Marks of Chaos

by James Wallis

  The watchman chuckled. “You mean that feller you met here last night?”

  Karl held himself. He hadn’t realised he’d been seen with Stahl, and was furious and terrified. He forced himself to stay calm. Surely Stahl would have known they’d be seen together? Perhaps that was the point. “Yes, that’s the man. Who is he? Have you seen him again?”

  The watchman shrugged. “Seen him once or twice before. Don’t know his name. Anyone like that on the Eider when she left, Heinrich?” The big man grunted neutrally. Karl took it to mean he didn’t know.

  “Who else has been asking about her?” Karl said. Heinrich shifted his feet, taking a more solid stance, bracing himself. “Ah, now,” he said, “some information is dangerous to the teller. That’s worth more than brandy. And silence doesn’t come cheap either.” He held up the empty flask, studying it in the light from the brazier. “Nice piece of silverwork, this.”

  “Knowing isn’t worth that much,” Karl said, holding out his hand. Heinrich’s reaction had told him what he needed to know: the witch hunters had been here before him.

  Heinrich snatched his hand back, holding the flask out of reach. “Knowing goes two ways. What if I was to tell certain parties that a man had been asking after the Eider? They’d be interested to hear that. Is my silence worth this trinket?”

  Karl feinted a fast punch with his right fist, and as Heinrich dodged left, slowed by the crate on his shoulder, grabbed his long moustaches with his left and pulled down. The weight of the crate pulled Hein-rich forward and down. Karl brought his knee up, hard, and the two connected with a crunch of breaking nose. Heinrich yowled. The crate hit the ground and shattered, scattering straw and brass pots across the stone dock.

  Karl grabbed for Heinrich’s hand, prising his fingers open to free the brandy flask, bending them back and hearing the little bones crack. Heinrich was on his knees, making gagging cries of pain. Karl kicked him in the mouth and he shut up and fell over. Blood poured onto the stones. Beyond his body, the dockers had heard the commotion. Some had put down their loads and were coming over.

  The terrier was on its feet, yapping and snapping. Karl pulled the flask free of Heinrich’s ruined grasp, sidestepped his wildly swinging fist, stepped away and took a long kick at the dog. His boot connected solidly, hefting the animal into the air to fly across the dock in a howling, twisting trajectory. It hit the stones, bounced and dropped into the water.

  The dockers were running now but so was Karl, heading away into the darkness of the closest alley. He had got what he had come for, and had left with what he had brought. He glanced back over his shoulder, checking his pursuers, but they seemed to have dropped back. The last thing he saw was the watchman, still sitting beside the brazier, staring into the flames, as his sodden dog limped across the dockside towards him. He hadn’t moved. There was a man who knew the value of not getting involved.

  As he ran, he cursed himself. For an instant he had lowered his guard and the beast inside him had broken loose, rushing up to possess him, making him wild and dangerous. He had fought it down this time before anyone had been killed, but he should have been able to resolve the situation without bloodshed. As Heinrich’s nose had smashed against his knee, as the fingers had twisted and shattered, he had felt something in him rise and rejoice, and he hated himself for it. If there was any way he could take a knife and cut it out of him then he would, but the only way to do that was to cut his own throat—and even that might not be enough. The only sure way to end it was decapitation and burning, as he had done to the mutants outside Oberwil. Without hesitation. Without mercy.

  He knew that one day it would come to that.

  The window in the front of The Dog and Pony let loose a fan-shaped spread of light across the street. Karl passed by on the other side of the road three times before he was confident there were no witch hunters in the tavern. It was not unknown for witch hunters to wear ordinary clothes to make an arrest, but they never drank on duty, and Karl was sure that anyone under the command of Theo Kratz would be doing neither.

  The tavern was not crowded and not noisy. A couple of people glanced up at him with suspicious looks but nobody made a move, except to pull at their steins of beer. Karl approached the bar—another bartender he didn’t recognise—and handed the man his flask.

