by James Wallis
DO NOT GIVE ME UP. KEEP HOPE AND FAITH. I WILL HELP YOU.
What was that, he wondered. Another way to break his spirit by promising false optimism? Or a real message from a sympathiser among the guards? Either way, it did him no good. With the nail of his index finger he gouged ‘NEXT TIME LEAVE FOOD’ across the inscription, threw the plaque to the floor, and turned back to his pain.
It was only there, curled up in the darkness like a fetus in the womb, more alone than he had ever been, he realised he could have answered Gamow’s question with a false name.
When he woke he was stiff all over. His fresh bruises throbbed. He felt his face, mapping the cuts and splits, and then unwrapped the bandage from around his neck and gingerly touched the wound there. It was still puffed up but he felt no pain from it so the infection and inflammation must have gone away. It felt moist, so it must still be healing. He retied the bandage. One less wound to worry about.
* * *
He let his thoughts carry him away to Grünburg, to the streets and alleys where he had played as a child, the faces he had known and might never see again. The last time he had written to Marie was weeks ago, before he’d left Marienburg. She would be worried. He had never mentioned the Untersuchung to her. Dear, sweet, simple Marie. She would have no idea why the letters had stopped, no way of linking that to the news of a cult of Chaos worshippers caught and burnt in Altdorf. Or maybe witch hunters had already been to Grünburg, looking for him, spreading word of his disgrace. In that case she would think him already dead, burnt with the others. Nobody knew he was still alive. Here, trapped in this dark place, it was as if he had been buried.
His chances of leaving here alive were null, he understood. For all his sweet words and wine, Lord Gamow lived up to the implacable reputation of the Order of Witch Hunters as it had been in the days after the fall of Mordheim, centuries ago, when the order had run out of control, a law unto itself. In Gamow’s eyes he was tainted by Chaos and nothing could remove that taint. There were only two ways he would leave here: on the way to a place of execution, or already dead.
Months ago Braubach had told him he was a dead man. He had not believed it then, but he believed it now. He resolved that if they were going to take his life, they would not take his honour with it. He would not give them the information they needed to find Pronk. They could kill him in the attempt, but as he was going to die here anyway, it did not matter. If his death was to be unnoticed by the world, it was still better to die with a shred of honour than with none.
Something in the distance was making wet sounds, like slobbering, like the mastication of fat jowls. He wondered what it was. Perhaps some faint sound amplified by the strange architecture of this deep, dank place—perhaps even a natural sound like water trickling from the ceiling, dripping in odd patterns.
Or maybe it was something more sinister. He had seen pigs slaughtered and butchered, and there was a quality to the sound of the way that guts and innards would pour from an inexpertly slit stomach, to slop to the ground in a wet heap.
Maybe some poor soul had given up or snapped, found something sharp and used it to eviscerate himself. Or…
He turned away and tried to think his way back to Grünburg.
It was particularly cold. He had wrapped himself in the blanket and huddled in a corner as he waited for his cup of water. He heard the cries and pleading before he heard the boots: four heavy sets marching down the corridor, the dim aura of torchlight proceeding them. Not the food-wagon, he thought. And they’re not bringing another unfortunate with them. They must be coming for me again.
He was wrong. The four guards moved past his cell. Despite himself, he moved to the door to see if he could see anything. His mind was numb from lack of stimulation, and even shadows were better than the eternal night of imprisonment. He was desperate for someone to talk to, but every time he had shouted to the voice who had called him on his first night, there had been no answer.
He couldn’t see them, but he could guess from the length and direction of their shadows that they had put their torches into wall-sconces by a cell-door some twenty feet away and stood in a group, discussing something in low voices. The words were unclear but their tone was worried. He heard the sound of a crossbow being drawn and nocked, chains, and a rusted bolt being drawn.
Something rumbled, so low he couldn’t tell if he was hearing it or feeling it. Despite the cold, Hoche felt his hackles begin to rise. Then the note changed and he recognised the sound. It was a growl. What in Sigmar’s name was growling down here?
