Dead Winter

by C. L. Werner

  ‘Stop,’ the wheezing voice of Baron von Schomberg arrested his attack on the door. ‘That will serve no purpose. You must leave me. It is important that you leave me.’

  The young knight peered through the bars, wondering what delusion gripped his master. He could not imagine what tortures von Schomberg must have endured at the hands of Kreyssig’s minions.

  Feeble as he was, the Grand Master was still sharp-eyed. He could read the thought he saw etched upon Erich’s face. ‘No, I am not mad. But there are bigger things to concern you than preserving my life. Boris Goldgather has become a tyrant. If he isn’t stopped, he will tear down the Empire with his greed. You must find others, gather an alliance to depose him. That is the only quest left to the Reiksknecht now!’

  Erich shook his head. ‘We will do all that,’ he vowed, pressing his shoulder against the door. ‘And you will lead us,’ he grunted as he tried to force the barrier.

  ‘I will be more valuable to your cause as a martyr,’ von Schomberg declared. ‘I am to be beheaded in two days by Gottwald Drechsler, the Scharfrichter of Altdorf. My death is intended to make the other nobles cower in fear before Emperor Boris. You must make my death have a different meaning. You must make it a lesson that none of them are safe, that if he dares execute the Grand Master of the Reiksknecht, then he will dare even greater outrages. You must make the great and the powerful understand that they can only be safe if they rise up against this tyrant!’

  ‘Prince Sigdan is already with us,’ Erich told von Schomberg, trying to make his master see that his martyrdom wasn’t necessary.

  ‘You will need more than just the Prince of Altdorf,’ the Grand Master said.

  ‘They have other allies,’ the Sigmarite priest declared. Throwing back the hood of his robe, Sigdan’s nameless clergyman friend revealed the face of Arch-Lector Wolfgang Hartwich. Erich and Konreid stood in stunned silence, never suspecting that the second-most powerful man in the Sigmarite temple had been their accomplice.

  Hartwich came to the door, smiling kindly at the Grand Master. ‘You see, there is no reason to make this gesture. You can help this great cause much more as a living soldier.’

  A ragged cough shook von Schomberg’s frail body. ‘It is too late for that, father,’ he said. ‘That choice has been taken from me.’ Panic shone in the Grand Master’s eyes as Erich made another attempt to force the door. ‘No!’ he commanded. ‘Stay outside! Do not come near me!’ His voice dropped to a mournful whisper. ‘Death sits here beside me. The Black Plague.’

  ‘You… you have the illness?’ Erich asked, instinctively recoiling from the door.

  Grand Master von Schomberg nodded his head sadly. ‘At first Emperor Boris wanted to save my execution for the anniversary of his accession. Now he fears I will die before the Scharfrichter can take my head with his sword.’ The prisoner’s thin hands clenched into fists. ‘But I will survive that long. I must survive that long.’

  Erich turned away from the cell door, his hand reaching for the sword hidden beneath his priest’s robes. He relaxed slightly when he saw Othmar and Josef come rushing into the hallway. The troubled expressions on their faces made it clear there wasn’t any more time to debate the question.

  ‘The archers know something is wrong,’ Othmar reported. ‘We could hear them trying to smash open the trap. It won’t be long before one of them decides to shout down to the courtyard for help.’

  The captain turned back to the cell, a bitter taste in his mouth. Snapping to attention, he saluted the sickly von Schomberg. ‘The Grand Master has decided that he can best serve our cause by remaining here,’ Erich told the other knights. Othmar looked ready to object, but the sad resignation he saw on his captain’s face made him realise there was something more, something that made rescue pointless.

  ‘Get the others,’ Erich ordered. ‘We can use the cellar beneath the tower to gain entrance to the dungeons.’ The other knights nodded. They had studied the floor-plans of the Courthouse carefully before setting out. The dungeons connected to an older network of catacombs, which in turn led back into the dwarf-built culverts. The underground route had been too risky to effect entrance to the tower, but with the alarm raised, there was nothing to lose using it to escape.

  ‘Sigmar’s strength be with you,’ von Schomberg called out to his knights as they reluctantly left him to await his doom.