  “Put four shillings of Bretonnian brandy in there, and don’t short the measure. I’ll be using the jacks.” He dropped silver coins on the bar and slipped through the grubby door beside it.

  The stinking room was just as he’d left it that afternoon. He stood on the plank and pushed the loose panel out of the way. Above was only empty space. The leather bundle he’d left there was gone.

  Damn, damn, damn. Either someone from Stahl’s organisation had collected it, or the witch hunters had learned of the drop-point and had got there first. Either way the information in the bundle was lost to him now, and he had been hoping he could learn more from it.

  Heinrich had said that the Eider had sailed at three bells. Karl hadn’t returned to the city until past four. So if Stahl or his agents had the package, then it didn’t leave the city on the boat. That didn’t mean it hadn’t left the city, but…. No, there were too many options for him to begin to work out what might have happened. He needed more solid information.

  He moved his head back and forward, trying to see if there was anything in the cavity between the ceiling and the floor above. He could see nothing except faint light through the cracks between the floorboards.

  Cracks in the floorboards.

  He reached up and pushed against the underside of the board, and it moved. So that was how they removed the packages: they didn’t even enter the privy in case it was being watched, but took them from above. But The Dog and Pony was a tavern, not an inn, so the room above wasn’t a bedroom or dormitory. He wondered what was in there, and knew he had to find out.

  Karl replaced both boards, stepped down and reentered the main room. His flask was standing on the end of the bar, and he picked it up and pocketed it, then turned to the barkeeper.

  “Do you have any rooms? Anywhere I could stay?” he asked.

  The man looked up: long face, bored expression. “No,” he said.

  “No space to rent upstairs? I can pay.”

  The man gave no answer and his expression didn’t change. Karl shrugged and left. He knew he’d get nothing else there.

  Outside, in the dark street, he looked back at the tavern. A narrow alley ran down one side of the building, with a small doorway set a little back from the thoroughfare. The door looked too solid for an easy break-in, and it would be too public, not to mention audible to anyone inside. That was no use.

  From down the street he heard the crack of hard leather boot-soles on stone, and knew the sound: soldiers’ boots, high and black, designed for cavalry but worn for authority. Witch hunters’ boots. He ducked into the narrow alley and listened.

  Three men walking in a group, then stopping. He heard a voice he recognised: Kratz. “Jan, wait here; Marcus round the back. If anyone tries to bolt, apprehend them. If you hear a fight, come and help me. If I’m not out in fifteen minutes, go for reinforcements.”

  His adversaries’ timing was unfortunate but, Karl reasoned, at least it meant he had reached the tavern before them. Karl ran down the alley, which opened into a small yard stacked with empty wooden casks. A narrow staircase ran up the rear wall of the tavern, turning sharp right to face a bare wood door. A winch projected from the wall above it, a loose rope harness dangling fifteen feet off the ground. There were no windows in this part of the building. Karl went up the stairs. He could hear the witch hunter Marcus entering the alley.

  He pushed the door, muttering a prayer to Sigmar about places too poor to afford locks, and it gave inwards on loose hinges. He slid through the gap and closed the door as slowly as he could, then pressed his ear to it. No sound came from outside: no indication that Marcus had seen him. He let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.


  The room was lit by two thick candles on a table at the side of the room, the same soft light he’d seen filtering through between the floorboards. The place was furnished with racks of barrels and casks lying on their sides on rough wood frames. Evidently The Dog and Pony had no cellar to store its stock. The standard tools of the vintner’s job lay on the table: hammers, spare bungs, heavy iron rods for levering the heavy barrels into their places. One of them had been used to beat in the skull of the man who lay in the centre of the floor. The great puddle of his blood was cold but still wet. Killed here, then, and dead no more than a couple of hours.

  Another person who had missed the boat out of town. Had this corpse been sent to collect the package, or had he tried to take it from the rightful collector? He had dark hair flecked with grey and wore clothes that could have belonged to a trader, but they were worn, and last year’s cut. The palms of his hands were soft, no callouses from manual work, and yet he had the words “Karl Franz” tattooed across his knuckles. Karl didn’t recognise him. He rummaged in the corpse’s damp pockets to see if he could learn any more, but they were empty.

