by James Wallis
“What if you are killed? Or rendered speechless?”
“Take pains to ensure that does not happen,” Karl said.
“At least,” Holger said, “tell me if they are one and the same man.”
“They are not,” Karl said, “and you will meet one of them soon enough.”
“The other?”
“You have already met the other.”
The plan was simple enough. The crusade would enter Altdorf in two days’ time. Most of the men would process to the cathedral steps, where the Grand Theogonist would be waiting. Luthor Huss and Valten, in disguise and with a small retinue of trusted guards, would secretly make their way to a second destination where the Emperor would be waiting for them.
That was the theory. In practice, Karl knew, a lot more would happen first. There would be cults trying to stop them, possibly the forces of the Grand Theogonist, and even fanatical elements in the crusade who could do anything so close to the place and the man they regarded as the heart of evil within their church.
Really, anything could happen, Karl knew, but it was better to have some plan than none at all. But he didn’t say that.
He finished his outline, and there was no sound. Huss sat on the edge of the bed, staring into the middle distance in thought. Holger leaned against the mantel of the slate fireplace, eyeing him. It wasn’t hard to read the expression on the witch hunter’s face: stark incredulity.
Huss straightened up. “There are a few things I need to hear clarified before I agree,” he said.
“A few things,” Holger said, mimicking his tone.
“I think there may be holes in your strategy.”
“‘There may be holes’?” Holger said. “There’s one hole right at its middle, larger than the bowl of Talabheim, for Sigmar’s sake.”
“Let Brother Huss speak first,” Karl said.
“I am sure that you have considered this,” Huss said, “but if Sigmar and I divert to meet the Emperor, who goes to meet the Grand Theogonist? There will be crowds on the street, curious to see Valten, whether they believe him to be Sigmar reborn or not—”
“They don’t,” Holger said.
“—and they must not be disappointed.”
“But they have never seen Valten before,” Karl said, “and few of them have seen you. We send substitutes, people who can fight and defend themselves in case the crusade is attacked.”
“You had someone in mind?”
“Brother Gottschalk. He is tall, his hair is blond and he has muscles. I don’t know how he carries a warhammer, but he has the tone of command in his voice when he wants to use it. If he can change his expressions so he doesn’t look like a melancholic bullock for fifteen minutes, he will pass.”
“And for me?”
“Friedrich Olsen. One of the Hammers of Sigmar. He has your build, and he is bald.”
Huss shook his head. “No.”
“No?”
“It must be someone I know well. Someone I can trust to represent me. To be me before the people of Altdorf.”
Karl thought for a second. “Brother Dominic might be able to carry it off.”
“I want you to do it, Karl.”
He was taken aback. “Me?”
“You. You have the bearing. I trust you. And if it turns out my trust is misplaced, at least I know where you will be.”
“The Untersuchung trained its members in disguise and mimicry,” Holger added. He was grinning.
“But…” Karl had not anticipated this, and was not ready for it. He had expected to be able to run through the city, monitoring the enemy’s movements and reactions, relaying information, coordinating the plan. He could not do that from the head of the crusade. Without his liberty, he wasn’t sure the plan would work.
“But people will know it’s not you,” he said. “I’m shorter than you, and ten years younger.”
“I haven’t been in Altdorf for five years,” Huss said. “Your position at the head of the crusade will give you stature. And it is hard to judge your age from your face.”
“I don’t know the doctrine of Sigmar. I don’t know what to say.”
“A priest’s son like you? You know the doctrine; it’s written through you like the rings of a tree or the pattern of a bird’s plumage. You’ll remember it when it’s needed. Besides, it’s Valten they’ll be interested in, not you.”
“But…” He felt himself grasping for straws. “But I’m not bald.”
“Shave your head,” Holger said. Karl turned horrified eyes to him, to blurt the reason why that was not possible, but stopped himself with the words half-formed and sour in his mouth. This was not the moment to remind these two men of Sigmar that the man in whose trust they were putting their futures was continuing to mutate under the power of Chaos. He swallowed. They could return to this subject later.
