02 - Sacred Flesh

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  “You were shot by the Sigmarites, up on the glacier,” Angelika said, half-recognising him.

  “Go ahead and take it,” the man nodded, “and finish me while you’re at it.”

  “I’ve had quite enough of that,” said Angelika, leaving another purse behind.

  On the sixth day, exhaustion caught up with them and they spent an afternoon’s good travelling time huddled against a rotting log, watching a colony of small black snakes catch and swallow an unending succession of mice.

  On the morning of the seventh day, the sky turned the colour of blood and its surface rippled like water on the verge of a boil. “Chaos,” Angelika whispered. They backtracked to the rotting log and made themselves small, while the black silhouettes of flapping, leather-winged lizard things glided calmly through the corrupted sky. “Is this the end?” Franziskus asked. The manifestations continued past twilight. They stayed awake all night, afraid to dream.

  But the next day all seemed normal again. They slept a bit, then set off, not saying a word until the chill of evening came. Then Devorah killed the silence by saying to Franziskus, “I do not have the gift. And even if I did, I would commit sins of the flesh until I drove it out of me.” Later she added, in a smaller voice, “Not so terrible sins of the flesh you understand.” Franziskus kept his face turned away from Angelika, to avoid the wiseacre look he knew she’d be wearing.

  On the eleventh day, they had just woken up from a sleep amid dead leaves when they heard a stream of urine steadily splashing against a tree. They looked up and saw one of Manfried’s men. They became still; Angelika slipped the decorative dagger from her belt. But the man finished his business and wandered off, unawares, to join a comrade. Eavesdropping, Angelika learned that the two were deserters and that Manfried’s procession was at least two days ahead of them by now.

  On the thirteenth day, Devorah fainted. They took her to a stream, dashed water on her face, and waited for her to come around before plodding on.

  Two days later, they entered the Empire, passing through the ruined gates of the border town of Grenzstadt, where Devorah and the other pilgrims had met up. Angelika and Franziskus knew the town too: they’d been present just before its recent sacking by orcs. Franziskus suggested that Angelika pay for an inn, but she reckoned that certain of Grenzstadt’s authorities might still have a low opinion of them. They staggered past the town and along a dusty road through the farmland to its north. They slept in a hayloft, leaving before dawn.

  They walked for half a day but then bought three mules—named Daemon, Horror and Patches—from a farmer called Hostler. They rode off the main road for most of a day. They lodged above a tavern named the Sickly Friar. Its sign reminded Devorah of Gerhold and made her throat bobble up and down when she first saw it.

  Another day of mule travel brought them over a rise, from which they could finally see, off in the distance, the mighty walls of Averheim.

  Just below the rise, a crew of frightened men, kerchiefs over their mouths and noses to protect them from the smoke, dragged the corpses of men, women and children onto a raging pyre. Some of the dead had additional eyes blinking blindly out from their foreheads. Others had tentacles in place of hands, or strange fissures on their bodies, lined with tiny teeth.

  “Chaos,” Franziskus said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The three of them walked through deserted streets. A stiff wind moaned across the city’s cobble-stoned alleys and walkways, whirling around the cornerstones of its leaning, stuccoed buildings, tossing a dust of dry, fine sand against the shuttered windows of its close-huddled taverns and workshops.

  Angelika kept her head down. Even at the best of times, she hated this city and the grit it was throwing in her eyes provided a splendid reason not to have to look at it. Devorah took it all in by shielding her eyes with her hands. She marvelled at the worn, creaking old buildings as if she had never seen a city before, which she hadn’t. Most of its structures were tall, thin wooden houses three or four storeys high, covered in plaster and framed by blocky, blackened oaken timbers. The few that boasted any ornamentation bore linen-fold mouldings cut into the timbers, or perhaps the odd imp or cherub carved in wood, clinging insouciantly to a steeple or roof-point. Flags and pennants, in the yellow and gold of the province of Averland, hung from poles. They flapped suicidally, tearing themselves apart in the violent wind.

