JAHRDRUNG
Krieger

 

 

Looking back now, it’s hard to believe that I was ever actually impressed by that blinkered old bigot, Theodrus. His mind was as closed to new thinking as a cast-iron strongbox. He could not bring himself to believe that there might be another way, another avenue of knowledge more far-reaching and powerful than his own. For he was a coward at heart, afraid of those who dared to question the primitive, out-dated understanding of the world that he held to be irrefutable truth, a way of thought that he would not let go of, like a mongrel with a scavenged leg of mutton. The guild master was a craven, opinionated sop whose position of power and influence was built on a feeble-minded adherence to the received knowledge and practices of others.

But looking back, however much I might despise the memory of Theodrus, it is nothing compared to the hatred and contempt I hold even now for that whoreson witch hunter, Ernst Krieger, Barakos take him.

Witch hunters! A pox on them! May they rot in the festering hells of their own creation, burning perpetually at the stake, throttled by their own intestines, as they have sent so many untold thousands to their deaths, innocent and guilty alike.

They dare to call themselves templars, divinely inspired holy warriors, knights of Sigmar. In truth they pursue their own obsessive hunts and exorcise their own daemons on the frail flesh of others.

They are a plague upon mankind, worse than anything the servants of the Ruinous Powers could ever conjure up. They claim piety and to be the true servants of Sigmar, yet they spread suspicion like a sickness. Their unbridled paranoia and pathological mistrust of others unnerves, terrifies and ultimately alienates the Heldenhammer’s otherwise faithful flock.

None can match their impossible, exacting ideals and expectations, so all—save Sigmar himself—are found wanting. And since they are the representatives, and instruments, of Sigmar’s divine retribution on the earthly plane, anyone they suspect of heresy is immediately considered to be guilty. And of course anyone who dares to disagree with them is a heretic.

They are mentally unbalanced, obsessive, irrationally paranoid individuals. They will burn, drown or put to the sword anyone—regardless of age or gender—without clemency. They are utterly without mercy and most of them are without reason of any sort. They encourage fanaticism and the mortification of the flesh, knowing little of its power. They breed discontent and spread antagonism in their wake.

Their idea of justice is to put the accused through one of their barbaric ordeals. They extract confessions, false or otherwise, by torture, many of those they abuse in this way succumbing before ever facing the ultimate punishment the witch hunters have proscribed for them—much to the villains’ disappointment and chagrin.

There are few who escape the prying suspicious intentions of witch hunters, not even others of their accursed kind. They are dangerous individuals whose merest word can stir up mass hysteria among a town’s populace and encourage a mob mentality that results in rioting and causing an otherwise peaceful crowd to bay for blood. Anyone who is slightly different can end up dead—strung up from the gallows or burnt at the stake—killed by people’s fear of what they don’t understand.

I hate them all with a burning black passion—this I do not seek forgiveness for—and none more so than that daemon Ernst Krieger.

 

The rest of the month of Nachexen passed in a whirl of excitement for the newly inducted apprentice of Bögenhafen’s physicians’ guild. Despite the promising signs that had appeared earlier in the month that spring was coming, now it seemed that winter showed no sign of releasing the town from its icy grip. In fact the weather seemed to worsen and the temperature dropped again as the days and weeks passed, to the point where on the twenty-first day it seemed that the relentless River Bögen itself might freeze and bring the barge traffic on the river to a standstill. Despite this fact, there still seemed to be a fair number of barges passing through the town bearing cargoes from as far away as Talabheim and the port of Marienburg.

But the cold weather did nothing to deter the increasingly enthusiastic Dieter Heydrich from his studies. As each day passed, he began to feel that he had truly found his calling in life, his vocation. Indeed his passion for his subject blazed so strongly within him that he barely noticed the cold of the attic room he shared with fellow student Erich Karlsen, a damp cold that seeped through his robes and even the blankets on his bed, as if his enthusiasm warmed him and kept the cold at bay at this dead time of the year.

