beautiful!”

  The convulsions began to accelerate. Verstohlen withdrew the amulet. Fromgar began to spasm. He looked wracked between some kind of ecstasy and crippling pain. The chair started to shuffle across the floor as his feet kicked out. That shouldn’t have been possible. It was solid oak, bound with iron.

  Verstohlen watched carefully, reaching for his pistol. Pricks of sweat burst out across his palms. This had always been the danger. With such work, there was always this danger. He primed the weapon, his eyes fixed on Fromgar the whole time.

  The foaming got worse. The man was drifting into a seizure. He began to shriek. His voice sounded strangely feminine, like an adolescent boy’s before it broke.

  “She is coming!” Fromgar wailed, then his speech drifted back into gibberish. Verstohlen watched carefully, trying to make sense of the words. They were nonsense. Or some language he didn’t understand.

  Suddenly, he realised what was going on. Fromgar’s eyes snapped open and the man stared at him. The pupils were gone. In their place, lurid pink spheres blazed out. Lines of blood ran down his cheeks. A deranged grin distorted his face. The language wasn’t nonsense. It was as ancient as the amulet.

  “She is coming!” he said again in Reikspiel.

  The chair began to rise from the floor.

  The pistol rang out, twice. The first shot went through Fromgar’s heart, the second through his forehead. The chair fell back to earth with a clang. Fromgar slumped in his bonds, drool and blood running down his chin. His fingers clenched, then relaxed. The light went out from his eyes.

  Verstohlen looked on for a moment, his heart still beating heavily. His hands shaking slightly, he reloaded the pistol, watching the corpse all the while. There was a knock on the door. The guard.

  “Sir? Everything all right in there?” came the muffled enquiry.

  “Yes. You may come in now,” said Verstohlen, putting the amulet away and doing his best to restore a facade of calmness.

  Kraus’ man entered. He glanced at the body in the chair. The merest flicker of surprise crossed his solid features. No doubt he’d seen much worse.

  “This man was a heretic,” said Verstohlen, putting his instruments carefully back in their wrapping. “I was obliged to silence his blasphemy. His body will have to be burned, as will his clothes and the perishable items in this room.”

  The soldier nodded smartly.

  “It will be done,” he said.

  “Ensure a priest is present, and alert the Temple of Sigmar. They’ll want to make their own enquiries. Tell them what I told you, but do not delay burning the body. If they have any complaints, they can speak to me.”

  The soldier bowed, then rushed
away to make arrangements. When he was gone, Verstohlen looked back on Fromgar’s body. Despite all his training, the sight of it turned his stomach. His assessment hadn’t changed. The man had been a crooked fool, no more. He’d had no real idea of what he’d been mixed up in.

  But Verstohlen did. And as he contemplated the possibilities, the thought of it chilled his blood.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Gerhard Muller gripped the cudgel tightly. It wasn’t as easy to do as it should have been. His vision was still clouded with drink. The men around him looked unsteady on their feet too. That was predictable, of course. If you gave a bunch of thugs a handful of coins and told them to prepare for trouble, they were bound to drink it away. That was what thugs did when you indulged them. Averheim was a much friendlier place for his kind than it used to be. And it was getting even better.

  He looked at the boys around him. He knew most of them. Some had been dragged out of some hole by Drucker, others looked entirely unfamiliar. They might just have been coming along for the ride. As far as Muller was concerned, they were welcome to. The more, the bloodier.

  The gang of men rounded the last corner before the square. The targets were right in front of them, celebrating in the evening sunlight outside the inn on the far side. They looked pretty well-lubricated. Muller surveyed the scene quickly. Leitdorf’s men numbered about fifty. Maybe a shade more. They were relaxed. He didn’t see any weapons. Some of them had already passed out. It was just as Alptraum had told him.

  “Charge!” he bellowed, waving the cudgel wildly over his head. All around him, his mates did the same. They made a pretty terrifying spectacle. In a disorganised tide, Muller’s band of brothers swept across the square. With satisfaction, Muller saw Leitdorf’s mob scramble to their feet. They were completely unprepared. That was sloppy. Really sloppy.

  Then they were among them. Muller swung the cudgel with abandon. Most of Leitdorf’s men were unarmed. He enjoyed the way the heavy wood crunched against bone. One particularly vicious swipe audibly caved a man’s skull in. Muller liked that. He made it an ambition to do it again. There was something gloriously satisfying in the sound, the squishy, liquid squelch of brains being redistributed.

  A man swung a table leg in Muller’s direction. It was a pretty pathetic sight. Muller hammered the cudgel into the man’s midriff, knocking the wind out of him. He collapsed, and the table leg skittered across the stone. The cudgel rose and fell quickly. Two, three blows and the man was out cold. Muller stood over him, feeling the surge of victory in his blood. He took aim and plunged the cudgel down at the prone man’s skull. It cracked, caving in like a chicken’s egg.

  “Yes!” he cried, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. This game was getting better and better.

  Drucker swayed up to him. He looked drunk, both on violence and on ale. He had a trail of blood across his mouth. Even Muller didn’t really want to know how he’d got that.

  “We should torch this place,” Drucker said, grinning. “That’s what we’re being paid for. Who’s got the flints?”

  “Thought you did.”

  Muller laughed. As much as he liked his ale, he couldn’t deny that getting plastered got in the way of proper planning.

  “Damn it. What are we going to do now?”

  That question was answered more quickly than he expected. From the other side of the square, more men had arrived. They were bearing weapons. Just like Muller’s men, they were pretty crude. Meat hooks, hammers, blacksmith’s tongs, even rocks. Leitdorfs people weren’t entirely unarmed after all.

