CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

Another dawn, another unfurling of the Imperial ensigns high above the palace, the capital, the Empire, and Konrad gazed over to the north where he could just make out the red roof of Zuntermein’s home.

Never trust a sorcerer…

But he had no real alternative. He could never hope to find Elyssa alone.

He had only once mentioned the girl to anyone, when Wolf had examined the black quiver and Konrad told him that Elyssa had given it to him.

When he had touched Konrad, Zuntermein discovered what had been foremost in his mind—and that was Elyssa. The sorcerer was certainly using what he had found to his own advantage, in order to persuade Konrad to join him, and he could so easily be lying. How could he have known where Elyssa was? But Konrad would only return to Zuntermein’s house if she was there. If she was not, he would leave—but not before he had taken revenge for the wizard’s mendacity.

A few days, Zuntermein had said, in a few days he would know.

Konrad glanced at Taungar, who stood to attention, saluting the embroidered standards as they were unfurled. The sergeant had enlisted him in the Imperial guard, and now he wanted to recruit him as a Chaos cultist…

Could Zuntermein really be a Chaos worshipper? Konrad doubted it. He remembered Kastring and his pagan warband, and he had seen countless other cultists over the years. He knew the price of their blasphemous creed. It cost them everything. They were transformed, becoming part-human, part-animal, until they were no more than the beastmen who were the original creations of Chaos, twisted and mis-shapen in mind as well as in body.

Behind his respectable facade, with his house disguised by the holy symbols of Sigmar Heldenhammer, Werner Zuntermein was playing at being an acolyte of Chaos. It was probably the latest fashion in Altdorf amongst the indolent rich. Somehow Taungar had become involved in the charade, probably because there was a way he could make money out of it.

“I want some money,” Konrad told the sergeant, as again they were the last two to leave the ramparts. “I also need a pass; I have to go into the city today.”

Taungar looked at him. After what Zuntermein had said—although he could not have been aware who the wizard had meant by “she”—he knew that Konrad would return to the palace. He nodded.

“Five crowns enough?” he asked. “I can excuse you from this afternoon’s duties.”

It was Konrad’s turn to nod, and after a morning spent teaching axe combat techniques he left the palace. Like the previous evening, he was clad in civilian clothes because he was not on official duties. He headed across Altdorf, and he felt as uneasy as he had done last night. He wished he could be somewhere else, anywhere except the largest city in the Empire.

The only other city in which he had spent much time was Praag, and that had been under very different circumstances. After it had first been captured and occupied by the regiments of Chaos two hundred years ago, then retaken, Praag had been razed to the ground and completely rebuilt, which meant that most of the buildings in Altdorf were far older. The streets of the capital followed a pattern laid down thousands of years ago, and some of the houses were on sites which had been in constant habitation since the days of Sigmar.

Yet it was not the buildings, no matter how old, which affected Konrad, nor the streets and alleys that paved the ancient earth which had not seen the light of day for centuries. The whole weight of history was like a miasma which he found overwhelmingly oppressive. He felt as if he could move nowhere without bumping into someone; and even when there was nobody close, the ghosts of so many millennia seemed to impede his progress. Even the desolate winter plains of Kislev seemed far more inviting by comparison.

It could only have been the concentration of people that was so disturbing, and he remembered what Zuntermein had said, that humans were a creation of Chaos…

Could that be true? If so, then this was the greatest concentration of Chaos energy he had ever encountered, and perhaps it explained his reaction.

Because Konrad was now himself a creature of Chaos, and like repelled like— or so Litzenreich had once said. Was that not why the forces of Chaos were so divided and forever fighting amongst themselves, the legions of each benighted god in eternal war with the battalions of the other dark deities? They feuded incessantly, one evil army against another.

Litzenreich had also claimed that evil was not a synonym for Chaos. Chaos simply existed, it was mankind who interpreted that existence. Litzenreich had compared Chaos to water; and Zuntermein had compared it to air; and Konrad believed neither of them.

He had become trapped inside a suit of bronze armour—of Chaos armour. That meant he had been contaminated by Chaos. Litzenreich had freed him from his metal prison, but he had used warpstone to do so… and later revealed that the enigmatic substance originally came from the wastelands and was believed to be the cause of all mutations, to have created the beastmen.

