by Desconocido
Reiner was confused by this attitude, attributing it first to anxiety over being thought inferior, but the words weren't said defensively, but with a sullen furtiveness. At last Reiner realised that the townsfolk were afraid he was a Sigmarite witch finder, looking to hang their local dispenser of love charms for witchcraft.
The response changed instantly when he asked instead, in the hesitant and embarrassed voice of a schoolboy, if there was someone who sold talismans for protection against lover's pox. Then he was told, with smirks and elbow nudges, to go see old Mother Yagna. She would put everything right.
Reiner and Hennig found the wise woman in a thatch-roofed shack outside a small fishing village just a few leagues down the river road. She was a short, frog-faced old crone in colourful rags who scuttled between towering jar-lined shelves, a clay stove and her mortar and pestle with the activity of a spider. She was less suspicious than the villagers. It was obvious she was used to soldiers seeking her out for protections against hangovers, pox and unfriendly arrows, but her demeanour changed abruptly when she glanced at Anyaka's list.
She looked up at them sharply. 'You be murder somebody?'
'I beg your pardon?' said Reiner.
She waved a gnarled hand at the paper. 'These very dangerous. Make you sick. This one poison. This one...' She hesitated. 'Bad magic.'
'Ridiculous,' said Reiner. 'These were ordered by a Sister of Shallya, sworn to preserve life, not take it.'
The wise woman grunted. 'Huh. She got rats, this sister?'
'Undoubtedly. She's staying in a stables. Would this kill rats?'
The crone chuckled. 'Oh sure. Plenty rats.' But she made no move toward her jars and bottles, only continued looking at Anyaka's list.
'I don't mean to rush you, woman,' said Reiner impatiently. 'But we have many things to do today.'
Mother Yagna pursed her lips and held out the list. 'Am sorry. I have not these things. I cannot help you.'
'Foolish old crone,' said Reiner, losing patience. 'Do you dare defy me?'
Reiner loomed over the woman menacingly. She smelled of turnips and bitter herbs. 'Listen, witch. You exist here at the mercy of the Empire, which has so far turned a blind eye to your heathen hedge magics. But it could just as easily go hard on you if you were accused of consorting with daemons, if someone were to say you'd been kissing the enemy's fundament by the light of the full moon. Do you understand me?'
Mother Yagna met his eye with an unblinking glare. She said nothing.
'Now, I am a fair man,' Reiner continued, 'I care not what two pfennig wart charms you fob off on ignorant peasants. I only want what I know you have, and I am willing to pay for it. Look!' He shook his purse. It jingled impressively. 'I will give you ten times what your leaves and twigs are worth. Only fill the order and let me be on my way.'
The old woman's expression hardened to stone. She turned without a word and began filling packets of dry leaves with powders and herbs. By the time she had finished, a hard knot of remorse had formed in Reiner's chest. He had no compunctions about getting what he wanted through guile, but intimidation of the weak wasn't his way. It had no finesse. Consequently, when he dipped into his purse to pay her, he took out more than he intended, letting fall on her table a handful of coins and jewels.
'Here, mother,' he said. 'May this soothe your pride.'
The old woman sneered. 'I no want your...' She stopped, staring. With trembling hands she picked up a ring. 'Where you get this?' she demanded.
'Curse your insolence,' snarled Reiner. 'Why should I...'
'Graverobber!' The old woman advanced on Reiner, eyes wild. 'This ring of boyar of village. Give him by Queen Katarin herself. He die fighting at Praag. You dig him up! You steal his ring!'
'Madam,' said Reiner, 'I assure you...'
'I know you now!' she interrupted. 'You no Imperial. You Chaos! Beast of Chaos!'
'Madam, please. Contain yourself.'
The old woman scooped up the coins and jewels and hurled them at Reiner and Hennig. The two pistoliers ran, ducking out of the door.
HALFWAY BACK TO Vulsk, Hennig turned to Reiner, who sat lost in thought next to him on the buckboard of the cart.
'She didn't say it was for rats.'
'Hmmm?' Reiner lifted his chin off his palm.
'The sister. She didn't say the stuff was for rats. She said it was medicine.'
'I know that, lad,' said Reiner.
'But then why did you say...'
'I was only trying to ease things along.' He laughed harshly at that.