For Dieter, Nachexen passed with daily attendances at the physicians’ guild listening to lectures given by the Guild Master Professor Theodrus and other senior members. Much time was also spent preparing the ointments, solutions, syrups, unguents and powdered remedies used by the physicians when practising medicine.

To begin with, Dieter was put to work preparing those medicines required by the respected sage Doktor Hirsch, who counted members of the noble merchant families of the town amongst his patients.

But then on the morning of Backertag the following week, after only five days’ service to Doktor Hirsch, Dieter received a summons to the chambers of Professor Theodrus himself.

“You show promise, Heydrich. You appear to have an almost intuitive understanding of the human body and its humours,” the professor told him at their meeting.

And that was that. Dieter was now apprentice to the head of the guild himself.

When he wasn’t attending to those duties he now fulfilled for Professor Theodrus, Dieter spent as much time in the library as he could. The keeper of the books, one Kubas Praza, quietly boasted that the Bögenhafen physicians’ guild’s library rivalled that of the guild house in Altdorf and contained some rare texts that could not even be found in the Shallyan temple in the city of Couronne over the Grey Mountains in the land of Bretonnia, the centre of the Cult of Mercy.

Erich continued to attend to his duties at the guild haphazardly and once it became common knowledge that Dieter was his roommate, the errant apprentice’s mentor—or rather overseer—Doktor Panceus stopped Dieter in the corridors of the guild house on more than one occasion to berate Erich and put the onus on Dieter to cajole his slovenly, defiant fellow lodger to attend.

One such incident occurred when Dieter and Leopold were making their way to a lecture on the last Konigstag of Nachexen. Leopold was updating Dieter with regard to the latest outrageous rumours about the phantom Corpse Taker when a wild white-haired man, as bony as a skeleton and as drawn as a plague victim, burst out of a door only a matter of feet in front of the two. He looked up and down the corridor, his soot-smeared face a portrait of fury. Dieter recognised the aging physician at once.

“Shallya damn him!” the old man exclaimed, his outburst making him cough phlegmily. “Where is that insolent whoreson wretch?”

Then his wild, bradawl eyes fixed on Dieter. “Heydrich! Where is Herr Karlsen, eh? Where is he, the blackguard?”

Dieter and Leopold were pulled up abruptly. Everyone knew Doktor Panceus. Panceus was Erich’s long-suffering master at the guild. He was renowned as an expert in the field of alchemical chemistry and was also slightly feared as being an irascible, unpredictable character.

“Um. I don’t know, Doktor Panceus,” Dieter said nervously, hoping that he didn’t sound as uncertain and as wavering as he felt.

“You don’t know? You don’t know? You lodge with him don’t you? Isn’t that what I heard? Eh?”

“I haven’t seen him today, doktor,” Dieter added, feeling that he was being blamed for Erich’s absence from the guild.

Leopold looked from Dieter to the wild-eyed doktor and back again, but said nothing.

“Probably drinking his poor father’s fortune away, I expect, down in one of those seedy dockside bars. Or still under the covers with some schilling and farthing whore!”

Panceus suddenly grabbed Dieter roughly by the front of his robe and pulled his face close to his own hooked beak of a nose. The doktor’s visage was pockmarked and wild white hair seemed to burrow up out of every part that wasn’t smeared with soot and the residue of Shallya knew what bizarre, unstable experiments. His breath stank of sulphur for some reason.

Indeed, Doktor Panceus had a reputation for being one of the only guild members who still actively experimented and tried to advance the boundaries of his science, rather than merely passing down previously received knowledge and honing delicate handiwork skills such as suturing, cauterising and amputation.

Dieter found himself staring into the bulging pinprick pupil eyes of the crazed master apothecary.

“Is it any wonder I give him the midden jobs if he never bothers to turn up? That boy has to learn respect. How can he hope to practise medicine if he has no respect? Damn his eyes! I’ll have to get Georg to do it.”

