by James Wallis
“Who are they looking for? Luthor Huss?”
“No, Huss is long gone, and the motley band of fanatics, doom-sayers, the too-credulous, the easily swayed and the terminally bored with him. Have you heard the stories?”
“Some, but…” Karl shook his head.
“Well. After he nailed the effigy to the cathedral door, the organised church was thrown into uproar. While they’re arguing about responses, he has been leading his pack across the Empire, dealing his own kind of justice to those he sees as enemies of the faith. Corrupt priests, embezzlers of temple funds, those within the church accused of crimes against women—or children. There’s never enough evidence to convict him, and sometimes he’s miles away when the killings happen…”
“He’s killing people?”
“People are dying, let’s say that. Huss hasn’t returned to this city since he left it at Hexenstag, yet Brother Bernard Schneider, known as the Leech, was beaten to death a mile away a fortnight ago and Huss or his followers given the blame—or the credit, depending on your point of view. Schneider’s death is one reason why the witch hunters are so active. Otherwise, as I’m sure you’ve sensed, there is a mood of fear and melancholy settling down from the north of the land, where the great armies of Chaos are gathering, and the witch hunters of the Order of Sigmar believe they can prevent the invasion by arresting and burning a few old women and hedge-wizards.”
Karl thought about telling his drinking companion that he had seen the Chaos armies for himself, the summer before, but restrained himself. Something told him this would be the wrong time. In this kind of transaction information was power, and the stout man had not even told him his name, much less given him a reason to confide in him. He seemed satisfied that Karl was not a witch hunter, but Karl could not say the same for him. No, not a witch hunter, but despite the other’s words and his acceptance of what Karl had told him, there was something about the situation that still didn’t feel right. Karl had learned to trust his instincts.
The man refilled their glasses with the last of the brandy. “So why did the witch hunters burn your order?” he asked.
Karl raised his glass in a silent toast, and drank. “My new friend,” he said, “we must each accept that neither of us will walk away from this meeting with the information we want. I want to trust you, but trust is a fragile thing and we both have too much to protect. So if we cannot prove ourselves with words, then let me prove myself with action. Give me a task, and I will show you that I can be useful, and loyal, and follow orders.”
The man smiled and raised his glass in return. “I accept your offer,” he said, and at that moment Karl knew he had ascended the first step towards the eventual goal. He leaned back as the other leaned forward.
“We have a courier mission. A package needs to be handed to a messenger at a location a few miles outside the city tomorrow, and another brought back. This is how it works: a package of clothes will be left for you at your inn. The letter will be sewn inside the lining of the jerkin, along with enough money for you to hire a horse. Go to Preminger’s stables by the south gate; tell him that Herr Stahl recommended that you see him and he will give you a paper with directions to the meeting-point. The messenger will be there at noon. Do not let us down.”
He paused and looked up at Karl.
“Thank you for your trust, Herr Stahl,” Karl said. “My name is Hans Frei.”
The two men’s stares met, each recognising something in the other—a sense of duty to a higher calling, perhaps. They touched their glasses and drained them in a wordless toast. In months to come, Karl would remember the chink of glass, the sense of the impact, and wonder who or what it was that Herr Stahl had been drinking to.
They rowed back to the quayside in silence, shook hands and walked away in different directions. Karl was half-tempted to follow his mysterious companion, but his mission had already begun and the soldier in him told him that to do such a thing would be a breach of loyalty, if not of trust. Besides, if the man was as professional as Karl suspected, he would take a false route designed to lose any pursuers.
As he walked back towards his boarding-house, he felt the first hints of elation rising in his stomach and spreading through his body. He did not know yet what the unnamed organisation was, or what its aims and goals were, but somehow that didn’t seem as important as the simple sense of belonging to something again.
The Fallen Gryphon was quiet and after a brief word with the landlord Karl took a candle straight up to his attic room. He bolted the door and fastened the shutters: although Herr Stahl and his unseen friends knew where he was staying, he didn’t want them to learn any more about him for the moment.