There was a crash; something heavy throwing itself against a door. Someone was muttering a prayer.
The crash came again. The third time he heard a spang as something metal broke and ricocheted across the corridor, and an instant later the crash of the door rebounding on its hinges. Then many things at once: someone shouting, “Now!”; a cry of “Sigmar!”, a crossbow firing, a roaring snarl. Thuds, slaps and crunches. The shadows on the wall outside danced and flew in confusion. There was a flash of light, hurting his eyes, and an instant later a sharp explosion of flame flashed down the corridor. A fire-ball spell: Hoche recognised it from his lessons with Hunni von Sisenuf. So the chanting hadn’t been a prayer, he thought, and: witch hunters aren’t supposed to use magic.
Something snarled again. Someone shrieked, yelling and pleading, and there was a sound like a young tree-branch being twisted and splintered. Hoche recognised that too, he’d heard arms and legs breaking often enough. Someone else was shouting orders above the screaming. Nobody seemed to be paying attention.
Then the shadows shifted and darkened as something moved to blot out the light and Hoche involuntarily shrunk away from the door. Whatever had been in the other cell was running down the corridor, away from its attackers, towards him. Its footsteps were fast but heavy. It was clearly injured, but none of the witch hunters were following it.
Hoche only caught a glimpse of it in the faint light, but a glimpse was enough. A huge, misshapen body, massive legs, a beast-like head atop hunched shoulders, a broad mouth with too many teeth. Slit eyes. Muscles. And, thinking about it later, he remembered something about the way the skin had glistened in the torchlight that suggested scales.
It ran away. One of the witch hunters shouted something after it, perhaps a warning. For a few seconds there was only the sound of its fading footsteps, and groans from the men who had tried to subdue it. Then there was a different roar, a fusillade of muskets and flintlocks, their thunderclaps reverberating and echoing down the stone walls. It sounded like enough firepower to tear a man to pieces. It sounded as if it had.
After they had carried the dead witch hunter away and a carpenter had fixed the door back on its hinges and hammered new bolts into its timbers, and all was quiet and dark once more, Hoche heard the voice again. It was calling from down the corridor, close to where the fight had been. He couldn’t make out what it was saying, but he got up from his bed and moved to the door.
“What in Sigmar’s name was that?” he said.
“It ate the food,” said the voice, hoarse and low. “It ate the meat. There are things in the bread. Drink the water but do not eat the food.”
“Answer me! Was it human, or some beast?”
“I told you, new man, the food makes us unclean.”
“What do you mean, unclean?”
“You said you were clean, new man. If you wish to stay so, do not eat the food.”
“How can I live without eating?” Hoche asked. The voice did not reply and the corridors were silent. He held the cold bars for a moment longer and then returned to bed, wondering how it could be, after he had been down here for so long, he was still the ‘new man’.
The next time the guard with the food came by, he held the cup of water while Hoche greedily swallowed his few mouthfuls, then pushed a lump of hard bread through the dull iron bars. “Knock yourself out,” he said.
Hoche sat on his bed and held it in his hands. He held it to his nose,
recognising the sharp smell of yeast and rye, feeling the coarseness of the cheaply milled flour that had been used to make it, finding whole grains in there. He had been without food for what felt like weeks. He had feel himself thinning, his muscles wasting, his thoughts becoming dull and tired from lack of nutrition. How could he not eat it? He was a dead man already. If the bread hastened his death or moved it further away, it did not matter either way.
He bit into it, gnawing hungrily at its dense texture, savouring the acrid flavour on his long-neglected taste-buds. He deliberately ate slowly so his empty stomach did not revolt at the sudden invasion. He thought about keeping some for later, but by the time he reached a decision he had already finished the last crumbs.
He lay back on his bed and thought about what a pure pleasure the act of eating was, how simple, how satisfying. Then he slept, and when he woke up he was somewhere else.