Dieter glanced over Panceus’ shoulder, unable to bear the doktor’s needling gaze any longer. The room beyond the Panceus’ open door was a smoke-darkened chamber, the brickwork of a huge fireplace dominating the room blackened with soot. Dieter could feel the heat radiating from the brickwork inside the laboratory. Cowering beside the chimney breast was an even more soot-stained urchin whose job it was, for a measly three farthings a week, to keep the fire hot and keep a watch on the cauldrons hanging over the flames. The birch Panceus used to beat the boy, if he ever failed in his duties, hung on the wall next to him. The rest of the room was cluttered with wooden work benches littered with alembics and various pestles and mortars full of brightly coloured compounds.

“Well when you next happen to bump into Herr Karlsen, tell him that if he lets me down again I shall have to have words with the professor about his position within the guild,” Panceus spat.

From what Dieter had gleaned from his occasional conversations with Erich in the Cutpurse’s Hands, the heir to the Karlsen estates was in truth assured as long as his father kept paying the guild fees. And his father would, as long as it kept Erich away from his family estates.

 

In terms of his practical ability, as well as his mental acumen, it soon became apparent that Dieter was a fast learner and a skilled practitioner. By the time the lightening skies and thawing frosts of Jahrdrung had supplanted the bitter chill of Nachexen, it seemed that Dieter had learnt as much in the past month as his roommate Erich had learnt in the past two years, if not more.

However, despite his unabashed resentment and bitterness, which he made no effort to hide in front of Dieter, his roommate’s passion for physick did seem to be rubbing off on Herr Karlsen, who began attending the guild on a more regular basis. Or it might just have been a result of the warning he received following Panceus’ latest complaint to Theodrus, Dieter was of course prepared to admit.

But perhaps Dieter’s passion intrigued him. Perhaps it was just the challenge—the mutual competition—he needed to buck his ideas up and make an effort once again. However, Dieter soon learnt that part of the reason for Erich’s apathy had been because no matter how hard he tried, he simply did not have the natural aptitude for the subject that the country boy from Hangenholz did. So it was that Erich also harboured a growing jealously towards Dieter.

“I like you, Herr Heydrich,” he had said once as they shared another bottle of Reikland Hock that Erich had procured, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t envy you and hate you with a passion. You’re a simple country boy, naive and innocent and no mistake, but you have an intellect as sharp as a Carroburg broadsword and an ability that could rival that of Theodrus himself.”

Erich emptied his glass and poured himself another half glass. Dieter had hardly touched his wine. He had discovered that it went to his head too quickly if he wasn’t careful. Erich, on the other hand, seemed to be able to down a bottle by himself and not show any ill effects at all.

“I don’t think you realise how talented you are,” Erich went on, “but others do, including Theodrus. That could go either way for you. It could make you his rival, in his eyes, and have him put you down at every opportunity. But I think he’s too arrogant for that. So it could mean he’ll look on you with favour. And either reason could be why he has you apprenticed under him now; it could be to nurture you, or to keep you in your place. I might not have the ability to become a renowned healer but I know people.”

Throughout the weeks of diligent study, Dieter also received regular missives from his sister Katarina back in Hangenholz. They would come in whenever there was a delivery with a coach running from Karltenschloss, the nearest settlement on the major routes through the Empire, the letters having been taken that far initially by any willing farmer taking his wares to the town to trade.

And amongst all this hustle and bustle of Dieter’s new life, he was still reminded of the life he had left behind whenever he received a letter from his devoted and loyal sister. Katarina’s letters kept him up-to-date with all that was happening in Hangenholz and let him know that his sister was coping there without him, caring for their father, seeing to his needs. They were a comforting reminder to him of home. There were never any letters from his father.

To begin with, Dieter dutifully replied to each and every one of Katarina’s missives, as he had resolved to do, sending them back via the Four Seasons Coach Company, operating out of the Reisehauschen inn. But as time went on and Dieter’s waking hours became more full by the day—preparing medicinal compounds, studying the treasured texts in the guild library and spending time shadowing Professor Theodrus as he went about his doctorial business amongst the rich and titled members of Bögenhafen’s population—he found that resolution starting to slip.

