by David Guymer
The preacher’s words only made the man thrash harder, as though his holiness inflamed the daemon within. The crowd perceived it as such and began to wail. A woman fainted, caught and clutched close by her husband who signed the hammer on her forehead and roared with his fellows.
‘Repent!’ Nikolaus screamed. The people echoed him. The whole township rang with it, the word peeling over and over from a hundred mouths as the soldiers tried to strip the recalcitrant sinner of his gear and force him into the pen with the other foul horrors that came unwilling to Sigmar’s mercy.
Nikolaus cleared his throat to shout again when he noticed another man forcing his way through the crowd. The man was one of his own flock and garbed similarly in sackcloth. His face was hideously burned, head bound in a bloodied tourniquet, the necessary scarifications of weak flesh. What remained of his face looked troubled.
‘What ails you, Brüder Friedrich?’
‘A mercenary has been brought to us. It is serious. She needs your ministry.’
Nikolaus nodded understanding and jumped down.
A lament went up from those gathered as he made his way between them, following the path that Friedrich forced open for him. None moved to stop him, but there were scuffles amongst those seeking to position themselves near enough to touch his sackcloth kilt or even his tattooed legs as he passed. They followed at a reverential remove as the two hermits made down one of the many alleys that branched from the gates of Sigmarshafen.
The alley was tight, large enough for two abreast but just barely. The doors to either side were small, narrowed and mean. Water ran from slanted roofs of pitched pine and rusted iron, a relentless trickle of worldly misery. The sun, such as it existed at all in Ostermark, never touched Sigmar’s earth. Human filth had frozen into the ruts left by carts and human feet. Nikolaus bore the pain in his bare soles with a grateful heart, each breath summoning its own small torture, needles of bitter cold prickling down his throat with each draw of icy mist.
At one of the doors, Friedrich held and knocked twice. The building was identical to the others, but for a smearing of bloody prints over the latch and the heap of frozen offal that had been left out for the dogs and strays.
For Sigmar was a beneficent god.
The door opened to frame another man, bald, one eyed, face similarly burned and criss-crossed with partially melted scars. There was a tension in the way he gripped the door, but he relaxed at the sight of Nikolaus. He peered out into the dreary street and the long train of rabble that had followed them from the gate. They held back, silent as any such gathering of men ever could be.
The man behind the door grunted and pulled his head back inside. ‘It’s good you came. The daemon is strong in her.’ He stepped aside, inviting Nikolaus in. Friedrich remained in the cold, closing the door quietly behind him. A part of Nikolaus wished he too could have remained without. His breath misted before his face, a frost sent spidery fingers through the joins in the door, but out of the wind, out of the fog, there was a warmth that smacked of vice.
Hocks of goat meat hung from metal pegs, fat glistening white in the cold. The butcher’s larder was illuminated by a single candle in the hands of another of Nikolaus’s brothers-in-penitence, Brüder Arnulf. The fug of roasted goat spat from the dribbling tallow was thick enough to chew, only partially clouding the stink of corruption.
The two sackclothed men positioned themselves either side of a blood-spattered wooden table. Arnulf set his burden upon a wooden shelf that ran along the rear wall. Its light caught off an array of bladed implements pegged to that wall, from knives and skewers, to huge serrated bone saws.
Nikolaus moved to the table. A woman lay upon it. She had been stripped bare, pale flesh dimpled, breath steaming in short sharpened bursts as she writhed on her bloody pallet.
‘Hold her.’
The men did so, each taking an arm. A shudder passed through her body. Every part of her shook. Watching her, Nikolaus felt a knot tighten in his throat. Even now, his own body would seek to tempt him. But then flesh would ever be desirous of flesh. That flesh would be opened this night. Sin would run in rivers.
‘She is fresh returned from the City of the Damned,’ said Arnulf. One side of his face was gone; burned muscle, bone and crumbling tissue all that remained. It was that face he presented as he spoke, rightly proud in the purity of his disfigurement. ‘Those who brought her attest she stepped on something. A shard of the wyrdstone, they say.’