* * *
“So good to see you again, Lieutenant Hoche,” said Lord Gamow, looking down at him. “I apologise for the restraints, but we had a little trouble recently, so we take more precautions now.”
He was staring at the ceiling, strapped to some kind of table. His arms and legs were tied, and a belt held his head down against the cool wood. The room, what he could see of it, was walled with bare stone, not plaster. Racks of tools hung from iron hooks: saws, pliers, hammers, awls. More hooks in the ceiling held pulleys, half-inch ropes over them. There was a smell of burning coal and hot metal, and under it sweat and roasted meat. The dull taint of stale blood hung in the air. In one coiner was a door, heavy and oak, probably locked.
“Very good. Your Untersuchung training is still in place, I see,” Gamow said. “I imagine that even at this moment you are compiling a list of items that could be used as weapons, possible escape routes, all that. Best of luck.” He walked to the far end of the table, where Hoche could not see him. “Once you’ve realised how futile that is, I hope you remember our last conversation. Honour and loyalty are all very well for soldiers and citizens, but neither are much use for a man in your position.”
He reappeared on the other side of the table. “I imagine that you’ve been doing some thinking,” he said. “You’ll have reached one of three conclusions. Number one: you will give me the information I ask for, without any trouble, in exchange for your freedom—which is still a possibility. Number two: you will give me information but it will be incorrect, either because you do not know the truth or because you wish to hide it from me. The former is foolish, the latter unadulteratedly so. Sister Karin has been schooled in the art of detecting lies from a man’s voice, his expression, the tension in his muscles and the beating of his heart. She will be watching you. Or thirdly, you may have chosen not to co-operate and to say nothing at all. That is not stupid, that is simply wrong. You will tell us. You may not think so, but you will.”
Gamow vanished from view. Hoche said nothing. He knew that if he began to talk, even to voice his refusal to answer, it would be one step towards breaking. If you start to communicate with your torturer, it makes it easier for them to crack you, Braubach had said. He lay back. So Sister Karin was here, though he couldn’t see her. He knew she could do what Lord Gamow described: he had been taught some of the same skills by the Untersuchung, and Hunni von Sisenuf had been a master of them.
He could see no reason to change his mind from the course he had decided. The talk of freedom was only a tempting lie. It and Gamow’s smooth words were nothing more than a veneer over the rough truth: that he was bound to a table in a torture chamber, with two ruthless people prepared to get the secrets out of his head if they had to bore holes in his skull to do it.
On the other side of the room was a hiss and rattle as someone poked a brazier of hot coals. He could smell the strange hard tang of metal brought to red heat. In his future he could imagine only pain. Well. There were worse things, he told himself.
Gamow loomed into sight above him, wearing a white apron. In one hand he held something like sheep-shears, half way between scissors and pliers, long and wicked. “Many of my colleagues believe that to be effective, pain has to be seen. The inflictee must witness his own defilement,” he said. “I cleave to the other view. I believe the true horror of torture lies in the unseen and unexpected. You know that whatever happens will be painful, but you cannot anticipate the nature and scope of the pain, its texture or duration. In its unknowing state, the mind amplifies the pain, and as the Reman scholar Lipocratus informs us, it is the pain itself, not its expectation, observation or dread, that leads the inflictee to give up his secrets. That is why I am going to start on your feet.”
He moved out of Hoche’s field of vision. Hoche tried to pull his head up, to see what Gamow was doing, but the leather strap restrained him. There was a sound of blades sliding against each other, and something sharp and cold pricked the sole of his left foot. From somewhere to the south came Gamow’s voice. “You would save us both a great deal of trouble if you talked now,” it said. “I’m a very busy man.”
Hoche tightened his lips.
“Very well then,” Gamow said. Hoche braced himself, tensing his muscles where the sharp point was still touching him. With awful suddenness something dug deep into the sole of his other foot, above the heel, and so far it felt like it would come out the top. The pain hit him so hard it drove the air from his lungs before he could scream, and his whole body contorted, twisting against the tight straps, desperate to break away and curl up. Through the agony he could feel the instrument moving, turning inside his flesh. It hurt worse than anything he had ever experienced, and it went on and on.