At first his replies became more concise. In contrast, his sister’s epistles were as detailed as ever, telling Dieter all that was happening at home and roundabout with the changing of the seasons, and expressing pride and love in equal great measure for her noble brother the scholar.

But it was only when another such missive arrived on the second Angestag of Jahrdrung that Dieter realised that not only had he not replied to his sister’s previous communiqué, he had not even finished reading it yet. He truly had become less conscientious about replying to them, so caught up was he in his studies.

Looking at the half-finished essay on common diseases of the Reikland—their causes, prevention and cure—that he had been in the middle of composing before the urchin delivering the letter on behalf of the coach company interrupted him, Dieter pushed the parchment to one side with a sigh.

He took up the unread letter that had been sitting on his desk under a pile of books for a week and read it through, poring over every last phrase and syllable, enjoying his sister’s cursive hand and the patterns the words made on the page, feeling a forgotten warmth growing within his heart again. His own handwriting had become little more than a scrawl now, as he tried to jot down everything he wanted to as quickly as possible, so that he might fill his mind with yet more knowledge.

Dieter broke the seal on the more recent missive and read that through too, noting with only a cursory concern that their father had taken to his bed of late and his curate, one Engels Lothair from the nearby hamlet of Gabelbrucke, had been fulfilling more and more of his priestly duties. The son wondered how long the father would, or even could, continue in his work.

Then, both letters read, Dieter took a fresh piece of parchment from the sheaf on his desk, picked up the quill with which he had been writing his essay, and dipping it in the ink well, with a contrite heart began.

 

My dearest Katarina,

 

I must confess that your brother has been lax in his filial duties, so inspired and preoccupied have I been by my studies at the guild here in Bögenhafen. I know I have told you before what a wonderful place it is. So much more than a mere market town, it is a veritable seat of learning. It would seem that all the secrets of nature and the spheres are here to be uncovered among the myriad precious volumes that array the shelves of the guild libraries of this town. I can hardly believe that anywhere can have more knowledge contained within its bounds, not even noble Nuln or Altdorf.

I was pleased to hear that you are not finding the work of caring for our father too onerous and that Josef Wohlreich has been helping keep the garden.

As your brother it is my duty, however, to tell you to beware of Josef’s advances. He is more than twenty years your senior and although I remember him to be a man of some standing in the village, when your duties to our father are complete, do you want to be forever keeping another old man? Do not make the same mistake our mother did.

The world beyond Hangenholz has so much more to offer a young woman such as you. Do not throw your life away, trapped forever within the village of our birth. I believe that we are meant for something more than that.

Please give my regards to our father. I remain ever your devoted, loving brother,

 

Dieter

 

There, he was done. The letter was a fraction of the length of anything he had received from Katarina but his new life was full enough as it was. He was rising at dawn to commence his studies and would then spend a full day at the guild, learning all he could from the senior members there, not just his apprentice-master Professor Theodrus.

Most days Dieter would leave after dusk had taken hold of the town and make his way back to his lodgings in Dunst Strasse, joining the labourers, traders and artisans returning to their homes for the night, passing watch patrols and evening revellers as they made their way through the streets of Bögenhafen. The streets were as full of hustle and bustle as they were during the day at this hour. Soon the revellers would be ensconced within their favourite drinking establishments and stews on the Hagenstrasse, the lamplighters work would be done until the morning snuffings, and those exhausted by a day’s work would be safely at rest at home. The streets then would only be home to the night watchmen, schilling and farthing whores and those who had no business being about at all.

Most nights Dieter would take his evening meal at the Pestle and Mortar, and sometimes Erich would join him and spend the time berating Doktor Panceus, mocking the boy Georg and their fellow students, or lamenting the state of his life in general. Erich was a talented and heartless mimic, and Dieter had to admit that he had the various characters from the guild down pat.

The meal was always modest fare—a hunk of bread, a slab of hard cheese, cold meats—and once it was done he would politely excuse himself from Erich’s company and return to the garret room they shared where he would work into the night by candlelight, filling his notebooks with all that he had learnt and continuing to peruse the works of other practitioners in the field that he had borrowed from the library.

