Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  And, he thought, it would be good to see them all again, Hunni, Bruno, Anders, Jakob and even Braubach, with his cynicism, his moods and the strange tangents his thoughts took. He wanted to hear the news, to know how the raids on the Knights Panther had gone, and who was in favour and who was out, before he became caught up in the official rote of meetings and paperwork. He tugged the reins, steering his horse away from the barracks and towards the inn.

  He left the horse in the tavern’s small stable and pushed open the side door, expecting a crowded room, loud conversation, the smell of fresh-poured beer and hot meat. Instead, in the quiet room a few strangers looked up from their platters, meeting his gaze with interest or suspicion. He did not recognise any of the drinkers, but Ralf the landlord was standing behind the counter with a jug of black beer, watching the tankards. Hoche gestured across the floor to catch his eye. Ralf looked up. He seemed surprised to see him.

  “Anyone in the back room, Ralf?” Hoche asked. The fat man shook his head. Hoche grinned back; it was odd that none of the others was there yet, but perhaps they were in a meeting, or the rain had delayed them. Still, he could use the waiting time. “Bring me a trencher of beef and a pint of black,” he instructed, and pushed open the door to the inner sanctum where Untersuchung members habitually drank and talked.

  The room was silent, the long table and benches clean and bare. Hoche sat down at the end nearest the doorway, ready to surprise his friends when they arrived, and waited for his food and beer to arrive. He stared idly at the unpolished surface of the table, and the pattern of scratches and marks that time had left there. Previous occupants had carved sets of initials he didn’t recognise, the outlines of the letters filled in with years of grime. Someone had scratched a round marker-symbol there, like the one he had found in Marienburg. Its cuts were fresh, not aged at all. It pointed to the centre of the table.

  Hoche stared at it, his attention caught. The mark had to be a joke. Someone had been sitting there, perhaps, and someone else had drunkenly scratched it to point at them. He stood and leaned over the table, checking the indicated spot to see if anything else had been carved at that point, but there was nothing. Nothing but a joke.

  And then again…

  He knelt and ducked his head under the edge of the table. There was something there, a rectangular shape wrapped in cloth, held to the underside of the wood boards with tacks. He reached out for it, and it came away from its fixings without too much difficulty. What in Sigmar’s name was it? What was it doing here?

  He placed the bundle on the table and unwrapped it: a small book, untitled, bound in cheap leather. He opened the front cover. There, on the verso, was the owner’s name. “Gottfried Braubach, his journal.”

  A sound came from the doorway. Hoche turned, expecting his colleagues or Ralf with his food, but the latch did not lift and the door did not open. Instead there was the rasping clunk of a key turning in an unoiled lock.

  Hoche was about to shout out in protest, and then he stopped himself. That wasn’t an accident, he thought. They have locked the door deliberately. They’re not going to let me out, and shouting will let them know I’ve learned I’m a prisoner.

  Wondering about reasons can wait. First I need to get out of here.

  He glanced up at the room’s high windows, but they were both barred, as they had always been. There was no other doorway. Think, think, he told himself. This is a room used by a group of somewhat paranoid occult investigators, with a lot of enemies. They wouldn’t come here unless they felt safe, and they wouldn’t feel safe unless there was another way out. That’s the way the Untersuchung think. They may not have told me about it, but it has to exist. Somewhere.

  Mentally he mapped the room, working out what was beyond each of its walls. The east wall, with its windows, faced the street. The west, with its large fireplace, probably shared its chimney with the kitchen. South was the door to the main room, so north had to be the stables. All the walls were brick, and not much chance of secret doors in any of them. He bent to peer up the flue of the fireplace, but the chimney was too narrow for a child, let alone him. He kicked the back of the grate but it didn’t move: no false back there.

  He looked up. No hatches in the ceiling. Then he stopped and mentally kicked himself. Tavern, he thought. Beer-cellars.