“Very well,” he said.
“Good,” Holger said. “So what is my role in this drama?”
“Return to Altdorf tonight,” Karl said. “You have to change the place for the Emperor to meet with Valten and Brother Huss.”
Holger’s laughter was prolonged. It tailed away into coughing and a silence that pervaded the room. He broke it. “So I, a witch hunter known mostly for one spectacular failure, stride into the Imperial palace, present your regards to His Imperial Majesty and request that he alter his plans?”
“You use influence,” Karl said.
“I already persuaded Brother Karin to use her influence to set up this meeting,” Holger said. “Why would she do it again?”
“She won’t,” Karl said. “Besides, her influence lies within the Order of Sigmar and the church. You need to speak to someone who has influence with the Emperor.”
“Who?”
“Herr Doktor Kunstler.”
He had expected more laughter. The silence was dead and deafening.
“Who?” Huss said, breaking the void.
“Are you saying that the Purple Hand has the Emperor’s ear?” Holger demanded.
“No,” Karl said. “The Purple Hand never get that close to actual power; it makes them too easy to discover. But Kunstler has the ear of someone who can speak to the Emperor. And that someone is Balthasar Gelt, the Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic.”
“How?” Holger demanded.
“Because, like Balthasar Gelt, Kunstler is a member of the Golden College. That’s where he’s staying. I don’t know what name he uses there but ask the porter for the wizard recently arrived from the north.”
“In Sigmar’s name,” Holger said. “The leader of the Chaos cult is one of the Empire’s battle-wizards?”
Karl nodded. “Think about it. If a young wizard goes renegade from the colleges, he’s tracked down and executed. The best thing for a cultist to do is to stay a member and work from the inside.”
“It makes sense,” Holger said. “But how do I-?”
“You pretend to be a Purple Hand cultist, recruited by the late Brother Heilemann. Tell Kunstler that Heileman was assassinated by members of another Tzeentch cult who had discovered the plan. Tell him the plan must be changed. Suggest a new venue. And tell him that once the Emperor has agreed, he is to give word to you, and you will send messengers to Emilie Trautmann, and she will tell the cultists within the crusade.”
“What if it doesn’t go according to plan?” Holger asked. “What if he doesn’t believe me?”
“Make him believe you,” Karl said. “All of this depends on it.”
“What then?”
“Send word if you can. No, don’t.” He thought for a moment, reconsidering. “Tell nobody else. Meet us at the city gate and tell us where the new location is.”
Holger nodded. “And then we’ll arrest Herr Doktor Kunstler.”
“No. Not till the meeting is over. As soon as the Purple Hand realise they’ve been deceived and betrayed then they’ll throw their weight behind the rest of the Convocation of Darkness and will try to destroy Valten. He needs to be under th
e Emperor’s protection before that happens. Hold off as long as you can. But I promised you a bigger prize in exchange for Oswald, and he is it.”
“No,” Holger said. “The prize you promised me was the witch hunter who betrayed me and betrayed the Order of Sigmar. The witch hunter from Priesdicheim.”
“I did,” Karl said. “I will give you your brother’s name when Kunstler is taken or killed.”
Holger nodded. Huss grunted. “There’s a lot that could go wrong,” he said. “What if the Purple Hand smells a trap? They have a high-ranking Gold College wizard.”
“So do we.” Karl indicated Oswald’s unconscious form on the bed. “Now, I have detained you both too long. I’ll stay here with Oswald. Bring the crusade here to Gluckshalt tomorrow evening. We’ll meet here and make the final plans.”
“What else can we do?” Holger asked.
“Make your preparations. Tell only those who need to know. And pray for our success.”