Konrad was doubly damned.

And Zuntermein had detected this.

He had used his thaumaturgical senses to do so—Konrad was convinced. It was not that the sorcerer recognized someone who was as infected as himself. Zuntermein had made his fortune through the application of his magical abilities, not through Chaos worship, because such corruption would surely have taken its toll upon his physical form. It was his wizardry which had enabled him to delve into Konrad’s thoughts, and it was the same talent which had led him to locate Elyssa so swiftly—if indeed he had done so.

Having attempted not to think of the girl and what might happen in the next few days, although without much success, Konrad was now trying to concentrate on another matter. He had originally come to Altdorf for one reason, because of the shield that Silver Eye had carried when they fought beneath Middenheim. Konrad wanted to know where the skaven had found the shield, and he also hoped to discover something about its gold emblem. This was a subject which had intrigued him for over a decade, ever since Elyssa had first given him the bow, the ten arrows, the quiver of rippled black hide. Now, at last, here was his opportunity…

 

Except for the Imperial Palace and the Cathedral of Sigmar, the College of Heraldry was the oldest building that Konrad had ever seen. It was hidden away in a back street, which must once have been much wider, and he missed the turning at first and had to retrace his steps and walk down a winding side road. All the other buildings nearby had been built and rebuilt many times, but the ancient college was half-sunken beneath the ground as if it recognized its age and was trying to bury itself. The road outside had risen over the centuries, so that the lower floors of the college had become basements, as the rubbish and debris of the city piled up and the level of the surface had risen. The roof was covered in slates and tiles, every one of which appeared to be of a different colour and size, their variety demonstrating how many times it had been repaired. All the walls and arches and gables were out of true. The whole building was bent with antiquity, like a cripple who somehow managed to survive despite all his deformities.

Konrad climbed down the worn stone steps and knocked on the door. There was at least one other level below, and he noticed that the doorframe was set in what had once been a window. The wood crumbled beneath his knuckles. There was no reply. He pushed on the ancient door, it creaked back on its rusty hinges, and he stepped into the gloom.

It was both dusty and damp inside, and Konrad waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He could see a glimmer of light ahead in the distance, and he made his way along the narrow passageway. The floor was uneven, the walls crooked. As he became more used to the lack of illumination, he noticed that the corridor was lined with plaques, some round, some in the shape of a stylized shield, and each of them had a different pattern painted upon it. They were all coats of arms, he realized, hundreds upon hundreds of them; judging by the way the paint had faded or peeled away they must have been very old. There were a number of gaps on the walls, where the shields had fallen off and not been replaced.

As he was gazing at the display, he trod on something which broke under his weight. He stopped to inspect the object. It was one of the missing shields, decorated with a silver cross on a red background, with some type of hunting bird silhouetted in black in one quarter. The other three designs could not be made out because the paint had come off when he stepped on it. He set the two broken pieces of the rusty plaque down in the corner and kept on walking towards the light.

The corridor opened up into a larger chamber, the walls of which were lined with books, thousands upon thousands of them. They were arrayed on shelves which stretched from floor to ceiling. The shelves were packed solid, and more volumes lay upon the ground, stacks and stacks of them piled high on each other. Nothing was straight. All the shelves were tilted at various angles; and even the piles of books on the floor were not vertical but leaned one way or another. Everything was covered in dust and cobwebs, as though nothing had been touched for aeons.

Yet in the very centre of the room, at a desk which was laden with heaps of manuscripts and documents which spilled over onto the floor, sat two men. There was a lantern between the pair, and they were so engrossed in their studies that they seemed unaware of their visitor. They were each poring over different volumes, making notations on the parchments before them.

“Good afternoon,” said Konrad, his voice sounding very loud in the unnatural silence of the library.

Neither man took any notice for several seconds, and then the younger one looked up. He was only younger when compared to his colleague, being about sixty years old, his hair grey as if with dust. His companion appeared to be at least half as old again, his skin as wrinkled and thin as ancient parchment, and he kept on with what he was doing.

“Have you come about the drains?” asked the younger librarian.

“No,” answered Konrad. “I’ve come about a coat of arms.”