  The trapdoor was under the table, which he had to shift by lifting it from one end of its solid wood bulk so it didn’t scrape across the floor as he moved it. The hatch led to darkness, the room’s light illuminating a patch of brick floor about eight feet below. Hoche thought for a moment about how he was going to close the trap to conceal his exit, but realised that if the table had been moved they’d work it out soon enough. He grabbed Braubach’s journal from the bench, wrapping the cloth around it, and lowered himself through the hole in the floor.

  It was an eight-foot drop onto a rough, dark surface. He landed in a crouch and paused for a second, letting his eyes adjust. The cellar room was abandoned, with only broken barrels and an empty wine-rack. At one end thin light filtered down from cracks around a heavy shutter: the old street entrance, Hoche guessed, and too obvious for what he needed. Then, as his vision cleared, he saw a passageway in the east wall. It was only two feet high and about the same across, but that was enough to crawl through. He dropped to his knees and crept into the darkness.

  The tunnel sloped down at a shallow angle for about fifteen feet and emerged into a wider, vaulted one with a stream of water running down its centre. It smelled of rot and decay but it didn’t sunk. A disused sewer, Hoche thought, or a storm-drain. He stayed close to its wall, following it by touch, glancing up at occasional shafts of light from broken brickwork above. There were no sounds of pursuit.

  What just happened, he asked himself? Nobody’s in the Windmill. I show up, and Ralf locks me in like a prisoner. Was it the Knights Panther? Are they still on my trail? He shook his head: it was possible but it seemed unlikely, particularly if they’d been raided. Perhaps it was a matter of revenge?

  But Braubach had hidden his journal under a table in the tavern. He’d left a sign so any Untersuchung agent could take it, but nobody had. Why would he do that? Hoche stopped for a moment, the water of the storm-drain running over his shoes, soaking his feet. That question was at the heart of it, he felt. Why had Braubach tried to pass his journal to someone else—and why had nobody else taken it?

  There were two possible reasons. Either all the other agents knew it was there, or there were no agents left to find it.

  Hoche knew he desperately needed answers. The obvious place to look for them would be the Reiksguard barracks, but he knew that if his sudden suspicion that the Untersuchung was in trouble was right, then going there would put him in mortal danger.

  He sloshed on through the darkness.

  Being sworn servants of Sigmar, most witch hunters never let alcohol pass their lips. For the few in Altdorf who did, the place they gathered was the Fist and Glove, an ancient drinking-house in the back-streets behind the Cathedral of Sigmar, not far from the Street of a Hundred Taverns. Centuries of repression, the disdain of priests and the occasional suspicious house-fire had not been able to remove it from its location, nor the patrons from its bar.

  Inside its cracked oak door, the low ceiling and the lack of windows added to the inn’s atmosphere of cramped gloom. The only light came from candles fixed to the wooden pillars that dotted its floor, marking off the booths with their hard wooden benches, worn smooth by generations of clenched witch hunter buttocks. It smelled of tobacco, wood smoke, incense, stale beer and stale sweat. Its patrons preferred the company of their own thoughts and the counsel of their beer. The atmosphere was sombre and heavy. It was as if centuries of earnest discussion over points of religious doctrine and agonising over matters of conscience had soaked into the walls, the woodwork, the beer and even the air itself, darkening them, weighing them down.

  Occasionally, however, the spirit might be lightened if a visitor was present: a del
egation from another city, perhaps, or pilgrims laughing, joking and telling stories, or a devout trader fresh from saying prayers in the Cathedral of Sigmar since Altdorf, unlike Marienburg, did not have a god of trade. This evening was one of those: a merchant from Carroburg had come in, one-eyed, his left arm bandaged, black curly hair visible under one of the flat velvet hats in the Tilean style. He said his name was Hans Frei and he wanted to speak to a witch hunter, to tell them about a Shallyan monastery he had visited. An astute observer might have noticed the stained bandage around his neck, and the fact that his sword was of a military, not civilian design. But when a stranger is so convivial, has such an interesting tale and is so free with the drinks, who has time to notice details?

  “It was a godless place,” Herr Frei said, and shivered, and supped his beer.

  “You didn’t see any solid evidence of Chaos-worship? Symbols, tattoos, unholy rites? Sacrificed babies?” asked a witch hunter, one of the three who had been listening to the story. His name was Theo Kratz, he was Altdorf born, four years in the service of the Order, and had burnt thirty-four witches. Everyone knew he would go a long way.

