by James Wallis
“These emissaries,” he said. “They arrived last night. A dark-haired woman and two men.”
Martinus smiled. “So you have heard of them. They have been in council all night and any minute now we expect—”
Karl twisted his neck, trying to get the soreness of the long night’s ride out of it. “I know them. They are not from the Grand Theogonist. They are the cultists I spoke of, devious and cunning—”
“It is you who are devious and cunning, Karl Hoche,” Martinus said. “They brought letters from the Grand Theogonist and the witch hunters, signed and sealed. I saw them myself. You are a mutant and a servant of Chaos, the man who destroyed Duke Heller and the Lord Protector of the Order of Sigmar, as well as their army. Huss may have been taken in by you, but I am not. I will let you go now, in thanks for the service you gave the crusade, but never come back.”
“I’m sorry,” Karl said.
“For what?”
“This,” he said and flung his throwing-knife at the priest. Martinus ducked it, as he’d thought he would, but it gave him the time to cover the twenty feet between them. He had no weapon. Martinus had a one-handed hammer on his belt, but made the mistake of scrabbling to free it, and Karl was on him before he could loose its thong.
Martinus hit him, a solid punch that impacted on his cheekbone and jarred his skull. That was unexpected. Warrior-priest, he thought, trained to fight as well as to pray. A second punch shook his jaw, rocking him backwards. He put all his force behind a blow to Martinus’ shoulder and as the taller man swung back from it, threw himself forward, knocking the man to the ground, landing atop him and groping for his throat. Martinus’ hands were already there, breaking his grip and pushing his arms of the way.
Karl spat in his face. Martinus’ hands jerked up to cover his eyes, the urge to protect himself from Chaos stronger than the instinct to defend himself. Karl lunged down with both hands, slamming them against Martinus’, forcing the priest’s head back to impact against the stones of the road with a solid thud. Martinus twitched and lay still.
Karl rolled off him and paused a second, waiting to see if it was a feint. Apparently not. The priest was breathing shallowly, unconscious, a little blood seeping from the back of his head. Good, Karl thought. Martinus was at heart a good man, and there was no point in unnecessary killing. And this way there were no bloodstains on the priest’s robes.
He began stripping Martinus’ still body.
The crusade was at prayer. Rows and rows of the devout and faithful, priests, monks, pilgrims, Templars, penitents, flagellants, disciples, zealots, ranters, speakers of tongues, the newly converted and the lifelong believers, all stood facing the wooden platform where Luthor Huss stood, chanting the familiar prayers of the matins service, their massed responses breaking the silence of the new day like the roar of a great waterfall.
The crusade had grown, Karl thought. He had heard that Sigmar had been leading a militia of local villagers when Huss found him, but there must be almost two thousand people here now. He wondered if his militia was still training, and who was leading them now, and then thought: Sigmar would be. And they would probably be a force to be reckoned with, the strength of their zeal making up for any deficiency in their training. If his military life had taught Karl anything, it was to avoid battles with fanatics, whichever side they were on.
With the hood of the robes up, and the unfamiliar weight of the hammer at his belt, he moved slowly through the crowd, trying to avoid faces he recognised. The closer he got to the front, the harder it became. Finally he stopped: there was no sense in moving further forward now. He would wait until the prayers had ended, then seek out Huss.
He peered through the ranks of worshippers. At the foot of the wooden dais were four people. Three wore ornate yellow and green robes, the colours of the Grand Theogonist. He recognised one of them, though her long dark curls were tied back in an austere plait, like one of the Sisters of Sigmar. Beside them stood a young man, fresh-faced, with long blond hair and skin tanned golden from a life outdoors. Though he mouthed the responses to the prayers of the high priest behind him, he seemed unconcerned with the service or its importance, or the fact that every eye in the crowd was on him, not Huss.