The man sighed, pushing his spectacles to the end of his nose and rubbing at his eyes. “What a pity. There are three feet of water in the lowest level, you know, and it can only get worse. Some of the material we have lost is priceless, priceless. None of it can be replaced, you know.”

“The coat of arms?” Konrad reminded him.

“You have come to the wrong place. These are the archives. If you wish to buy a coat of arms, you must go to the new building.”

“I’ve been there; they sent me here.”

The “new building” had been at least two hundred years old. It was in a much better state of repair, and with more people working there. The clerk at the first desk had shaken his head when he heard Konrad’s request, then directed him to the original building, and charged him a crown for doing so.

“What for?” asked the archivist, sliding his spectacles back into place.

“I’ve seen an emblem,” said Konrad, “and I want you to identify it. You can do that for me?”

“You will have to pay, you know. We are obliged to make a charge for our expertise.”

“I can pay,” said Konrad, jingling the four crowns in his hand.

The archivist selected a sheet of paper, then beckoned for Konrad to come nearer. The older scribe had still not looked up. He remained hunched over the single desk, parchment in front of him, his body leaning across to the massive book next to it.

“Can you describe the crest to me? You have to be absolutely accurate, you know, in every detail. Some coats of arms are so similar to others than only a specialist can detect the difference.”

“It’s a very simple design.”

“What seems simple to a layman may be very complex to an expert.”

Konrad glanced at the scribe, but his face remained expressionless.

“Let us start with the tinctures.”

“What?”

“The colours, you know.” The man gestured to the row of quills in front of him, and Konrad realized that they must all be dipped in different coloured pots of ink.

“There were only two,” said Konrad, “gold and black.”

“Or and sable, that is what we call them.”

“And the design is of a pair of crossed arrows—”

“Fleche en croix, you mean.”

“With a mailed fist in between.”

“Poing maille.”

“The arrows and the fist are in gold. The rest is in black. Or that’s the way it is usually.”

“Usually?”

“The pattern was reversed on the set of arrows. The arrows were of black wood, with a narrow band of gold near the flights, and the emblem was carved into the gold to show the wood beneath.”

“So it was sable dans or on the fleches, instead of or dans sable?”

“If you say so.”

“Where else have you seen this coat of arms? On an ecusson?”

“What?”

“A shield.”

“Yes. Gold on black. Also on a bow and a quiver.”

“An archet and a carquois.” The man made another note, then began asking more questions: “At what angle are the arrows? Do the arrows point up or down? Are the arrowheads very large in proportion to the shafts? Are the flights very large in proportion to the shafts? Which hand is the fist, dexter or sinister? Can you see the fingers? On which side is the thumb? Where is the base of the fist in relation to the tips of the arrows? What size is the fist relative to the lengths of the arrows?”

Konrad answered all the questions as best he could, while the scribe made a notation on the paper at each reply.

He wondered how long the process would have taken if the pattern were more elaborate.

“Good.” The man chose another sheet of paper and took another feathered pen from the row of inkpots in the stand in front of him. A minute later he said: “Like this?”

He gestured for Konrad to look at what he had been doing. He had drawn the arrow and fist design, using black ink upon bleached paper, and it was exactly as Konrad remembered.

“That’s it.”

“It is probably quite old. Later crests have tended to become more complicated, partly for aesthetic reasons, partly because all of the more basic designs have been claimed.”

“There is no such coat of arms.”

It was the old man who had spoken. He had set down his quill, gathered up the book he was studying, wearily risen from his seat and glanced at his companion’s illustration. His body was as hunched as if he were still bowed over his work, his torso leaning to one side, and not under the weight of the heavy volume.

It was almost as if he had contorted himself to fit in with the configurations of the library; or perhaps he had studied here for so long that his whole shape had become stooped and curved whilst the pillars and bricks of the college had been similarly twisted and distorted by the remorseless pressure of time.

“But I’ve seen it,” said Konrad.

“You may have seen the same pattern on various weaponry,” replied the younger man, watching as his colleague slowly shuffled across the chamber, “but that does not mean they are part of a coat of arms.”

“Can’t you check? Look it up in one of your books?”

