by James Wallis
“Father, we must leave,” he said. Magnus Hoche shook his head.
“This is my temple. My place is here.”
“Father, come with me. It’s not safe for you to be here when they find the witch hunter. There will be questions.”
“I cannot come with you.” The old man sat down heavily on one of the bare wood benches. “I had learned how to live with the memories, and the fears, and the stories. And now I know they are all true.”
“They are not all true.”
“The worst is. I did not believe it before, but you are… You have that…” He pointed at Karl’s neck. “I have borne so much. I cannot bear any more. Go. Please, Karl. Go.” Karl looked down at his body. “I am naked, father.” Silently his father took off his priest’s robes of office, the dark fabric loose and thin in his hands, and passed it to him. Karl pulled it on. It was not a good fit: too tight and short. He fastened its belt and turned its collar up high, buttoning it to hide the disfigurement on his neck. He needed another gag for it, and another high-necked jacket. “Go,” Magnus said. “I can do no more for you.”
“You can pray for me,” Karl said, rooting through the pile of blood-soaked clothes for his possessions. His father made no reply and when Karl looked up the old man was turned away from him. He wanted to go to him, to comfort him, to touch him one last time, but he knew he could not.
He left, stepping over the tied figure of Rhinehart, pulled the torn curtains closed behind him and went to find Luthor Huss.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Morning Sun
Huss was outside the chambers of the town council, in the sunlight of the street, talking to the mayor and two of the council. As he approached, Karl could hear the discussion was intense but not unfriendly. The dosing of the gates had been meant as a show of peaceful resistance. No order to fire had been given. The matter was being investigated. The mayor sounded almost apologetic.
Huss saw Karl coming and turned to introduce him to the mayor. “By Sigmar’s grace and the skill of your high priest, the wound was not serious and my arms-master is already recovering. Brother Magnusson, this is Herr Meyer, the mayor…”
Karl turned away so the mayor could not see his face. “Brother Luthor, we must leave.”
Huss looked across at him, surprised. “Magnusson, there is much to do here. The people of Grünburg have opened their gates to us, we should not run off so soon.”
“We have urgent business in Lachenbad.”
“Nothing is more urgent than spreading Sigmar’s word to the faithful.”
Karl pulled Huss aside by the arm. “You trusted me to make an army for you,” he hissed, “now trust me in this smaller thing. We must leave. Immediately.”
Huss looked him in the eye. “Very well. You can explain as we go.”
It was not that simple or that fast, but the core of the crusade left within half an hour, and stragglers were still rejoining them until late into the night. There was no sign of Rhinehart, no pursuit from the town guard, so if the alarm had been raised it had not happened until long after they had marched out of the south gate. Perhaps his father had helped to keep the bound and gagged witch hunter concealed.
Karl walked at the head of the crusade with Huss, the two men silent and contemplative, revisiting every moment of the time he had spent with his father. It left him feeling drained and miserable. His father had seemed such a fraction of the man he remembered, and he knew he was the cause. Did Magnus still love him, or hate him, or both? How was it possible to have so many different feelings about one person?
The familiar countryside flowed past and away one step at a time. Huss kept his silence for the first mile or two, then hefted his hammer onto his shoulder and sighed. “Can you tell me now why we left in such a hurry?” he asked.
Karl was silent, thinking how to explain. “I should tell you who I am,” he said.
“I know who you are,” Huss said.
“You do? Since when?”
“Yesterday. When I realised why you had called yourself Magnusson.”
“Oswald did not tell you?”
“Oswald did not and I did not ask. I judge a man by his actions, not by his name or his rank—or by the number of handbills that offer rewards for his head.” Huss paused. “So that’s why we had to leave. You were recognised?”
“Yes.” Karl said. “But not by the townsfolk. The last time I was in Grünburg I looked very different. No, someone else. Erwin Rhinehart overheard my conversation with my father and tried to arrest me.”
Huss looked shocked. “Did you kill him?”
“No, but I delayed him. He’ll be after us—after me in particular, but my presence in the crusade makes you all targets.”
“What about your father?”
Karl thought of Rhinehart’s blood-smeared face. Now the heat of the fight was out of him, he wondered if the punishment he had given the witch hunter had been fair or honourable. The man was scared of the effects of Chaos, he knew that, but the chances of him becoming a mutant himself were slim. And it was necessary to give him a hold over the witch hunter, to stop him from harming Magnus.
“He’ll be fine,” he said.
Huss stared ahead, down the long straight road. Sheep were grazing on the grassy hillocks of the common-land, their winter fleeces heavy and ready for shearing. “You may endanger us,” he said, “but you should stay with us, at least until Lachenbad. We will see what happens there.” He sighed, and looked up at the sky. “A strange time, when mutants work to fight Chaos and the Grand Theogonist undermines his own church. The world is turned upside-down,” he said. “We do what we can. It is all we can do.”
“Can we really change it?” Karl asked. “Can we do anything to change the world’s course?”
“We will see,” Huss said. “At Lachenbad, we will see.”