  ‘We will not forget your sacrifice, Grand Master,’ Erich vowed.

  Nuln

  Ulriczeit, 1111

  Gaining access to poor old Erwin’s tannery wasn’t especially hard. After the man’s murder, the place had become shunned, more for the belief that plague victims had done the crime than any fear of the crime itself. A belief was taking hold that the plague was spread by the sickly breath of the diseased. There was a chance that the sickly exhalations of the killers might be lingering in some dark corner of the building. No one wanted to take any chances.

  Walther wasn’t sure if he believed the plague was spread that way. What he was sure of was that Fritz hadn’t been killed by anyman, sick or not. His killer was a monster, a rat bigger than a sheepdog, with fangs like daggers. People might laugh at him for believing in such a beast, but when he caught the giant, he would drag it out into the light of day and make his detractors eat their words.

  The tannery was a filthy shambles. Housed within a boxy building with mud-brick walls and a floor that was depressed a good three feet below ground level, the tannery had acquired a thin scum of ice along much of the floor. With none to maintain the place, run-off from melting snow in the street had seeped into the building to form a crust of dirty brown frost. The big clay pots where the tanner stored the acids he used to cure hides still exuded the stench of urine despite being frozen solid. A motley confusion of half-cured goatskins and ox hides drooped from ropes suspended from the ceiling while a stinking heap against one wall denoted skins Fritz had never gotten around to.

  Rats had, however. The pile of skins showed every sign of being rifled and pillaged by the vermin. Pellets littered the floor around the hides, scraggly scraps of fur and hair were strewn about. Any hint of flesh clinging to the skins had been plundered by the marauding rodents. Nor had the animals contented themselves to the meagre pickings left by the tanner. Several dozen rat carcasses were lying frozen to the floor, their skins turned inside out as their cannibalistic comrades stripped them clean. Walther had no idea how a rat managed to so utterly devour another rat. He was fairly certain he didn’t want to know.

  More important than the common vermin, however, had been the spoor of the giant. Walther had spotted a few of the monster’s paw-prints in the ice and the terriers had uncovered a rat pellet as big as his own hand. It was obvious the giant had marked out the tannery as part of its range. The giant would be back to forage, and the rat-catcher would be ready for it.

  A dozen box-like traps had been set up around the tannery. One thing Walther had always noticed about rats was their tendency to scurry in straight lines, keeping one flank against a wall at all times if possible. Playing upon that verminous habit, he placed his traps against the edges of the walls, far enough away from any holes or windows the giant might use to creep into the building that it wouldn’t get suspicious. Each of the traps was the product of his own design, operating upon a counterbalance that would use the giant’s own weight to trigger it. The rodent would slink into the box to retrieve the scrap of beef placed inside as bait. The increased pressure would tip the counter-

  balance and release the taut bowstring suspended above the box. Walther knew the design would work. He’d spent several hours adjusting the counterbalance after normal-sized rats sprang some of the traps. The bowstring had sliced the inquisitive vermin clean in half.

  ‘Aren’t you going to arm the rest of the traps?’ Hugo asked when Walther rejoined him in their hiding spot between the wooden vats Fritz had used to soak the hides after curing them.

  The rat-catcher sighed as he climbed down between the vats
. He pushed away the affectionate welcome of the terriers and explained to his apprentice for the fifth time why some of the traps weren’t armed. ‘A rat is a clever brute,’ he reminded Hugo. ‘The traps will be new to him. He’ll study them a bit when he sees them, sniff about and then play it very careful. Now, if he nips inside real quick, he might get away. So I leave the traps closest to the windows and holes baited but unarmed. That way he can get inside and treat himself to a bit of beef. It’ll make him figure the other traps are safe too. And that’ll be his last mistake.’

  At first Hugo nodded, but then he began to shake his head. ‘I don’t see how this giant can get inside unless we leave the door open. The windows are too narrow and those holes you are talking about wouldn’t let Alex wiggle through.’ Hugo patted the head of one of the ratters, provoking a frenzy of tail-wagging.