“There is no need. Herr Renemann is an encyclopedia of heraldry. If he says there is no such coat of arms, then there is no such coat of arms.”

“He can’t know them all.”

“He does.”

“But it could be an old crest, one which no longer exists.”

“They always exist. The family may die out, you know, but their coat of arm remains. We have it in our files. Somewhere.”

“Then it’s from outside the Empire.”

“No. Our records cover the Old World, from Albion to the Border Princes, from Kislev to the Estalian Kingdoms. We do not want to risk bestowing the same crest in Altdorf that might already belong to a noble house in Magritta, for example. Although that is not our department anymore.” The man shook his head sadly. “The coat of arms which you have described does not exist. If you wish, however, you could take the necessary steps to bring it into existence. We could have such a crest assigned to you and your descendants. We can still do that here, you know.” He brightened up at the thought, nodding in approval of his own scheme.

Renemann was wrong, of that Konrad was absolutely certain. The mailed fist and crossed arrow pattern was more than a mere design on a few armaments.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”

“Two crowns?”

Konrad dropped two coins from his right hand to his left. “You mentioned families dying out. Do you keep records of the families who have a coat of arms?”

“Yes.”

“I want to know about a family called Kastring,” he said.

“Where are they from?”

“A village in Ostland, near a town called Ferlangen.”

It was his own village, the village where he had lived for as long as he could remember—although he never felt as if he had truly belonged there. If the village had a name, Konrad never knew it. And he himself had no name until Elyssa gave him one. Elyssa, whose family name was Kastring…

The scribe pushed his spectacles to the end of his nose, gazing over them as he began slowly surveying the shelves of the library. He rose from his seat for the first time and took a single pace towards the nearest line of shelves. He gazed up and down and across for several seconds, then turned towards the end of the room by the entrance. He was much too far away to read what was written on the spines of those books which still had visible lettering. It was almost as if he expected to find the correct reference work without moving.

“Ah-ha!” he said, and it seemed that he did know precisely which volume contained the Kastring lineage. He started towards the distant shelves, waving for Konrad to follow him.

“There,” said the man, as they reached the overflowing ranks of books. “Five rows up from this one, seven, eight, nine books along from the upside down one with red leather binding. You see it?”

“The one called Chron Ost XXXVI, Jud-Kel?”

The man glanced up at Konrad, and he nodded. “Get it down, will you? You are probably more agile than me.”

None of the other volumes nearby had titles which were even remotely similar. It seemed that the books were distributed at random throughout the library. The one that the scribe had specified was too high to reach, and Konrad looked around for a ladder. There must be one, because that was the only way access could ever be gained to the upper shelves.

“Use these,” said the man, tapping the pile of books on the floor next to him.

“If you say so.”

Konrad climbed up onto one of the lower stacks of books, then onto a higher one, using the crumbling ancient volumes as a flight of stairs. Even standing on the tallest pile, he could not quite reach what he wanted, and so he put one foot on top of the books on the nearest shelf, stretched up and managed to slide his fingertips under the spine of the necessary volume. He eased the book out inch by inch, caught it as it fell, then jumped down to the floor.

“We only keep duplicates of the more recent material,” said the scribe, as he put the register on top of a bundle of decaying books and opened the first page. “The originals are in the new building. This seems to need updating, but that is no real surprise. We are somewhat understaffed, as you may have noticed.”

He began leafing through the volume. “Here—Kastring.”

At the top of the page was inscribed the crest which Konrad recognized, a blue diagonal band separating the two halves. The upper left of the shield showed two towers linked by a crenellated wall, red upon white; the lower right showed a signet ring, silver upon purple, and the crest on the ring was that of the Kastring coat of arms.

“A castle and a ring,” commented the librarian, and he shook his head. “I do like the way that the design must become forever smaller and smaller within the ring, however. But what did you want to know?”

Konrad was at his side and already reading the last entry, which finished halfway down the page. The volume did need updating: there was nothing about the Kastring manor house being burned down, the family destroyed.

“According to this,” said Konrad, “Kastring had three sons—Wilhelm, Sigismund and Friedrich. What about his daughter?”

