by James Wallis
The space around the coach was clear. Emilie and her unnamed comrade were climbing out. He was heading for the horses, to check their traces; she was climbing up to the driver’s seat at the front.
They were going to kidnap Valten.
He looked up at the man who stood beside him and it was Luthor Huss, awful in his full robes, his face fierce and stern, his warhammer clasped in both hands. Karl was about to point to the cultists, to get Huss to intervene, but Huss was not looking at the coach. He was staring down at Karl, his eyes unyielding. A sense of very real dread and danger, quite different from the magically induced one of a moment ago, swept over Karl.
In the back of his mind he thought: if he was here, watching, then he heard Emilie name me and denounce me as a mutant to the whole crusade. If he did not hear that, then he has no idea that Emilie and the other man are cultists. Either way, he thinks I am the danger here. Either way, his duty is to protect Valten and the crusade. Either way, I am a dead man.
Huss was still staring down. Without taking his eyes off Karl, he let the head of his warhammer drop from his left hand, sweeping it down, inches above the ground, inches from Karl’s head. He whipped it up, flexing his wrist to whirl it once around his head, gathering momentum, building velocity.
Karl tore his eyes from it. Emilie was seated on top of the coach, the reins in her hand. The other cultist leaped back, jumping for the running board, ready to clamber on board.
Huss spun the hammer around once more, both hands on the shaft now, its head humming through the air, the weight and force of the weapon moving his whole body with it.
Karl flinched down, waiting for the hammer to whirl down and crush him.
Emilie flicked the reins. “Go!” she shouted. The coach door slammed, the other cultist inside.
With a grunt Huss released the hammer. It sped through the air, some dark-winged angel of death, and smashed into Emilie, shattering her right arm, crushing ribs, knocking her sideways out of the seat and off the far side of the coach. Karl heard a crunch as she landed, and a single moan of pain. Emilie wasn’t a screamer, he remembered.
Huss looked back down at him impassively, then raised a single eyebrow. It was a quizzical gesture, yet it answered every question Karl had. He scrambled for the rough sword on the ground. Huss was already moving towards the closed coach door.
There was a heavy crack and the door crashed outwards. The cultist hurtled backwards through it, his face a mass of blood, and fell heavily onto the trampled earth. He tried to roll over, noticed Karl’s sword, and went for it. Karl got to it first, kicked it away left-footed, then used his right boot to kick the cultist in the mouth. The man jerked back and didn’t move.
Valten appeared at the smashed coach door, shaking his fist. It was bloody.
“Are you all right?” Huss asked. There was a tone in the warrior-priest’s voice that Karl had heard once before: outside the gates of Grünburg, after he had been shot. He could only describe it as paternal.
Valten nodded slowly. “What was that about?” he asked. His accent was southern, rural: slow and low.
“What did they do to you?” Karl asked.
Valten smiled slowly. “Mostly they talked to me. Dull stuff, it was, about whether I knew who I was and where I was going, and how I should question that.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I was Valten of Lachenbad, and I was going to Altdorf, and then I was going north to fight Archaon as Brother Huss has asked me to. They talked all night.”
“Do you remember much of it?”
He shrugged. “Scholar-talk. Priest talk. Dull stuff. Meant nothing to me, most of it. Who are you anyway?”
“I think he’s all right,” Huss said.
“You know Valten best,” Karl said. “But she had magic, and she has been well tutored. You should do everything you can to cleanse him.”
Huss smiled. “Back with us ten minutes and already giving orders, Karl.” His expression changed. Some of the crusaders were coming back, their blind panic ended, and this time they had weapons with them.
Huss spoke quickly. “You have to leave, Karl. They know who you are.”
Karl shook his head. “We have much to talk about.”
“We’ll meet again in Altdorf.”
“No. It has to be sooner.” He thought quickly. “Take the crusade as far as you can tonight, then ride on to Gluckshalt. I’ll meet you in the temple there. And apologise to Brother Martinus for me.”
