Warhammer - [Genevieve 04] - Silver Nails

by Jack Yeovil (epub)

'His father is was'

  'Yes?'

  Rosanna was shaking violently now, as if in the early stages of a seizure. He was worried for her and stepped nearer.

  'His father was the Warhawk.'

  'The Warhawk.'

  She nodded, her hair whipping. She was turned away from him, but he knew her eyes were still shut. Beyond her, he could see the statues of all the emperors since the time of Sigmar. Pigeons×a rarity in Altdorf these days×roosted in Sigmar's helmet and flocked on his dropping-encrusted hammer.

  There was a wrenching sound, like a sword being pulled out of a stone wall and Rosanna lurched forwards, a scream starting from her mouth. Harald reached forward, grabbing her shoulders, holding hard. The clock's bells began chiming, impossibly, torturously loud.

  The rail had come out of the masonry and Rosanna was toppling from the platform. Her weight pulled at him and one of her feet slipped over the edge.

  'In his mind,' she shouted over the din of the chimes, 'he's flying, he's with the hawk!'

  Her legs were over the lip of the platform now and she was gripping his arm. For an awful moment, he thought they would fall. He grabbed the end of the rail still embedded in the wall and pulled, hauling her away from the edge. She got both feet back on the platform. The others were crowding around the door, concerned. Katz reached out, feet well braced, and held his arm. Rosanna clung tight to him. She had very nearly gone off the front of the building.

  They stood up and leaned away from the edge. Rosanna whistled out a breath and shook her head, smiling shakily. She gripped him hard. Then her hold relaxed and she pushed herself away, slipping into the cupola. The others got out of her way.

  What had she read? What had she read from him?

  He was shaking himself, as if fear had bled out of her mind into his. He stopped his trembling, stilling his own heart with an iron fist inside his chest.

  Harald followed Rosanna inside. The chimes finished.

  VI

  In the attic, his birds were mostly asleep. He had trained them to be night flyers.

  He prowled between the coops and perches, checking on his favourites. Belle was resting, head tucked under one wing. The barbs attached to her feet weren't chafing her. A good attack bird should have weapons as grown-in as a never-removed wedding ring.

  His back, where the wings would grow, was itching constantly, two invisible rashes on his shoulderblades. Candlewax dripped on his hand, stinging.

  He remembered his father, a statue on the hillside, mind soaring up in the body of his Minya. The Warhawk, the first Warhawk, had left his son in early childhood. Each of the boy's memories of the man was a polished perfect cameo that would stay with him forever.

  Some of the birds shifted. It was comfortably hot up here in the windowless dark, only occasional shafts of light beamed in through the slats around the hatchways. The natural smells were strong, comforting, constant.

  In his memory, his father was always still, a shell, his true self absent. He remembered looking from his father's impassive mask of a face to the dancing shape in the sky, and feeling the beginnings of understanding.

  He lined the birds' coops with broadsheets that contained stories about the latest sacrifice.

  The next movement of the Device must be bold.

  In a corner of the attic, he contemplated the detritus of his earlier paths. Here were the remains of his first machines, bent metal and torn canvas, broken-toothed clockwheels and tangles of snapped wire. He had wasted years. He had always known that the answer was in science, not magic. But it was only recently that he had remembered his father's talk of the Device.

  A clever man might fly. A man with no magic, but with the love of the sky in his heart.

  Once, he had consulted a wizard about the Device, and the man had laughed at him, concealing his terror and envy with scorn. Wizards were all afraid of being caught out, of being shown up as frauds. They all pretended that Devices were nonsense, jealously guarding their own exclusive powers.

  When he could fly, he would take a delight in tormenting wizards.

  He must sacrifice again, soon. This time the sacrifice must be deliberately chosen. As it neared its completion, the Device had to be tended carefully, each move provoking its successor.

  He thought of Kleindeinst and his witch woman, wondering if they were ready for what they must do next.

  It would be a gamble, but it was his only possible move. Would his father have approved? He didn't know. It didn't matter. When the Device was complete, there would only be one Warhawk.

  He went downstairs, and put on his hood.