He took a water-skin from his pack and poured the contents into the china bowl on the dresser. The water was dirty and discoloured: it had been several weeks since the monks at Oberwil had given him a fresh supply. If he could get to the cathedral he would obtain more. He muttered a prayer to Sigmar over the bowl, then positioned the polished silver of the room’s small mirror so he could see his face. He peered at himself. Were his eyes just bloodshot, or was the redness in them something more permanent? In this light it was hard to tell.
Slowly he unbuttoned the high collar on his shirt and pulled it down and apart, then unknotted the bandage that encircled his neck. Under it, the contraption of wood and leather straps that served as a gag was still in place. He undid its clasp and pulled it away, staring at his reflection. On the left side of his neck, the chapped lips of his second mouth moved, parting, revealing fierce white teeth. A dark tongue flicked out, licking at the worn, calloused skin around the orifice. Karl watched the movement, unable to control it. The thing had a mind of its own.
This thing, this foul addition to his body, was the outward sign of the contagion in his system: an unwanted gift from the gods of Chaos. He was changed in other ways too, he knew, and still changing: he healed faster now, and his senses were more acute. Sometimes he felt he was stronger too. He hated it. It had destroyed his life, and would destroy his mind, and until that day he would fight against it with every ounce of his spirit.
He took a cloth, wetted it in the bowl of holy water, and began to clean the lips. The water stung on the mouth’s cracked lips, and he relished the fleeting pain. The tongue moved, giving a low moan, and Karl froze, ready to jam the washcloth between its teeth to silence it if need be. It had given him away once before, and he would never let it happen again. The moan subsided with a low burble that could have been a word, perhaps “blood” or something else, and the mouth was silent. He relaxed. More than once he had thought about cutting out its tongue, and would have done it if he was not afraid that the blood would clog his own lungs and drown him. Or that the tongue would regrow, perhaps as something worse.
The washing done, he rinsed the wooden gag and the bandage in the water and laid them out to dry. It was a nightly ritual. Then he rummaged in his pack for the leather satchel with his inkstand, quills and parchment. Dawn was a long way off, and it had been weeks since he had last slept. Writing would pass the time.
When he left his room in the morning the bundle of clothes was outside his door, and the letter where Stahl had said it would be. Its cover was plain parchment, sealed with three hard wax impressions. Karl studied them. It would be a matter of moments to open them—he had a candle and a sharp knife in his room—and almost impossible to detect. But the purpose of the mission was to establish trust. There was unlikely to be anything of importance in the letter, and even if there were it would be in code. And if they noticed the seals had been removed and re-set, they would never trust him again. It was not worth the risk.
As the piebald mare trotted southwards out of the city along the old Reman road, Karl could not resist taking the letter from his saddlebag and holding it up to the weak sun, hoping the light would penetrate it and reveal the words written inside. The parchment was too thick but his curiosity was piqued. Now that Herr Stahl’s organisation had begun the slow process
of accepting him, he wanted to know more about them and about the role he could play in their work. He wondered if they would accept a mutant, and how long he could keep that fact about himself hidden from them.
The sun rose in the sky, traffic on the road was light, and Karl counted the crossroads as he passed them. Shortly before noon he came to one marked by an old moss-covered shrine to some neglected saint or martyr, and took the left-hand turning, down a track that led between the twisted trunks of old, scattered woods. Two miles down the road forked beside a pond of dark water, half under the canopy of the trees’ empty branches. This, according to the instructions he had been given, was Dead Man’s Pond.
A large chestnut horse, bridled and saddled, was snuffling around the weeds at the water’s edge. A man leaned against an old elm that stood near the road, picking at the mechanism of a pistol with the point of a knife. He was wearing the uniform of an Imperial messenger. Karl reined in his horse and swung himself down, unsure what to do next. He had not been expecting an officer of the Empire, and his instructions had not included any password or way of identifying himself, or checking that he was giving the letter to the right person.
