by James Wallis
“It has taken me a long time to find you,” he said. “My tutor and friend Gottfried Braubach left hints to your identity in his diary.”
She turned her back to him, busying herself with teacups.
“I am contacting as many old agents as I can,” he said. “Nobody is tracking down the Chaos cults that have infiltrated the Empire’s courts and councils. Even the witch hunters have been corrupted at their highest levels. The Untersuchung’s time is past and we cannot rebuild it, but we can make a new organisation to fight the schemes of Chaos. And that is why I sought you out. I need your help, Frau Farber.”
She did not turn to face him. “How do I know I can trust you?”
He smiled at her back. “I can give you no reassurance except my word. But a spy intent on trapping you would have forged a proof. My lack of evidence is the only bond I can offer.”
“How do you know you can trust me?”
“I don’t. But concealed within the carvings on your door is the Untersuchung code-symbol for a safe-house, so at least I was sure you were the right person.”
“Who is the corrupt witch hunter you mentioned?”
“Lord Gamow, their former Lord Protector. Dead.”
“Braubach’s diary?”
“Destroyed.”
“And how many Untersuchung agents have you tracked down?”
“You,” Karl said, “are the fourth.”
“How many have joined you?”
He did not answer. He knew she knew.
“One agent to save the Empire,” she said, “and him a liar. You have kept one card hidden from me, and it is a trump.”
“Yes,” he said, and knew he had lost her too. “I bear the mark of damnation. Chaos flows in my blood, put there by a cultist’s cursed blade. I am a mutant like the ones I killed on the road. My body is changing, and though so far my mind remains clear, one day it too will succumb to this curse. Until then, I shall fight against the power and influence of Chaos wherever I find it, with every shred of my strength.”
She said nothing, but passed him a cup of tea. He look it and their fingers brushed. She did not flinch away.
“How did you know it?” Karl asked. “Can you recognise us?”
She sat down, holding her own cup. “Nothing so clever. There are handbills for your arrest, Karl Hoche. They describe you as a mutant, a traitor and an assassin. They say you betrayed an entire army to an ambush by Chaos knights. They promise two hundred gold crowns for your head.”
“Signed by Brother Karin Schiffer,” he said. “I have seen them. They are not true.”
“Why are you really doing this?” she asked. “You didn’t cross half the Empire to find an old woman, expecting her to join your foolhardy crusade.”
He looked into her face and found nothing there to distrust. “I have nobody I can talk to,” he said. “There is nobody to help me bear my pain. Even for a man such as I am, loneliness is a fearsome burden. Talking to somebody who understands… who does not hate or fear me… even for a few minutes…” His words trailed away.
There was a long pause, heavy with meaning. She looked at him, and her eyes were not unkind. “Agent Hoche—Karl—I cannot join you. I will tell you what I told the last Untersuchung agent who sought me out…”
“Wait.” Karl leaned forward, tea spilling unseen from his cup. “I’m not the first? There have been others?”
“There was one other,” said Frau Farber, “who sought me out here, two months ago.”
“What was his name?”
“He would not tell me. About your age, or slightly older. Three inches shorter than you, ten pounds heavier, hair brown and thinning, posing as a mendicant. He wore a silver hammer on a chain and had a strange wide scar on his neck.”
Karl shook his head. “What did you tell him?”
“What I have told you: that I cannot help you. But ten weeks before that, as the harvest was coming in, I received a letter. It was not signed, but its text was filled with our pass-phrases. It said that if I was interested in continuing the—what was the phrase?—‘the great work of my former employer’ then if I went to The Dog and Pony tavern in Nuln and asked for Herr Scharlach, I would learn something to my advantage. And then I sent him away.”
“May I see the letter?”
She shook her head. “Destroyed, like you destroyed Braubach’s diary. Too dangerous to keep.”
Karl was silent for a long moment. “So what now?” he asked.
“Now I send you away, and clean up the mess you’ve made,” she said.
