by Nathan Long
The companions hesitated in the doorway.
‘Forgive me for not seeing you in my home,’ said Manfred. ‘But the savages have made it unlivable. There is much cleaning to be done. Please sit.’
They sat, looking around suspiciously, afraid it was some new kind of trap.
‘Gollenz!’ called the count. ‘Wine for our guests.’
A servant came out of the shadows with goblets of wine on a silver tray. Reiner and his companions took them as warily as they had taken their seats. Perhaps Manfred meant to watch them die in throes of agony from poisoned wine. Or perhaps he meant to drug them to make them talk.
When the servant had retired, Manfred leaned forward. He coughed, seemingly embarrassed. ‘Er, I want to apologise for the deception I employed earlier. There was indeed no need to explain, for when that unholy banner appeared on the hilltop, I knew that you had told the truth, and that my brother did mean to slay me.’
‘But then…’ said Reiner.
Manfred held up a hand. ‘I and the Empire owe you all a debt of gratitude that we can never repay. You, more than any others in my army, have won this day, and the destruction of the Bane has prevented its influence from spreading any further. You have saved the Empire from a long and fratricidal war.’
‘So…’ said Reiner.
Manfred coughed again. ‘Unfortunately, in these troubled times, with the great war over but the cost not yet counted, and the rebuilding still to be done, the morale of the citizenry is low. It would not do for them to believe that their lords were so weak that they could be corrupted as Albrecht was corrupted. They must not learn of his betrayal and the falling out between us. It would shake their faith in the nobility just when they most need us to be strong.’
A cold coil of dread snaked around Reiner’s heart. Something bad was coming.
‘Therefore,’ said Manfred. ‘Though it pains me to do it, you will still charged with Albrecht’s crimes.’
‘What!’ barked Hals.
‘The public needs a villain, a focus for their hatred. A scapegoat who can be disposed of so that life can return to normal.’
‘And we’re it,’ said Reiner hollowly.
Manfred nodded. ‘It will be your greatest service to the Empire.’
Hals pounded the arm of his chair and rose. ‘Y’twisty little worm! Y’admit we saved your skin, and the Empire’s, and still ye mean to give us the drop? I’m starting to wonder if we’re fighting on the right side!’
Manfred raised his hand again. ‘I haven’t finished.’ He waited until Hals sank back into his chair. ‘I said it will be your greatest service to the Empire, but it will not be your last. You will be hanged with great public spectacle in Middenheim in a week’s time.’
Franka tried to hold in a sob, but failed.
‘At least,’ continued Manfred, ‘the crowd will believe it to be you. In reality it will be some other garrison scum: deserters, saboteurs, the like.’
A spark of hope kindled in Reiner’s chest. ‘So you mean to free us after all?’
‘You will be freed, eventually. But first you will have the honour of further serving your Empire.’
The spark of hope fizzled out, and the feeling of foreboding began to creep over him again. ‘How so?’
Manfred smiled thinly. ‘The more I thought about what you accomplished here today, and the lengths you went to achieve it, the more I came to believe that we could make use of you.’ He leaned forward again. ‘The Empire needs blackhearts like yourselves—men who will do things that would be beyond the pale to the average soldier, men who are not awed by rank or power, who think for themselves and keep their wits in desperate situations.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘Battles are not the only way the Empire stays strong. There are less honourable deeds that must be done to keep our homeland safe. Deeds no true-hearted knight could allow himself to undertake. Deeds only knaves, villains and dishonoured men could stomach.’
‘Y’high-talking twister!’ growled Hals. ‘All yer fine manners and all yer asking is for us to do your back-stabbing for ye!’
‘Precisely,’ said Manfred. ‘After your doppelgangers are executed, you will become invisible. No one in the world but myself and the men you see before you will know that you still live. You will be ciphers, able to enter any situation and become who we wish you to be. The perfect spies.’
‘And what if your perfect spies decide they don’t want to do your dirty work?’ asked Reiner. ‘What if they decide to slip their leashes? These brands are only a death sentence within the Empire.’
‘Aye,’ said Giano, crossing his arms. ‘I be my own man. No one control me.’