  VII

  The offices of the Atrocities Commission were in the watch station on Luitpoldstrasse, the largest in the city. Harald had a desk there, and notional control over a small army of clerks and record-keepers, but Rosanna knew he spent as little time as possible surrounded by quill-pushers and inkwells. A street copper, he had no patience with ledgers.

  But now they were forced to fall back on dusty books. Every surface in the room was piled high with yellowing paper. Viereck was a poor organiser and the files from his period of command were chaotic. Anything of an earlier vintage×and there'd been a watch station on Luitpoldstrasse for centuries×was as likely to have been used as a taper for lighting cigars as to have been preserved. By the inexorable law of bureaucracy, the chances of a document's survival could be reckoned in inverse proportion to its usefulness, which meant that anything with a possible bearing on the case was liable to be ashes on the wind, while badly-spelled grocery lists or Imperially-decreed alterations to the watch uniform were preserved for posterity.

  'I should have made the connection before,' Harald was fretting. 'Warhawk isn't exactly a commonplace name.'

  Rosanna was less sure of this. Now it had come up she knew she'd heard the name before these killings, but not in any context that could possibly apply to the current crimes.

  'Surely, the first Warhawk wasn't a murderer? He was some kind of hero, wasn't he?'

  She dimly recalled a ballad recounting great victories and a noble death.

  'Good question. But you get to be a hero by doing the same thing murderers do.'

  'Killing?'

  'There's nothing wrong with killing,' he snarled, 'just so long as the right people get killed.'

  As Harald flicked furiously through forty- and fifty-year old gazetteers, Rosanna's eyes watered from the raised dust. It was late afternoon and the lantern in the office was smoking badly. One bad sputter from lantern to papers and this place would burn like a Mondstille bonfire. She had already been hauled out of one burning watch station by Harald Kleindeinst, and had no intention of repeating the experience. She opened the lantern and trimmed the wick.

  'After all,' Harald continued, 'who killed most often, the Beast or Sigmar? Killing for a cause may be all well and good, but there are some for whom the killing is more important than the cause.'

  'When did our murderer start being called Warhawk?'

  'Another good question, and one our friend Viereck should have troubled himself to answer.'

  'I've seen it chalked up on walls.'

  'Usually, the names of pattern-killers×the Beast, the Slasher, the Ripper×start in the broadsheets, but this time I think it just appeared out of the air, like our quarry's bird.'

  Rosanna thought back to her saying of the Warhawk. She could pick up names sometimes. It depended on how people, in the supposed secrecy of their skull, thought of themselves. One of the fundamentals of magic was the true naming of things and individuals, Once you knew a person's true name, you had a measure of power over him or her. In this business, that was literally the case. If they knew the Warhawk's true name, he could be tracked down and stopped.

  Harald coughed as another cloud of dust rose from an unrolled scroll.

  In his private self, the killer thought of himself as Warhawk, but behind him was a greater shadow, the Warhawk. Unmistakably, the Warhawk was the murderer's father. Rosanna had sampled
his childhood, his memories of punishments and favours.

  A clerk, cheek permanently stained by the ink-dribble from the feather-pen lodged above his ear, staggered in, and deposited another armful of documents on an already overburdened table.

  'Found it,' Harald said, quietly.

  Rosanna crossed the room and looked over the captain's shoulder.

  The scroll was an old indictment, dated nearly thirty years ago. It bore the seal of the Emperor Luitpold, and it was a list of charges laid against Prince Vastarien, beginning with disloyalty to the Empire and concluding with the raising of a private army to pursue the prince's own military ends.

  'Vastarien's Vanquishers,' Harald said, through gritted teeth.

  'Who were they?' she asked.

  'I keep forgetting you're young,' he said. 'Prince Vastarien was before you were born.'

  'I know the name.'

  'Mention it to anyone my age and you'll get an interesting reaction one way or the other, an eternal curse or a prayer to Sigmar. Whatever the prince was, he was extreme about it.'

  'Was he a hero?'

  'A lot of people thought so. A lot of other people×obviously including the old Emperor and most of the court×disagreed violently. No one really knows what happened to him in the end, up in the Fastness of Jagrandhra Dane, but if he'd come back he would as likely have spent the remainder of his life in Mundsen Keep as have been weighed down with honours and glory.'