When Karl gave the order for his recruits to form into their sections that evening, there were gaps in the ranks and a lack of enthusiasm. Perhaps the encounter outside the town had made some of the men realise that their training was not just for show, that they would almost certainly be required to fight soon. A few of the men who turned up were enthusiastic and eager to practise more, ready for their first battle; the others, Karl felt, were mostly there to see if it was true he was walking and talking half a day after being shot in the heart.
The meal that night was of better quality than usual: evidently the merchants of Grünburg had been generous with their supplies. He devoured his portion speedily: his body’s supernatural healing always made him ravenously hungry—not just with his own mouth but with the second, possessed orifice in his neck. Its pangs were hard to endure but he had learned to resist them. On occasional nights they would become unbearable and he would have to feed the ghastly thing or be crippled by pain, but this was not one of those times.
Something else gnawed at him. The crossbow shot from the ramparts of Grünburg—that had not been an accident, a chance misfire or a case of nerves. The bolt had been aimed to kill Luthor Huss and, given the range, by someone with great ability. But who in Grünburg would want to do that? Even Erwin Rhinehart had only argued to close the gates against the crusade. And why would anyone want Huss dead? To make him into a martyr, perhaps, and provoke a greater uprising? It wasn’t an outlandish idea.
But, he thought, it’s just another of those questions that will have no answer; another one for the heap. And then he thought: no. There are Cloaked Brothers in the camp, the gatherers of information, compiling truth, report and rumour in equal measure as they try to compile their great theory of the nature of Chaos. They might know, and if they did know, they might tell him. Perhaps.
First he had something he needed to do. There was a copse of trees near the campsite, and though many had already been felled for firewood—the smell of their burning sap filled the evening air—he would find what he required there. He sneaked away.
In the undergrowth someone was scourging himself, whipping his flesh raw with brambles,
and against a tree an older priest was receiving succour from a younger disciple. Karl moved silently past them and they did not see him.
Why was it always about the flesh? Its sins, its pleasures, its mortification, in an unending cycle. These were supposed to be men of faith, filled with the spirit of Sigmar, concerned only with holy thoughts. The reality of the flesh dragged them all down to levels of corporeality and earth, just as it dragged Karl down. The flesh always won over the spirit or the will: the philosophers said that an ideal could not be killed with a sword, but you could just as easily kill all the men who believed in that ideal. And now he was training godly men, people of words, creeds and soul, all the things of the head and the heart, to fight.
He found an ash tree and broke off a section of branch thicker than his thumb, slicing the bark off it and whittling the ends to a taper, then used the point of his knife to make holes through the wood to attach a leather thong or a cord so he could tie it on. He didn’t have any. When they reached Auerswald he’d find a cobbler, tailor or chandler and buy some there. Until then, if he kept a bandage around his neck, the wooden gag would be held in place.
He reached up to the left side of his neck and pulled the lips of his second mouth apart. The teeth were clenched and a faint growling sound came from its throat—from his throat. With one hand he prised the teeth open, and with the other he pushed the wooden plug into place. It was a struggle, but it slipped in. He moved to clamp a hand over the mouth, but the mouth had spat the plug out first. It fell to the ground, amidst shadows. The mouth made a susurrating noise between its clenched teeth.
“S-s-s-s-sigmar,” it said.
Karl froze. It had said many things in the past, its whispered obscenities filling his ears and mind during long dark sleepless nights, but it had never said the name of a god before, not even one of the awful quartet of Chaos Lords. Part of him wanted to silence it, in case someone heard its muttered babble, but he knew that if it had chosen this moment to speak such a word of importance, there must be a reason.
He crouched among the low bushes, the fresh-cut piece of ash damp against his hand, its scent like unripe pears sharp in his senses, and listened.
“S-s-sigmar,” it said again. “Sigmarrr… isss here.”
Here? In the crusade? Did it mean Sigmar himself, the gods’ agents, or was this random babbling?
Huss had said the same words a few days before, he remembered. In the past it had repeated things that he had said, or that people had said to him.
“Taaake word to Allltdorf,” it said.
Had anyone said that to him? He didn’t think so. It had never spoken coherently before, or prophesied, or had dialogues with him, as the multiple mouths of Chaos-beasts in stories did. Mostly it spoke gibberish, streams of filth and obscenity, vile but incoherent. If it could think at all, it was a pitiful, idiot thing. He prayed it never infected his own mind.
“What word?” he said out loud.
“Njaivrr’thakh “Lzimbarr Tzeentch!” it spat. Gibberish and the name of its foul god. But it had answered him. Or was he going insane? Was it driving him mad?
He waited, sat on his haunches, for it to say something else. He could feel the tip of its tongue moving over its lips, an alien sensation that still unsettled him. It seemed to be settling. Perhaps it was safe for him to replace the gag and return to the camp. He stood up and raised the wooden plug to his neck.
“Onnne will bennnd and two will brrreakkk,” it said with sudden finality and bit down on the wood. He forced it into place, damped his hand down over it, and walked back across the fields, the night air full of the smell of spring grass, dew and unwashed holy men.
One of the sentries stopped him, rising from the darkness with a warhammer held ready. “Identify yourself,” he said.
Exactly as he’d taught them. Karl smiled. “Magnusson,” he said.
