by James Wallis
The walk to The Fallen Gryphon took him most of the way across the city, a walk of almost twenty minutes, the paving-stones of the street, laid in Reman times and probably not moved since then, felt strange to shoes used to the cobbles of more northern towns. Something about Nuln set his teeth on edge, something more than just the danger of dealing with people whose loyalty and affiliation were unknown. The city had been the capital of the Empire until just a hundred years ago, and it was as if it still held a silent grudge against anyone who held allegiance to the new Emperor in Altdorf, many miles north along the River Reik.
The Fallen Gryphon was quiet, though the tavern across the street was doing good business; the smell of roasted mutton and spilled beer wafting across the street. Karl could hear its noisy patrons as he stood in the Gryphon’s empty front room, looking for the porter so he could ask if there had been any messages or packages for him, or to get a candle to navigate the dark stairs and light his room. There was no sign of anyone. He tapped his fingers on the countertop, felt in his pocket for his key, and started up.
His room was on the top floor, under the slanted ceiling of the eaves. The corridor was whitewashed walls and bare wood floor, lit by a strip of faint night light from between the half-closed shutters over the window at the far end. He fumbled the key into the lock, turned it and pushed open the door.
Light burst through the gap, and he knew something was wrong. There was a man in the room, standing, sword drawn. Witch hunter’s uniform. Lamp in one hand. Hat lying on the bed. Karl recognised him. “Karl Hoche, you are under arrest,” Theo Kratz said.
CHAPTER THREE
The Push
Karl threw the door shut. He could already hear footsteps beating up the narrow stairs behind him, cutting off his escape, and there was movement from one of the other rooms. An ambush. He guessed they wanted him alive, but he suspected they wouldn’t be too upset by the alternative. He sprinted down the corridor.
Kratz shouted, “Stop!” Another room door opened, but Karl was already past it, shoulder lowered to charge the wooden shutters that bracketed the lead-paned window at the end. He collided with it, the impact bruising his entire forearm. The weak hinges gave and the panels swung outwards, crashing into the diamond-patterned glass. The frame broke part-way, sending bits of lead and glass shards cascading outwards, sliding away down the steep tiled roof.
Karl grabbed the upper ledge of the window-frame and swung his legs up, kicking at the remainder of the window. It collapsed outwards and he was through, rolling through the smithereens of glass that covered the sloping tiles. He threw out his arms to stop his roll towards the edge and felt the fragments slice at his hands and clothes. He scrabbled, trying to gain a hold for his fingers or feet before he hit the gutter and then, a few seconds later, the street below. Tiles slid loose under him. A corner of his mind made a note to plan his escape routes in more detail next time.
His foot hit the wooden end of one of the gables, slowing him enough to get his fingers round the edge of a tile and cling on. He felt himself slide to a stop. For a second everything was still and quiet. Then he could hear dislodged tiles shattering on the cobbles of the street below.
“…under arrest for consorting with the forces of Chaos, conspiring against the Empire, sedition of the innocent—” Kratz’s face was at the window, ten feet above, staring down at him with a look of amusement. Another witch hunter appeared beside him, carrying a crossbow. “You have no possible means of escape,” Kratz said. “Don’t do anything rash.”
A memory of a rooftop in Altdorf lit by moonlight, the figures of witch hunters bearing down on him, the threat of arrest, and those words. It felt like a hammer-blow. He would not let that happen again. He could not. He looked up at Kratz.
“I cannot climb up on my own,” he said. “Throw me a rope.”
Kratz gave an order and the other witch hunter left the window. Karl lay there, hearing their voices, planning. A moment later the end of a length of rope began to slither down the roof towards him, stopping just by his left hand. Not quite ten feet. Not enough to get him over the edge of the roof, out of the crossbow’s arc of fire.
“Tie it off there,” Kratz told the other witch hunter.
