by James Wallis
“Hail to Tzeentch!” the congregated answered. The speaker stepped back. Stahl passed him a cloth, and he wrapped it around his hand. There was a sense of something being completed, a change of mood and a transition between two stages. Karl knew he was at risk. The only people who might recognise him here would know him for an enemy, but he needed information. Karl turned to the woman beside him.
“Who is that?” he asked.
She turned, looking puzzled. “What, Herr Heilemann?”
Karl affected amusement. “No, beside him.”
“That’s Herr Doktor Kunstler,” she said, and there was reverence in her voice.
Kunstler. The name meant nothing to him, but he knew people who would recognise it. “So that’s what he looks like,” Karl said and looked away, up towards the front of the temple. People were beginning to move forward, down the aisle towards the table, the two men who stood there, and the blood-filled bowl before them. Karl watched.
“I thought you couldn’t speak,” she said.
“The gifts of Tzeentch work in ways puzzling to us who are only mortal,” he said, and felt the mouth on his neck twist in a leer. She smiled.
“Can you speak now?”
“When the gift allows me. I am Karl.”
“Emilie Trautmann.” Her smile widened, and it was pleasant to be smiled at in that way. “We should move forward,” she said, and did, and he followed hesitantly. Others were lining up before the table. If he got too close Stahl would recognise him. Maybe if he kept his hood up, he would not be recognised. A prudent man would leave now, he thought, but there was more he needed to know, and he felt Emilie could tell him. Besides, he was enjoying her company. And if the trap was sprung then he would go down fighting.
“Where are you from?” Emilie asked.
“Nuln.”
“You travelled with Herr Heilemann?”
“No, I came overland.” So Heilemann was Stahl’s real name, or at least his name within the cult. Karl paused, looking at her attractive face, deciding to try a long-shot. “I had information for our agents in Luthor Huss’ crusade,” he said.
She laughed out loud, and the sound was joyful. Karl smiled. So the Purple Hand did have agents in the crusade. He wondered who they were.
“I heard Huss preach once,” she said. “So perfect for our needs. Why are the men who think themselves their own masters the ones who are most easy to manipulate?”
“I don’t know,” Karl said.
“Are you a negotiator or part of the greater plan?” she asked.
Karl shook his head. “I prefer not to say.”
“The gift again, or are you afraid of infiltrators?” She smiled, and it was a beguiling smile. “You are among friends here.”
He could feel it. He had expected to feel on a blade-edge of tension, ready to spring into combat or flight. Instead he felt a sense of empathy with these people and with this woman. They were, in a strange way, his kin, twisted by the same forces that had deformed his body and wrecked his life. There was a common bond-but he recognised a red tinge to the thought and tensed his muscles, pushing it physically away. That way lay a deeper damnation. He was the outsider here, and still in danger.
He looked up, ahead, down the aisle. Without realising it they had drawn close to the table, and he suddenly saw what was going on. As each person reached the front they bent to the golden bowl that had caught Kunstler’s blood, put their lips into the dark liquid, and drank.
He was filled with horror and revulsion, and fought not to show it. Once before Chaos cultists had forced him to drink human blood against his will, but then he had not known what it was. This time the thought terrified him.
The mouth on his neck thrashed violently, and he grabbed it with his hand to subdue it, to make it less obvious. It occurred to him that Tzeentchians, who worshipped the Lord of Changes, would not be concerned by mutations among their members, but he still fought to hide his deformity. Then he felt a wrenching pain in the pit of his stomach, and recognised it. The mouth had sensed the blood, and was demanding to be fed.
“Are you all right?” Emilie asked.
He tried to nod, but a second wave of pain hit him and he flinched with his whole body. Space in the line opened in front of him and he took a hesitant step forward. There were only a few people between him and the place at the bowl. Stahl—no, Heilemann—was looking at him strangely.