  “Excellent!” exclaimed Muller, licking his lips. “They’re up for a fight.”

  Drucker grinned savagely.

  “I’ll squeeze their eyes out,” he wheezed, fingering his meat chopper lasciviously. Muller looked at the man uncertainly. He liked a good scrap as much as anyone, but Drucker could be a little alarming.

  There wasn’t time to dwell on it. Muller’s men left their looting and charged the newcomers. The two groups met in the middle of the square. They were evenly matched. Soon the blood was flowing again. Muller began to really enjoy himself. He took a deep cut from a flailing knife. That was fine by him. Credit to the man who managed to land a blow. It all made for a more entertaining evening. Especially once the lad in question, a meek-faced boy with freckles and a tuft of light brown hair, was lying on the floor with his jaw knocked clean from his head. He made an appealingly agonised yelping as he crawled along the ground, a slick of blood and saliva in his wake. Muller walked after him casually, swinging the cudgel. He lined it up with the boy’s head, and wondered if he was likely to make it three skull cracks in a row.

  Then there was the sound of trumpets blaring. Muller looked up, a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach. This fun could soon be about to end. The square began to fill with mounted warriors. Knights. They were wearing the livery of the Averburg garrison, wearing armour and carrying longswords. That was completely unsporting. He looked around, trying to see if there were any escape routes. The way they’d come was still open. If he ran, he’d make it.

  Leaving the lad to choke on his blood, Muller broke into a sprint. The ale still swilling round his head made the going difficult. Running in a straight line was far harder than it should have been. He stumbled at one point, tripping over a prone figure on the ground. It might even have been Drucker, but he couldn’t stop to check. He picked himself up and carried on running. He was going to make it. The horsemen were busy mopping up the laggards behind. The side street beckoned.

  Then something very hard and very heavy hit him on the back of the head. That really caused him problems. He fell down again. Getting up was difficult. The world was swimming. Something hot and wet ran down his back.

  Muller pushed himself to his feet, trying to keep his legs steady. He looked up. There was a horseman looming over him. He couldn’t focus on the figure well. The man looked massive. He was wearing heavy armour and had a grey beard. His blade was unsheathed and it blazed silver. The man’s face in the open helmet was contorted with anger. It looked oddly familiar, though he couldn’t think why.

  Muller could feel his awareness slipping away. The scrap was over. He’d had his fun and spent his money. That was really all a man like him could expect out of life. With any luck, this militia captain would give him a break and he’d spend a day or two in the stocks. After all, brawling was something that happened all over the Empire.

  “You’ve got me, sir,” he drawled, dropping the cudgel and holding his hands up shakily. “I’ll come quietly.”

  The horseman leaned forward, pulling his blade back as he did so.

  “No, you won’t.” The voice was humourless, as cold as iron.

  Muller looked up, just in time to see the sword sweep towards him. His last thought was how magnificent it looked. There were runes on the steel. That must have cost a packet. Then it bit, and the game was over for good.

  Schwarzhelm pushed open the door to his chamber and sat down heavily in his chair. His sword arm ached. It had been out of practice. Though he’d craved some action to offset the tedium of the tribunal hearings, there was no satisfaction in breaking up the mobs of Leitdorf’s and Grosslich’s supporters. Three more days had passed. The daylight hours were filled with legal arguments, the nights with suppressing the electors’ unleashed violence.

  It was grim, depressing work. The gaols were full, and still the candidates found willing hands to do their sordid work. They were both as bad as each other, though each was careful to distance themselves from the trail of gold. It was getting worse. The city was drifting into lawlessness. The whole situation was listing out of hand.

  Schwarzhelm poured himself a flagon of ale from the jug on his desk. He drank deep. He hadn’t slept for any of those three days. Even drink made no difference. It was making him fractious, paranoid. Something would have to change. Somehow, he’d have to turn things around. As it was, he felt like he was slowly going mad.

  There was a gentle
knock at the door. Verstohlen again. The man was like a bad schilling.

  “Come!” he roared.

  The agent entered. His face looked grave.

  “I’ve not been able to contact you,” he said. Was there reproach in that voice? There’d better not have been.

  “I’ve been busy,” Schwarzhelm growled.

  “I heard about it. That’s the second night of disturbance in the Old City.”

  “They’ve both got their hired boneheads out in force. I had to adjourn this afternoon’s hearing. These men are powerful, and they know what they’re doing. We can’t run the tribunal while the city burns.”

  “You’re halting it?”

  Schwarzhelm shook his head. “It’ll continue. We’re making progress. They’ll accept the Imperial decree. They’ll have to.”

  “I’m glad they’re coming around. But the closer you get to a decision, the worse things will get on the streets.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  Verstohlen paused.

  “There are other options.”

  “I know what you’re going to—”

  “You should give it some consideration.”

  Schwarzhelm’s eyes blazed. His anger seemed to come so readily. He had to keep a lid on it. Verstohlen was only doing his job.

  “You’re questioning my authority,” he said, warningly.

  “I’m doing no such thing. I’m questioning your judgement.”

  Only Verstohlen could have said that. Kraus or Grunwald would have died before such words could have passed their lips. That was the difference between soldiers and ordinary men. Soldiers knew when to shut up and take orders.

  But Verstohlen wasn’t ordinary, in any sense.

  “I won’t debate with you,” Schwarzhelm said bluntly. “I don’t want Helborg brought into this. You know my reasons.”

  Verstohlen held his ground for a few more moments, looking like he was going to argue. Then he clearly thought better of it. “Heard from Grunwald yet?”