  On the floor beside the dead man someone had left a mark: a hand-print in blood, fingers slightly apart, the print scarlet in the low light. A woman’s right hand had made it, and one unaccustomed to hard work: no callouses or blisters had left their trace. Whoever she was, she wore rings on her third and fourth fingers. The print was too clear, too precise to be an accident. It meant something, but he had no idea what.

  Karl studied it for a second more, then leaned over and pressed against the short floorboard next to it. It moved. He had been right about that, at least but why put a marker next to an empty safe-drop point? Was someone trying to tell someone else that their message had been intercepted, or to indicate that the right person had picked it up, or even that it wasn’t safe to use anymore? Karl felt dizzied by the details. Each new due only added more uncertainty, more possibilities to the already con-fused weave of information. He needed some sharp facts to help him unpick the threads. He needed information.

  He lifted the floorboard from its place and stared into the void between the floors. There was nothing there but he could see a little through the cracks in the wood panel ceiling of the privy below. He could tell that there was someone sitting in there. Someone in a black tunic and no trousers.

  He silently lifted the lower panel from its rest and stared down at the feared witch hunter Theo Kratz, his britches around his ankles, straining. He stared straight ahead, unaware of everything except his bowels.

  “Move and die,” Karl said. “I have a crossbow aimed at your head.”

  Kratz froze. One hand moved instinctively to cover his groin. Karl didn’t stop him; he could see the man had no weapons there.

  “You will never leave Nuln,” Kratz said, his gaze fixed on the closed door in front of him. “We know—”

  “Who told you where to find me?” Karl asked.

  Kratz said nothing.

  “What brought you to this tavern?”

  Kratz’s stare was fixed straight ahead.

  “Who are the people—” Karl stopped. Asking that would tell Kratz that he know almost nothing about Herr Stahl and his organisation, and besides it was clear that the witch hunter was not going to tell him anything. He tried a different tack.

  “Who set you on my trail? Brother Karin?”

  “Yes.” Kratz’s reply came through gritted teeth.

  “She wants me dead because I know the truth about her and Lord Gamow. She follows the Blood God.”

  “Heretic filth,” Kratz growled. “Mutant. I will not listen to your foul lies. I have men surrounding this building—”

  “Jan at the front and Marcus at the back, I know.” The witch hunter’s obstinacy was tiring but Karl was beginning to enjoy the sense of control and the other’s obvious discomfort. “And if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I will kill you where you sit.”

  “Not an inch will you have from me. I will track you down and destroy you, in the name of Sigmar. No servant of Chaos shall be permitted to live.”

  “You may not believe it, but my creed is the same,” Karl said. “You know enough about me to know that is true. And I will kill Brother Karin for the same reason: Chaos and its servants must be destroyed.”

  “Then kill yourself,” Kratz said.

  Karl was still. “I think about it often,” he said. “But I prefer to die struggling against my enemies.”

  “You are a ruthless man,” Kratz said. “Such zeal would be admired among the godly, but you are an abomination. You are the cause I fight against.”

  “We are fighting for the same cause,” Karl said, “but you don’t know it yet because you haven’t realised who your real enemies are. When you do—”

  Someone banged on the privy door, three hard thumps. Karl jerked, startled. Kratz dived forward, hitting the door with outstretched arms, pushing it open and rolling through, out of sight. The last thing Karl saw of him was his hairy backside, smeared with shit.

  Most men would stop to clean themselves after that. Karl knew it would take more than filth and stink to stop Kratz.

  He leaped to his feet, ran to the door and shouted, “Brother Marcus! Up here!”

  Heavy footsteps ran across the yard outside and came up the stairs two at a time. Witch hunters were renowned for their zeal and the swiftness of the justice they brought, but they were not great strategic thinkers. Like a faithful dog, Marcus was responding to his name, not to the voice that called it.