A fresh surge of pain swept from his stomach. He gasped and grabbed Emilie’s shoulder for support. The man in front of him in the line noticed what was happening and stepped aside, making way for him. The person at the bowl stood up and moved away. There was nothing between him and it.
Beyond the table, Heilemann and Kunstler were staring at him. He raised his head and met the eyes of the man he had followed from Nuln. Heilemann’s hand went to the hilt of a knife at his belt, but stopped. He cocked his head an inch sideways as if to say: you came this far. Now prove yourself.
Karl stepped forward, and as another agony cramped his stomach, slumped to his knees in front of the golden bowl. He had a terrible urge to hurl the thing and its vile contents to the far wall of the temple. He resisted.
He bowed his head and lowered his lips to the surface of the thick blood. It smelled like death, the warm odour cloying in his nostrils. His lips touched it, and he paused a moment, then dipped his tongue into the blood.
It tasted salt-sweet and rich. It was the most disgusting thing he’d ever tasted.
He raised his head, and more pain staggered him, almost knocking him sideways. Heilemann was still watching him. What now? He’d drunk the foul stuff, wasn’t that enough?
His second mouth gnashed against its gag again, and he knew what he had missed. He wrenched the cloth and wood from it, put his fingers into the bowl, and thrust them into the mutated orifice. It sucked on them greedily, like a baby at the nipple, and he felt the pain ebb away. Slowly his body filled with a strange warmth; a sense of power, mental acuity, sensory acuteness, energy and virility. He felt revitalised, fitter than he had done in months. He felt complete, but it was a wrong completeness, a feeling of possession. It was tempting. Part of him wanted more of it. A lot more.
He rose to his feet and stepped away from the table, aware of Heilemann’s eyes on him. Behind him, Emilie dipped her face into the bowl and drank.
She joined him a few moments later. He had not turned to look back at Heilemann.
“Are you all right now?” she asked.
“Better than all right,” he said. “Emilie, a moment ago you asked me a question. I would like a chance to answer it, but at greater length. Not here.”
“I would like to hear your answer,” she said, and paused. “I admire your discretion. Perhaps our parts in the scheme are complementary, and perhaps we can work together. More closely.”
He had to admit, it was an attractive offer and she was an attractive woman. He glanced over her shoulder, to see the last of the cultists rise from the table. Someone stepped in from the side to remove the bowl and cloth. Heilemann was still observing him, but as Karl watched he turned and spoke to Kunstler. Karl could guess what the topic of conversation was.
“I would welcome the chance to talk further,” he said, “and to learn how you do things in Middenheim. I have some business to attend to in the next hour, but later…?”
Heilemann was coming over, making his way through the cultists around the table, stopping here and there for a word but unmistakably heading for where they stood.
Emilie smiled up at him. “It is a dark night, and I am a girl from the north, unfamiliar with these dangerous city streets. A gentleman would walk me to my inn before he set out on his other affairs.”
Heilemann was drawing closer. “Then we should go,” Karl said, “and if we meet a gentleman on the way, I will pass you over to him.”
She gave a chuckle like wine gurgling from a bottle and took his arm. Karl walked her briskly towards the exit and the bearded fellow who guarded it. He swung the door open and th
ey stepped into the cold of the night, leaving Heilemann and the cultists behind them.
Immediately Karl could feel something. It wasn’t that he could sense movement, or see a presence among the shadows of the cul-de-sac. It was a combination of his heightened senses, like smelling or tasting at a distance. It set his teeth on edge. He could not describe it or explain it, but he recognised it. Someone he knew was nearby, watching him.
He wanted to do something about it, but now was not the time. He walked on, Emilie at his side, out onto the main street.
“Which inn are you staying at?” he asked. She looked up at him. It was a deliberately artificial move, done to accentuate the way her dark hair framed her face, the darkness of her eyes, the curve of her neck and the swell of her décolletage.
“The Black Goat,” she said, and Karl’s heart, which had risen a few moments before, sank.
“It is not far,” she said, “and their wines are excellent. Perhaps you can step in for a few minutes before your business?”