Karl waited a second, then reached for the rope, testing it. It felt solid. He took a solid grip, wrapping it around his wrist, then used it to pull himself up onto his feet, balancing on the steep incline. He looked around. Between him and the window the tiles were broken and dislodged, revealing the lathe and rafters beneath.
Holding the rope, aware of the crossbow’s unwavering aim, he took two steps to the left, watching his footing as he traversed sideways across the slope, then turned to look at the roofs on either side.
“Try anything and we’ll shoot you where you stand,” Kratz said.
Karl pulled on the rope, thinking about angles and arcs, and took another step to the left. Then he sprinted right, in a semicircle across the steeply slanted surface, using the rope to stop him from falling. Tiles cracked and broke under his feet. He heard the thud of the crossbow firing but felt nothing. Then the gap between the buildings opened up at his feet revealing the street below, and the gentle slope of the next building’s roof beyond. He dropped the rope and leaped.
Four roofs further on he found an open skylight and climbed in, shutting it behind him. The empty servants’ attic room inside led to a passageway, and from there to a back staircase, and he was out in the alley behind the street in seconds, having gained a half-cloak and a hat along the way. There was activity further down the street, and he glanced back as a concerned citizen might, before heading out into the street.
The fugitive Karl Hoche would obviously not head straight for the cathedral square. That was where he went, striding as quickly as possible without drawing attention to himself, trying to pluck coherence from the confused torrent of his thoughts.
They had been waiting for him. They had known where he was staying. Either they had traced him there, which meant they must have been following him since yesterday, or someone in or near The Fallen Gryphon had recognised him and told the witch hunters, which was unlikely because he had never been to Nuln before and the handbills calling for his arrest did not give enough description to identify him; or this was down to Herr Stahl.
He hated to admit it, but the last option seemed the most likely. He forced himself to quash his disappointment to ignore it, and to remember his Untersuchung training: work out all the options, weigh them up, apply Occam’s Broadsword to rule out the unlikely ones and make plans based on the others. Basic strategy. But it required objectivity and a clear head, not one already filled with a sense of regret and retribution, and a sense of panic at knowing witch hunters were so close behind.
He took several deep breaths, forcing the other thoughts out of his mind. The Karl Hoche who panicked, who felt regret and pity, who was human—that part of him was dead. He had smothered it, coldly and deliberately, in the Reikwald forest a year ago. In becoming less, he had become more. Why, then, was he finding it so hard to regain that inner strength now? The hard part was done: he had escaped, buying himself time to breathe and think.
The cold air stung his lungs and forced him to concentrate. Herr Stahl. Karl had identified himself as Hans Frei to the man, the same name he had used to the three witch hunters in Altdorf, all that time ago. Stahl might have guessed that he was really Karl Hoche, but Kratz had known it was him even while he was still opening the door. On the other hand, if Stahl had described him, Kratz might have recognised the description. But then Kratz had only ever seen him once before, eighteen months earlier, and in disguise.
It might not be Stahl. There might be infiltrators or rogue agents in his organisation, possibly working for the witch hunters, or for a rival group, or a Chaos cult, or some opportunist. Many cultists would cheerfully frame an agent of another group if they could. And two hundred crowns was a lot of money.
Who else had known where he was staying? The answer came
to him immediately: whoever had followed him from The Dog and Pony yesterday and, if it was not the same person, whoever had left the package outside his door this morning. Both of these seemed more likely than Stahl. He had liked Stahl. He had wanted to trust him.
The cathedral square was deserted, the doors of the great temple itself closed and barred for the night. He walked towards them, aware of the faint scent of resin and sawdust: the Arch-Lector of Nuln had demanded that the doors be replaced after Huss had desecrated them with his effigy of the Grand Theogonist. They were ghostly in the moonlight, their timber still pale and fresh, unbattered by storms. Like the Grand Theogonist himself, Karl thought.
To one side, in a covered colonnade, one wall bore wooden boards covered with official signs and notices. Many were temple duties, orders of service, prayers to be said for the ill and the dying. He was looking for the other ones. The board wasn’t hard to find.