  Walther sighed again and explained again some of the peculiarities of a rat’s physiology. ‘A rat’s skull isn’t solid,’ he said. ‘The whole thing can dislocate, sort of collapse inwards so the vermin can squeeze into tight places. If its flattened skull can fit, then the rest of the brute will follow. I’ve seen one-pound rats crawl out of holes no wider than my thumb. Our giant has lots of options to get back in here if he has a mind to.’

  The explanation seemed to sink in this time. Hugo’s eyes roved across the walls of the tannery, staring at the narrow windows and peering into the dark recesses of the holes in the plaster.

  Walther left his apprentice to his vigil, turning his attention to the cold meal Zena had prepared for him. A bit of rye bread, an almost shapeless nub of cheese and a sausage that he prayed hadn’t been bought from Ostmann. Not the most lavish supper, but it was the thought that counted.

  As he moved to take his first bite of the bread, Walther’s face turned upwards. His hand froze before it could reach his mouth. His eyes bugged in shock. A grim pallor spread across his skin.

  Staring down at him with beady red eyes was a creature spawned from a madman’s nightmare. Squatting among the rafters, its whiskers twitching, its hideous naked tail dangling obscenely from its hindquarters, was the giant rat. The smells of the tannery must have hidden its presence from the dogs and the rat-catcher’s labour with the traps had kept his own attention focused downwards, not upwards. How long the wicked thing had been sitting up there, watching Walther and Hugo, it was impossible to say. Perhaps it had been the smell of his supper that had lured the giant from whatever hole it had been hiding in. Whatever the circumstances, Walther was getting his first glimpse of the monster he had taken it upon himself to track and trap.

  Hugo’s words about needing bigger dogs came back to him as an unheeded premonition. The rat seemed to Walther’s eyes to be as big as a pony, its back arched, its fur standing out in angry bristles. Its ghastly fangs, those chisel-like teeth which had visited such horrendous damage upon Fritz, glistened in the darkness.

  The traps were a joke! This brute would never fit inside one of them! With those fangs it could gnaw its way clean through even if it did get caught. The bowstring wouldn’t make a scratch on all that bristly brown fur.

  Walther was about to whisper a warning to Hugo when one of the terriers, noticing the rat-catcher’s fright and following the direction of his gaze, looked up and saw the giant. A low growl rumbled from the dog’s throat.

  The giant rat’s beady eyes gleamed from the shadows, its hideous fangs clashing together. Walther had half-expected the monster to flee when the dog growled at it. For a second, disappointment flickered through his heart, fear that his quarry would escape.

  Disappointment evaporated as stark terror raced down the rat-catcher’s spine. The giant wasn’t scampering off. Instead it launched itself from the beam, leaping straight at the littler dog. Horror flared through Walther’s mind as the verminous body hurtled past him, its bristly hair and scaly tail brushing against his cheek. The colossal rodent struck the terrier head-first, the momentum of its leap sending both itself and the dog crashing against one of the vats, knocking it over.

  A sickening yelp escaped from the little dog before its life was crushed between the rat’s snapping fangs. The monster held its victim by the neck, shaking its own head from side to side to dig its fangs deeper into the terrier’s throat. Blood sprayed from the mangled dog, steaming on the icy floor.

  Without thinking, the stunned rat-catcher struck out at the marauding rat. Walther’s pole cracked against the brute’s flank. The giant didn’t even squeak in pain as it dropped the dead dog and spun around to bare its fangs at the man who had dared attack it. Blood dribbled from the giant’s whiskers, flecks of foam oozed between its sharp teeth. There was an almost calculating malevolence in the rat’s eyes as it glared up at Walther.

  The rat-catcher cringed away from the monster’s gaze, his mind reeling with horror. The image of Fritz with his throat torn out, the loathsome thought of the cannibalised rats with their innards eaten away and their skins turned inside out, these came crawling through his brain like black prophets of doom.

  The giant was tensing itself to leap at the paralysed rat-catcher when the brute was suddenly struck from the side. This time it cried out, an angry chirp that sounded like steel scraping against steel. Hugo jabbed at it a second time with his pole and the brute spun around, springing at the man without any warning. Hugo screamed as the giant’s weight tore the pole from his grip and the fangs stabbed into his hand.