  Devorah’s childish amazement aroused doting feelings in Franziskus. He opened his mouth to discourse knowledgeably on the architecture, to explain that these buildings were in an old style, but one that Averheimers considered fine and proper. That the black timbers suited their famous melancholy. But then he got a mouthful of dirt and halted his lecture before it had begun.

  The trio drew back as a man in a butcher’s smock came cantering out of an alleyway, twirling a cleaver over his head and screaming about encroaching Chaos. The raving man even mentioned several of the Chaos gods by name. Angelika reached for her dagger, but when the butcher saw them, his hamhock features convulsed in alarm, and he turned and ran back the way he had come.

  Above Averheim’s low-slung buildings soared a few monstrous structures, clustered in the centre of town, about a league away. Franziskus pointed them out to Devorah: one would be the old town fortress, another, the elector’s palace. The tallest was a vaulting structure, surrounded by flying buttresses, bristling with turrets, in lustrous grey limestone, fresh-quarried and sharp-edged. A multitude of writhing gargoyles and hammer-wielding holy warriors, chiselled from unyielding stone, framed its stained-glass windows and stood guard around its vast and haughty arches. Angelika squinted at it. “Manfried’s cathedral,” she said. “But before we scout it out, I need food and sleep.”

  With the wind pushing at her, Angelika strode up to the stoop of a tavern. Overhead, its sign, a large iron ball painted cobalt blue, swung threateningly on squeaky hinges. Angelika knocked, waited, knocked and waited, knocked harder and waited, banged and yelled, waited and banged some more. Finally she leaned back as the door swung open in front of her. A middle-aged woman with haggard rings under her bulging eyes ushered them quickly inside. Her body, wrapped in folds of linen, was a comforting collection of curves; her bodice offered up a generous helping of cleavage.

  “You’re mad to be out there,” the tavern keep said.

  “Good thing you let us in then,” replied Angelika.

  A room full of unhappy faces regarded the new arrivals. Angelika challenged their suspicions by straightening her posture and marching determinedly to one of the few empty tables. “We’ve come a long way. We’re hungry, thirsty, and well-funded,” she announced, plunking a gold coin into the taverner’s wrinkled palm.

  Tall flagons of ale appeared before them; Devorah pushed hers gently aside, but then relented and sipped from it apprehensively. Plates of food followed soon after: red cabbage, white sausage, dumplings and pork steaks glistening with beads of fat. As the tavern keep delivered the last of the grub, Angelika took her by the forearm and urged her to sit with them for a moment. “We need news,” Angelika said. “Tell me what goes on here and why the streets are so empty.”

  Bosom jiggling, the taverner leaned in close, casting a nervous glance around the room, as if afraid unseen beings might overhear her. “Chaos is on the loose. There’s a plague of it. No one’s safe from the foul winds. My own cousin, sprouted tiny, crippled wings, greasy and black, only last week.” She shuddered. “Naturally her parents had to turn her in to the city guards, to be bludgeoned and then burnt on a pyre.”

  A full-bearded oldster at a nearby table chimed in. “Where’ve you been? Word travels fast in times of woe. The whole Empire’s suffering in the grip of Chaos, from top to bottom. There’s armies of beastmen marching from the north. The crops are blighted in Stirland. Burghers of Nuln have been caught coupling with curs and swine.”

  “That’s nothin’ new for Nuln!” cried a joker behind him. His jape netted only a smattering of weary chuckles and he took
to murmuring bitterly, something about a little gallows humour never hurting nobody.

  The taverner put her hand on Angelika’s wrist. “Here it’s the Chaos plague. The city authorities have put in a curfew, but there’s no need. No one wants to venture out and get infected by Chaos humours. They come in on the wind, near as we can figure. We keep praying that it’ll die down, after the Theogonist comes and performs the ceremony. It has imprisoned us here. We are no longer ourselves—now we’re no better than rats, scurrying in the dark.”

  “Theogonist?” asked Angelika. The Grand Theogonist was the highest-ranking Sigmarite in the entire Empire—the whole Old World, for that matter. The earthly representative of the Chaos-smiting hammer god himself. Even she, who did not give half a fig for priests and their religions, could not help but draw back in her chair, impressed.