Hennig frowned. 'So then, do you think the witch was right?'
'Of course not! The witch is an ignorant peasant. She is doubtless unaware of the higher curative properties of her so-called poisons.' But Reiner was less than sanguine. If the business with the boyar's ring had been an isolated incident, he might have laughed it off as the crazed imaginings of a demented crone, but the ring, on top of the revelation of the poisons, and Madam Tolshnaya's grumblings about the priestess's patients going bump in the night, it was all beginning to gnaw on him.
REINER STOLE ALONE into the stables. Hennig was buying samogon for the both of them in the tavern next door.
'Sister Anyaka?' Reiner called. 'Sister, I would speak with you!' He glared around in the dim interior, looking for the priestess. He wished instantly that he hadn't entered. The smell was horrific, and the moans of the sick men fell unpleasantly on the ear. He could only barely make out their forms in the stalls, and was glad of it, but found that he was oddly distressed that he didn't see the little fellow with the snow leopard hat.
Sister Anyaka hurried out of the tack room at the back of the stable. 'Master Hetzau, is all well?'
'That you shall have to tell me, lady,' said Reiner stiffly. 'I have just... Er, could we talk outside. It's a bit, er...'
'Certainly,' said the priestess. 'I am used to the smell, but I understand completely.'
She led him into the yard. The afternoon sun had melted the morning's snow and there was a dry bench against the stable wall. They sat.
'Tell me, my lord,' said Anyaka, turning to Reiner. 'What is troubling you?'
Now that he came to it, Reiner was suddenly less certain about things. The young woman looked so innocent that he found his suspicions melting away. 'Er, well, er... I say, where's the little fellow with the big hat? The snow leopard hat.'
Anyaka looked confused a moment. 'Oh, you must mean Ulenko. He's getting some air.'
'Is he now? You surprise me. I wouldn't have thought he could even sit up.'
The priestess frowned. 'My lord, I can't believe you've called on me to ask after the health of one of my patients. What is wrong?'
Reiner's face fell. 'Forgive me. It's just a bit... Well, you see, I had a most awkward encounter with the wise woman you asked me to find. She recognized a ring you gave me and accused me of robbing her boyar's grave to get it. Most disturbing. And I was wondering...'
Anyaka put a soft hand on his arm. 'You poor man.' she said. 'To be harangued so on a mission of mercy. I only wish I had been there to explain to the woman.' She looked at him sadly. Her eyes were green, with the depth of the ocean. 'She was indeed correct. The ring's owner was a boyar from near here. I curse myself for not thinking of the distress it might cause.'
She touched a hand to her chest. 'You see, our mission was just outside of Praag. We took in many of the dying during the battle, and many, being devout men, bequeathed to us their possessions as thanks for the comfort we gave them in their final hours. When...' She paused, and a shiver passed though her. 'When the raiders overran the convent, I brought the treasury and those I could save south to continue Shallya's work here.' She looked up at him again, eyes moist. 'Have I explained things to your satisfaction, my lord?'
'Oh, yes. Absolutely.' said Reiner, blushing. He felt horrible, having asked such a question of so virtuous a woman. 'I crave your forgiveness.'
'You require none.' She put her hand on his. A warm thrill shot throu
gh him. 'Anyone might have thought the same.'
'Nonetheless...'
'And I wish,' she said, leaning forward so that the fabric of her habit tightened against the swell of her breasts, 'that since you are obviously a man who cares little for gold, there were some other way I might repay you for your trouble.'
Reiner's heart thudded audibly in his chest and perspiration sprung out on his brow. The priestess traced the veins of his hand with a delicate finger. 'The sisterhood of Shallya is dedicated to relieving suffering in all its forms.' she said softly. 'And I sense, Master Hetzau, that you are suffering from loneliness, that you are ill from want.'
'Sister.' said Reiner hoarsely, and took her by the shoulders. She stopped him with a hand on his chest.
'Forgive me, my lord. It would be an honour - nay a pleasure - to tend to your needs, but the needs of my patients are greater, and there are things I must do before I can give you the attention you deserve.'
'How soon will you be done?' asked Reiner curtly. He couldn't remember when he had been so filled with desire.
The priestess smiled. 'Well, I'll be done the sooner, if you will once again assist me.'
