by James Wallis
In fact, Karl thought, it would be enough if Huss announced that he had found Sigmar. The nature of godhood was unprovable, and Huss’ word would be enough to convince most people. Not that Huss would knowingly commit a fraud of that kind against the people of the Empire and the Church of Sigmar… would he? No, surely not. But for the first time Karl understood why Huss had led the crusade on his peripatetic route across the Empire: the people of the villages, market-towns and river-ports had seen him, heard him preach, felt they knew him. If it was a choice between his word and that of the remote, distant and disliked Grand Theogonist, who never left his palace in Altdorf and who had already raised the tithes this year, Huss would find the support and believers he needed.
While the Convocation of Light went on, the logical thing to do would be to bring Sigmar to Altdorf and present him to the Emperor. But Huss was an excommunicant and a criminal, and his associates were damned by association: the appearance of thirty Templars was evidence that the Empire wanted to erase Huss and the threat he posed. The chances of the church and the army letting Huss and his putative Sigmar within five miles of Altdorf were low, let alone granting him an audience with the Emperor. And if those weren’t enemies enough, Karl feared the attention of the witch hunters and the corruption he knew lay at their heart. I le did not trust the Cloaked Brothers. And the mention of the Purple Hand worried him. He had not seen much trace of their work, but they were like cockroaches: if you see one, his mother used to tell him, you know there are twenty more.
Afternoon dissolved into early evening. Perhaps, Karl thought his logic had been wrong or Oswald had been misled, and Herr Stahl was not associated with the person who signed and sealed the warrant of arrest after all. I low close had the handwriting been? He would wait until seven bells, and then admit the day had been wasted. He was hungry: one sausage all day had not been enough, and his stomach was growling. His legs hurt and his throat was sore from the repetition of his beseechings. Begging was surprisingly hard work.
Then Herr Stahl stepped out of the chapter-house, wearing the robes of a priest of Sigmar. Karl almost started forward. With one eye he noted the insignia sewed over the man’s breast, denoting that he was attached to the Order of Sigmar as a cleric and official. So not actually a witch hunter, then. Oswald had been wrong. On the other hand Brother Karin had been in the same role when Karl had first met her; Stahl could still be senior within the order, or have considerable influence with what appeared to be a minor rank. With another part of his brain Karl registered that he had not seen the man enter the building, only leave. Either he had spent the night in there or there was another, hidden entrance. Neither boded well. But mostly it was a sweep of emotion, too many to analyse, that Stahl was actually here.
Stahl looked both ways down the street. For a second he stared at Karl but looked away without blinking, the effortless gaze of a man assured in his superiority. He turned and walked into the cathedral square, moving north towards the river. Karl scooped up his handkerchief, threw the remains of his sausage to a stray dog that had been hanging about the street since mid-afternoon, swung his pack onto his shoulder and followed.
CHAPTER TEN
Something Going On
Karl followed the man he knew as Herr Stahl through the twilight streets. Storekeepers were shuttering their shop-fronts, merchants made their way home from the north of the city, socialites left their houses or lodgings to head out to parties, dinners, the city’s social round. Beggars mostly stayed where they were, slumped in doorways and alleys.
They crossed the Reik over the Altbrug. Traffic on the river was light but the water seemed sluggish and heavy, roiling and choking downstream towards the sea, cluttered with silt and flotsam. Karl cast an eye upstream, wondering if he might see the Eider moored somewhere, but it was an idle chance. He had thought about searching the waterfront for the vessel but Altdorf’s docks were simply too large to make the job feasible. Ahead of him, Stahl did not look right or left, but kept on down the wide street, heading towards the north gate. As he walked he pulled a thin cloak from under his robes and unfurled it around his shoulders. The priest of Sigmar disappeared into anonymity, becoming just another figure on the street.