So this was Valten. He didn’t look like a god, though Karl could see a certain resemblance to the face of Sigmar as it was portrayed on temple statues or wall-paintings, or stamped on the backs of medallions. He looked young, handsome in an untidy way, a little nervous, a little tired. He looked distracted, disinterested, perhaps a little stupid. Under the loose white peasant shirt he wore his arms and torso were well muscled. Karl did not know what to make of the man, but he was not convinced. He wondered how many of the people around him were not convinced either.
The prayer ended. Huss stared out over the heads of his congregation for a moment, then clapped his hands and shouted something. Karl did not catch the words but he understood the tone: the crusade was preparing to move.
Karl pushed his way through the worshippers as they broke ranks, becoming travellers and followers again, unpitching tents, dismantling shelter, and generally decamping. He needed to talk to Huss, to explain what was going on. He could not think what else to do. Tackling the three cultists would be disastrous: if he had more time and less crowded surroundings then he could have taken them out one by one, but his time had already run out. Whatever he did, he would have to do soon.
His hand moved instinctively to touch his sword-hilt, but of course it was not there. The witch hunters had taken it when they arrested Oswald. And he had thrown his last dagger at Brother Martinus, and had neglected to pick it up. He was weaponless apart from the small hammer at his belt, and it had been years since he had last used one of those. He felt naked, surrounded by people he had once known but who were now all potential enemies.
Someone tugged at his elbow and he started, turning, almost reaching for his non-existent sword. At his right hand was a tall, lugubrious fellow with blond hair and a familiar face: Gottschalk, leader of the pikemen. He was smiling.
“Magnusson?” he said in a broad whisper.
Karl’s first instinct was to run, but he didn’t. Running would do nobody any good, not Huss, not Valten, not himself. He didn’t say anything.
“I thought it was you,” Gottschalk continued. “Why did you come back? There was a huge fuss after Rottfurt, Dominic and Martinus denouncing you as a criminal, but I stuck up for you. I saw what you did for us there, and I remember how you built us into an army, and I thought a servant of Chaos wouldn’t have done those things. And then Stockhausen—he took over the Hammers of Sigmar after Kuster died—told me how you’d got Brother Huss back on his feet after he lost his nerve, and I knew you were one of us, not one of them. But why did you come back?”
“I had to,” Karl said. His voice sounded rough, even to him.
“It’s too dangerous for you here.”
“Is there somewhere we can talk without being heard? Or seen?”
Gottschalk thought for a second. “There’s a ruined cottage a quarter-mile off.” He pointed.
“I’ll see you there in ten minutes.”
“The crusade’s moving off in half an hour.”
“It won’t take long.”
Gottschalk looked hesitant. “Magnusson—if what they said about you is true, how do I know this isn’t a trap?”
Karl smiled. “You can’t know. You can either trust me, or bring some of your trusted men.” He paused. “Come to think of it, bring them anyway. And a spare sword.”
The one-room cottage was a stone skeleton in open countryside, a shadow of a living-place. Its bleached stones were wrapped in thin ropes of bindweed, the white bell-flowers reaching out like hungry mouths sucking at the sunlight in its morning glory. Inside, the floor was grasses and dandelions. The caked droppings of roosting birds smeared the inside walls.
When Gottschalk arrived Karl had unwrapped his pack and shaken out the few clothes he had brought with him. Gottschalk
was a tall man and well-built with heavy muscles, good qualities in a pikeman but not the same size as Karl. Perhaps one of his soldiers would be a better fit. But the pike-unit’s leader would be better for the part: he had the right demeanour, the right sense of faith and dedication.
He glanced over, beyond the figures of Gottschalk and the four pikemen advancing across the field with him. The crusade was beginning to form up, moving towards the road. At any moment someone would discover Brother Martinus, Karl thought, and alarms would be raised. They only had a few minutes to make this work.
“I’ve brought some fellows,” Gottschalk said. The four pikemen stood at the empty doorway, looking in with curiosity. Karl recognised them.
“Four? You distrust me that much?”