Luthor Huss was at the top, of course, with a woodcut rendition of his face. The printing was strident, black ink on yellow paper, but no crime was stated and no reward offered. It was a notice of excommunication. Huss had fled the stable of his own accord, but the Church of Sigmar was determined to make its slamming of the empty stable door echo round the Empire.
Karl found his handbill fifth, and ripped it down to study it. It was a revised printing with new information; evidently Brother Karin’s hatred for him was undimmed. There was no picture, but his name was in inch-high letters, and the reward on his head had increased by fifty crowns. He had noticed his description grow more hyperbolic with each new bill that Brother Karin issued: this time he was apparently “subtle, treacherous and vile”, his “limbs swollen with the power of his Chaotic lords”, his face “hawk-like, raptorial and vicious’. At the bottom was a list of aliases he was known to use. Hans Frei was among them.
Karl crumpled the bill in his hand, and crossed that name off his mental list. He had enjoyed being Hans Frei, the jovial god-fearing merchant from Carroburg, with a wife and two sons at home. It had been relaxing to slip into that personality from time to time, to pretend to have even for a few minutes the things that Karl Hoche never would: a home, stability, happiness, peace.
He could create another persona as soon as thinking about it, but Herr Frei had become almost a part of him. Just another thing that Chaos and its works had taken away. With a thought, the absence of a thought, he discarded Herr Frei, his history, his family and his contented life. Existence moved on. This would be a busy night, and there was no time to mourn imaginary friends.
Unbidden and unwelcome, a parade of faces from his past pushed their way back into his memory. There was Gottfried Braubach, his mentor in the Untersuchung, burned by the witch hunters. Schultz, his orderly in his old regiment, killed by Chaos cultists. Sergeant Braun and Tobias Kurtz, good soldiers and comrades, who he had inadvertently led to their deaths. Erasmus Pronk, who he had tried to keep safe and failed. His parents, the dutiful priest and faithful wife in Grünburg, still alive but believing their son was a traitor to the Empire and their god, turned against them and everything they held precious, an Imperial criminal with a price on his head. And Marie, the girl he had loved and the woman he had dreamed of marrying. He hoped he was dead to her. He hoped she never thought of him. He wished she was happy in the arms of another man. Anything else was too painful to contemplate.
He banished the thoughts. There would be time for them on his journeys, when he left the city. But there was much to do before then.
He glanced up at the sky, taking his bearings from the Mars and the steeples and spires of the tall buildings he recognised. The docks were south-east from here. He walked away, keeping to the shadows.
The wharfs were busy this evening. A chain of barges carrying doth, brassware and dried fruits from Estalia had docked and gangs of stevedores were sweating to earn their wages, lit by flaming baskets of bright-burning wood mounted on high poles, the air bearing smoke, shouted orders and oaths. The barges would be unloaded by dawn, the cargo sold by noon and reloaded into carts and other boats by nightfall. Whatever the direction, leadership and fate of the Empire, the trading never stopped.
Karl made his way through the paths of men carrying crates, boxes, barrels, sacks and bales, dodging loads and oaths. The far end of the docks was quieter and darker, the shadows deep and long. He walked to the end of the quay and stared out across the dark water. The river was scattered with boats, the strong current pulling against the ropes that held them in place. The wherry with the black sails was not there.
He scanned the length of the river, from the Altmarkt bridge upstream to the bend where the Reik turned away north outside the city, studying the silhouette of each moored boat. The wherry had a distinctive design, low and wide with a style and grace quite unlike the river-barges that plied the lengths of the Empire’s waterways. If it was on this stretch of the river, he should have been able to recognise it. He could not.
What were the possibilities, he thought. What might have happened? Stahl and his men have sailed it away. The witch hunters have captured it and sailed it away. Someone else has taken it. It is here and I cannot see it. It has sunk. Possibly it was not Stahl’s at all; perhaps he knew it would be empty last night and would leave the next day, making it a perfect venue for a secret, untraceable meeting.