‘Do we not?’ asked Manfred. ‘My brother had the right idea, branding you, but his methods were crude.’ He motioned to the man behind him on his left, a white-bearded ancient in the black robes of a scholar. ‘Magus Handfort is a member of the royal college of alchemy. He has developed a poison that can be activated from afar, at any time he chooses. While the surgeons were tending to your wounds, they rubbed this poison into your cuts.’ He raised his hand as Reiner and his friends began to stand and protest. ‘Take your ease, please. The solution is perfectly harmless until the magus reads aloud a particular incantation. Only then will you die a horrible agonising death.’ He smiled, as warmly as if he were wishing them a happy and prosperous new year. ‘And he will only read the incantation if you fail to report back to me at the end of the assignments I shall give you.’
‘You swine,’ said Reiner. ‘You’re worse than your brother. At least he offered a reward if we completed our mission. At least there was to be an end to our bondage.’
‘My brother never intended to honour his end of the bargain, as you well know,’ said Manfred. ‘And he used you for his own interests, whereas now you will be working for the good of the Empire.’
‘He said that too,’ said Pavel.
‘You will be well rewarded,’ continued Manfred. ‘When duty does not call you, you will live well indeed, within the walls of my castle. And when this time of crisis is over and the terror is at last vanquished, you will be freed from your service and given riches enough to build entire new lives. In addition, as you have all died, all your crimes will die with you.’ He gave Franka a significant look. ‘Your secrets will remain buried in your past, and you may live as you choose, new men.’
Reiner and his companions looked blankly at Manfred as he sat back and folded his hands in his lap.
‘So,’ he said. ‘What have you to say? Do you take my offer? Will you help the Empire in its hour of need?’
‘I’ll say what I said to your brother,’ sneered Reiner. ‘We haven’t much choice have we?’
‘No,’ said Manfred. ‘You have not.’
A SHORT WHILE later, riding toward Nordbergbruche castle in a coach with heavily curtained windows, Reiner and his companions looked at each other glumly.
‘That some loads of horse mess, hey?’ said Giano.
‘Aye,’ said Pavel. ‘Until the terror is vanquished, he says. The Empire has stood for two thousand years and there’s always been some terror or other banging on the gates.’
‘We’re in it for the duration all right,’ said Hals.
‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’ asked Franka.
Reiner shook his head. ‘Not unless we can find a way to flush the magus’s poison from our system. But until then…’
‘Until then,’ said Pavel, ‘they have us.’
‘Aye,’ growled Hals. ‘By the short hairs.’
Reiner laughed and couldn’t stop. His life might have become a never-ending nightmare, but at least the company was good.
Rotten Fruit
IT ISN’T OFTEN a man gets to witness his own hanging, but Reiner Hetzau was being given the privilege. He didn’t much care for it.
It was a week after the battle of Nordbergbruche, where Reiner and his companions had helped Count Manfred Valdenheim reclaim his family castle from the Kurgan who had occupied it since the
Chaos invasion. This despite the fact that Manfred’s younger brother Albrecht had turned on him, attacking him with two thousand troops, all under the spell of the cursed banner, Valnir’s Bane, which had turned them into bloodthirsty automatons. If Reiner and his companions hadn’t slain Albrecht and destroyed the banner, the day would have been lost. And for this great service to Manfred and the Empire, Reiner and his companions were to hang. At least it was to appear so.
‘Poor damn butcher lambs,’ said Giano, the Tilean mercenary, as he peered through the slats of the louvre-windowed coach Reiner shared with his fellow condemned. ‘Bet they sorry now they born with our faces, hey?’
Pavel, the scrawny pikeman, swallowed and blinked his one good eye. ‘There but for the grace of Sigmar…’
Reiner nodded, squinting at the scene outside. The coach sat amidst Manfred’s retinue of twenty knights in the square before the Middenheim gaol. A great crowd surrounded them, all looking towards the gallows in the centre—a gallows that could hang five at once. The crowd was in a cheerful mood. There was nothing like a hanging to break up the monotony of rubble clearing and rebuilding that had become the daily life of Middenheim, the site of the final battle of Archaon’s aborted invasion. Sellers of pinwheels and sweetmeats wound through the crowds, while on the gallows, five frightened men with passing resemblances to Reiner and his companions were about to dance on air.