“What for?” Huss asked, but Karl was already running, past the coach, through the bewildered ranks of the pilgrims, and on towards the road where he had left the horse.
Karl had known there would be a temple at Gluckshalt, but he had never been to it. Now that he stood in front of it, he realised it was completely unsuited for a clandestine meeting. It was large, built in the opulent style popular a couple of centuries before, the style of the architects who had fled north from the inquisitions in Tilea, who had brought their wide aisles and open colonnades with them. Sound carried in these buildings, the faintest footfall audible from one end of the aisle to the other, and there were no side-chapels for covert discussions or liaisons—the Tilean merchant-princes who had paid for such buildings in their homelands were as protective of their wives’ fidelity as they were devout to their gods.
Also it was locked.
As the day had lengthened the rain had returned, and the horse’s pace had grown slower until a couple of miles beyond the village of Hartsklein it had stopped and refused to go on. He had turned it loose on an area of common land there, leaving its bridle attached. It was only a few miles from home, and probably knew this road well. He had walked the last five miles.
It was evening. Holger was not here yet. Neither was Luthor Huss. Karl slumped down against the wall beside the temple’s main door and pulled his hat down over his face. His stomach growled, hungry, but he had spent his last coins preparing to leave Altdorf, and besides he dared not enter the local tavern or the coaching-inn just outside the village, not this late at night. Either his eyes would give him away, or his silvered glasses. Such things could be worn in Altdorf without remark, but not outside. He licked his lips, trying to remember the last thing he had eaten. All he could taste was the blood from the golden bowl in the temple of Manaan.
Would Huss come? The plan he had formulated along the road would not work without the warrior-priest’s cooperation, and there were things Huss had to know before he tried to enter Altdorf. But there were many reasons the leader of the crusade might decide not to meet him again—politics, clemency, revulsion—and Karl could not make the plan work without him. And the plan had to work.
It was not just about Huss, nor about Valten, nor even about helping to save the Empire from the threat of Archaon and his armies. Those were worlds away, spinning in different orbits that sometimes crossed his, intersecting, becoming bright points in his constellation, but they were not his world and not his path. Even the Purple Hand and their schemes and machinations were more Holger’s concern than his. He wanted Brother Karin, and wanted her dead and damned. For all the hells he had suffered, and suffered still, he wanted her dead.
And yet, as he sat here in the rain, it occurred to him for the first time that when he had disguised himself and lied his way into the Altdorf chapter-house, he could have gone past Heilemann’s room, found hers, and killed her instead. Because she was so much a fixture in his life, such a landmark and a focus for his hatred in his mental map of who he was, that he could not imagine her gone? Or that it was not the moment? Some things must play out to their end, he knew. And if he had killed her then, he would not have been able to ask Holger to get her unwitting assistance for this scheme.
When the time came, would he be able to kill her? When would the time come? Would it come at all?
“Karl?”
He looked up. For the second time that day, Luthor Huss towered over him and for a second Karl was again afraid for his life. Th
e moment passed. Things could not be the same between them, not after what had happened at Rottfurt and beside the carriage that morning, but at least the man had come.
“The temple’s closed,” Karl said.
Huss considered. “It could be opened. It’s the law.”
“No. No point in drawing attention to ourselves.”
“The tavern then.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Karl took off his hat and raised his eyes, looking Huss full in the face. “When I told you at Rottfurt that what you saw was the fire in my soul,” he said, “I was lying.”
Huss said nothing for a long moment of contemplation. Then: “I recall you saying you didn’t lie.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Huss asked.
Karl was about to answer, and stopped. For the first time it occurred to him that Holger might not come. Not because the witch hunter could have been detected and arrested—Karl had considered that possibility and worked it into his plan—but because he had decided not to. Perhaps he would send his brother officers, Rhinehart and Kratz, to arrest him. Or perhaps Holger would simply lie low and hold his peace. Perhaps he had underestimated the man’s desire to know who had set him up at Priesdicheim the year before.