He had no idea how long it lasted, but eventually the anguish began to ebb. Out of sight, Gamow chuckled. “I think you begin to see the truth in the words of Lipocratus,” he said. “Is there anything you want to tell me? Other than the fact I’m a foul whore-son pig-sticker or any of the other usual insults?”
Hoche opened his eyes and breathed deeply. To resist torture, focus on the furthest thing you can see, Braubach had instructed him—years ago, it felt like—and think of the furthest thing you can imagine. Don’t think about what’s happening. Lose yourself and you lose the pain.
It had sounded convincing at the time. Hoche stared at the ceiling and tried to think of Grünburg. Then something sliced through a layer of skin and flesh, peeling it away, setting his nerves on fire, and he screamed.
The next few minutes were unbearable. After that it got worse.
After an eternity of agonies it was over. There was no sound in the room except for Hoche’s ragged breathing and the slow drip of viscous fluids falling to the floor. Gamow’s face, out of focus, blurred into view above Hoche’s tear-filled eyes. His face and hair were blood-spattered and he was smiling.
“Well,” he said, “I think we’ve got the measure of each other now.” He raised an elegant goblet to his thin lips and sipped from it. “Your resilience is strong for a man in your condition. Do you have anything to say to me?”
Hoche licked his dry lips with a dry tongue. The pain was less than it had been, but it still made it hard to find enough clear space in his head to form coherent thoughts. He said nothing.
Gamow looked thoughtful. “Nothing? Not a word?” he asked. “You know, I wonder why you’re working so hard to protect a minor, almost inconsequential member of your organisation when there are so many larger fish we could be chasing. Think of this”—he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of Hoche’s feet—“as an exploratory mission, a scouting trip to see how much pain you can bear, how much further we’re going to have to go in future sessions. You’ll notice that while I was slicing you apart, I wasn’t demanding the name of your Marienburg contact.”
He bent closer to Hoche’s face. “Do you know why?” he said, with breath that smelled of rich dark wines.
Hoche said nothing.
“Because he’s dead.”
It had to be a bluff. Hoche lay still, his sweat-covered clothes suddenly chill on his body, st
aring up, trying not to listen. Gamow straightened and took another sip from the goblet.
“Erasmus Pronk is dead,” he said, stretching the syllables of the name. “Your colleagues gave us his identity before we’d even dragged them out of the barracks. We sent agents to Marienburg the same day. You probably passed them on the road. Ironic the way these things happen, isn’t it?”
Hoche closed his eyes. Tears, born of pain, fatigue and wild sorrow, trickled either side of his face, past his temples and were lost in his hair.
He wanted to grieve for Pronk, but he knew that to survive this and outwit Gamow he had to keep his mind as clear as possible. There would time for mourning later. He hoped.
“So,” said Gamow from somewhere on the other side of the room, “that pain-befuddled head of yours is probably trying to work out whether this is some intricate game of bluff and double-bluff. How much do I already know? Was I certain that Pronk was the man or had I just heard the name? Has something in your reaction told me if I was right or wrong? And above all, why would I have caused you so much pain if I already knew the answer?
“They are all good questions, and I think that as an intelligent man you understand that if I was to answer them it would spoil the fun for both of us. But I’ll give you a moment to consider them, as well as two new questions that along with your calves will comprise the next act of this entertainment.”
His voice was now coming from Hoche’s side. Hoche kept his eyes closed, his breathing shallow, trying to think his way back to the escape of Grünburg. It seemed too far away, hidden behind mists of deception and hills of pain.
“The questions are these,” said Gamow. “Firstly, we know that the Untersuchung placed a deep-cover agent within the Order of Witch Hunters here in Altdorf. Who is that agent?”
Hoche did not move. The question meant nothing to him. Even if it had he would not have answered.
“Secondly, where is Andreas Reisefertig?”