Sometimes Dieter would hear Erich return to their lodgings as he was settling down to sleep but just as often he would be disturbed later in the night by his roommate’s drunken shushing, or then again, not at all.

Apart from Erich’s growing, self-pitying jealousy and resentment, life really couldn’t be better for Dieter at that time.

At least, that was, until Brother-Captain Krieger of the Templar Order of Sigmar arrived in Bögenhafen.

 

Dieter was unsurprisingly studying at the guild at the time. He was firmly ensconced within his favourite musty haunt of the library within one of the enclosed, heavy oak study stalls that stood in the centre of the high-ceilinged space between the groaning teak bookcases, studying the Il Corpo Umano, by the eminent and long-dead Tilean physician-philosopher Umberto Casale. His first awareness of a disturbance was when he thought he heard shouting and pounding footsteps in the corridor outside the draughty, two-storey hall of the library.

The students of the guild had already heard of the arrival of Brother-Captain Krieger in Bögenhafen, his name being linked as it was with that of the Corpse Taker. Rumour spread like an unchecked flood through the laboratories and common room of the guild. The word amongst the students was that Krieger had been sent from the headquarters of the order’s temple in that centre of Sigmar worship, Altdorf. Word was that he had come riding into the town on a midnight black stallion, arriving as the clock struck midnight on the twenty-third day of Jahrdrung, to put the Bögenhafen chapter house in order. Word was that he was in the town to discover the identity of the Corpse Taker and hunt the macabre felon down.

In fact it had been all anyone was talking about in the Pestle and Mortar two nights earlier. Erich was finishing off his second flagon of ale far too quickly, whilst Dieter was still supping at his first of the evening. “I’d pay anything to see their faces down at the guild when this Krieger gets round to investigating them,” Erich was chuckling cruelly. “And he will. There’s always been a deep distrust between the Order of Sigmar and the physicians’ guild.” Dieter had even smiled at the thought too. But that had been two days ago and things were about to take a very serious turn for the worse as far as Dieter was concerned.

With a crash, the heavy oak door of the library opened, shattering the scholarly, musty silence of the place. The library usually had an almost sacred stillness to it, like a holy sanctuary, but now that had been banished by the arrival of the witch hunter.

He had the bearing of a man used to having to get what he wanted by force, and who was happy to do so. And certainly no feeble physician’s apprentice was going to stand in his way.

The man stood over six feet tall in his leather riding boots and although he looked to have already reached middle age, rather than making him appear past his prime he simply looked all the stronger for it. Dieter could see cords of muscle tightening at the man’s neck as he laid eyes on him.

Krieger’s profile was one of chiselled nobility, his jaw jutting and distinguished, his grey hair and neatly trimmed beard close-cropped. His eyes were sharp, piercing points of brilliant sapphire blue and his bared teeth were set in a snarling canine grimace. He had the unmistakable look of a killer about him, even to one as naive and inexperienced of life as Dieter.

The witch hunter did not favour the wide-brimmed buckled black hat worn by so many of his kind, nor did he sport a whole array of talismans and holy symbols of his faith. He was simply dressed as a warrior, in leather armour sewn with metal rings. A sheathed sword hung from his belt, as did the various other tools of his trade, including a coil of rope and a set of thumbscrews. He did not need to dress to intimidate or prove his holy worth. There was an almost intangible air about him that suggested his actions and his deeds would be proof enough that he was the best man for the job.

“Herr Heydrich!” the witch hunter captain boomed.

Dieter felt cold shock at hearing the witch hunter call his name. But the commanding tone demanded respect and Dieter found himself slowly rising to his feet. “Yes, sir?”

“With me, now, heretic!”

Dieter noticed Friedrick Koss, a fellow apprentice in his first year of study at the guild, standing at the witch hunter’s shoulder. Koss, a whole head shorter than Krieger, was looking at Dieter with undisguised detestation. Dieter knew that many of the other apprentices were jealous of his ability and position within the guild, just as amidst the petty politicking of the guild some of the more senior physicians were envious of Professor Theodrus’ position. It was one of the reasons why Theodrus surrounded himself with an entourage of like-minded guild members and wide-eyed idolising students.