‘Why do I feel guilty it isn’t us up there?’ asked Franka, a dark-haired archer who only Reiner knew was not the boy she pretended to be.
‘Because yer a soft-hearted fool,’ said Hals, a bald, jut-bearded pikeman. ‘They’re villains. They’ll be guilty of something.’
‘But not guilty of what they’re to hang for,’ Franka pressed. ‘They’re being hanged for looking like us.’
‘They’re being hanged because Manfred doesn’t want his family name besmirched by his brother’s infamy,’ said Reiner. He affected Manfred’s statesmanlike tones: ‘It would not do for the citizenry to believe their betters could be corrupted as Albrecht was.’ Reiner snorted. ‘I’m sure if Albrecht were someone else’s brother, Manfred wouldn’t be so concerned with the morale of the citizenry.’
A drum roll began. The crowd fell silent. Reiner and his companions stared through the narrow louvres.
On the gallows, Middenheim’s chief magistrate read the charges as Manfred and a host of dignitaries looked solemnly on. ‘Reiner Hetzau, Hals Kiir, Pavel Voss, Giano Ostini, Franz Shoentag, you are charged with the foul murder of Baron Albrecht Valdenheim; of bewitching his troops by means of heathen sorcery; and causing them to attack his brother, Count Manfred Valdenheim, thereby bringing about the deaths of countless innocent men. For these and sundry other bestial crimes you are to be hanged by the neck until dead. May Sigmar have mercy on your souls.’
As the hangman pulled sacks over the condemned men’s heads, Reiner looked at the man chosen to be his replacement, a debauched-looking villain with a pencil-thin moustache. Reiner wasn’t flattered by the comparison.
Beside him, Franka sobbed. ‘He’s only a boy.’
Reiner looked at the lad who had been picked to die for her. It was doubtful he’d seen sixteen summers. He wouldn’t see seventeen. His face was frozen in a mask of dumb incomprehension as the bag was tugged down over his head.
The drums stopped. The trap banged open and the five men dropped and jerked at the end of their ropes until the hangman’s apprentices jumped up and hung from their knees to make certain of the deed. The crowd cheered.
‘There’s another five deaths on our consciences,’ sighed Pavel.
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Hals. ‘I put ‘em square on Manfred. He’s the one ordered ‘em hung.’
But the reason he’d hung the impostors instead of us, thought Reiner, was that we were too damned clever for our own good. Manfred had gone to the trouble of all this subterfuge because he had been impressed by the guile Reiner and his companions had demonstrated in their defeat of Albrecht, and wanted to employ it for himself. As he’d told them, winning battles was not the only way the Empire stayed strong. There were less honourable deeds that had to be done to keep the citizenry safe, deeds no true-hearted knight could undertake, deeds only blackhearts could stomach. Reiner and his companions were those ‘Blackhearts’.
Manfred was having them ‘executed’ so that they would be invisible men—perfect spies who did not exist in the eyes of the world. But because he also feared they might abandon their new duties at their earliest opportunity—a not unreasonable fear—the count had insured their cooperation by magical means.
‘We are just as much hanged men as those poor devils,’ said Reiner. ‘For the cursed poison Manfred put into our blood is a noose around our necks—and he could drop the trap at any time.’
Outside they heard Strieger, the captain of Manfred’s retinue, call ‘Forward!’ and the coach lurched into motion. As they rode out of the square Reiner took a last look at the five hooded bodies swaying in the breeze.
THEY WERE BOUND for Altdorf, where Manfred had a townhouse and where he advised the Emperor on matters of state. The road travelled south from Middenheim through the depths of the Drakwald Forest until it at last crossed the Reik and entered Altdorf. Reiner and the other Blackhearts saw none of it. Locked in the louvred coach, the world passed them by only as light, shadow and sound, the monotonous symphony of creaking wheels, clopping hooves and jingling harnesses lulling them into a state of torpidity. At least they were alone, with no one to overhear them, and this allowed them to plot their escape, however fruitlessly.