They were headed for the Königplatz, Karl realised. By this time the daily market would be packed up, the barrows and trestles stacked in neat piles and the traders and pedlars long gone, but the square’s other function would still be in full effect: the place where the coach-lines from all over the northern Empire dropped their passengers and picked up new ones. So was Stahl leaving or was someone arriving?
Karl hung back, keeping Stahl in view but not so close that the man would be able to guess he was being followed. He glanced around the street on the offchance that someone else was tailing Stahl, or possibly tailing him, but the evening crowds gave nobody away. He felt reasonably confident.
Stahl entered the square and walked quickly across towards the north side. Karl watched him with a sinking heart as he headed towards the scaffolded front of The Black Goat inn. Twice earlier in the day he had noted men in the white and red colours of his old regiment walk past. If soldiers from the Reikland Pikes were in the city then their officers would be too: officers who would be staying at The Black Goat and who would recognise Karl on sight, disguise or no disguise. He dropped a few more yards further behind his quarry.
Stahl didn’t go into the inn, but walked a few yards beyond it, to where one of the coaches of the Wolf Runner line was parked. It had fresh horses in the traces and looked ready to leave. A crowd of people stood around, carrying luggage and trunks, saying goodbyes, taking their places on board, leaning on the wall, watching. Stahl turned to face the throng and with a slow, deliberate movement raised his right hand to tug on his left ear.
A tall man who Karl had not noticed detached himself from the throng, walking towards Stahl as he ran his left hand backwards through his hair, pulling its dark strands out of shape. He looked nondescript: there was nothing in his dress or appearance to draw attention to himself. A very professional job. Karl was reminded why he had been impressed with Stahl’s organisation in the first place.
Stahl and the stranger shook hands and exchanged greetings and pleasantries. The new man’s accent was curiously nondescript: he could have been from anywhere in the Empire, as long as the upper classes were there. They walked away to the east, into the mercantile district.
Karl kept an eye on them as he walked swiftly over to the boy holding the reins of the lead horse. “Where’s this coach going?” he asked.
“Middenheim.”
“Is that where it’s come from?” The boy nodded.
Middenheim, the fortress city on the rock, the place that the northern god Ulric chose for his followers to build their stronghold. More than four hundred miles north of Altdorf, Middenheim was said to be impregnable, proof against any siege—and right in the path of Archaon’s route south. Karl made a note in the margin of his memory, tipped the boy a few coppers and walked on after Stahl.
The two men seemed deep in a discreet conversation, their voices low and dropping lower whenever they passed someone. Karl strained his senses, focusing his hearing on them, blanking out all distractions. They were talking about people, he realised. Probably catching up on news and acquaintances, though he could hear there was a note of seriousness, almost anxiety, to their tone.
Deep in the mercantile district the two men turned into a cul-de-sac in between the high houses. At the end of the narrow street was a dilapidated temple, its white frontage peeling and discoloured by green and black lichens. The wooden doors were weather-beaten and iron bars had been fastened across. Long streaks of rust ran down from them like stalactites. Distinguishing marks had been removed, along with much of the lead from the roof, but from the wavelike crests across the door-pillars and the scallop-shell patterns Karl guessed it had been dedicated to Manaan, god of the sea and sailors. A strange thing to find in the middle of Altdorf. Perhaps the cult had thought th
ere would be purpose and profit in building a temple to a god much invoked by the traders of the Reik in a prosperous merchant area like this. If so, they had been wrong. Altdorf had never been a comfortable home to foreigners, or their gods.
Stahl and his companion walked up the short flight of steps to the door, and knocked. Karl hung back at the entrance to the street: another man entering the road now could only be heading to the same place and would be hailed, even if Stahl did not recognise him at once. But he watched and listened, focusing all his attention on the end of the street.
The door opened a crack. Stahl paused a second and said something. Karl closed his eyes, trying to give their strength to his ears, to catch the password. He failed. It had sounded foreign, with too many syllables. He watched, frustrated, as the door opened, the two men entered and it closed firmly behind them.