“It will not wait,” he said, “but I hope that you will.”
She looked disappointed her lips in a half-moue, half-pout. “A girl needs her sleep,” she said, “but you may call on me up till eleven bells.”
“If my business overruns,” he said, “then I will make my apologies and reparations on the morrow.”
“Do better than that,” she said. “Make sure it does not overrun.” The walk back to The Black Goat passed easily, peppered with small-talk and coquettish hints of what might come later. When they arrived outside the building, she squeezed his hand for a second before heading slowly to the inn door. She pushed it open and turned to look back at him, her face catching the lamplight from inside, the reflection in her eyes promising much.
Karl watched the door close behind her, shook his head and walked away from the inn, heading back into the merchants’ quarter and breaking into a jog as soon as he was out of sight of The Black Goat’s windows. He had no intention of returning there that evening.
As he approached the cul-de-sac he slipped his silvered lenses into a pocket, took a cloth cap from his bundle of clothes and pulled it down low over his eyes. Then, choosing a doorway from which he could see the entrance to the narrow street, he slumped down over his bundle of clothes, looking like a sleeping vagrant. He watched the street through half-closed eyes, and waited.
People came out in small groups, walking away unobtrusively and disappearing into the Altdorf night. He guessed that none had brought a carriage, though a few had probably left one at a nearby inn. Faces were carefully hidden, and nobody carried a torch. He hoped the night-watch did not come past and move him along.
After twenty minutes the occasional flow trickled off and ceased, and he guessed the last had gone. He had not recognised Herr Heilemann or Herr Doktor Kunstler as they left, but had not expected to: if they had not been masters of concealment and disguise, they and their cult would have perished years ago. But there was still one person to come out. He lay quiet and waited.
It took almost half an hour before a lithe figure dressed in black slipped out of the shadows of the alley and began to walk towards the south, its strides short and slow, like a man who has been in a cramped position for several hours. Karl rose noiselessly to his feet and set off after him. The figure turned suddenly, a shortsword drawn, his mop of long curls whirling around his head.
“Good evening, Brother Dagobert,” Karl said. “Did you learn much?”
The Cloaked Brother did not drop his guard. “Magnusson,” he said, “I recognised you as you came out.”
“And I you.”
“Have you spent an amusing evening with your new friends in the Purple Hand?”
“Old friends, some of them,” Karl said, “but it has been instructive. I did not lie to you when I told you I was not a follower of Chaos, and that is still true. Do not fear me because I dared to go where you wouldn’t.”
“Fools rush in,” Dagobert said, “where sane men fear to tread.”
“Fools,” Karl said, “or those with nothing to lose. You missed the excitement at the crusade.”
“Forewarned is forearmed,” Dagobert said. Karl sighed theatrically.
“Do you speak in nothing but poor aphorisms to hide information from me, or because without the other half of your double-act you cannot form sentences of your own?” he asked. Dagobert grinned, and lowered his sword.
“You missed the excitement too,” he said.
“What?”
“Shall we trade answers again?” Dagobert asked. Karl scowled and nodded, and the man’s smile grew wider.
“Then I give you this for free: at Lachenbad Luthor Huss found a blacksmith’s son named Valten and proclaimed that he is Sigmar reborn. They are now reunited with the main crusade and are making their way to Altdorf, where Huss intends to present his discovery to the Emperor.”
“And I give you this: the Purple Hand wishes him to succeed,” Karl said.
“They do?”
“They do. Their target is Sigmar’s mind, not his life.” That much he had worked out from Kunstler’s speech.
Dagobert hesitated. Then he said, “Who did you recognise at the meeting?”
“Two people. The man I met in Nuln is known here as a witch hunter called Brother Heilemann. And Herr Doktor Kunstler is here from Middenheim.”
“Kunsder’s here?” Dagobert seemed genuinely startled. Karl filed that information for future use. “You’ve met him before?”
“No, my companion told me who he was.”