Karl remembered Priesdicheim. Someone had left a trail of corpses leading to the nunnery like a reaper through a field of wheat and Karl had followed it just as Holger had, except Karl had arrived two days after the witch hunters had left. He had walked through the desecrated buildings, talked to men who had seen the carnage, seen the graves, considered the evidence It had looked like a Chaos ritual out of control, a frenzy of killing first as sacrifices and then to remove any witnesses. It had appeared to be the work of Tzeentch worshippers. That was how its executors had intended it to appear.
Huss hadn’t moved.
“We’re waiting for someone,” Karl said.
“Who?”
“Me,” Holger said, appearing from round the corner of the colonnade.
Huss took a step back with an oath, fumbling for the strap of his warhammer. Karl thrust himself between the two men before anything could happen. “Don’t! He’s a friend.” he said. “Luthor Huss, meet Anders Holger.”
The men shook hands warily. Karl’s heart was still pounding, and he felt angry with himself. That corner was only place from which he could have been taken by surprise, and he had let it happen. His guard was down, further than he realised. The exertions of the last few days had drained him, sapping his strength. He needed to find more if he was to survive what was to come.
“Did you bring Oswald?” he asked Holger.
“Oswald?” Huss asked. “He’s here? How is he?”
“In the inn,” Holger said. “But he’s in a bad way.”
“Why? What happened to him?” Huss’ face was impassive, his voice still with no sound of concern. He hid it well, Karl thought.
“He was arrested,” he said.
“And tortured. Extensively,” Holger said.
“And you made him travel?” A mix of astonishment and anger in Huss’ voice.
“You would rather I had left him where he was?” Holger’s tone was carefully controlled sardonicism. All witch hunters had it, this bone-dry wit. Holger had it to perfection. There could be no friendship, not even trust between him and Huss, Karl could sense. And neither man knew why he was here. He had to take control of the situation.
“Take us to him,” he said. “Brother Huss is a priest; he may be able to heal him.”
The lines were parallel, horizontal, a foot long and about an inch apart, like furrows on a shove-groat board. On some of the fresher ones the crusted lines of dried blood had cracked and clear ichor oozed out. Others were beginning to heal, their scab discoloured.
“Sussman’s work,” Holger said. “His trademark. Cut the line, rub in salt, or vinegar, or acid. Feels like you’re being cut in half. So a survivor told me.”
“Did he talk?” Karl asked.
“If Sussman had him for two days?” Holger nodded solemnly. “Yes, he talked.”
Luthor Huss raised his head from his clasped hands, then rose from where he had been kneeling and praying beside the bed. Oswald’s breathing was shallower now and more stable; he was sleeping, and would heal.
“Do you know what he said?” Huss asked.
“No.”
“Do you know what the questions were?”
Holger made a fist, jerked his thumb at Karl. “About him.”
Karl exhaled, relieved. “Even if he talked, he didn’t know what I know.”
There was silence in the room, its seconds measured by the slow pace of Oswald’s breaths. Karl waited, his eyes on the old priest on the bed—no, not a priest, he reminded himself—but his other senses were on Huss and Holger, monitoring the two men and the space between them. Huss was tense, Holger anxious. Both seemed uncomfortable, uncertain of what was expected of them.
Karl looked down at Oswald’s unconscious body. The man on the bed seemed diminished by his nakedness, pale and drawn, the skin on his face loose and dark with bruises, lack of sleep, lack of food and pain. Huss’ healing rite and his prayers had started the process of recovery, but it would be a long time before he was healthy again. And there was no way of telling how the torture had affected his mind.
“What is the mood in Altdorf towards my crusade?” Huss asked. Karl turned to reply but the warrior-priest was not facing him; he had broken the tension and addressed the question to Holger.
“It ranges,” Holger said, “between seeing you as harmless and seeing you as a threat.”
“We are not seen as saviours?”