When they had gone, Karl sat on the bed and looked down at Oswald. The old man seemed to be sleeping, but the lines carved across his bare chest were horribly raw and vivid. The scars would be deep and would last as long as he lived, and the wounds in his mind would be the same. Karl had been tortured by the witch hunters himself and it had destroyed the man he used to be. Would Oswald be up to the task of defending Huss and Valten from the cultists and forces of the Grand Theogonist who might assail them? Would he even be conscious in time?
Only time would say. Meanwhile, he had some healing of his own to do, and before that he needed to harm himself.
He lifted the candlestick from beside Oswald’s bed and carried it to the pine table against the far wall of the room. He covered the scrubbed pine surface with a double-folded sheet adjusted the small mirror—polished metal, he noted, not mercury under glass—and poured water from the jug into the white pottery bowl.
He took his last throwing knife from his belt, the one he had hurled at Brother Martinus that morning, and tested its edge against his thumb. He had sharpened it in Altdorf before Oswald was arrested, and the flat steel had kept its edge. A thin line of blood began to ooze from the hair-slit in his skin. He watched it intensely. Was it closing up? Was it healing? How long did it take?
How much blood was he about to lose?
He stared at his reflection in the mirror, remembering another inn room a year and a half ago, sitting with a bowl of water, unwrapping the cloth around his neck for the first time. He had been expecting to see scar tissue, a healed knife-wound. Instead, the sight of the mouth had driven him mad for a while. Mad, and then it had killed him, shredding the man that Karl Hoche had been before, wiping the slate bare and giving him a new life and a new purpose to fill it with. The memories that still haunted him were just that: memories, ghosts in the mind of a dead man, and he ignored them when he could.
He tried to ignore the memory of his father’s face, his horrified expression looking down at his son, watching what should have been a mortal wound heal itself. Was there strength in such memories, a strength he could tap and use? Maybe there was, maybe at some time. But not now.
He held up his hand, holding the knife at an angle, ready to take the first slice. The cut on his thumb had healed. He studied the thin scar, and for a second found his concentration drowned in a flash-flood of self-doubts. Who was he, to march into Altdorf at the head of the largest crusade seen in the Empire for centuries? To stand before the Grand Theogonist? To stand beside Valten, who might be the bearer of the spirit of Sigmar? Even to plan these things. He was nobody. He was a low soldier, the son of Magnus Hoche, a small-town priest. He had some expertise on the battlefield, and a little knowledge of the ways of Chaos. He was not worthy. He was not able.
No. He pushed the thoughts down, into the depths from where they had sprung. They were Karl Hoche’s thoughts, and though he still used Karl Hoche’s name and face and memories, he was a new man. He had to be. Hoche had been weak. He had to be strong.
Strength was one of the few things he had left.
He gripped the haft of the knife in his right hand, pulled a wad of hair tight with his left, and sliced through it close to the root. A shower of blood-drops fell into the water bowl, forming spirals and twists like red smoke in air, and he grimaced. There would be a lot more of that before he was finished.
There was. He had to stop twice, to let the pain of the cuts ebb away, and let the bleeding roots on his scalp begin to heal, so the steady streams of blood that ran over his ears, down his face and over his chin and neck could ease to a trickle and dry. Then he would wash it off slowly, regaining his strength, and would resume the process of cutting and shaving.
By the end the candle had burned down two inches, the knife was blunt and his whole head was red with crusted blood, the bowl filled with clumps of hair matted together with blood, the sheet he had used to protect the table stiff with his blood. He was exhausted. But as he washed himself for a final time and examined his smooth scalp in the mirror, he had to admit that Huss had a good eye. Their skulls were roughly the same shape. He might be able to pass for the warrior-priest.
Once again, for a second, the scheme felt like madness and he wanted to flee, to have nothing more to do with it. But he was so far in now that it was easier to go on than turn back: the far bank was closer than the one he had left. And he knew he could never go back. The person who was Karl Hoche was lost to him, swept away by the current of history. There was nowhere to go but onwards, into the future, one hour at a time.