‘Why not we kill the mage who know the poison spell?’ suggested Giano.
‘Manfred would get another, and have him unleash the poison,’ said Reiner.
‘What if we broke the mage’s fingers until he removed the poison?’ asked Hals.
‘And if he said the spell that killed us instead of the spell that freed us, would you know the difference?’ countered Reiner.
Pavel folded his arms, ‘Alright then, captain. If yer so smart, what do we do? Let us poke holes in your ideas for once.’
‘Well,’ said Reiner, leaning back, ‘perhaps we could pay a hedge witch to remove the poison.’
‘If we could find one, and that would require a lot of gold,’ said Franka. ‘Something we are sorely lacking.’
Reiner nodded. ‘True. But fortunes change. While helping Manfred we may find opportunity to help ourselves.’
‘But a hedge witch could cheat us as well,’ said Hals. ‘He could spout any sort of mumbo jumbo and we wouldn’t know if he’d removed the poison until we tried to run and fell dead on the spot.’
And on and on it went, an endless circle of argument as monotonous as the sound of the wheels rolling below them. Only occasionally would the monotony be broken when Reiner would look up to find Franka’s eyes hot upon him.
She and he had first shared that look after they had killed Albrecht. Since then, each time they locked eyes, visions of Franka’s lithe body stripped of her boyish trappings danced through Reiner’s head. But even these pleasant dreams led to frustration, for none of the others knew Franka was a woman, so their desire could not be acted upon, and the cycle of lust stirred followed by lust denied became as grinding and dull as everything else.
THE AGONY CONTINUED for three days, with the Blackhearts only let out of the coach when the company made camp. The coach had become thick with the smell of their unwashed bodies and their conversation had been reduced to ill-tempered grunts, when, late on the afternoon of the third day, the sudden booming of the coach wheels rolling over wood woke them from their stupor.
All five crowded to the slatted windows. The narrow view told them little more than they were crossing over a drawbridge into the courtyard of a castle. After a moment the coach came to a stop amid hails and responses from Manfred’s retinue and the house guards.
One voice rose above the rest. ‘Count Manfred! Well met, my lord.’
‘And you, Groff
,’ came Manfred’s voice. ‘I see you survived the troubles.’
‘Barely, my lord. Only barely.’
The coach door was unlocked and the guard in charge of the Blackhearts’ transport, a sour veteran named Klaus, swung it open. ‘Fall out, vermin,’ he growled. ‘And no nonsense. We’re staying with quality tonight.’
‘We’ll be on our best behaviour,’ said Reiner stepping out. ‘Lay out my finest suit and ruff, won’t you?’
‘That’s just the sort of thing I’m talking about,’ snarled Klaus.
He lined them up at attention as Captain Strieger talked over their lodging with the head of Groff’s house guard, and Manfred and Groff continued their conversation.
‘We were hit very hard, my lord,’ Groff was saying. He was a short, dark-haired man with a flabby, careworn face. ‘We held supplies for Baron Hegel’s cannon, and somehow the devils got wind of it. Tried for three days to force their way in before Boecher’s garrison came up and chased them off, by the grace of Sigmar. But by then three-quarters of my men died, and as you can see…’
Groff gestured around at his castle, which was in terrible disrepair. Crews of peasants laboured to close up holes in the outer walls that one could have led a company of lancers through, but they were making little progress. The roof of the stables had burned away, and one of the keeps towers had collapsed, and now lay across the courtyard like the corpse of a dragon.
Groff nodded at the ruined tower. ‘Lost my older son when that fell. He was fighting some horror with bones for skin. It called lighting from the sky and…’ He swallowed.
Manfred put a hand on his shoulder. ‘At least he died as Sigmar commands us to, fighting corruption.’
‘Aye, he died well,’ said Groff sadly. ‘But we seem to have bested one evil only to have another spring up. Indeed, I am glad you have graced us with your presence, m’lord, for something’s brewing in the forest that I would have you warn Altdorf about.’