“Mess?”
She pointed at the spilled tea, but he knew she meant more. In this small community there would be questions: why had the stranger who’d saved the monks in the forest wanted to see her? What had he said? Who was he? All these things would require falsehood, and a tapestry of good lies takes time to weave.
“Is there nothing else you can do for me?” he asked.
She was already on her feet, fetching a cloth from a cupboard beside the fireplace, but stopped and looked at him.
“I can read your fortune,” she said.
Karl stared at her. She smiled, and there was a lifetime in the smile.
“My husband was a merchant captain,” she said, “and knew a man from Araby, who claimed to have learned the skill from a man in Ind, who had had it from one of the fabled sorcerers of Cathay. I do it rarely these days, but I will do it for you. Choose six sticks from that box of kindling and pass them to me.”
Karl dug among the rough twigs, sorting and selecting. “Does it work?”
Frau Farber shrugged. “If you believe a thing will happen, does it become more or less likely? If you doubt it then don’t see it as prophecy, see it as advice.” She took the sticks from him, closed her eyes and cast them onto the carpet in front of her. They fell in a scatter. She stared down at them, her lips pursed. In that long moment Karl realised that once she had been a very beautiful woman; the kind of beauty that only the upper classes have. How had she been lured into the Untersuchung?
She looked up at him. “Opposition and change,” she said. “On one side: you. You will grow stronger and weaker.”
“The mutation,” Karl said. “It strengthens my body even as it weakens my mind.”
Frau Farber pointed at the sticks. “The other side. There are three against you. One will bend and two will break.” She paused. “That’s all.”
Karl considered her words, then stood and picked up his sword and cloak. “Thank you, Frau Farber,” he said. “I have troubled you enough.” At the door, he turned back to look at her and her little home, the contents of her long life spread out around her to keep her company, and for a second he felt again a sense of desperate solitude.
“When you read the fortune of the other agent, what did you see?” he asked.
She looked him in the face, and he felt that he saw the same loneliness reflected there. “Nothing good,” she said. “All I see these days is nothing good. It’s why I stopped casting the sticks.”
He hesitated for a long moment. Then: “Pray for me,” he said, opened the door and stepped out into the long night.
CHAPTER TWO
Weighed Down
“I want to see Herr Scharlach,” Karl said.
It was a bright day, beyond the reach of winter but still too early in the year to be called spring. Nuln, the southernmost of the major cities in the Empire, was always first to feel the heat of the year’s new sun, bringing the townsfolk onto the streets like forest creatures coming out of hibernation to sniff cautiously at the street traders and market stalls. The river Reik flowed through the centre of the city, rolling and heavy with floodwaters from upstream, bringing the smells of upland topsoil, ice, grass and mud, and carrying away the must and mildew of winter.
The Dog and Pony tavern was bright and cold, its windows thrown open to the pale sun. A couple of patrons huddled over drinks in shadowed booths, keeping pale complexions and tired faces out of the light. The walls were w
hitewashed, the sawdust on the floor freshly strewn. It felt curiously soulless. Outside in the street a ragged voice was crying doom for the Empire.
Karl leaned on the bar and waited for the landlord to finish cleaning and checking the taps on the large beer-barrels and the smaller casks of wine racked behind the bar. Finally the man looked up and observed him with thick eyelids and half-closed eyes.
“Herr Scharlach’s not here,” he said. “If you sit and buy a drink I’ll send the boy with a message.”
“Does he work far away?” Karl asked.
“There and back takes about a glass of wine,” the bartender said, “if you have a large one and a meat pie with it.”
Karl sat at a table half-way down the tavern and waited as the innkeeper brought his food and wine. He had not known such a sense of enthusiasm, of optimism, for years. Meeting Frau Farber had felt different: he knew he had been taking a risk, and the chances of her agreeing to join him had always been small. But now he had the name of someone who, like him, was trying to recruit former Untersuchung agents.