Gottschalk shrugged. “Take the enemy by surprise. You taught us that.” He looked down at the clothes that Karl had unpacked. “What are those?”
Karl ignored the question. “The three who arrived from Altdorf yesterday,” he said, “have you spoken to them? Been close to them?”
“The ones from the Grand Theogonist? No.”
“They’re not from the Grand Theogonist. They’re from a Chaos cult, a very well connected one, and they aim to win Valten over to their side.”
Gottschalk’s mouth hung open. After a while he shut it. “That’s not possible,” he said.
“It is possible, and I will prove it to you with a simple deception. Put these clothes on and follow me. I’ll tell you what to say.”
It was in Lachenbad that Luthor Huss had found Valten, working in his father’s smithy. Recognising him as the spirit of Sigmar reborn, Luthor had convinced the young man to come with the crusaders. An over-excitable driver for the Four Seasons coach-line named Ezzo Schumacher had witnessed the proclamation of the reborn god. Overcome by the religious fervour of the moment, he had abandoned his job and joined the crusade on the spot, donating all he owned to the coffers, to pay for food for the multitude.
The coach had not technically been his property but nobody except his passengers had wanted to argue the toss, and Huss’ men had put the vehicle to good use carrying the old and the lame who otherwise would have slowed the crusade’s progress. The two passengers were last seen retiring to the Two Moons inn, one to write a strong letter of complaint to the owners of the Four Seasons line, the other to open the contents of the mail-sack, to see if anyone had been unwise enough to send any material that was sellable, blackmailable or pornographic.
Now the coach stood at the centre of the crusade’s campsite, while men and women busied themselves around it, getting ready to move. Someone had retrieved the two black horses from the improvised paddock where the crusade’s mounts had overnighted, and was preparing to harness them to the traces. Around the outside of the vehicle itself, four of the Hammers of Sigmar stood guard. Its doors were closed and its windows curtained. The new god was inside, talking with the representatives of the Grand Theogonist, and was not to be disturbed.
Through the throng of dark-robed worshippers and devotees strode a tall man, and the masses parted to let him through, like a tear splitting fabric. The black clothes he wore should have blended in with the mass, but the silver buttons on his tunic and the buckle on his high hat marked him out as something different from the people around him: he had come from somewhere else, and his thoughts could not be their thoughts. The last time the witch hunters had met the crusaders, they had brought Templars and death with them. The effect of the uniform was abrupt. People stopped what they were doing and watched, talking in low voices.
Flanked by pikemen, the tall man walked to the closed door of the carriage and rapped on it with a gloved hand. “Open!” he commanded. “In the name of Sigmar!”
The door swung open slowly, framing a woman in green and yellow robes, the bruises on her face almost as dark as her long hair.
“We are not to be—” she said. “Oh. How can I help, brother?”
“I bring news from Altdorf,” the witch hunter said. “Brother Heilemann of the Order of Sigmar is dead.”
She said nothing but the flush faded from her face, leaving only the bruises. A male voice behind her said, “That is sad news, but—”
“Your face is familiar,” she said. “I have seen it recently.”
“Perhaps in Altdorf,” he said. There was a note of nervousness in his voice.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Why have you brought us this news?”
“Because he died in our custody. And before he died, he talked.”
“He what?”
“He told us everything.” From the dark interior of the carriage someone moved and said something quietly. The woman made an impatient gesture, waving them back, without moving her eyes from the witch hunter’s face.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “We are here on the orders of the Grand Theogonist—”
“You are here on the orders of Herr Doktor Kunstler, to twist the mind of the reborn Sigmar to your foul scheme,” the witch hunter said. “Aren’t you, Emilie Trautmann?”
A man’s voice shouted something inside the coach, and the priestess’ head twisted to the sound. “No!” she shouted. “No, this is Hoche, this is his doing—” but got no further.
The door on the far side of the carriage slammed open and a man with short-cropped hair leaped out, grabbing for a knife at his belt, preparing to sprint for freedom. There were no pikemen on that side of the coach. Only Karl Hoche and his new sword.