Nikolaus reached out his one hand. His fingers hovered over her belly, pure white, prickled with goose bumps and yet moistened by fever. Even without touching, her skin flexed from the nearness of his hand. He worked his dry mouth and forced his hand down to the woman’s foot. It was black, cracks parting the cold hard skin to reveal pink tissue that shed no blood. With blunt fingers, he prodded the dead flesh, tracing upward to where the blight extended its roots into the living leg. The woman gasped, but failed otherwise to react, as his thumbnail scored a mark above her knee.
Stepping around the table, Nikolaus selected the bone saw from the row of implements and then returned, candlelight tinting the serrated blade red. He looked down on the poor creature, the pity he felt all the greater for the lust she so sinfully induced in his own heart.
‘Your leg offends you, schwester. With Sigmar’s blessing, may the Dark Gods keep it.’
Felix subjected Gotrek to an angry glare as the dwarf stamped down two steins of flat, insipid moonshine onto the table between them.
‘I’m not about to sit here and drink with Rudi due to be burned alive in the morning.’
‘Do you know how hard it was to find this, manling? What kind of holy war do these men hope to wage without proper ale?’
Felix sniffed at the contents of the pewter stein. It was pungently acidic and looked to be stripping the lead from the inside of the vessel. ‘I hope you didn’t pay too much.’
Gotrek planted himself onto the stool opposite and took up his own mug in one meaty fist. He gulped down a mouthful, winced, then took another before setting it back down. ‘After convincing our host that I wasn’t set on turning him in for peddling drunkenness, I may have gone on to suggest that a dwarfish patron might be good for his custom. He may also have been brought round to the idea that it’d be handy if those from that pansy timber deathtrap they call a cathedral should drop by.’ He patted his axe where it rested against the side of their table and leered. ‘We can only hope.’
‘So you took advantage of a man’s faith to get a free drink?’
Gotrek chuckled and rapped his stein off Felix’s. ‘Two drinks, manling.’
Felix snorted and sat back, leaving his drink untouched. ‘You know what, I don’t care. I’ve read the Unfinished Book, you know. The temple at Altdorf University had a copy made of that which was lost in the great fire that destroyed Nuln Cathedral. I hate to imagine what Sigmar would make of what these people are doing in his name.’
‘They’re all of them fools if you ask me,’ said Gotrek, wiping sop from his beard on the back of his hand. ‘Sigmar was a great man, aye, well deserving of godhood off the back of his deeds. But do you see any dwarf falling over themselves to appease men on account of one man’s valour?’
Felix scowled and pushed his drink away and, ignoring the glug of Gotrek noisily disposing of his, looked around the dank cellar of the mercenary flophouse that Gotrek had dragged them too. Grey light wormed in through narrow slit windows just below the rafters with the rumble of handcarts and hymns. Through the greasy panes, he could see the feet of the mercenaries who favoured fresh air on their faces to questionable ale in their bellies. Felix considered the preference eminently the more sensible.
The illicit drinking hall, for such it clearly was however much the wooden hammer set above the bar tried to make it appear to be the landlord’s private shrine, bustled with a subdued murmur. A dozen tightly packed tables played host to sodden mercenaries. There was tension in the drinkers’ faces, hands playing restive over unsheathed weapons.
There was no relaxation to be found in Sigmarshafen, not for men who flouted the commandments of Konrad’s moralpolizei.
Felix watched as the house’s proprietor, a grey bear of a man called Theis, wound between the tables towards them. He was as tall as Felix and far better endowed in poundage, both in muscle and in fat. He stooped under the ceiling beams and hovered by their table, wringing his brawny fists, hammer and comet talismans jangling about his thick neck.
‘Is all to your liking, masters?’
Gotrek grunted and made a grab for Felix’s unwanted drink. ‘Barely, barkeep. Barely. We’re scarce three days march from the last dwarf post on the Kadrin road. Is there no dwarf ale to be found in this sorry place?’
‘Forgive us, master dwarf, but there’s little as gets by Konrad’s men.’ He gestured at the sullen patrons with a wave of one hairy hand. ‘You get used to it when there’s naught else to be had.’
‘More ale then, barkeep. The sooner I’m too drunk to taste this swill the better.’
Theis bowed and turned to Felix. ‘I’ll bring over some honey for that eye, my lord.’
Felix crossed his arms, his expression sour, and waited for Theis to leave. As soon as he was gone, he lifted his fingers to his black eye and winced.