The Untersuchung. Karl sipped his wine and grimaced at its bitter undertaste. He had only spent six months in the secretive branch of the Reiksguard. He had been tricked into joining in the first place, and his brief career as a member had not exactly been glistening. But in those short months he had made true friends—friends who had died when the witch hunters under the Chaos-worshipping Lord Gamow had falsely accused the Untersuchung of being infested with Chaos-worshippers—and he had seen first-hand the importance of the organisation’s role in seeking out and destroying the cults and schemes of those who followed the four dark gods.
With the Untersuchung gone, there was nothing to fill its place. The witch hunters tried but were too bound by doctrine and fanaticism: they were rakes and sledgehammers compared to the subtle instruments that Karl and his colleagues had wielded. Since the order had been destroyed, since Karl had become a wanted criminal and a mutant, he had sworn vengeance against the forces that had ruined his life. But there was a limit to what a man could do alone. Even if Herr Scharlach had only recruited one other person, that still made three. And three was a powerful number.
The meat pie was stodgy and filled with bits of gristle. Karl left it and waited for the boy to return. What had Frau Farber said? “One will bend and two will break.” He had no idea what that meant, but eighteen months ago he had no idea what the wise fool and the two of hearts would represent. Fortune-telling, like many things, was always clearer when you looked back at it.
The boy re-entered the tavern at a run and handed something to the landlord, who emerged from behind the bar, approached Karl’s table and held out a folded piece of parchment. There was no writing on its outside, and the seal that held it closed was just a blob of hard wax. Anonymous. Karl broke the seal, opened the letter and read it.
The handwriting was neat and elegant, though the ink was slightly smudged. “I regret I am unable to meet you at present. I am detained by pressing business which will keep me busy until tonight.” it read. “Come to the Oldenhaller quay on the docks at ten bells, where I will await you. Faithfully, Herr Scharlach.”
Karl read it over twice, looking for hidden nuances or codes in the language. He could find none. The letter appeared entirely innocent and therefore would be safe if intercepted. The mysterious Herr Scharlach had given himself ten hours to prepare for the meeting and more besides: almost a day to observe his visitor, not just a few minutes. The whole operation was nicely planned. Without lifting his head, Karl studied the other drinkers in the tavern. Which one of them was watching him? Was one of them secretly the man he was here to meet? He knew he’d have to behave cautiously, but despite it all he was impressed. It felt good to be working with professionals again.
Karl spent the day waiting for ten bells. In the meantime he hired a cheap room at a boarding-house called The Fallen Gryphon in the east end of the city, exchanged his filthy travelling clothes for new-bought ones and sent the old set to be laundered.
He explored the streets and squares of Nuln to get a feel for the place, its layout, its thoroughfares, alleyways and hiding places. He had never been here before and wanted to get the measure of the city.
He also wanted to hear the news and gossip. He had spent the winter trekking through the Empire’s forests, following leads and hunting down beastmen, until he had felt like a beast himself: isolated, insulated against the civilised world, able to lose himself in the chase and the fight. It was an easy existence, but it was not the path he had sworn to follow; and that path had brought him back to the bustle, crowds and inquisitive faces of the city. He was probably in more danger here than he was in the depths of the darkest forest.
The mood of the city was sombre. On the streets the spring clothes and faces were bright enough but in the taverns and bars where the real business happened, conversation was subdued and gossip was quiet. Questions about Luthor Huss and his heretical declaration were answered with nervous glances. It seemed to Karl that other people had been asking the same questions, had not liked the answers they had heard, and even all this time later the bruises were still raw.
He spent a while in a tavern at the docks, listening to gossip, then moved to another not far from the cathedral, sitting not far from a group of pilgrims talking about Esmer and the changes he had brought to the Church of Sigmar. He had been tempted to go into the cathedral itself, partly to pray and partly to view its famed high altar, but he had seen Imperial handbills fluttering on signboards in the square, each with the name and description of a wanted criminal on it, and being recognised was not a risk worth taking.