But as the man stepped towards him he lifted his right hand and gently touched his left ear. Karl recognised the gesture that Stahl had made the night before. It must be one of the group’s secret signs, which meant this must be the man. Perhaps there was something that he was meant to do in return, to signal that he was the other half of the connection. Stahl hadn’t mentioned anything.
“I have the letter,” he said, dug in the saddlebag and produced it. The parchment was slightly creased from the journey. The stranger took it, backed away a step or two and examined it closely. Evidently what he saw satisfied him, because he sniffed and turned away towards his horse.
“I have a question,” Karl said. He had many questions, ones that he couldn’t ask Herr Stahl, but this man didn’t know he was an outsider. On the other hand he hadn’t been able to reply to the hand-signal, so perhaps it was obvious. Still, it was worth a try.
The man turned back and faced him. “Have we met before?” he said.
“No.”
“Then you shouldn’t have spoken. If you’re caught and tortured, now you’ll be able to tell them what my voice sounds like. Discretion is everything.” He made a clicking sound and his horse left the edge of the pond, walking over to him. He swung up into its saddle and prepared to move off. Then he stopped, twisted round and tossed a small package towards Karl.
“For your contact,” he said.
The throw was high. Karl reached for it, but the leather-wrapped bundle glanced off the tips of his outstretched fingers and ricocheted away. He made a desperate grab at it, missed, and watched as it splashed down into the dark waters of the pond, bobbing on its ripples.
The rider gave an amused snort, trotted to the road and rode off towards the main highway. Karl looked after him for a second, then cast his eyes around the area to find a branch long enough to retrieve the package from the water before it sank. There were none: evidently someone had gleaned the area for firewood recently. He sighed and waded into the cold water, feeling deep mud squashing beneath his boots.
The water was very cold and surprisingly deep, and in a few steps he was already up to his thighs. Circles of waves spread from where he stood, upsetting the still waters and pushing the package further out towards the centre of the water. He kept going, moving more slowly till the parcel was almost within arm’s reach. Then something on the base of the pond shifted under his loot and he stumbled, lurching sideways, half-soaking himself. He swore loudly and with feeling.
A few feet away from him, something brushed the underside of the water’s surface, and was gone, sinking hack into the murk. Something attached to the thing he had kicked, probably. Karl stared at the swirl of sediment where it had been. It had been white, branched and curled. Very like a hand.
He grabbed the package, shook the water from it and threw it onto the bank, then walked slowly across the pond, feeling the bottom through the soles of his boots. The water was up above his waist. He kicked a stump of wood, but that wasn’t it.
He knew, with awful inevitability, that he was looking for a body.
His right foot struck something soft, moving it an inch or two out of the bottom silt. It was large and heavy, but he was able to push it slowly towards the hank. Then he felt it shift and roll in the water, and one arm swam up towards the surface. He grabbed it. The flesh was soft and clammy and he felt it slide off the arm-bones, but it was clad in a leather-sleeved jacket and when he grasped that it didn’t tear.
He pulled the body to the shore and out of the water.
It was a man with dark hair. He guessed it had been in the water a while, but the cold winter had slowed its decomposition and the tiny fish and insect larvae that would have feasted on its flesh had not had time to do much damage. All the same, it looked like hell. Its eyes were gone, and most of its nose. The skin was white-green and puffed, swollen inside its clothes, its belly distended by gases. Its pockets were stuffed with stones to weigh it down, and in the middle of its forehead was a ragged hole, roughly circular. The man had been killed by a musket-ball, too small for a rifle. It was the kind of wound a flintlock pistol would make.
Karl stared down at the corpse, trying to read information from it. The man was slightly older than Karl and a little heavier, with short, thin hair. The skin of his neck was strangely textured, as if burned or scarred. Karl didn’t recognise him. Then he caught a glimpse of a silver pendant inside the man’s shirt and something brought Frau Farber’s voice and words to mind. Another agent, she had said, shorter and heavier than Karl, and she had mentioned a scar and a silver talisman. And he too had travelled to Nuln in search of the Untersuchung or its heirs.