  “The new Theogonist, Esmer, will be consecrating the great cathedral. I forget exactly when it’s supposed to happen, but he should be coming into town any day now. When that happens, surely the tide of Chaos will be turned back, held at bay by Sigmar’s almighty power.”

  The bearded man again interjected. “And they’ve got an awesome relic now, to install in its crypt—the beatified body of the holy woman, Mother Elsbeth. That’s sure to turn the Chaos back.”

  Angelika gripped her fork so tightly that its handle began to bend. “Let me guess. The one who fetched it has been put back in charge of the new cathedral…”

  “So runs the scuttlebutt,” said the tavernkeeper, standing to acknowledge a signal for more ale. “Though the workings of churchly politics is beyond me…”

  “Don’t listen to her!” joked the jokester. “She’s always got a priest or two beneath her bedcovers!”

  She flicked her wiping rag at the man and bustled off into the kitchen.

  Angelika’s throbbing head demanded a pillow to lie itself on. Her task was already difficult enough, but now that there was a Theogonist on the way…

  Even though the world was seemingly on the brink of annihilation, Franziskus could only think of only one thing. He was alone, in a room all his own, in an inn, with an actual bed to lie in. It had been over a month since he’d slept in a real, genuine bed. This one looked scruffy and he was sure the straw mattress was full of biting insects, but he didn’t care. There were linen sheets. They even seemed clean, more or less. He stripped off his clothing and flung himself into the bed. The pillowcase was cool against his face. He felt himself drifting immediately to the realm of sleep.

  A tap came at his door, jolting him. It would be Angelika, no doubt, determined to discuss plans of attack. He scrambled back into his breeches.

  “Please, let me in, quickly,” a voice said, on the other side of his door. It was not Angelika’s. His toes tangled in the cuffs of his trousers. Franziskus tripped over to the door and lifted up its bar.

  Devorah rushed at him, taking hold of the door handle and gently shutting it. She had a sheet wrapped around her.

  “Devorah,” said Franziskus. “What is it?”

  She dropped the sheet. The only light in the room slipped in through the door-jamb, but even so, Franziskus could not help but see. She surged into him, wrapping her slender arms around his back, pressing her bare chest against his. She kissed his breastbone, his throat, his lips. He turned his head from hers. She took his face in her hands and pulled it down to hers, and kept kissing him.

  Again he pulled back. “Devorah,” he said. “I cannot be the one to sully your purity.”

  “Sully me,” she breathed. “Franziskus, I beg it of you.” She climbed on top of him. “Sully me.”

  Before dawn, Angelika crept along creaky corridor floorboards to Franziskus’ room. She passed Devorah’s door and saw that it was ajar. Smirking, she departed the inn on her own and ducked through gusty, winding streets until she reached the city’s central square and stood before the cathedral. Across from it stood a smaller, more modest Sigmarite temple; a few priests and penitents scurried up its worn steps. It would, no doubt, go out of use after its replacement was consecrated. Beside it, an even humbler temple to Shallya nestled, its roof bowed in, its shingles shaking as each gust rushed over it. But it was the cathedral where Angelika’s business lay. She sidled across the square and hid herself behind a marble fountain depicting a covey of cavorting nymphs. Its waterworks sprayed her with mist droplets.

  A grand set of steps led to the cathedral’s massive, iron-shod doors, bounded on each side by a stone rail decorated with axes, hammers, and the fierce heads of divine, Chaos-eating wolves. Living guardsmen, alert and fully armoured, lined the cathedral steps, ready to repel any onslaught of mutants or beastmen that might suddenly decide to fall upon Manfried’s mighty church tower.

  She would need to know where the hidden entrances were. She required a floor plan.

  The wind blew harder; the spray from the fountain became a drenching torrent.

  It occurred to her that there was a person who would be almost guaranteed to have a full set of architectural plans already in his possession, with secret entrances clearly marked. And, though she did not know where to look for him, there was a second person who could surely point her in the correct direction.