'Anything,' said Reiner, licking his lips. 'Anything.'
'THE LENGTHS YOU will go to get your wick waxed will be the death of me,' growled Hennig as they again manoeuvred the cart through the teaming town. 'Sigmar's oxter, what a stench.'
'Don't blaspheme, Hennig,' said Reiner. 'We do holy work.'
'But you're the only one who'll be getting a reward.'
'Now, lad. It isn't as if you've lost on the deal. I convinced the sister to give us more gold, as well as, er, intangibles.'
'I'm not sure if it's worth it.'
This time the cart's cargo was two corpses, reeking of death and disease, and covered in lesions and festering boils. Anyaka had tried her best, she said, but the two men - a handgunner from Nuln and a Kislevite lancer - had slipped through her fingers. She had asked Reiner to dispose of the corpses: the handgunner to the army's priest of Morr, who operated the camp mortuary on the west side of town, and the Kislevite to the village's cemetery on the east, where the priests incorporated local customs into the ceremonies.
It was not a pleasant task. Even in the cold, the smell was overwhelming, and Hennig, stomach still delicate after the previous night's revels, had had to jump off the cart and vomit before they'd travelled half a league. But eventually they reached their first stop, the camp mortuary. Erected a discreet distance from the camp itself, it consisted of a few low black tents, one of which was a consecrated temple of Morr. A small, wood-framed shack sat behind it, which housed the furnace that cremated the dead. Tall stacks of firewood were piled next to this, and stacks of bodies, almost as high, were piled in front of the temple. The smell that drifted from them was the first thing to drown out the stench of the bodies Reiner and Hennig carried. Black-robed acolytes of Morr crawled over the mounds like flies over carrion, preparing the corpses and taking them into the black canvas temple.
A burly acolyte with his sleeves folded back approached them as they trundled up.
'What have you there, my lords?' he asked.
'A citizen of Nuln,' said Reiner. 'Name unknown. And a Kislevite who we take to the local temple.'
'Very good, my lord,' said the man, turning to whistle at two acolytes who wore heavy gloves and kerchiefs over their faces. 'Though there'll be a wait until we can see to him properly.'
Reiner surveyed the mounds as the masked acolytes lifted the body off the cart, 'Does the war truly go so poorly?'
'Taint the war, my lord. It's sickness. Last day or so they been dropping like flies. Don't know why.'
'Most disturbing.'
'Yes, sir.'
IT WAS DUSK. Shopkeeps were boarding up their storefronts and taverns were hanging out lanterns. As they rode through town to drop off the second body Reiner and Hennig noticed a commotion in the town square. Villagers were using ropes to haul something out of the well, and just as Reiner pulled abreast, the men succeeded in getting it over the lip. It flopped to the street with a wet smack. It was a body, so bloated as to be unrecognizable. What was readily apparent however, was that the fellow had been terribly sick before he fell in. Though his waterlogged skin was the colour and consistency of gruel, Reiner could see black gangrenous wounds all over it.
'That accounts for the wave of illness,' he said.
'Good thing we only drink samogon,' said Hennig.
Reiner was urging the carthorse forward again when a villager fished something else out of the well. At first Reiner thought it was a drowned cat, but then he saw it was a large Kislevite hat of snow leopard fur, pinned with a red and gold cockade.
'Damn and blast!'
'What's the matter?' asked Hennig.
Reiner geed the cart horse into a trot. 'That hat! Getting some air, was he? Ranald curse the woman!' he cried.
'Who?' asked Hennig. 'The sister? Why are you angry at her?'
'Because if she's up to what I think she's up to, I won't be getting my "heavenly reward" this evening.'
Reiner drove the cart as fast as he could, which wasn't very fast. The streets were as crowded as ever with refugees, and Reiner spent as much time bawling at lollygaggers to get out of his way as he did moving forward. They were just three blocks from Madam Tolshnaya's and moving well at last when Reiner heard Hennig gasp.
'Reiner!' he said. 'Reiner, look! The corpse!'
Reiner glanced behind him and froze at the sight that met his eyes.
The Kislevite had been a trim, well muscled warrior in life. Now his abdomen was more bloated than that of the fellow who had drowned in the well. He looked like he'd swallowed a hogshead of Marienburg Ale whole. His belly was taut as a drum head; so tight that the skin was splitting. But that wasn't the worst of it. The balloon of flesh bulged and squirmed like a sack full of rats.