Dieter knew that Friedrick was apprenticed to Benedict Vergis, the renowned herbalist, who was known to be one of the strongest rivals to the professor’s position, even though he publicly paid fealty to Theodrus. If Theodrus’ most favoured pupil was to be handed over to the witch hunters then the guild master’s own position would be brought into question and put into jeopardy, and Vergis would be able to take subtle steps to wrest control of the guild’s interests from Theodrus. And if Koss were the one to provide Vergis with that opportunity, it would do his own advancement within the guild no harm at all.

Dieter felt physically sick. He had only encountered Krieger’s like once before, eight years earlier, back in Hangenholz. The villagers had only known the heavily cloaked and hooded stranger by the name Kreuzfahrer but Dieter’s father, had told him the man’s profession.

Kreuzfahrer had arrived as dusk was falling one Nachgeheim evening when the smoky autumn air was thick with the smell of decaying fallen leaves and toadstool spores. He had made straight for the house of Old Gelda, the village wise woman, and dragged her out into the village square. She was accused of witchcraft and consorting with daemons.

Dieter still doubted the validity of the accusations to this day but what made it worse was how the witch hunter had made everyone in Hangenholz turn on Gelda, who had seen to all of their winter ailments and delivered fully half the population of the village as midwife. In order to prove themselves innocent of her corruption, the villagers had to profess the helpless old woman’s guilt with ever-louder voices and more strident accusations.

Gelda, terrified tears streaming down her panic reddened cheeks, had been unable to say anything in her own defence, Kreuzfahrer having already cut out her tongue. Then, in front of his father’s chapel, Dieter had watched the witch hunter tie Gelda to a fence post the blacksmith himself had hammered into the ground, and had her burnt to death, even forcing the village headman to put the blazing torch to the faggots piled around her decrepit body. It was this experience alone that had given Dieter nightmares as a child more than any warning tales of rat-headed men or brutish greenskin raiders ever had. The rest of the village had suspected each other of all manner of heinous crimes after Kreuzfahrer’s visit and as a result, certain families never trusted one another again.

And now one like him had summoned Dieter and called him a heretic!

Dieter dared not disobey the witch hunter. Feeling his blood ran cold in his veins, and his heart beating its own rapid tattoo of panic, he dragged his leaden feet towards the imposing figure of the Brother-Captain Krieger.

Now Dieter could see Professor Theodrus forcing his way into the library behind the towering witch hunter.

“This is preposterous! An outrage!” the guild master blustered. “First you come here practically claiming that we are harbouring a murderer and body-snatcher within our walls—”

“Where do you get the bodies for your studies?” the witch hunter’s grim snarl of a voice interrupted.

“We are not barber-surgeons! We are physicians!” Theodrus bridled. “And now I find you harassing one of our students as if he’s some dangerous criminal!”

Before Dieter’s patron could reach them, Krieger had grabbed Dieter roughly with a grip like an iron vice, clamping down on his arms and holding them tight to his sides. Dieter could feel Krieger’s breath, hot and rancid against his neck.

“Unhand this boy at once!” Theodrus’ face was flushed red with furious indignation and barely-controlled rage, like a caged feral beast struggling to free itself from beneath the professor’s usually composed demeanour.

“Would you stop the work of the Sigmar’s own templar?” Krieger challenged.

“I might have been foolish enough to let you in here in the first place but I’m not that addle-brained!” Theodrus railed. “But might I suggest that we continue this discussion behind closed doors.”

“You wish this interrogation to be carried out somewhere less public?” Krieger fixed the guild master with his piercing icy stare. “Very well. Where?”

“My study. This way.”

Dieter yelped in pain as the witch hunter grabbed him by the arm and forced it up behind his back until he was sure he heard something snap and pain stabbed through his elbow. Then he was frog-marched away.