  With the streets empty, and those few who ventured out driven witless by the fear of Chaos, it was difficult to get passers-by to stop and answer questions. Those willing to speak to her were mostly of the male persuasion; circumstances forced her to stoop to eyelash batting. Each time, she halfway expected the man she was interrogating to throw off his robes and reveal a hideously mutated body, festering with the tendrils, suckers and sores of Chaos, ready to engulf and devour her. But if the minions of the dark gods were about, they were also keeping to themselves.

  She knew that Udo Kramer had business interests in Averheim, but she hadn’t guessed how extensive they would be. Half of those she spoke to had heard of him. Each named a different store, warehouse, or workshop. Each time she found one, she was directed to another. Angelika leaned wearily against a storefront wall, then trudged on to her next destination: a rug shop that Udo had apparently bought, or was thinking of buying, or perhaps had recently sold. It would be found without sign or symbol, at the end of a snaking, dead-end laneway, distinguished only by its bright yellow door and a stone carving of a jester’s head above its archway.

  She found the place after a series of wrong turns. Her ankles ached from walking on uneven paving stones; she’d grown too used to soft forest floors. Angelika ventured down the alleyway, looking for hiding spots. She heard a groan, nearly drowned out by the keening wind. Plastering herself against a wall, she inched cautiously along it and turned a corner. The groan came from a basement window, no more than six inches high, covered by a wrought-iron grate.

  She bent down and peered inside. A man in monkish robes sat tied to a broken-down wooden chair. His head was slumped down, his chin resting on his chest. Angelika recognised him from his abundant curls of caramel-coloured hair: it was Brother Lemoine.

  Through bloodied lips, he addressed a figure Angelika could not see: “No matter how many times you strike me, I can’t tell you what I do not know.” He braced himself for another hit.

  Udo Kramer stepped from the shadows and obliged him, smacking him in the side of his face with a chainmail glove. Red droplets sprayed the basement’s limestone wall. “No matter how many times you deny it, you pontificating prig, I won’t believe you. You know when he’s coming. You have to know.”

  Lemoine vainly struggled to loosen his bindings. “What makes you think that? I’m not one of them. I’m not a Sigmarite warrior priest, just a monk—and a foreigner, at that!”

  Udo took hold of Lemoine’s left ear and squeezed it as if he was wringing out a dishrag. Lemoine winced. “I refuse to believe that it’s such a damn secret!”

  “It is! It is! The Theogonist faces many threats to his person! Chaos minions… the rag-tags of that heretic, Luthor Huss… Esmer will arrive with fanfare, but no advance notice!”


  Angelika moved to the yellow door and pounded on it with her off-hand. Her fighting arm already held her blade.

  “Who is it?” called Udo, his voice muffled.

  “Hrmmm hrmm!” replied Angelika. “Hrrmm!”

  “What?”

  “Kirchgeld sent me!”

  “What?”

  “Kirchgeld!”

  The door opened. Udo stood dumbfounded. “Angelika?”

  She kneed Udo in the groin. His eyes bulged. He stumbled at her, grabbing at her legs. She brought her dagger hilt down on the base of his skull. The sharp edges of the decorative handle sliced into his flesh. He slumped at her feet. She stepped over him, moving through a small foyer into a storeroom stacked high with eastern-style rugs, stacked flat. She shouted Lemoine’s name. He shouted back, his voice coming from behind a curtain. She pushed it aside, finding stone steps on its other side. Running nimbly down them, she stopped short in front of Lemoine, tied to his chair. As Angelika moved behind him to untie the knots that bound him, she made a quick survey of the cold basement. It was expansive, its walls mortared with rough chunks of limestone, its floors flat and tiled in stone. Raw timber support posts appeared in twin rows. Stacks of rugs, some piled to shoulder height, occupied most of the room’s floor space.

  “You’ve come to rescue me!” Lemoine cried.

  “You were not in my plan, I assure you,” Angelika said, giving up on the knots, which were too well-tied. She began to saw her way through the rope with her knife.

  “They’re planning to steal holy Elsbeth’s body!”

  “So am I, and I was hoping to trick them into helping me. But you ruined that, didn’t you? Sitting here looking pathetic and getting yourself mutilated.”

  Udo staggered down the basement steps, an ungainly matchlock pistol in each hand. “So—you meant to trick us?”