Dagobert stared at Karl. “I must cut this game of questions short,” he said, and began to turn away. Karl caught his shoulder.
“One more,” he said. “Tell me who in the Order of Sigmar is leading the search for me in Altdorf.”
“Brother Anders Holger,” Dagobert said. “He reports to Brother Karin. A little too flexible in his thinking, Brother Holger. He blotted his copybook badly on a mission to Priesdicheim last year and has been kept in Altdorf ever since. But he’s conscientious and diligent nonetheless. Do not underestimate him. Now I must go.”
“How can I contact you?” Karl asked. Dagobert turned back to face him, knocking his hand off his shoulder. There was anger in his face.
“Don’t,” he said. “You are in far over your head. Swim away now, or drown. It’s taken you this long to work out your precious Herr Stahl was a Chaos cultist. We could have told you that outside Grünburg.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You didn’t ask.”
Karl almost punched him. He almost felt Dagobert’s nose disintegrate under his fist, almost slammed a second blow into his throat, almost knocked his sword-hand away while grasping for his belt-knife, almost plunged it between the third and fourth ribs, almost watched the heart-blood jet from the wound as the man choked his life out on the ground. But he didn’t. He didn’t move.
Dagobert sighed. “Karl, I know you think the Cloaked Brothers are a group of do-nothing information gatherers as close to Chaos as they are to the forces of good. I tell you now: we gather information for a reason, and the coming crisis is just such a reason. We have amassed considerable forces, favours and abilities, and now we will use them. This has been building for decades, and will last for decades more. You can’t begin to understand its complexities. Do not interfere, or it will go ill for you and your friends, and possibly for the Empire too.”
Karl said nothing, startled by the man’s arrogance, yet accepting that there was truth in what he said. This was a struggle between power-blocks, fought on dozens of different fronts between hundreds of agents. But in such a war between entrenched forces, there had to be a role for a man who could travel between the different camps. He didn’t know what that role was, but he intended to find it. He had come so far, he would not stand by while his enemies threatened the Empire.
“And,” Dagobert said, “do not be fooled into thinking that the enemy of your enemy is your friend.”
“Sometimes,�
�� Karl said, “they’re the only friends you have. And you would do well to remember that the friends of your friends may turn out to be enemies too.”
The Cloaked Brother smiled. “I never forget it.”
“Good,” Karl said. “Goodnight.” He turned and walked away towards the docks. Oswald would be waiting, and might have more information. He had learned too much this evening and another head would help him work it out.
He saw the world differently now. Before it had been like ants’ nests or swarms of bees, each organisation or power-bloc unique, built of individuals with a common cause, discrete and identifiable. Now he realised that there were strands and connections between them, overlaps and intersections, areas of grey, areas of common interest, agents who could work for opposed factions at the same time, people whose goals changed with time, or who worked for other, even more shadowy causes. The deeper he looked, the more groups he found and the more interwoven and tangled the links between them became.
Even two streets away from Bremerdamm he could tell that something was wrong. The air felt heavy and still, as if it was pregnant with waiting and expectation. Something had happened, and the world was watching for something more. The sounds from the taverns were muted and people did not look at each other on the street or looked too much.
He turned the corner and looked towards the street-door of the tenement house where he and Oswald had their room. On the other side of the street, someone leaned against the wall. He looked like a dock-worker. No, he looked too much like a dock-worker, more like a parody of a stevedore than a real one. Like someone who had been told to disguise themselves as a docker and stand watch. Stevedores didn’t wear sabres on their belts either. Karl took three quiet steps backwards, turned and walked away.
Two corners away he found a tavern where he wasn’t known, and bought a pint of dark beer and one for the barkeeper. He drank the first half and made small-talk: nobles, the Emperor, the state of business. Then he asked for a pickled cucumber, bit into it, and absent-mindedly asked what the disturbance in Bremerdamm had been about.
The bartender raised his eyebrows. “Witch hunters,” he said.