“Not a chance.” The two villagers shook their heads vehemently, so quickly that Rudi couldn’t tell which one had spoken. “You miss your footing out there and you’ll drown for sure.”
“He could be in real trouble,” Rudi urged. One of the bowmen shrugged.
“More fool him for leaving the path, then.” Their minds were clearly made up, and becoming aware of his position, Rudi couldn’t altogether blame them for that. He gestured to Pieter.
“Coming?” The deckhand shook his head.
“I haven’t got my land legs,” he said. “I’d fall in for sure.”
“Fine, go back then.” Rudi felt a surge of anger rising up in him, although whether from unassuaged hunger or disgust at their apparent callousness, he couldn’t be certain. The worst of it was that part of him agreed. If the herbalist remained missing he wouldn’t be able to harm Hanna, even by accident. Forcing the thought away, he held out a hand for the torch. “Just leave me the light.”
He thought for a moment that his companions would try to argue him out of it, but a quick glance at the sun, almost hidden by the horizon, was enough to settle their minds. Pieter leaned out over the stinking mud, just far enough for Rudi’s groping fingers to grasp the torch, and then they were gone, heading back to Nocht’s Landing as fast as they could before the light failed altogether.
Well, fine. It wasn’t the first time Rudi had been left on his own, and somehow he doubted that it would be the last. Returning his attention to the quagmire in front of him, he found the next disturbed patch of grass, and jumped again.
The going was surprisingly easy, and he made good time, better than he would have done had his companions still been with him, he thought. The light from the torch was more than sufficient to pick out the marks he was following, although the flame was burning a little lower now. Once again he felt a brief pang of regret at his impulsiveness. If he didn’t find the missing healer soon, he could be marooned out here himself, without light or a clue as to his direction back to the settlement. It was an almost certain death sentence.
He forced the thought away, along with the memory of his trek through a similar wilderness of mud with Hanna a few months before. They’d found firm ground then, but a nest of skaven too. Feeling the comforting weight of his sword at his hip, and wishing he hadn’t left his bow behind, he hurried on as best he could, trying not to think about how close the dwindling flames were getting to his fingers.
The brand had almost burned down by the time the going underfoot became firmer, and he hurried forward onto solid ground with a sigh of relief. Almost as soon as he did so it scorched his hand, and he dropped it with a yelp of mingled pain and irritation. The light went out, hissing against the wet grass, and the darkness closed in around him.
Too experienced in the ways of the wilderness to panic, he stayed where he was, waiting for his night vision to adjust. Morrslieb was just visible over the horizon, the light it cast as sickly and ill-favoured as always, but even that was welcome. Rudi shivered as his surroundings came slowly into focus, the stars above adding their own modest increment of illumination, and took comfort from the familiar constellations above his head. They, at least, were unchanged, a reassuring presence.
The patch of dry ground he’d stumbled upon wasn’t large, perhaps a score of yards across, but the far side of it was obscured by the first real trees he’d seen since entering the marshes. A small copse of them grew here, frail specimens compared to those he’d grown up surrounded by, but he took heart from their presence. A woodsman all his life, the improbable glade held out the promise of shelter and relative comfort for the night. As if to remind him just what a tenuous hope that was, his stomach growled again.
Well, at least he had his tinderbox, and he was sure he’d be able to kindle a fire. That would be something, and he wouldn’t starve by the morning, he knew that much from experience. He just wasn’t looking forward to the discomfort of another hungry night. He sniffed the air, catching the scent of a roasting rabbit. It seemed as if his mind was beginning to play tricks on him already, reminding him of what he was missing.
As he approached the stand of trees, however, he hesitated. Far from fading away as he’d expected, the scent of cooking meat was growing stronger, and an accompanying flicker of firelight was appearing intermittently between the trunks. Loosening his sword in its scabbard, he moved on, all his old forester’s instincts coming into play, slipping stealthily from one patch of shadow to the next.