 

Before he knew it, Dieter was being forced down into one of the well-upholstered chairs in Professor Theodrus’ study. As the professor closed the door behind them, a jostle of apprentices and guild servants already packing the corridor behind them, the witch hunter took a coil of rope from his belt and lashed both Dieter’s hands roughly to the arms of the chair. Dieter winced and gritted his teeth as the hemp rubbed and cut into the thin flesh of his wrists.

Then the questioning began.

“Where were you on the night of the first Wellentag of last month? And on the seventh night of Nachexen? What brought you to Bögenhafen?”

Krieger’s constant challenges didn’t give Dieter enough time to answer. Then the questions became more personal.

“Why did you leave… Hangenholz, was it? Why did you leave? What guilty secrets did you leave behind you there? Has death always followed in your wake? What of your father? What was it like having a priest of the death-cult for a father?”

Someone’s tongue had obviously been loosened on meeting Brother-Captain Krieger. Dieter wondered who had told the witch hunter about him.

“Morr, preserve me,” Dieter gasped under his breath, panic having gripped him fully.

“What? What was that?” Krieger turned on him. “Why not ‘Sigmar save me’? Was your father a heretic too? Did he teach you his heretical ways?”

“No,” Dieter struggled. “It was never like th—”

“What were you doing on all those long, dark, lonely evenings, whilst your father prepared the bodies of the dead for burial? I expect you used to watch, didn’t you? Watch and learn? How did it make you feel watching him strip the carcasses and wash them, anoint them, enshroud them? Did you become just a little too interested? Morbidly fascinated even? How long have you been practising occult heresies of the most abominable nature, raising the dead by means of foul necromancy?”

The witch hunter clearly wasn’t interested in what this naive country boy had to say. In Krieger’s mind, Dieter was already tried, found guilty, and burning at the stake.

“What made you do it, eh? What drove you first to kill?”

“I… I didn’t k—”

“Did someone disturb you when you were stealing the merchant’s body?”

“A merchant? I didn’t reali—”

“Was it the beggar Hubertus? Is that what happened to him? Did you make him disappear? What did you do with the body? Did you throw it in the Bögen? What did you do with the other bodies? Are you keeping them somewhere? Do they keep you company in the squalid charnel house that you call home?”

Spittle flew from Krieger’s lips into Dieter’s face as his incensed interrogator leaned closer. Dieter said nothing now. He could say nothing in the face of the witch hunter’s constant barrage of questions.

“I can have every house between here and the Langen Strasse searched. But why don’t you just tell me where you’ve dumped them? What will loosen your tongue? Shall I get out the thumbscrews or should I haul you back to the temple to introduce you to Madame Rack?”

Dieter was stunned into silence. It was all happening so quickly. To him the interrogation was passing in a daze, so traumatic was he finding the experience. He had retreated back inside his shell of shyness. He was a child again, back in Hangenholz, before his mother died, before his world ended, before this!

He could well understand why innocent men confessed to all manner of crimes. It wasn’t even just to make the incessant questioning stop. After several hours of this, Krieger could probably make you believe all manner of evils about yourself. And then there was the confessional of the torture chamber where stronger wills than Dieter’s were broken as easily as a hammer breaks an egg.

Dieter might have been cowed into silence, but Professor Theodrus could still speak, and did, in the boy’s defence.

“This stops now!” the guild master roared, slamming his hands down on the top of his desk.

Krieger rose, turning away from Dieter, his sapphire gaze cold as a Mondstille night.

“Why do you defend this wretch?” the witch hunter said, his voice as hard and cutting as a tempered steel blade. “Is it a sign of your own guilt, perhaps?”

“This interrogation is a farce!” Theodrus bellowed. “I would offer any member of this guild the same support in the face of such flagrant lies and fraudulent accusations.”

“Unless they were proved to be a servant of darker powers, of course.”

“Which Heydrich is not!”

“That is yet to be proved.”

“How can this boy be the Corpse Taker? He only arrived in Bögenhafen at the beginning of Nachexen and the disappearances began as far back as last Kaldezeit, as far as we are aware.”

“Bodies have gone missing since, and with increasing regularity.”