Night fell hard and cold, and ten bells came round slowly. The river-wharfs and docks were deserted save for sporadic watchmen. At the southern end, the Oldenhaller warehouse stood unguarded and shadowed, its solitary quay stretching out into the dark waters of the River Reik. A wind blew off the water, cold and cutting. Karl walked out to the end of the jetty and waited.
The city was a panorama of lights against the night sky. In front of the lights a silhouette walked down the docks towards him. Karl appraised it as it approached: male, human, short and stocky, short hair, thick clothes but no cloak and no armour. Sword on the right hip. Confident. The figure strode across the waterfront and along a parallel jetty separated by fifty feet of river-water, well out of range of sword or throwing-knife.
Karl smiled to himself. The precautions they were taking were exemplary. He hoped that his own were as good. “Herr Scharlach,” he said.
“Herr Scharlach is indisposed,” the man said, “but I speak for him.” The two stared at each other across the gap. In the near-darkness Karl could see the details of the newcomer: the shine on his leather boots, the bone buttons on his wool coat, the streaks of grey hair at his temples, the way his waistcoat was stretched across the curve of his belly. He looked about forty and prosperous. Karl didn’t recognise him.
The man slowly reached up with his right hand and scratched his left ear. There was a long cold pause. It seemed to be up to Karl to make the next move.
“I wish to know more of you,” he said. “You wish to know more of me. But how do we convince each other that we are trustworthy?”
The man grimaced. “You go straight to the heart of it. We could each be any colour of villain. What is your name?”
“A man who shouts his name to a stranger in public is not to be trusted with secrets.” Karl said. “Passwords and code-phrases can be broken. Men can change sides. I need to know that I can trust you, and that your aims are my aims, and that you will not betray me to my enemies.”
“You have enemies?”
“A man who does not have at least one mortal foe by the time he is twenty has not been trying,” Karl said.
“So far,” the man said, “this conversation tells me you have many aphorisms, but little else.”
Karl rubbed his hands, wishing he had brought gloves. “Isn’t there somewhere warmer we can go?”
The man stood, considering, then turned to point out across the river. “You see that black-sailed wherry, moored midstream? Her cabin has a warm stove and a bottle of ten-year-old brandy. Nobody will hear us there, or see signals if either of us should send them. You agree?”
“I agree.”
“Then join me and I will row us out.” He began unfastening the mooring-ropes of a clinker-built rowing-boat tied up alongside the quay. Karl walked around to where the boat was rocking on the water and climbed in. He did not offer a handshake to the other man; he knew they had not reached even that little level of trust yet.
The wherry’s cabin was snug and warm, the stove smoky, the brandy a little disappointing. Karl and the unnamed stranger sat across a table that was little more than a single plank. Being this close together made it somehow harder to talk. The little rituals of drinking spirits punctuated the silence.
The man across the table lifted his glass to Karl. “Here’s blood in your eye,” he said, swilled the brandy into his mouth and swallowed, pausing a second to savour the aftertaste. “Delightful. Sent by a friend in Parravon,” he said. “For services rendered.”
“You have an outpost in Bretonnia?” Karl asked.
“We have outposts all over the Old World. Agents in every city. Advisors close to the ears of some very powerful people.”
“So this isn’t a new organisation?”
The man’s brow furrowed. “New? Not at all. We’ve been around for decades. What made you think we were new?”
“I was—” Karl forced himself to pause and sip more brandy to give him time to think. “Let me start again. The person who gave me Herr Scharlach’s name told me that if I wanted to continue the work of my former employers, I should talk to you.”
“What happened to your former employers?”
“Witch hunters burnt them,” Karl said.
The man cocked an eyebrow and drank more brandy. “My first fear was that you were a witch hunter,” he said. “You have the bearing of one. And the city is crowded with them at present.”