Concealing himself behind a trunk somewhat stouter than the rest, he peered cautiously into the open space at the centre of the copse. The trees grew in a ring, he realised, almost a perfect circle, and far too regular to be natural. Who had planted them, and why, he dismissed as fruitless speculation.
A fire had been kindled in the centre of the clearing, and a middle-aged man was warming his hands at it with every sign of comfort. Two coneys, expertly gutted and spitted, were sizzling over the flames, and Rudi’s mouth watered at the smell of them. The fellow was dressed in rough but serviceable clothes, and carried a small shoulder bag like the one Hanna used on her herb-collecting forays.
“Herr Gofrey, I presume.” Further concealment would be pointless, Rudi decided. He stepped forwards into the circle of firelight, keeping his hands well away from his weapons. The herbalist must have assumed that he was completely alone out here, and there was no point in alarming him unnecessarily. To his surprise, though, the man seemed completely at ease with his sudden appearance, simply glancing up for a moment before returning his attention to the browning meat in front of him.
“That’s right,” he said, sprinkling some shredded leaf across them, and sniffing appreciatively. Then he looked up again. “You must be Rudi. I thought you’d be along about now.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“How did you know that?” Rudi’s hand went to the sword at his belt before he was even aware of the movement, and he checked himself in the act of beginning to draw it. The healer looked harmless enough, but he was only too aware of how deceptive appearances could be. On the other hand, there was no point in overreacting. Gofrey didn’t seem at all put out by this sign of distrust, though, glancing away to check on the roasting rabbits as he smiled a welcome.
“Because somebody told me, of course.” He gestured towards the fire. “Sit down and warm yourself. It’s going to be a cold night. We might as well talk in comfort.”
Drawn as much by the scent of the food as by the man’s show of friendliness, Rudi moved closer to the blaze. The warmth was indeed welcome.
“Who told you?” Rudi sat, and accepted a haunch of the sizzling meat. It was only as he began to chew it that the full extent of his hunger struck home, and it was all he could do to restrain himself from bolting the food down like a starving dog. Gofrey watched him eat for a moment with an air of quiet amusement, and then started in on the coney’s other hind leg.
“News travels, even in the Wasteland,” he said around a mouthful of rabbit, leaning forward to sprinkle another pinch of herbs over the second one. As the first couple of mouthfuls eased his hunger, and he began to eat more slowly, Rudi began to appreciate the subtle flavour of his own portion. Clearly, Gofrey had a keen appreciation of herbs, which went far beyond the practicalities of his calling. “Not all of it by the most conventional of routes.”
“You came here to meet someone,” Rudi said. He glanced around the clearing, looking for evidence of other footprints, but night was falling in earnest, and the fire didn’t cast enough light to reveal them.
The healer nodded. “I did. There are places like this all over the Empire, and far beyond it too, probably; anywhere there are people living in fear of the ignorant. People like me, and your friend Hanna.”
“What do you know about Hanna?” Rudi asked, suspicion flaring again. He glanced round at the encircling trees, half expecting Gerhard and his mercenaries to ooze out of the shadows.
Gofrey held out his hand. “I know she can do this. Or somet
hing very like it.” A small flame, tinted a delicate blue like the skies of midsummer, burst into life in his upturned palm. Rudi watched it flicker for a moment, bemused, and then nodded slowly.
“You’re a hedge wizard.”
Gofrey echoed the gesture, and closed his hand, extinguishing the magical flame.
“I see you’ve learned enough not to call me a witch, at any rate.” He held out another portion of rabbit. “Thank you for that.”
“How do you know about Hanna?” Rudi asked, accepting the sizzling meat eagerly. “Or me, for that matter.” He shivered, not entirely from the cold. “Have you been watching us?” He wasn’t sure how that was possible, but some mages, he knew, were able to see through other eyes, or cloak themselves in other forms.
The hedge-wizard laughed. “Some of us stick together,” he said. “We meet from time to time and pass on whatever information we have to share, especially about anyone the witch hunters are taking an interest in. The news about you left Marienburg almost as soon as you did, but it travelled a lot faster than a riverboat.”
“Can you help her?” Rudi asked.