Perhaps he could knock on the door and stab the guard in the eye before he could raise the alarm, the man’s blood spilling…. Karl fought the thought down. He could recognise its source; it felt as though it had been tinged in red. It had not come from his own mind. Beneath its bandage, under its gag, his second mouth writhed, possibly in pain or in joy. He remembered that he had received the wound it had grown from in a place not unlike this, in the port-city of Marienburg, and he had almost drowned. Manaan was no friend of his.
What kind of people would choose such an abandoned temple as a meeting-place?
The mouth gnashed.
“Take word to Altdorf,” it had said, back in the woods after Grünburg.
With a feeling like nausea, like physical sickness, Karl realised he knew what it had meant, who Herr Stahl was working for, and how to give the password.
He walked down the cul-de-sac his feet echoing on damp flagstones. The steps were loose, the limestone pitted by years of rain and the piss of vagrants. He knocked hard, thumping his hand into the iron bars across the door. Each blow hurt, and he took satisfaction in the pain.
The door opened, and in the slow instants as the dark crack widened Karl knew he was damned, utterly and irrevocably. His mind was still his own but his soul belonged to Chaos. The fact he was prepared to do this proved it.
A figure stood inside the door, unmoving. It said nothing.
Karl untied the bandage around his neck, and snapped the leather thongs of the gag with his hands, dragging it away from him. He stood still and silent, filled with sorrow and the agony of his unholiness, waiting.
“Njawrr’thakh “Lzimbarr Tzeentch!” the mouth said.
“Enter, friend,” the doorman said.
* * *
The interior of the temple was dark, lit by a few small oil-lamps set in small alcoves on the walls. There were around forty people inside, standing in between the double row of dust-covered pews, facing the steps up to the apse where the altar had once been. They were either silent or talking in low, cautious whispers, their feet making hollow shuffling sounds on the tiled floor. Many wore hoods, but there was not enough light to show their faces. Karl sensed no trace that he knew any of them. Fabric had been hung over the windows to hide the light from eyes outside.
By the altar-place, in front of a rough cloth-covered table with a wide, shallow golden bowl and two candles on it, Stahl and his visitor stood, looking back at the crowd. Karl was reminded not of priests but of politicians before a council meeting, or officers about to brief their troops. He stepped back, into the shadows of the rear wall, slipping the gag back into his second mouth, and ducked his head so he was less visible.
Someone was there already. He sensed them rather than saw them. The other person nodded their head, and Karl acknowledged the gesture, hoping they wouldn’t speak to him.
“Have you come far?” they asked and Karl was surprised to hear a woman’s voice. Her Reikland accent was soft and familiar, and for a moment he thought: Marie. It wasn’t her. Pretty enough, almost attractive, dark hair in soft curls falling down to her shoulders, but not Marie. He looked away, watching the room, and said nothing. He could feel her eyes still on him. The silence between them was awkward. Karl began to think about how he was going to get out of here. If only he had not left his sword behind in his room.
Up at the table, Stahl raised a small bell and rang it with a high, tinkling sound that cut through the conversations. Silence fell. He stood for a moment, his gaze sweeping the room.
“Brothers and sisters,” he said. “I thank you in the name of all the rites and transmutations for your pains in coming here. I am sure your journeys have been dangerous, and there is greater danger in having so many of the primarchs of our organisation in one place at one time. This will be the first and last meeting of this kind. From now on, you know your meeting-places and contacts, and you must not breach them.”
The gathering murmured its agreement. Stahl stepped back and the newcomer from Middenheim took his place. For the first time Karl was able to get a good look at him. He was in his mid-forties, just shy of six feet with brown curly hair tending to silver at the temples. He was watching the people in front of him with an expression that Karl could not place, but looked uncomfortably like appetite. Without a word he reached down to the table in front of him, picked up a knife and, holding up his other hand, slowly sliced a line across its palm.
He clenched his fist for a long second and opened the hand again, raising it, fingers slightly splayed. Blood covered it.