“And there is nothing to suggest that these disappearances are the work of anyone other than the Corpse Taker.”

Through the haze of the trauma of his experience Dieter was gradually aware of a needling thought at the back of his mind. Professor Theodrus seemed very well informed regarding the disappearances and the Corpse Taker’s alleged crimes. What part had he played in these events?

He had been master of the physicians’ guild for a good number of years and enjoyed the patronage of many of the market town’s most respected noble families. There would be almost nowhere that he could not go within the town and almost no piece of information that would not be accessible to him, one way or another.

“And how could a youth of meagre means, who grew up in a backwater Reikland village, be able to carry out what it is claimed the Corpse Taker has done?”

“Theodrus, I came to this guild to gather information about events that have beset this town that I might uncover the identity of this foul carrion creature and hunt it down like the mongrel dog the malevolent fiend undoubtedly is. And then I find this heretic skulking in your very midst.”

Krieger turned his crystal-sharp gaze back on the restrained Dieter. “Consider this possibility, professor. Perhaps it is you who is tutoring the apprentice in the ways of dark magic.”

“This is preposterous!” Theodrus’ face was the very picture of fury. “I am calling an end to this farce right now. If you propose to question this student any more, then you had better take him off to your temple and you had better have some proof to back up your wild accusations. Or do I need to remind you of this guild’s influence within Bögenhafen? Now untie the boy at once!”

“Do not dare to threaten me, bloodletter,” the witch hunter growled like a mastiff, a vein pulsing unpleasantly in his neck, “or I shall take you in for questioning along with this wretch,” he said, half-pulling Dieter out of his seat by the scruff of his robes.

“We are not sorcerers here, brother-captain!”

Ignoring Theodrus’ plea Krieger turned his chilling gaze on Dieter again. “Do you realise, Heydrich, that for centuries the proscribed punishment for the practise of this particular heresy was to be burnt at the stake, in agonising torment?”

“I-I did know that, y-yes,” Dieter stammered. To be accused of sorcery was still something that could shame a man, particularly a doktor of physick.

Krieger brought his face even closer to Dieter’s, his eyes wild, burning with the full fury of the retributive inferno. “And in my humble opinion, it still should be. And what is the practice of medicine but one step away from alchemy and that itself is but the first step on the path to the damnation that the study of the magic arts brings. And you, a son of a priest of the death-cult, making a study of the human body. It you ask me you are just a little too well-informed about the frailty of the human form, but obviously not well-informed enough, so you have to continue your study of anatomy by other means.”

“Anatomy is not a subject taught by the guild of physicians,” Theodrus angrily corrected the witch hunter. “As I thought I had already made plain, we are not back-street barber-surgeons, we are members of the most esteemed and venerable guild of physicians. We are men of medicine; men of science.”

“And that in itself is dangerous heresy.”

“Shallya help me, I shall report you to the town council and the elector count’s household myself and have the full might of his armoured fist brought down upon your chapter house!”

For a moment neither the Sigmarite nor the guild master spoke. Dieter saw the men exchange dagger-pointed stares. It was the brother-captain who eventually broke the silence.

“I come from a long family line of witch hunters and warrior priests, and we are proud of our heritage. My great-great-great grandfather scoured Mordheim in the years following the devastation caused by the comet-strike of the Hammer of Sigmar. Mark my words—Brother-Captain Ernst Krieger always gets his man.”

It appeared that a stalemate had been reached but Dieter wondered how long such a status quo would remain.

The witch hunter strode back to the chair to which Dieter was bound. He pulled a gleaming knife from his belt and held it under Dieter’s nose.

“And if you are that man, I will have you excommunicated from the bosom of the Holy Church of Sigmar and then I swear that I will come after you and hunt you down!”

With one sharp motion the witch hunter cut Dieter’s bonds, nicking the flesh of his arm in the process. Krieger turned on his heel to leave. But before he left he had one last warning to offer.

“Remember, I’ll be watching you.”

And then he was gone.

Dieter sagged in the chair where he sat and threw up.