  “I saw nothing like that,” said Herr Frei. “But my senses were telling me that something was wrong. There was none of the tranquillity I expect from a shrine of the Mother of Peace. My father was a priest, and I am told I am sensitive to such things. And as I said, there’s the matter of their strange healing practices.”

  “Very strange,” agreed Erwin Rhinehart, who had drunk more of Herr Frei’s beer than the others. “I will instruct our brothers in Carroburg to make investigations. Be assured the matter will be examined.” He drained his tankard and put it down rim-first on the table, with a sound like a cracked bell.

  “Thank you, gentlemen. In Sigmar’s name,” said Herr Frei. “But tell me, what news of Altdorf? I heard of a discovery of a great cult of Chaos-followers. Was that your work?”

  “Aye,” said Anders Holger, the third of the listeners, and the only one wearing their distinctive dark clothes and high-collared shirt. His accent was from the western Empire, and he had taken a particular interest in the earlier talk of Carroburg. “It was our business, and bad business it was. The work of the Foul Lords, so close to the Emperor’s court. But we rooted them out, and their smoke has risen to the sky.”

  “Close to the Emperor?” Herr Frei looked concerned. “I heard tell it was one of the great regiments. Is that right? Members of the Knights Panther?”

  “The Panthers?” Theo grinned in amusement. “No, your tale-teller has his facts twisted. It was the Reiksguard.”

  “The Reiksguard? The Emperor’s bodyguard?” asked Herr Frei. There was a strange note in his voice.

  “No. Well, not that way,” said Erwin. “A secret division of the Reiksguard. You wouldn’t know the name. They were a subtle crew.”

  “Too subtle for their own good. Or ours,” Anders said. “It’s public knowledge now. The Untersuchung, they were named, and charged with protecting the Emperor from the schemes of Chaos. The Lord Protector received word they were harbouring heretics and dealing with the dark forces they had sworn to revile. They thought they were safe, see, because they had special protection for their work. But Lord Gamow obtained a dispensation from the Grand Theogonist himself to search their barracks.”

  “And what a haul we found!” crowed Erwin.

  “You were there?” Herr Frei asked. If the room had not been so dark, his skin might have looked pale, like ashes. Then he gestured across the room to the pot-boy to bring more beer and for a few seconds everyone’s attention was drawn to the other side of the room, away from him. By the time they looked back he had recomposed himself.

  “I was there.” Theo watched as his tankard was refilled, paused to drink, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Heretical documents, foul forbidden books, parts of mutants, two wizards with expired licenses—such a gathering of idolators, false priests and dark things I have never seen. We burnt every one of them, and used their vile books to stoke the blaze higher still. The bone-fires burned for three days, and their hot fat ran down the gutters like rainwater. It was a sight to behold.”

  “Sigmar’s work,” said Anders.

  “Sigmar’s work,” echoed Erwin.

  “All of them, you said,” Herr Frei asked. “How many were they?”

  “Fifty-seven,” Theo said. “In Altdorf, that is, and another fourteen in Talabheim. Some escaped us but we have their names and there are warrants out for their arrest, with a bounty of a hundred crowns on the head of each man. They had agents in every city in the Empire, but we will have them all by Mondstille. Their souls will answer to Morr’s justice, and they’ll learn what good their vile masters are to them then.”

  “Sigmar’s work,” said Herr Frei thoughtfully. He looked up from the pint-pot he had been staring into, and narrowed his eyes across the half-empty tavern, to where a female figure sat alone at a corner table, in the robes of a priestess. Erwin followed his gaze, then looked back to smirk at the other two witch hunters. Herr Frei caught their smiles and broke his stare.

  “You know her?” he asked.

  “She’s one of us,” Erwin said.

  “A witch hunter?” Frei asked.

  “Yon’s Sister Karin Schiffer, assistant to Lord Gamow,” Anders said. “A pain, she is. You’d think she followed one of the cold gods of Kislev, for the frozen water that flows in her veins. Not one to talk to us. Keeps her own company. But drinks, she does, and a good deal of late.”