He wondered if the dockmaster was around, and if so whether anyone had told him to be wary of people asking about the wherry.
There was only one way to find out.
A watchman was sitting on a folding stool not far from the door to the Oldenhaller warehouse, warming his hands on a pot of coals. A small white terrier lay beside him, one ear cocked. The two watched idly as Karl approached them.
“A cold night for watching,” Karl said.
The man studied Karl’s face, dispassionate, and did not reply.
“A man needs something to warm him through the long hours,” Karl said, and held out a handful of silver shillings, enough for a bottle of cheap spirits. The man looked at him, and at the coins, and at him again.
“And much warming they’ll do me tonight. Not able to leave my post till six bells,” he said, but reached out his hand all the same. Karl dropped the coins into it.
“Last night a black-sailed wherry was moored out there—” he pointed. “Do you know who owns her, or where she is now?”
The watchman looked up with slow scornful eyes. “The thing about boats at night,” he said, “is that it’s dark. Sky’s dark, water’s dark, other boats dark, mooring ropes dark, shoals and sandbanks in the water dark. Easy to hit things, or run her aground, or sink. So if you move a boat you do it in the light, and when night comes you tie her up.”
“Yes,” Karl said, “and the wherry was there last night, but—”
“And I seen her last night, as I would, being as I been night-watchman on these warehouses these twelve year. And when dawn come I went home, and when the sun go down I come back and she’s gone.” He looked around and rubbed his hands in front of the fire. “And now it’s night again, another cold one, but if I want this job for another twelve year, to hand on to my son Bertold in his time, then I can’t leave my place for a bit of a warm.”
Karl dug in his breast-pocket, pulled out a flat silver Mask and passed it over to the man, who unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow from it. Karl’s father had given him the flask when he joined the army five years ago. These days it didn’t remind him of his family much, and when it did he drank its contents and tried to forget again.
The watchman handed back the flask, sucked his lips contemplatively for a second, then stood and turned in the direction of the dockers unloading the barges. “Heinrich!” he bellowed. The Eider—when did she sail?”
A man with shoulders as broad as the crate he was carrying turned, hefting the load into a more comfortable hold. “About three bells this afternoon,” he shouted back. “Headed downstream, no cargo loaded. Who’s asking about it now?”
The “now�
�� caught Karl’s attention. “Get him over here,” he said. The watchman’s sardonic eyes turned to him, then back to the stevedore and he raised his hands to cup his mouth again. “Feller wants to talk to you,” he shouted. “Got brandy.”
Heinrich walked over bow-legged, carrying the crate on his right shoulder, steadying it one-handed. He spoke with a local accent but wore his moustache in the long Kislevite style. Karl sensed mixed blood in him. “What about the Eider?” Heinrich asked.
Karl passed him the silver flask. “Who owns it, who was on it when it left, where was it bound and who else has been asking about it?” he said.
Heinrich shook the flask. “Not much brandy in there for a lot of information.” He unscrewed the cap and sniffed it. “But decent brandy, I’ll grant. A thirsty night this has been. The Eider, she’s an Oldenhaller boat, bit small and long in the tooth now, but nippy if speed’s what you want. They use her mostly for special cargoes, perishables and valuables.”
“People?” Karl asked.
“On occasion. Her winter’s been quiet, she was moored on that station for the last two weeks. She’s got no regular crew.”
“So who took her out today?”
“Didn’t recognise them. But the Oldenhallers hire all sorts. Anyone who’ll work cheap. Anyhap, she was bound for Grissenwald, they said. And left in a hurry.” He shifted the crate on his shoulder and swigged the last of the brandy from the flask.
“The captain?”
“Pieter Finkel.” Not Stahl then. Perhaps the mysterious Herr Scharlach. After all, Karl reminded himself, he wasn’t the only man in the Empire with many names. “Do you know a man, short, smart, grey hair, in his forties?” he asked.