The sword was a standard straight-edge design, forged by a local swordmaker or an apprentice at one of the larger firms. There was some skill in its manufacture but no real craft: it was the kind of cheap blade that was made and sold in bulk to market-town militias across the Empire. It had been maintained in a cursory way, occasionally polished and ineptly sharpened until any balance that the maker had given it had gone. It swung heavily in the hand, not helped by the crude grip and guard that had been fixed to it to replace the originals, probably by a blacksmith more used to forging horseshoes. It was a crude weapon, more for show than for wielding, and best suited for blunt, basic practice.
Karl took the man’s head off with a single stroke. It spun away, blood spewing, to bounce on the hard ground. People around the coach, who had been stopping to watch the commotion, froze.
Emilie saw her colleague fall, the spray of arterial blood bright in the morning sun, saw Hoche beyond him. “Bastard,” she spat. “Betrayer.”
Karl’s face was expressionless. The blood had dewed his skin. He held the sword out, like a diagonal slash between them. “Get out of the coach, Emilie,” he said. “Slowly.”
She did not move. “Come and get me,” she said. Next to her, the shape of Valten did not appear to have reacted to what was going on. That seemed odd to Karl.
“It’s over,” he said. “You can’t win.”
“Can’t we?” she asked. “It depends what you mean by winning. We can still remove your king from the board.”
She was talking about killing Valten, Karl realised. The blacksmith’s son would not understand her analogy to a game of chess, but he should still have realised that something was wrong. Karl had been counting on Valten being an ally in the carriage, helping them overcome the cultists. Instead something was wrong, and he didn’t know what it was. Then he thought about Val-ten’s posture and expression during the service that morning, and understood. They had drugged him, to make him suggestible. To make him bendable.
“But you, Karl Hoche,” Emilie said, breaking his thoughts, “whether I live or die, you will still be a mutant.”
The crowd around him moved at the word, heads turning, like river-rushes in a sudden wind.
“A vile cursed outcast thing, you are,” she said. “Why did you come back? Did you think that a touch from Sigmar would heal you? I have to tell you that his touch is just a man’s. More of a man’s than yours, though.”
The wide ring of watchers murmured in low dissenting voices. Karl shook his head:
she had insulted him, and at the same time cast doubt into the crusaders’ minds about Valten’s claim to godhood. He reminded himself he must not underestimate Emilie: her wits were stunning.
“This ends now,” he said.
She murmured something that he didn’t catch.
“What?” he said.
Something like a wave hit him in the mind, and in a second he was filled with an awesome terror that pushed him backwards, away from the coach. Something of unutterable dreadfulness was in there, something he had to flee from. His eyes pressed tight shut and he was unable to open them. He felt his knees buckle, his legs moving of their own volition, all the most primitive parts of his mind screaming to get away from this place. Dimly, he heard cries and screams, heard the unmistakable tumult of a panicking crowd, and realised that whatever he had sensed, the crusaders around him had sensed too.
He fought it. He had sworn his life to destroying darkness, not running from it. He had spent a night in a forest staring at bleaker horrors than this sense of nameless dread, and had survived, and had emerged stronger. This was terrible, awful fear but it was not a real fear, not compared to what he had already faced and beaten.
He willed himself to stand still, not to run, not to join the terrified crusaders in their flight. Instinct fought will; head fought heart. Muscle strained against muscle.
It would not beat him.
It was not real. He focused on that, forcing the fear out of his mind, giving himself a corner of space to think.
Not real. Magical. A spell, a daemonologist’s spell, he had read about in the old days of the Untersuchung. And as he realised, the sense of terror dropped away and he could open his eyes.
He was kneeling on the ground. He hadn’t realised he had dropped to his knees. He was soaked in sweat and every muscle in his body felt weak. His sword lay three feet away: he had dropped it. Someone was standing by him, towering over him: another person who had been able to resist the effects of Emilie’s magic.