“Enter, brother,” the guard said, and then, “Have you hurt your neck?”
“A squirrel bit me,” Karl said.
“A squirrel?” The man sounded puzzled. “Why would it do that?”
“It must have thought I was nuts,” Karl said, and walked past him into the camp.
The last prayers of the evening had faded away and most of the crusade had settled down to sleep. A few fires were still alight with small groups of men clustered around them, talking about the usual things that men discuss in such places and times—points of doctrine in the writings of the Grand Theogonist Yorri VII, the greatest martyrdoms of history, which saint they fancied most, whether Sigmar had truly been reborn, and how soon they would be arrested and executed as heretics. Karl picked his way among them, scanning each group for the faces he wanted. Something told him they would not be asleep; they would be moving between groups, blending in, listening and absorbing information. It was what they did.
He found them in a group near the last large fire, in a discussing crusades and heresies. He tapped the nearer of the two on the shoulder, and the man turned his shaggy dog-haired head to look up at him. “I need a word,” Karl said.
“Speak it,” the man said.
“Not here.” He led them away to an edge of the camp where no guards were posted, where they would not be overheard. There was a dead fireplace here, its ashes and branch-ends still glowing red in the occasional breeze. They sat around it on the trod-down ground.
“I need information,” Karl said. “I’m prepared to pay.”
“We don’t need your money,” the blond said. “Besides, you couldn’t afford us.” His companion gave a barking laugh.
“A word can be worth a thousand crowns, they say,” he said, “if it’s the right word. And you said you only needed one.”
“For a start I’d like to know your names,” Karl said.
“Aw,” the curl-headed man said, “don’t begin by asking us to lie to you.”
“Surely your dealings with Andreas Reisefertig taught you that?” blond asked.
“True.” Karl smiled ruefully. These two reminded him of Reisefertig, the Cloaked Brother he had met last year: their conversational tricks, twisting words and language, playing games with trust, always working to keep the upper hand, showing a hint of something and then whisking it away. It was an art that Karl found difficult to keep up with and these two, with the way they spoke lines alternately, were clearly practised at it. The trick was to absorb the flow of everything and then filter it later, to work out what was substance and what was as clear and empty as water.
“What do your travelling companions call you?” he asked.
“Better,” blond said. “My friends call me Lutz, and him Dagobert.”
“Well, Lutz,” Karl said, “can you tell me who fired at Luthor Huss from the walls of Grünburg?”
“Can I tell you?” Lutz said and Karl immediately regretted his choice of words. “Of course I can tell you. The question is whether what I told you would be true. It’s possible that I know the answer, but would lie to you for some reason of my own, or possible that I don’t know but would make something up.”
“He might even make something up and be accidentally correct,” Dagobert said, “which would be very amusing with hindsight should any of us live long enough to have any.”
“More to the point,” Lutz said, “why should we tell you? When we last met I suggested we might work together, and you spurned the idea. Now you’re back. What’s in this for us?”
Karl sat back, arms folded, knowing what was coming. “You wouldn’t ask that question if you didn’t already have an answer for it.”
Lutz laughed out loud. “Ah, now this is the game as it should be played,” he said. “Yes. We have questions too. Answer for answer, then, and no deceits or dissembling. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Karl said. “Who shot at Luthor Huss?”
Dagobert glanced at Lutz. “You could have asked Huss himself that. He knows.”
“Huss may know his name, but you would know the reason.”
“What do you suspect?”
>
Karl chose his words carefully. “There are sects who believe that with Huss dead this crusade would disappear. Others believe that Huss martyred would be more powerful and less fallible than Huss alive. Some want to prevent Huss from finding the reborn Sigmar, if such a man exists. All I know is that whoever fired at Huss aimed to kill him.”
Lutz nodded. “It was a man named Friedo Baum. He claimed his crossbow misfired, and the Grünburg guard captain took him at his word.”
“But you know better,” Karl said.
“We do. Baum’s brother lives in Kemperbad, where he is employed by the Oldenhaller trading family—”
“Oldenhaller!” Karl said. “Tell me about the Oldenhallers.”
“An answer for an answer was the deal,” Dagobert said. “Our turn to ask.”
Karl grimaced. “Very well,” he said.
“Tell us why you want to know about the Oldenhallers,” Lutz said.
Karl told them about what had happened in Grissenwald, careful to keep the details obscure, with no mention of Oswald, dwarfs, the Eider or Herr Stahl.
“These certain gestures you made and observed,” Dagobert said, “what were they?”
“An answer for an answer,” Karl said. “Oldenhallers first.”
“Ah, the Oldenhallers,” said Lutz. “An old trading family, with outposts and cousins up and down the Reik. They are—what’s the best word?—unscrupulous. They are not Chaos worshippers themselves, so far as we can tell, nor do they have direct ties to any of the major cults. On the other hand they are happy to do any bits of business that come their way, particularly if it’ll curry favour with important and powerful people. Sometimes that means dirty business for the Empire, sometimes it means foreigners, sometimes it’s people with muddier intentions. They keep their bread buttered both sides, the Oldenhallers.”