He would dispose of the hair and the bloodied sheet in the morning. He could not simply pour it out of the window or into a drain in the courtyard outside. Some stable dog might lick up his tainted blood and become infected with the same plague that had touched him. He had learned to live with his fate but he would not wish it on another living thing, not even a dog.
There were still hours till dawn. Oswald’s slow, shallow breaths were like a pulse, strangely comforting. Karl looked at the old priest feeling sorrow and sympathy for him, then blew out the candle, and lay down on the floor, and lay still, and did not sleep.
“Where am I?”
Karl was on his feet in a second, leaning over the bed. The voice was Oswald’s, faint but unmistakable. He had feared he would never hear it again.
The room was dark, no light creeping in through gaps in the shutters. It must still be night. He could see nothing at all.
“Rest, Oswald. Don’t move. You’re badly hurt,” he said.
“Karl?”
“Yes, it’s me. You’re outside Altdorf, safe, back with the crusade. Sleep.”
The voice was weak, almost plaintive. “Karl?”
“Yes, Oswald?”
“I’m sorry I let them take me alive. I tried to cut my throat but they took the knife away too fast. You must have worried.”
“Don’t worry, old friend,” Karl said.
“But you must have worried.”
“I did,” Karl said, “I did,” and he found tears pricking from the corners of his eyes. For a moment he did not recognise the feeling, it had been so long since he had last cried. He only cried a little now.
“You must rest,” he said, and there was no more sound from the bed except the low sighs of the old man’s breathing. Karl settled back down on the floor.
“Karl?”
“Yes, Oswald?”
“Why did you save me?”
Because you’re my friend, he thought. Because you were under my protection. Because in saving you, Holger proved himself trustworthy. Because it’ll annoy Brother Karin.
Because I could not save my father from the anguish I caused him.
“Because we’re going to need a spell-caster,” he said. “Now sleep.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cry Wolf
Oswald woke around noon, weak and in pain. Karl calmed him and called down to the inn’s kitchens for some soup or gruel to feed him, but by the time it arrived the old wizard had fallen back to sleep. Ka
rl sat at the end of the bed and watched him, wishing there was something more he could do.
At least the cuts on his scalp had healed.
The crusade arrived at Gluckshalt an hour before sunset, the village filling up and overflowing with bodies, the temple crowded with men eager to see the glories of the stained glass above the high altar and its rood-screen carved by Hawkslay. Karl wanted to go out to meet them, to speak to old friends and discuss the strategy for the morrow, but he was afraid of being recognised and denounced, and afraid of leaving Oswald alone. He listened to the voices outside the window and waited for Huss to come to him.
When the door opened it was not Huss who came in, but a man Karl remembered from the crusade, a portly greybeard who had said few words but whose facial expressions as he had watched Huss’ conversations had spoken volumes. Now he glanced in Karl’s direction, acknowledging him with the scantest of nods, then looked at Oswald’s crumpled shape on the bed, pulled his Sigmarite talisman from around his neck and a jar of salve from one pocket, and began incantations in a soft western accent.
By the time Huss arrived Oswald was awake, his wounds semi-healed under a glistening layer of salve that smelled of tree-sap and lamp-oil. The old man had not said a word, but winced every so often as the portly priest’s hands crossed a spot that was still sensitive. When he had woken at the first touch of the priest’s fingers, he had met Karl’s eyes with such a look of sadness and tiredness that Karl had felt compelled to look away. It had been less than a week since they had seen each other, but Oswald looked ten years older.
Huss smelled of fresh sweat and the mud of the road. “Come outside, Karl,” he said. “Leave the healer to his work. The ale they serve downstairs is good, and tastes better in the fresh air.”
“No,” Karl said. “I should stay here. It will be dark soon and my eyes would give me away. Besides, I have too many enemies among the crusaders, people who would unmask me, or try to arrest me, or spread word that I was here. We cannot give our enemies any reason to attack us, or to prevent us from entering the city. And this close to the capital, there will be agents from every branch of the army and the Church among your men, watching and reporting back to Altdorf.”