  Rosanna read the charges against the prince. They were lengthy and detailed, alleging all manner of moral turpitude, unseemly conduct and dangerous behaviour. It appeared that a raid against river pirates on the Urskoy had almost caused a tiny war between the Empire and Kislev, rattling Tsar Radii Bokha's cage enough to prompt a strong diplomatic complaint. However, scrawled in a different hand from the rest of the document was an instruction that the indictment not be proceeded with, over the personal signature of Maximilian von Konigswald, one of the old Emperor's closest advisors. Evidently, Prince Vastarien had been let off, the tsar appeased some other way.

  'Who are the heroes of the day, Rosanna?' Harald asked. 'That mysterious fellow who's said to be the scourge of goblins and beastmen? Detlef Sierck, genius and defier of Drachenfels? Hagedorn, the wrestler who could put anyone on the mat three out of three falls? Graf Rudiger von Unheimlich, the foremost huntsman of the Empire? Your intrepid swordsman friend, the Baron Johann von Mecklenberg?'

  Rosanna blushed at the mention of Johann. He was with his brother, back on their estates in the Sudenland.

  'Well, when I was a lad, Prince Vastarien was one of those names. The traitor Oswald von Konigswald was another, so that goes to show how seriously you should place your trust in heroes. If Vastarien did a tenth of the things the ballads and chap-books claim he did, he was the greatest citizen of the Empire since Sigmar. He was also probably the most completely insane fool that ever lived. He raised his own cadre of fellow heroes, and fought his campaigns, ignoring Imperial edicts, smiting whoever he decided was the enemy of his cause.'

  'Vastarien's Vanquishers?'

  'That's what they called themselves. Next time you see the Baron Johann, ask him about a man called Vukotich. Iron Man Vukotich.'

  'I am not likely to be seeing'

  'I'm sorry,' he said, in a rare moment of solicitousness, 'I shouldn't tease like that. We all have our scars. Anyway, our Warhawk×the first Warhawk×was one of the prince's heroes.'

  He turned the scroll over, and tapped a list of names, written in a watery ink that had faded to pale blue.

  'Here,' he said, 'see'

  Rosanna's eyes ran down the list. The Vukotich Harald had mentioned was there. And, near the bottom, the single word, 'Warhawk'.

  VIII

  Harald didn't get out to Mundsen Keep very often. Too many old acquaintances were permanent guests here. This black, slit-windowed pile beyond the city walls was where Altdorf dumped its human refuse. Debtors and murderers, revolutionists and thieves, out-of-favour courtiers and long-forgotten scapegoats. All ended up in the depths of the Keep. Even here, in the governor's airy and well-lit apartments, the aura of misery was strong.

  Rosanna had never visited the prison, and he could tell she was appalled by the place. The Keep was outside the city walls because no one could stand to live too close to the human stench that hung around it. No amount of lye and water could dispel the stink.

  She didn't say anything, but Harald knew she was thinking of the criminals she'd helped send here. Since Baron Johann left for the Sudenland, Rosanna had been very helpful to the watch. Without her, there would be a few more felons loose in the streets and sewers. And without the watch×now she was no longer welcome at the Temple of Sigmar×Rosanna would have no means of income.

  Governor Gerd van Zandt received them in his office, and listened patiently to Harald's request.

  'Out of the question,' Van Zandt said, fluttering a heavily-scented handkerchief under his large nose.

  The prisoner Stieglitz is in solitary confinement and is to have no contact with the outside world. There are revolutionists everywhere, they constantly try to smuggle messages in or out.

  'Are you suggesting that I'm a Brustellinite?'

  Harald glared at the governor, who quivered and looked away.

  'No, er, not at all, Captain Kleindeinst. It's just that rules and regulations, you know we must have discipline.'

  'Rickard Stieglitz is still alive?'

  'Um, yes,' Van Zandt sputtered.

  'Fine, then it is imperative we speak with him.'

  'As I said, that is, um, not possible.'