Reiner pulled on the reins and brought the cart to a juddering stop, then turned, staring.
'What is it?' asked Hennig. 'I've heard corpses fill with gas when they-'
His sentence went unfinished, for with a horrible wet pop, the body's stomach erupted in a shower of rotting flesh and putrid viscera. Reiner and Hennig recoiled, instinctively covering their faces as they were spattered with clots of stinking flesh. Choking and blinded, they didn't at first notice that, mixed in with the reeking ejecta, were small snot-coloured creatures that skittered over the cart on tiny, malformed legs.
The first Reiner knew of them was when one sank needle-like teeth through his boot into the flesh of his calf. He yelped and knocked it to the ground. His hand came away smeared with slime. Another bit his left toe. More climbed Hennig's legs. He plucked them off, gagging.
The street, a narrow way lined with tanneries and low taverns, was crowded with idle soldiers, street-hawkers and sisters of joy. The slimy vermin leapt off the cart into that river of humanity like fleas, biting and clawing, and the normal street chatter was replaced by bellows of pain and surprise. A roiling knot of victims twisted and swatted at the miniature horrors, looking for all the world as if they performed some strenuous dance. It would have been ludicrous were it not for the unfortunate soul, who fell, screaming, with eyes plucked out and veins chewed open to the muddy ground.
'What are they?' wailed Hennig, trying to knock one loose with his sabre.
'Nurglings!' said Reiner, snatching one off his shoulder and hurling it away. 'Revolting little beasts, aren't they? Ow!' He stomped on one that was biting his ankle.
Recovering from their initial shock, soldiers lounging outside nearby taverns rushed forward, swinging swords and stabbing with daggers. Reiner and Hennig jumped down and joined them.
'Second time today,' said a crossbowman. 'Things just like this attacked the camp hospital not two hours ago. Killed a score of wounded before we put 'em down.'
Reiner frowned at this news, but a nurgling jumped on his leg and he had to attend to it.
The tide was turning when a you
ng guardsman, riding past at a gallop, reined up sharply. 'What happens here?' he demanded, breathless.
'Nurglings,' said Hennig, still swatting. 'Corpse was full of them.'
'Sigmar preserve us,' said the guard, making the sign of the Hammer. 'It's an infestation. The same thing happened at the mortuary. I ride to inform Captain Ulstaadt. Now I shall have two tales to tell.'
'The mortuary?' said Reiner, but the boy had already spurred away. Reiner's stomach sank like he had swallowed lead shot. 'Hennig!' he called, climbing onto the cart. 'Mount up.' He pushed the exploded corpse off the cart with his boot, then grabbed the reins as Hennig swung up to the buck board beside him. Reiner slapped the reins across the horse's rump and they were off at a trot.
IT WAS FULL dark when they reached Madam Tolshnaya's, and the evening's festivities were already in full swing. Drunk troopers staggering in and out, arm in arm, singing bawdy songs. Knights intent on breaking their knightly vows ducked in discreetly, the badges of their orders hidden under plain cloaks. Fiddles and flutes mixed with feminine laughter behind the glowing mullioned windows. But though those sights and sounds would normally have made Reiner green with envy, tonight he was too angry to pay them any mind. He disliked being beaten at his own game. He was nobody's dupe. Nobody's.
He slewed the cart into the yard behind the brothel, scattering protesting soldiers as he went, and reined up with a skidding of hooves and a skittering of wheels. Drawing their sabres, he and Hennig leapt off the cart before it had come to a full stop and kicked in the stable door.
The long room was dark and silent, but smelled like a charnel house. Reiner and Hennig clapped hands over their faces, retching. At first they could see nothing, but soon their eyes adjusted. Anyaka's patients lay in their stalls as before, but seemed now very still - too still. Reiner and Hennig could hear no breathing or movement. All sound was lost in a constant low buzzing.
'What's that?' whispered Hennig through his fingers.
Reiner swallowed thickly. 'Flies, lad.'
The patients were dead, all of them. Reiner wondered with a prickle of dread if he had ever seen them alive, if they had all along been corpses, animated by some foul magic.