‘Stop poking at it, manling. You’ll only make it worse.’
Felix considered keeping his mouth shut but when it came to feats of sullenness Gotrek was unrivalled. ‘Don’t talk to me about my eye, Gotrek. I still can’t believe you let them take Rudi without a fight. They’re going to burn him alive, for pity’s sake.’
‘You’re always lecturing me on tact, manling. Did you want me to kill them all? The priest too, maybe? What of every other man and child in that square?’
‘Gramm was hanging on your every word. He would have let Rudi go if you’d asked it.’
Gotrek shook his head grimly. ‘I’m no expert, but that horse-loving fanatic is clearly the one taking the decisions now that the baron’s from the picture and minds like his aren’t for swaying. And you forget the most important point, manling. The beardling did betray his oath of fealty.’
‘And what of the oath he swore to us?’ said Felix, thumping his fist into the table. ‘He vowed to help us track the Beast.’
‘And he’s fulfilled that part of his bargain ably.’ Gotrek pointed to the south wall of the cellar, beyond which, over fog-haunted downs, the City of the Damned lay in wait. ‘We know now where it lurks. And even had he not, his oath to his lord was made first.’
Felix pinched his temples and slumped back into his chair. He could forget sometimes how alien Gotrek was. The Slayer looked like a man, but he was not one. There could be no sympathy for oathbreakers.
‘It our fault he’s here at all. And in any case, this isn’t Karaz-a-Karak or wherever. This is the Empire.’ He stared glumly toward a particularly joyless group of pale-faced men with the appearance of Middenlanders. ‘Nobody chooses to serve in their lord’s militia.’
‘I’ve said it before, manling and I’ll say it again. Yours are an odd folk.’
‘I’m getting him out, Gotrek. With your help or without.’ Slowly and with feeling, he ground his fist into his open palm. ‘And if I have to go through that swine, Seitz, then so much the better.’
‘That’s unlike you, manling.’
‘Maybe it’s something in the ale.’
‘The way you sniff at it? Hah!’ Gotrek chuckled gruffly, myriad piercings jangling. ‘More likely some honest dwarfen stubbornness has rubbed off on you at last. Well fine. If he agrees to join us and find himself an honourable end in the damned city, then I’ll help you.’
‘Thank you, Gotrek.’ He wanted to say more, but could not think of the words to use that Gotrek would not consider sentimental or… human. So he said nothing.
‘Eat something first, why don’t you. And get some rest. You’ve hardly slept since the day before yesterday. Some admirable dwarfishness may have rubbed off onto you, but I doubt you’ve yet acquired the stamina to carry on like that.’
Felix felt a tide of weariness rise to the Slayer’s words. Had it really been so long?
As Felix’s thoughts returned to the problem of his bedevilled sleep, the door to the upstairs apartments opened behind him. Cold plucked at his hackles. He heard people enter, mail rustling, boots creaking over the floorboards. He rolled the chill from his shoulders, pulled himself from his crouch, and tried to ignore them. He tapped the rim of Gotrek’s stein. ‘I think I will have one of those now.’
‘A fine idea, meinen herr. Allow me to purchase this round.’
Felix noticed that every eye in the hall had turned his way, the air adopting a frost that had little to do with an open door. He shifted in his chair to find Caul Schlanger lounging against the plaster wall by the doorway. Like a lizard on a rock. Felix had noted previously the man’s dearth of teeth, but for the first time he was struck by the perverse order to it. It looked as though every tooth had been deliberately pulled to leave four sets of four. As the man stood there, regarding Felix with those calculating green eyes, two more soldiers entered. They wore grey cloaks over darkened mail and quilted brigandine, their padded biceps bound with the black band of the moralpolizei. The last through closed the door behind him. Both men took position beside it, hands on hips, nonchalant enough to be unthreatening, near enough to the blades swinging from their belts to stress otherwise.
‘Ale for these two.’ Caul motioned to Theis, then stabbed a digit at Gotrek and Felix. ‘And one for myself.’ He pulled up the chair next to Felix’s, twisted it back to front and slouched forward in a posture of calculated insouciance. Felix felt the skin of his right side try to pull away from his bones. He dragged his own chair to the left to make space between them.