  “She’s an uncommon handsome woman,” said Frei. “I feel that I’ve seen her before.”

  “’Tis possible,” Theo said. “She has been in the order only a year or so. But Lord Gamow has taken a powerful liking to her. If you know what I mean.”

  “I follow your sense,” Frei said, looking across the room at her. As he did she raised her gaze, scanning the room, and met his stare. Their eyes locked in mutual recognition. Then she dropped her head again, looking back to her clasped hands, hiding her face behind the dark waterfall of her hair.

  Herr Frei stiffened, and his right hand dropped from the handle of his tankard to rest by his side. A suspicious man, or one more alert and less drunk than his companions, might have wondered if he was about to draw his sword. But Sister Karin did not move from her table, and he relaxed.

  Nevertheless, a minute or so later he made his excuses, paid the pot-boy for the night’s beer, and left the tavern. The path to the street took him past the table where the priestess sat alone. He did not look down, and she did not look up until the door had thudded shut after him.

  Hoche waited until he was streets away from the Fist and Glove before ducking into an alley to remove his hat, eye-patch and the sling around his left arm. Perhaps the disguise had been too much, but he had wanted to distract attention from the bandage around his neck. And yet, despite it all, Sister Karin had recognised him. He would have to leave the city that evening. Where he’d go, he wasn’t sure. Home to Grünburg, perhaps, but even that wouldn’t be safe for long.

  The news was still sinking in. The new Hoche, the trained agent, was performing almost by rote, information-gathering, asking the right questions, thinking about plans of action, plotting survival. Underneath, at a more human level, he was numb.

  He hadn’t believed it until he had heard it from the witch hunters’ mouths, but it was true. His colleagues were dead, burned. All of them. Braubach, Hunni, Anders, Bruno, Jakob and all the rest. For a moment he pictured them screaming in flames, bound to stakes, their clothes and hair on fire, blazing. He closed his eyes hard, pressing his fingers against them, to banish the image.

  All dead. The Untersuchung all dead, denounced as heretics and daemon-worshippers, followers of Chaos. The organisation that had ended his career as a soldier to recruit him was now itself ended, and with it his new life. This morning he had been an agent of the Empire returning home with important news. Now he was a wanted criminal, a consort of Chaos, an enemy of the state.
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br />   Was it true about the Untersuchung? He’d seen the damned books with his own eyes, and heard the oaths and the heresies. But had his fellows been followers of Chaos, or had they just strayed too close to the line that separated black from white, so lost in that twilight region that they didn’t realise they had gone too far? He couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t liked them all, but he had trusted them. Nothing they had done had given him cause to doubt their integrity.

  If so, if they were innocent, then who had ordered the raid? The Knights Panther, still fighting to save their reputation? Possibly, but it must have been someone who knew that enough evidence lay there to convict the whole order, to damn them by association. The raid had come from the witch hunters, directed by Lord Gamow. Hoche resolved to learn more about the man.

  Gamow was Lord Protector, second-in-command of the Order of Witch Hunters. His ruthlessness and zeal had taken him to the top of his Order, and he was renowned for his ability to seek out groups of Chaos worshippers. Some of those arrests, Hoche had learned from Braubach during his training, had been based on tip-offs from the Untersuchung. Others had been groups of frightened innocents, tortured until they would admit to anything if it ended their suffering. Braubach had disliked the man. In the last few months that dislike had increased and become tinged with fear.

  After Hoche had clambered from the storm-drain through an access-tunnel in the slums and bought some clothes from a grubby pawnshop by the docks—too risky to return to the Tilted Windmill for his saddlebags—he had sat by candlelight in the Cathedral of Sigmar and studied Braubach’s journal.

  His mentor’s crabbed script and frequent crossings-out did not lend themselves to fast reading, and Hoche had only studied the last few entries in detail. They had not been illuminating: the normal minutiae of Untersuchung bureaucracy and life. Only the final entry, written in a scratched, swift hand different from Braubach’s normal elegant script, gave any hint of what had happened.