“Let me see.” The man’s fingers traced the family tree. “Sir Wilhelm Kastring. Married Ulrica Augenhaus of Middenheim. Eldest son named after his father, you notice, as was his father before him. Two other sons.”

“Why isn’t the daughter mentioned? Because she was the youngest and her name hasn’t been registered yet?”

“Possibly, although I doubt it. In a genealogical sense, you know, daughters are not very important. The only role of a woman is to produce sons. It is through the sons that the family name passes and the line continues. Daughters are frequently regarded as an unnecessary expense, from the time of birth right up until their wedding day, when a dowry has to be paid to the groom’s family in order to secure the marriage. But even if there were a daughter to this Kastring family, she should be registered for the sake of accuracy. Is that all?”

Konrad nodded, and the man closed the book and put his hand on it.

“Leave it. It needs bringing up to date. Perhaps someday…” He shrugged.

Konrad started counting out coins again. The librarian rubbed his hands together to wipe off the dust and dirt. Konrad gave him the four crowns. Having paid for it, he considered asking for the illustration of the mysterious crest, but he had no need of such a reminder.

“Thank you,” said the man, tucking the coins into his tunic pocket. “If there is ever anything else we can do for you, please do not hesitate to ask.”

The visit had been totally pointless. Konrad had been informed that Elyssa did not exist and neither did the coat of arms—both of which he knew to be untrue.

“You are absolutely certain that there is no such crest?”

“If there is,” said the librarian, “then it is not human.”

 

Not human…

The words echoed in Konrad’s mind over the next two days. The librarian must have been referring to the banners and standards which were borne by the warriors of Chaos; but in Konrad’s experience, all such flags and emblems also contained the blasphemous symbol of whatever unholy entity the berserk troops worshipped. The crossed arrows and mailed fist device was not tainted by such depraved idolatry.

When Konrad had returned to his native village soon after the onslaught, the only signs of habitation that had remained were the outlines of the houses and buildings burned into the ground. Sir Wilhelm and Lady Ulrica must have died in the inferno that had devoured the manor house, and until the day before yesterday Konrad believed Elyssa had perished with her parents.

Her brothers had long before left the valley to make their way in the world— and one of them was to become Konrad’s tormentor during the long and arduous trek from Kislev into the Empire.

Konrad had been hostage to a band of Khorne acolytes, followers of the Blood God whose campaign of mayhem and murder had taken them far across the border. Gaxar was to blame for his capture. In his human disguise, the grey seer had deceived Konrad, then knocked him unconscious. When he regained his senses, he found himself a sacrificial offering to the huntsman of souls. But the leader of the feral band still wore the Kastring crest upon his accoutrements, which Konrad had recognized. That had saved his life—for a while.

Whether it was Wilhelm or Sigismund or Friedrich, he had already begun to pay the high price of his obscene devotion. Kastring’s face and body had become changed, with horns growing from his skull, fur from his flesh, and teeth that were now fangs.

His marauding horde was a bestial rabble, yet it was Konrad who was treated as the caged animal, to be tortured and abused. In the end he had taken his savage revenge, slaying dozens of the dog-faced mutants in a bloody battle that rivalled their own gory ceremonies. And the last one to die had been Kastring himself, impaled upon Konrad’s lance—the bronze knight’s lance…

Before then, Kastring had spoken of Elyssa, and he had claimed that she was not his true sister. Although Elyssa had been unaware of this, it seemed there was some question over her legitimacy. Kastring himself was not sure of the exact details, but he had maintained that Elyssa’s parentage was different from his and his brothers; she was only his half-sister—if that. Perhaps he was correct, and this might explain why her name was not recorded in the Kastring chronology.

Elyssa had found the bow and arrows deep in the cellars of the manor house, and Konrad asked Kastring if he knew of the mailed fist and crossed arrow emblem.

An elf! Kastring had ventured. Some connection with an elf, could it be?

Were they elven implements that Konrad had seen? Was it an elven shield which Silver Eye now used? Elves were as tall as humans, and so it could have been an elven bow with which Konrad had taught himself archery.

Humans and elves could interbreed, he had once been told, so was it possible that Elyssa’s father had been an elf?

Nothing human…

The words echoed in Konrad’s mind over the next two days—and then came Zuntermein’s summons.