A blood-purple hand, like the one Karl had seen beside the corpse in Nuln. Fresh blood ran freely from the cut and trickled from his wrist into the golden bowl in front of him.
“At the appointed time we shall rise from our secret places,” he said.
“At the appointed time we shall rise from our secret places,” the cultists responded. The words were unfamiliar but had the rhythm and cadence of a creed. Karl heard the voice of the woman beside him, intoning the words as if she was breathing them, as if they were as vital to her life as breath. He didn’t know them and so he kept quiet.
“Chaos will cover the land and we, the chosen servants of Chaos, shall be exalted in His eyes.”
“Chaos will cover the land and we, the chosen servants of Chaos, shall be exalted in His eyes.” The woman glanced up at Karl, her eyes questioning his silence. He thought for a moment about removing the gag from his second mouth but it had given him away to the forces of Chaos once before, and he would not make that mistake again. Instead he pointed to his mouth, which could have meant anything, but the woman seemed to take it as an excuse and turned away, focusing her attention to the man leading the—the chant… the prayer… the oath…the spell?
“Hail to Tzeentch, Changer of the Ways.”
“Hail to Tzeentch, Changer of the Ways.”
“Njawrr’thakh ’Lzimbarr Tzeentch!”
“Njaurrr’thakh ’Lzimbarr Tzeentch!”
“Brothers,” he said, “and sisters. It is a great day, but greater ones are at hand. We are here with two purposes: to do what we can to affect the outcome of the Convocation of Light, and to arrange our own, a meeting that our enemies are calling the Convocation of the Dark.”
His hand was still outstretched. Blood continued to fall from his wrist into the bowl.
“Despite what you all may think, the first purpose is subservient to the second. The alliance we are here to forge must be strong enough to survive the year ahead, though it will be pulled in other directions by the other powers of Chaos.
“I know that dealing with our Chaotic kin is an unpleasant prospect, but we must bond with these people because together the clans of Chaos are stronger. Also because we know that in matters of treaties, negotiations, alliances and planning we are stronger than they are, and therefore we will lead them, whether they know they are led or not.
“The same truth holds for our brethren in Tzeentch. I know that in tavern rooms and cellars, hidden chapels and dark alleys across this city, every cult leader is saying these same words to a roomful of the faithful, but in our case I know it to be true. We are the Purp
le Hand.” He thrust his outstretched hand forward, and droplets of blood splashed across the bare wood floor. “We are the Purple Hand, and we have already infiltrated their numbers. We know their plans and we have already thwarted them.
“There is one hornet in the ointment, and it still has its sting. I learned on my journey that the followers of Khorne are not with us. It is not because they do not believe the reborn Sigmar is a threat. They do. They believe him to be the finest warrior the Empire has produced in two millennia, and they wish to see his forces clash against Archaon’s. Blood—” he paused and looked around the room, “—for the Blood God, and hell for the rest of us.
“This is why some of our number are not here. I have charged them with a greater task, to thwart those whose heads would be best used as part of their lord’s skull throne. Luthor Huss has found the one he calls the reborn Sigmar, and is leading him to Altdorf. We know our lord Tzeentch has planned these times for millennia, and though his plans are not made clear to us, we know that history must take a certain course, and we must steer it along that course. And we will do it as we do best: by persuasion, deviation and assignation. We know our target, and we will convince him that our path is the one he must follow.
“So we will do this. The history of the Purple Hand is long and hidden in shadow, but we know it and we take strength from it. The followers of Tzeentch shall lead the Convocation of the Dark, and the Purple Hand shall lead the Tzeentchians, and when the last warrior of Archaon and the last warrior of Sigmar have choked their life-blood out on each other’s swords, our master has foretold that we are the ones who shall rise to glory and control this Empire in the name of the Lord of Change.
“Go now, my children. There is much to do, and little time. You know your roles, your duties, and the will of our Lord. Our day is coming. Hail to Tzeentch, Changer of the Ways!”