Gofrey nodded. “I can try, but it sounds as if all she needs is rest.”
Rudi shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. If you have friends, and they know about people like Hanna, they must be able to help keep her safe.”
The hedge wizard took another bite of rabbit before replying, clearly buying the time to order his thoughts.
“That’s probably not such a good idea,” he said at last. “Her best chance is to apply to one of the colleges in Altdorf. That’s the only way anyone with the gift will ever be truly safe, and the colleges don’t like us. They’re almost as bad as the witch hunters.”
“You mean you think she’ll betray you if they accept her,” Rudi said.
Gofrey smiled ruefully. “I hope not, but I’ll be moving on from here long before you get to Altdorf, just to be on the safe side. The rest of my friends in the Wheel wouldn’t thank me for placing them in the same situation.”
“Hanna wouldn’t do anything like that!” Rudi said hotly.
“We’ll all do whatever it takes to survive, my young friend.” Gofrey shrugged. “She might surprise you yet.”
Rudi tried not to think about the expression on Gerrit’s face as he lay twitching in the snow, or the bloody ruins of the Black Cap gunners thrashing about on the jetty.
The mage continued. “Besides, how much of a chance do you think she’ll have of getting a college to accept her if they find out she’s been consorting with witches? They’ll burn her on the spot.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Rudi said. There was much the man wasn’t telling him, of that he was sure, but he didn’t press the point. Instead, he stood, and approached the stand of trees. “I’d better get some more wood. Like you said, it’s going to be a cold night.”
Dawn crept slowly through the curtain of trees, shrouded in mist. Rudi started awake, grateful for the residual heat of the fire, the embers of which still glowed warmly in their blanket of ash. He stretched, yawning, feeling surprisingly refreshed. He’d expected to be awake for most of the night, but the warmth of the fire and the food in his belly had combined to make him drowsy surprisingly fast. Or perhaps the herbs that Gofrey had used on the rabbits were for more than enhancing the flavour.
Struck by that thought, and the sudden memory of how Hanna had drugged the mercenaries the night they’d helped Fritz to escape, he sat upright, reaching for his sword again. Then he relaxed. The hedge wizard was snoring loudly, wrapped up in his cloak against the cold. Rudi clambered to his feet, feeling faintly foolish, and went to find a convenient tree.
Returning, with the pressure in his bladder comfortably relieved, he found Gofrey awake and pottering around the clearing.
“Ah, there you are.” The healer hailed him. “I was beginning to think you’d fallen in the swamp.” He sat on a convenient tree branch, and started tying what looked like a lump of moss around his ankle. “I’m afraid we’ll have to put off breakfast until we get back to the landing.”
“I can wait,” Rudi assured him. Compared to the privations he and Hanna had endured on their journey to Marienburg, a late breakfast was barely worth considering. The mist was rising fast, and he would be able to set off and find his way back to the settlement without any danger fairly soon. As if to confirm the fact, a shaft of watery sunshine struck through the latticework of branches enclosing the glade, turning the frost-speckled grass into a rippling mirror. He nodded at the poultice. “What’s that for?”
“Sprained ankle,” Gofrey explained. “Blackmoss makes the flesh swell up, and the skin look bruised. We’ll need some excuse for staying out here all night.” He limped for a couple of paces, nodded in quiet satisfaction, and resumed his normal gait. “I’ll just need to hobble about a bit for a couple of days. Then the next boat to put in will bring an urgent letter from my cousin about a sick relative, I’ll wave everyone here goodbye, and find somewhere else quiet and in need of a healer.”
Rudi nodded. It was clear that despite his assurances, Gofrey was still determined to move on. Well, he couldn’t fault the man for being cautious. He’d obviously stayed ahead of the witch hunters for a long time, decades judging by his appearance. He tried to imagine what that must be like, never being able to settle anywhere or fully trust anyone, and smiled sourly. He didn’t have to imagine it. He might not have mystical powers, but he was in almost exactly the same position as the hedge wizard.