  Harald leaned over, and took hold of Van Zandt's ruffled shirt-front, getting a good grip, hoping some of his flabby flesh was caught in the folds. He hauled the man out of his padded chair and lifted him into the air, letting his skinny legs dangle.

  'Nothing is impossible in Mundsen Keep, governor. Prisoners can get extra food, ale enough to drown a halfling, a supply of weirdroot, jars of olla milk, even the occasional woman or pretty-boy All it takes is influence, money, a favour. We both know that. And we both know no money changes hands in the Keep without a tithe slipping your way.'

  'This is outrageous these charges ridiculous'

  'I don't care, Van Zandt. I send them here and that's an end of it. What you do then is up to you. And the Imperial Prison Reform Committee. I have friends on that committee. Maybe I should see my old friends more often. Talk things through. I'm well-known for my strict views on penal conditions. I could be called in to give testimony. And that testimony could go either way.'

  'Ah ah ah'

  'I hate criminals. They make my stomach churn. And do you know how my stomach feels now? Like a storm at sea, Van Zandt. As if there were a criminal very close by. Almost as close as the end of my arm.'

  Van Zandt's shirt was tearing and blood had drained out of his face.

  'Vou understand me?' Harald said, dropping the governor back into his chair.

  Van Zandt nodded. 'Yes, I understand.'

  'Good, now arrange for my associate and I to see the prisoner, Stieglitz.'

  'Yes, of course, right away, captain'

  Van Zandt hurried out of his office. Harald turned to Rosanna, and shrugged.

  'What else could I do?'

  The scryer must disapprove of him, of his methods. But they worked well together. She would accept anything that bore fruit. Before, he had not been the kind of watchman who did well with a partner×he'd buried too many good men×but Rosanna Ophuls was different. Her expertise was in a different area, and complemented his. His stomach and her conscience had given many criminals cause to regret their sins.

  'I still don't understand,' she said. 'This revolutionist, what does he have to do with the Warhawk?'

  Harald patted the scroll, rolled up in his belt.

  'One of the habits of heroes is that they die young. Plain men like me live to an old age, but heroes tend to go down fighting. Do you think that Konrad fellow intends to die in bed of the go
ut? So, it follows that a thirty-year-old list of Vastarien's Vanquishers isn't likely to have many still-warm bodies on it.'

  'Stieglitz is one of them?'

  'That's right. Lucky for us. In his youth, before he fell in with Brustellin and Kloszowski and the rest of the firebrands, Rickard Stieglitz was one of Vastarien's muscle-flexers. An axe-hefting mountain of meat and bone.'

  'How did someone like that wind up dedicated to the overthrow of the aristocracy?'

  'Someone with a title took his wife, killed his children and cut off his arm.'

  'That would do it.'

  'When he was captured after the fog riots, he had his ears clipped. I understand there's not much of him left.'

  Harald had never been with the special corps who rousted the ten brands of revolutionist who preached sedition against the Emperor. That was a militia job. Sometimes the palace guard or the Knights Templars of Sigmar helped out. A simple copper had no politics.

  'You hope he'll be sane enough to remember the Warhawk's real name, if he ever knew it, and well-disposed enough towards the watch, who penned him up here, to share the knowledge with us?'

  Harald's stomach was eating away at him again.

  'He has no reason not to, Rosanna. Our murderer is no champion of the oppressed. The Warhawk is just a scummy killer. If Stieglitz is still enough of an idealist to want justice for all, he'll help.'

  'Sometimes you sound like a Brustellinite yourself.'

  Harald spat. 'Revolutionists? I hate 'em. Dreamers and bullies and trouble-makers.'

  The door opened, and a prisoner was dragged in by two trusties. The man was weighed down with chains, his head hung. His ears were scabbed over, his face a ruin of scars and his left arm missing. Those were the injuries Harald had been expecting. Also, one of his eyes was gone, one bare foot was inflated with pus to the size of a football, only the little finger and thumb remained on his right hand, and through his rags there were obvious burn-marks on his back and chest. The mountain of meat and bone had been worn down to a pathetic hump.

  Rosanna shuddered and stifled a cry. The trusties dropped the prisoner on the floor and the server went to him, helping him huddle into a sitting position.