This could not be a coincidence.
The corpse carried no other identification. Karl checked, then pulled the pendant out from inside its shirt and stared at the tiny hammer of Sigmar. Perhaps it bore a jeweller’s mark, and he could use that to trace who the man was, who he had been, to learn his story.
No. This man’s past was irrelevant. His present had told Karl all it could, and his future was murky and held nothing good. Karl rolled the body back into the water and watched as it sunk from view, muttering a brief blessing over the place. He felt he knew rather more about the people he was dealing with now, and it didn’t make him comfortable.
He picked up the leather-wrapped package from where it had landed on the bank. It was wrapped in a ribbon, fastened with a blob of sealing wax. He was tempted to open it, but he knew that whatever the implications of his accidental discovery, he was still being tested. Stahl would be waiting for him back in Nuln. It was time to return, and the journey would give him time to think.
He retrieved his horse, climbed into its saddle and let it walk on. It seemed to know the way. The sun was behind him, casting his shadow onto the road ahead, as if he was following a part of himself that had already trod this path before. It felt like an omen. Under his high collar, the thing on his neck struggled against its gag, gnawing against the hard wood. Something had upset it. Karl ignored it, thinking.
The man in the pond had been shot, probably by the Imperial messenger or one of his colleagues, but the key question was why, and on that Karl could only speculate. Perhaps he had not been what he seemed: an infiltrator from another sect, a rival group. Perhaps his curiosity had won over his sense and he had broken the seals on whatever he had been given. Perhaps he had been an informer, or had recognised his contact as an old adversary. Or perhaps he had revealed too much about himself or his past, and it had not been to his new friends’ liking.
It was all food for thought.
The ride back took as long as the ride out, though the road was busier: merchants, pilgrims and men of the cloth were scattered along the miles that led to Nuln’s walls, all of them heading away from the city. None looked cheerful. A couple were chanting ancient prayers,
the rhythm and familiarity of them more comforting than the actual words. Karl stopped for a few slices of pork and some potatoes at an inn about eight miles from the city and listened to the gossip of the other travellers: apparently there had been raids that morning, heretics and religious extremists arrested. Many who sympathised with Luthor Huss were taking the chance to flee to safer towns, or even to seek out Huss and his rabble-band of crusaders on their Sigmar-inspired mission. Karl heard the stories and left in silence. He hoped that Stahl and his men were made of sterner stuff.
The sky was darkening by the time he reached the city’s south gate, a half-moon already high in the sky, and the pinholes of a few bright stars. It was going to be a cold night and the streets were already clear. It was too late for traders, but still too early for the students from the university to be out looking for their evening’s entertainment. Even the stray cats and the flocks of pigeons that usually plagued the place seemed to be hiding, or to have left.
Karl returned the horse to Preminger’s stables, reclaimed the coins he had left as a deposit and made his way on foot across the river to The Dog and Pony, close under the city’s western wall, on the edge of the university district. The place was more crowded than the last time he had been here but this seemed to be a different crowd and he recognised no faces, even among the staff.
He had hoped that Stahl might be here, or that he might be contacted by someone else from the group, but after a few minutes of standing at the bar with a tankard of light beer, it was clear that wasn’t going to happen. He downed the last of the beer and pushed through the patrons to the door of the privy at the back, a small room just big enough for one occupant, with a plank above a stinking trough. Someone had hung some garlic on the wall, either to mute the smell or to ward off anything that might emerge from the filth below.
Karl peered up at the ceiling, then stood on the plank and pressed upwards against the panelling. One of the pieces of wood shifted, revealing a gap. Following the instructions he had received that morning, he slipped the damp leather-wrapped bundle into the darkness, slid the panel back into place and climbed down. Presumably someone would collect it, but he wasn’t going to spend all night watching the privy door. He cast his eyes around the tavern one last time, and slipped out into the night.