  Hugo’s scream snapped the remaining ratters from their fright. Snarling, the two dogs fell upon the giant, one seizing an ear in its jaws, the other darting in to snap at the rat’s belly. The giant ripped away from Hugo, turning on these new attackers.

  While the monster was busy trying to fend off the dogs, Walther drove in upon it. A thick hunting knife in his hand, he came at the brute from behind, stabbing its back again and again, thrusting the blade deep into the vermin’s flesh. Pained squeaks streamed from the rat as blood bubbled from its wounds. A terrible frenzy came upon it, enabling it to shake free of the dogs and drive Walther away with a lash of its naked tail.

  The effort came too late to do the giant any good. The rat had taken too much damage; Walther’s knife had pierced past ribs to puncture the brute’s lungs. Wheezing, panting, it hobbled a few paces, then slipped on the icy floor. The dogs were on it in an instant, tearing at its throat and avenging their fallen comrade.

  Walther shook with excitement, that curious alchemy of terror and jubilation familiar to any victorious soldier. ‘We did it!’ he shouted, his voice so loud they might have heard him back in the Black Rose. ‘Get ready, Bremer! You’re going to have a heart attack when you see what I’ve brought you!’

  The rat-catcher turned towards his apprentice. Hugo was sitting on the floor, hugging his arm against his side. Walther clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Did you hear! Our fortune is made!’

  Hugo nodded weakly, then his face contorted in a grimace of pain. ‘Very… nice… Herr Schill,’ he muttered. ‘But… do you think… you could… get my fingers… out of its mouth…’

  Middenheim

  Ulriczeit, 1111

  ‘Your grace!’

  Franz’s cry had Mandred clenching his teeth. It was bad enough that he had been unable to shake his bodyguard, but now it seemed the knight was determined to let everyone in the Westgate district know that the Prince of Middenheim was walking the streets.

  Mandred pulled his wool cloak a bit closer and ducked into the closest alleyway. For a moment, he thought about ducking out the other end of the alley but then decided that Franz would only catch up to him again. Or maybe the buffoon would start asking around the neighbourhood if anybody had seen the Graf’s son prowling about.

  When Franz appeared at the mouth of the alley, Mandred grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up against the wall. The knight’s hand fell to the grip of his sword, but quickly relaxed when he recognised the prince’s features beneath the brim of the battered fur cap.

  ‘Your grace,’ Franz said, trying to
affect a stiff salute within the narrow confines of the alley.

  Mandred rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘You do understand that I’m trying to go unnoticed,’ he reminded the knight.

  A bewildered expression came across Franz’s stony features. ‘Of course, your grace,’ he said. ‘You made that clear when we left the palace.’

  ‘Then can I ask you to stop addressing me as “your grace”?’ Mandred snapped. ‘And stop bowing and saluting every time I look twice at you. We’re supposed to be ordinary peasants, nothing more.’

  Franz nodded. ‘Yes, your grace.’

  Mandred felt an ache growing at the back of his skull. Rumours of refugees sneaking into the city had reached the palace, accompanied by rumours that incidents of plague had started cropping up in the poorer sections of the city. Graf Gunthar had already dispatched troops to investigate the rumours, even going so far as to request Thane Hardin send some of his dwarfs down into the old Undercity to see if someone had found a way up through the tunnels. His father would put a stop to the stream of refugees once he uncovered the source. Mandred was determined to keep that from happening.

  No outsider could possibly manage to sneak into Middenheim without help, a native of the city who knew how to get around the Graf’s guards. Mandred was going to find that someone. Find them and warn them before his father could step in and stop the flow of refugees.

  If he could only find one of the refugees and convince them of his sympathy, then Mandred might be able to learn who was helping them. But so far he had had no luck in finding anyone who didn’t belong in the city. And the longer he looked, the greater the chance that Franz’s blundering would give his presence away.

  ‘Perhaps we should go and check the Pink Rat again, your grace?’ Franz suggested, licking his lips at the thought of the notorious tavern.

  Mandred closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to Ulric for guidance, or at least the self-control to keep him from strangling his own bodyguard.