Not quite, though. He still had a goal beyond simple survival, in a world that seemed to become more bewildering and threatening the more he discovered about it. The mystery of his origins continued to torment him, the questions buzzing around his head like flies around a midden; questions he hoped to find answers to in Altdorf. All he had to do was evade his enemies, track down some surviving member of the von Karien family, and…
Well, after that he wasn’t sure. He supposed it would depend on the answers he got. Once Hanna was safe, he’d have to move on again, that much was certain, perhaps further upriver. There were vast tracts of woodland beyond Altdorf, he knew, and he had little doubt that he could live well in them. A lifelong forester, he should be able to elude any pursuers with little difficulty in such an environment. It would be a dubious haven at best, though. Bandits had fled to the forests for generations, and fouler things by far had always lurked in their deepest clearings: things grown more numerous and desperate than ever since the tide of war had turned in the Empire’s favour, leaving the flotsam of the Chaos invasion stranded in isolated pockets wherever they could find places to hide.
Or perhaps they were closer at hand. As the sunlight strengthened, he began to see tracks in the floor of the glade, as he’d hoped to the previous night: his and Gofrey’s, of course, but others too, entering and leaving from other directions. One set caught his eye at once, standing out from the rest because of their depth. Whoever made them was far larger and heavier than an ordinary man. There were other indentations too, just ahead of each step, which seemed to indicate that the feet were equipped with fearsome talons.
His mind racing, Rudi looked more closely at the prints. As he’d half expected, they were accompanied by a second pair, quite normal looking, left by a woman’s shoe.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Greta and Hans had been here?” he asked, as casually as he could. There could be no doubt in his mind. He’d followed the tracks left by the mutant, who had once been Hans Katzenjammer, into the woods outside Kohlstadt, and he’d seen them again in the offices of the lawyer in Marienburg, who had apparently been a part of Magnus’ Chaos cult. These prints couldn’t have been left by anyone, or anything, else. That meant that the woman who’d left her own alongside them must have been Greta Reifenstahl. Gofrey shrugged.
“Who?” His expression was open and ingenuous.
“The woman from Marienburg who told you about us. She’s Hanna’s mother.”
“Ah.” Gofrey nod
ded. “We don’t use names, or show faces either if we can avoid it. In case the witch hunters take one of us and put us to the question. We can’t give up what we don’t know.” The thought seemed to disturb him, as well it might. He shrugged. “Why didn’t you leave town with her?”
“We lost touch,” Rudi said shortly. Gofrey nodded. “What about her… companion?”
“Big fellow, didn’t say much. He kept to the shadows, bundled up in a cloak.” Gofrey shot him a challenging glance. “Yes, he probably was a mutant. They’re just people too, most of them, living ordinary lives, until suddenly they start changing through no fault of their own. If he’s found someone to help him, good luck. Witch or mutant, it doesn’t matter to me. We’re all brands for the bonfire if we don’t stick together.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Rudi said. “He’s saved my life a couple of times, although Sigmar knows he’s got no reason to. I’m just as dead as the rest of you if the authorities catch up with us.”
“Well then.” Gofrey shrugged. “Shall we go?” He turned, and started towards the path leading back to Nocht’s Landing. Finding nothing else to say, Rudi followed.
As they came in sight of the palisade, one of the villagers hailed them, waving frantically, and within moments of passing through the gates they were surrounded by a chattering mob, firing excited questions at them in a babble of overlapping voices, hardly pausing to draw breath or wait for an answer. Gofrey leaned against Rudi for greater effect, his assumed limp growing more exaggerated by the moment, and waved a tolerant hand at his friends and neighbours.
Struck by how glad they all were to see the friend they’d given up for dead, Rudi felt a pang of regret that his and Hanna’s presence would soon force the man to depart. Perhaps this was a foreshadowing of his own future, he thought, forced to wander from one temporary refuge to another for the rest of his life. If Gofrey felt any regrets at being forced to leave, he gave no indication of it, just smiling happily in response to the chorus of greetings as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
[Blood on the Reik 03] - Death's Legacy Page 5