  As Brother Marcus’ footsteps reached the top of the stairs, Karl kicked the door as hard as he could. It flew open, hitting the witch hunter and sending him backwards off the edge of the platform, with a strangled cry and a crash of falling barrels. Karl followed him, grabbing the dangling ropes from the pulley above the doorway and swinging to the ground.

  Marcus lay half-buried in smashed barrels, not moving. Karl grabbed the man’s cloak, pulling it loose from under the barrels, and threw it round his shoulders, then picked up his tall hat, knocked the dents out of the felt and slipped it on.

  Kratz and the other witch hunter appeared at the entrance to the alley. Karl, stooping, pointed at the figure under the pile of barrels.

  “Good work, brother,” Kratz said. He still smelled of shit.

  The two witch hunters approached the fallen figure. Karl slipped around behind them, and was away down the alley. It would be a few seconds before they discovered he had tricked them, but that was enough.

  He had to get out of town. It would leave many questions unanswered, but he preferred to be alive and wondering than informed and dead. He could have stayed and killed Kratz—he felt an alien part of his spirit rise with bloodlust at the thought—not least because after this evening the witch hunter would be an implacable and relentless foe, but when he had said that they were on the same side he had meant it. Allies were hard to come by. Perhaps Kratz could finally be made to realise that not all was as black and white as Brother Karin wanted him to think.

  The western gates of the city loomed ahead. For the next few hours, Karl thought, he would be a witch hunter. Then he’d find a coaching inn outside the city, borrow a horse from their stables and head downriver. The Eider had sailed towards Grissenwald, its crew and cargo unknown. It wasn’t much to go on, but he had nothing else and at least the journey would give him time to think.

  Brother Karin,

  Your dogs have chased me out of Nuln, though I am not sure there was anything left there for me. Theo Kratz is a changed man since I met him in Altdorf. Do not chastise him for losing my scent. His zeal and single-mindedness are impressive, but they are also his weakest points. In that way, he reminds me of myself as I was when I entered the Untersuchung. Give him time and he may gain understanding and become a true warrior against the forces of Chaos, as I did. And if he does, then you should live in fear.

  I have sensed there is a web that crosses the Empire, and it grows day by da
y. It is the outward sign of something that matures within our hearts: the Empire’s own resistance to the insults and infections thrust upon it by its enemies outside, like Archaon’s army in the north, and from those who burrow into its heart like worms or parasites, like you. I am a part of it. From what I hear of him,Luthor Huss is too. Theo Kratz may feel it, and if he does then he may join us.

  It increases not by planning or design, or by the subterfuges that the cults of Chaos use to spread their tendrils, but every time a man or woman realises that the only way to stop the destruction and corruption is to add their strength to the struggle. I feel it more strongly every day. You should fear it because one day it will rise up and strangle you and all your kind.

  If you think the lack of mercy that you showed the Untersuchung, or the bloodlust with which your warriors of Khorne cut down Duke Heller’s army last summer was a show of your might, then I tell you that when it is revealed our strength will show yours for the pitiful, scornful thing it is.

  I hope I am there to see you die.

  Karl Hoche

  Karin refolded the parchment and held it in the flame of a candle, letting it burn till it scorched her fingers. “He’s left Nuln,” she said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Contents of a Chamber Pot

  Grissenwald took a night and a day to reach. The night was cold, the day was filled with a miserable drizzle, and the horse he had borrowed from the coaching inn at Mattersheim had thrown a shoe barely a mile beyond the village and he had been forced to walk beside it until he found a blacksmith to nail it back on. Karl did not let these things distract him from his thoughts.

  How much of the information he had learned in Nuln could he trust, he asked himself, and answered his question almost immediately: only what he had seen, heard, smelled and touched for himself. He could not trust the word of any of the people he had spoken to; not Herr Stahl, who he had wanted to trust very much; not Theo Kratz who had told him almost nothing anyway; certainly not the men at the docks; not even Frau Farber back in Oberwil. People were unreliable. They could be corrupted too easily. He did not trust people.