“Only by a few.”
“Are you among them?”
Holger shook his head.
“I am a witch hunter. If the Grand Theogonist says that you are a heretic, then the Order of Sigmar sees you as a heretic.”
“And you are a loyal witch hunter?”
Karl watched Holger. The younger man was about to nod, and then his eyes flicked down to the form of Oswald on the inn’s narrow bed, and he was still. Loyal witch hunters didn’t free renegade wizards from their torture-cells, or ride out to meet heretics and mutants. He wondered what was going through Holger’s mind right now.
“My loyalties do not begin and end with my order,” Holger said. “But you would put this reborn Sigmar of yours above the stability of the Empire?”
“I want this reborn Sigmar to aid the stability of the Empire,” Huss said. “That is why I sought him out, that is why I fostered the crusade, and that is why I am taking him to Altdorf, to meet with the Emperor and add his strength to the forces of the Convocation of Light.”
“Yes. Meeting the Emperor,” Holger said. “There has been a lot of politics around that matter in the last day. Brother Karin took her case to Lord Bethe, and Bethe took it to the Lord Chamberlain who has the Emperor’s ear, and the Grand Theogonist caught wind of it and said that only he could judge whether Valten was truly Sigmar reborn or not. So the upshot is that you will have your meeting, on the steps of the cathedral, at noon the day after tomorrow.”
“And the Grand Theogonist will proclaim that Valten is nothing but a blacksmith, and I am a heretic, and we will be arrested,” Huss said.
“Unlikely,” Karl said. “To arrest you in such a public place would risk a riot. They will take you somewhere private for the appraisal, and announce a day later that you are arrested. I’m more worried about the meeting itself.”
“Why?”
“Because the city is full of Chaos cultists. Of all creeds and denominations. The ones who came for Valten were from the Purple Hand, which heads the faction that wants to subvert the Empire’s saviour and turn him to their ways. Others want him dead. And what better time to kill him than very publicly, on the steps of the cathedral of Sigmar, while the question of whether he is truly Sigmar reborn is still unanswered?”
“I take your point,” Huss said. “But what are our op
tions?”
“And who are our allies?” Holger said.
“I’ve thought about this all night and all day,” Karl said. “We have the crusaders, obviously, and from what I saw this morning they are beginning to live up to their name.”
Huss nodded. “Valten has a gift for strategy and he is a natural leader of men.”
Holger snorted. “A natural leader of men who believe he’s their god, you mean.”
“Let it pass,” Karl said. “We have the witch hunters, I believe. We have the Khorne cults, who wish to see Valten lead the Empire’s armies into a battle to end all battles with Archaon and his forces, and will protect him. And we have the Emperor and those loyal to him.”
“The Emperor?” Huss said. Karl had expected him to question the mention of Khorne cultists, or at least ask how they were to be brought into the struggle, but he knew that the warrior priest had learned how to balance idealism with pragmatism.
“Yes,” Holger said, “the Emperor. “He and the Grand Theogonist have been at loggerheads in the last weeks. It came to a head in the Convocation of Light, and there is now a division between church and state, each pulling—discreetly—in a different direction.” He paused. “They say the Emperor pines for the days when Volkmar the Grim was his Grand Theogonist.”
“Really?” Huss cocked an eyebrow. “And you? Are your loyalties to the high priest of your order, or to your Emperor?”
“As I have said,” Holger said with a trace of impatience in his voice, “my loyalty follows my conscience.”
Huss smiled broadly and looked across the bed to Karl. Karl looked back and did not smile, at least not outwardly.
“Now that we all know where we all stand,” Karl said, “we should begin to organise what needs to be done. Tomorrow will be a busy day for all of us.”
“Wait,” Holger said. “You promised me names. The leader of the Purple Hand, and the person who ordered the massacre at Priesdicheim.”
“When this is done, you shall have them. But not till this is done,” Karl said, and hesitated. Holger’s shoulders were drawn up, tense with frustration.