It helped, but not much.
Theis was sweating, eyes flicking from man to man to dwarf, convinced he was being fed into a trap and desperate to figure out exactly what kind. Konrad may have been hated with a passion. But Caul Schlanger was a name to wring knots into the guts of the most hardened. ‘And for your… erm… men?’
‘I’d advise not,’ said Caul, scratching his coarse chin as he surveyed the room with a knowing smirk. ‘They are pious men. It is uncharacteristically lax of them to allow this den of iniquity to persist on their watch. I assure you I will see them thoroughly scourged later.’
‘What do you want?’ said Felix, his fingers reaching for the reassuring touch of his sword’s dragonhead hilt. ‘We know nothing about what happened to Baron von Kuber. We’ve already said as much to your sadistic master.’
Caul gaped in mock astonishment. ‘Mein kapitän?’ He cast his gaze over the warily observant crowd, their drinks left untouched in favour of weapons. ‘I thought that all of Sigmarshafen appreciated the benevolent zeal of dear Konrad?’ There was a low grumble of assent from the seated mercenaries. Not one of them dared look up from their tables to meet Caul’s eye. Caul broke into a cackle with an ironic shake of the head. ‘So cruel a world. That the virtuous Konrad should make liars of an entire town.’
Felix ground his teeth. There was something about these sanctimonious prigs that he just wanted to throttle some common human decency into. ‘If you have a point to make, Herr Schlanger, I would suggest you make it. My companion and I have little patience for barroom bullies.’
Caul’s green eyes glittered with malice, all pretence at friendship bleeding back into his angular face.
‘Steady now, Herr Jaeger. Let’s not say something we might later regret.’
Felix froze. He was, technically, still a wanted man in Altdorf for his role in the Window Tax Riots, but at no point had he mentioned his, or Gotrek’s, name. He found it hard to believe that word of his petty infamy could have made it out to the provinces and to men who, quite plainly, had larger problems to contend with. Caul’s smile was etched in copper, Felix holding his gaze through a charged silence as Theis arrived to deposit three overflowing steins before making a hasty retreat. Caul dipped his
finger in his drink and sucked it dry without any apparent distaste.
At last Felix could bear no more.
‘How do you know my name?’
Caul proffered a practiced, self-deprecating shrug. ‘Der Kreuzfahrer tasks to me such things as would sully the hands of one so noble. It would be remiss of me not to recognise the infamous Jaeger and Gurnisson.’
Felix leaned into the table and hissed. ‘Does Konrad know?’
‘Konrad does not care, so Konrad does not ask.’
‘And you do?’
Caul spread his hands, all beatific innocence. ‘I’m a carer.’
‘Not too many of those about,’ Gotrek grunted, knocking back a casual slug of ale.
Felix was still trying to hold Caul’s stare but the man’s regard was so unwavering that Felix began to doubt whether his eyes had lids. He hoped that he sounded less nervous than he felt as he cleared his throat. ‘I’ll ask again, Herr Schlanger. What do you want?’
‘What is it that you want, Felix?’
‘How about a straight answer?’
Caul cracked his unnervingly ordered smile.
‘Just spit it out, you tiresome lizard,’ said Gotrek. ‘This may be the only tavern in this damnable town and I don’t care to share it with you and yours.’ His hand slid meaningfully for the handle of his axe that rested butt-down against the table.
‘Threats are unnecessary, Herr Gurnisson. Trust me that had I wanted you harmed, I have people for that.’ His eyes drifted over the subdued drinkers. ‘You’d not have seen it coming.’
‘Trust you?’ Gotrek snorted. ‘Aye, about as far as I can ram you down the necks of one of your half-starved ponies.’
Caul took a sip of his ale, eyes glittering over Gotrek’s huge torso from behind his simply patterned stein. ‘And how far do you think that might be? I’m almost curious to see for myself.’ With a fluid smile and a reptilian intensity to his regard, Caul tugged the fingers from his left-hand riding glove one by one and set the glove down. His body flowed over the reversed back of his chair like a snake over a tree stump, his elbow striking into the tabletop. He flexed his four fingers, the middle clipped through just below the knuckle, and grinned a broken alligator smile.