CHAPTER THREE

Bruno

Stefan had not been the only one troubled by his dreams. Since coming home to Altdorf, Bruno Hausmann had struggled to bury the past, but the past had refused to die. Memories had returned, time and time again, invading the night hours. At first, the nightmares had come only rarely; Bruno had believed he could live with that. But over the last few weeks he had been visited night after night by the same, terrifying dreams; dreams that filled him with a sense of foreboding that stretched on, long into the waking day. Now his health was in decline; a sick weariness was drenching his body, sapping his strength and reflexes. He was growing sluggish and careless. And, that morning, carelessness was about to cost him dear.

He didn’t react to the sword until it was inches from his face. A rush of adrenaline spared him from the blade as he reeled back. Bruno was seized with the sudden impulse to run, flee in whatever direction would take him away from the conflict. Then he remembered where he was, and why. There would be no escape. The stocky man in his bright new armour had him cornered at the back of the narrow barn. There would be no running from his sword. Bruno would have to stand, and give account of himself here.

A voice roared in his ears. “Defend yourself, sir!” Again the sword sliced the air, just inches from his face. In front of him, a burly, barrel-chested man in bright, burnished armour stood, sword in hand, preparing to strike again.

Defend yourself. Fight back. Bruno raised the new-forged steel of his blade just in time to parry the next flurry of blows. His thickset opponent grinned, sensing that his adversary was at last to make a fight of it, and swung his weapon with a renewed vigour.

Bruno found his sword was light and fast. He parried the blows the knight was aiming at him with something approaching ease. Yet there was a sickness in his limbs and in his mind. The threads of his dreams wound themselves around him, dragging him down into a place of despair. In his mind, he had already lost the fight.

Sweating and swearing beneath his mail and breastplate, the figure in armour began to force Bruno steadily back towards the far wall of the barn. A stray stroke broke through Bruno’s guard and nicked the side of his face. He tasted blood dribbling into his mouth, but felt no pain. A few seconds more, he imagined, and it would surely be over.

His opponent suddenly broke off his attack and stood back, resting on his sword. He scowled at Bruno.

“Come on man, fight me!” he shouted. “Can’t you do better than this?” He whipped the flank of his sword against Bruno’s blade once again.

“Are you useless,” he chided, “or simply a coward?”

The word stung Bruno more than a hundred cuts from a sword. A sudden rage coursed through him, filling him with a new, raw energy. His sword flashed in the air as he beat away his attacker’s blade as though it carried no more weight than a feather. He struck forward with speed and a hungry aggression. Within a few seconds he had regained all the ground he had previously lost. The other man found himself defenceless against the speed and agility of the attack. Soon he was down on one knee, his sword held up to protect his face. In the next instant the blade had been swept out of his grasp, knocked clean away by Bruno’s sword.

Bruno bore down upon his opponent, the tip of his sword poised above the man’s throat.

“Think twice before you call me a coward,” he advised.

“Herr Hausmann!”

Bruno turned at the sound of his name being called. He looked round to find his employer, Oswald Schaffner, hurrying across the barn towards him, his face red with agitation. Behind Schaffner, a second figure looked on from the shadows of the main building.

“In Taal’s name, Bruno!” Schaffner exclaimed. “I pay you to entertain my customers, not to kill them!” He extended a solicitous hand to the prostrate figure of the knight, and helped the big man regain his feet.

“My deepest apologies, my Lord Augenrich. I trust you’re not harmed?”

The burly man dusted down his battered armour and eyed Bruno and his sword for a few moments. A wide grin split his features.

“By all the gods, I ought to be,” he declared, beaming. “Don’t fuss about like an old woman, Schaffner. I insisted that your man here demonstrated the wares before I lined your pockets with gold.”

He took the sword gingerly from Bruno’s grip. “I’m thinking I’d best buy a gross of these beauties rather than a score!”

Herr Schaffner relaxed visibly. He, too, allowed himself a smile.

“Now tell me the truth,” Augenrich continued. “Sigmarsfest may be the season of goodwill, but I won’t be swindled here. Is this sword of yours really as good as it seems, or is this young man just an excellent swordsman?”

“The sword is truly without peer,” the armourer assured him. “And”—he caught Bruno’s eye—“the young man can handle it very well indeed.”

Lord Augenrich threw an arm around Schaffner’s shoulder. “Then I reckon we have some business to conclude.”

Oswald Schaffner gave Bruno a look that said well done—but don’t try it again.

“Oh, Bruno,” he said. “You almost make me forget. There’s someone waiting out in the yard to see you. You’d better see what it is they want. I can manage back here for a while.”

Bruno wiped the blood from around his mouth and made his way slowly but purposefully towards the front of the armourer’s shop. He wasn’t expecting company; he discouraged visitors at his work. A nagging unease in the pit of his stomach put him in mind of his dream, of a memory that cast deep shadows from the past.

His visitor was sitting on the far side of the yard, his back towards Bruno, a crimson cape hung loosely over his shoulders. From a distance it might have been anyone, but Bruno knew otherwise. Even before the tall, dark-haired young man stood to greet him, Bruno knew who was waiting for him.

The past had stepped from the shadow of his dreams, and returned to haunt him once again.

“Stefan,” he said, his voice faltering. “It’s been a long time.”

Stefan Kumansky smiled warmly, and held out his hand. “I was hoping I’d still find you here. You’re looking well.”

Bruno brushed his own hand across his brow, avoiding the offered greeting. The sight of his former comrade stirred a chill sense of dread within his heart. The unease that had gnawed at him since the lonely hours before dawn now took on solid shape.

For two days, ever since he’d left Otto’s chambers in the Palace of Retribution, Stefan had been thinking of how it would be when he finally faced Bruno again. The two men had not met or spoken since that day upon the mountain, although it had not been for want of trying on Stefan’s part. But Bruno had made it plain that he wanted nothing further to do with Stefan, and, over time, Stefan had come to accept that their friendship was at an end. But if he had been able to take only one man with him on the journey east, then it would have been Bruno above all others. He knew that he must try to mend the rift between them.

From a distance, he had stood watching Bruno’s combat with Augenrich. Even after a year, there was no mistaking his comrade. The swordsman’s style and movement could belong only to one man. The edge that had made him one of the best fighters in Altdorf might have dulled a fraction, but Stefan knew that he would prove more than a match for the overweight nobleman in his expensive armour. He felt a surge of joy to see his friend again, and to find him apparently well and thriving.

Closer to him, Stefan now noticed the changes that the months had marked upon Bruno. A little thicker in the girth, for sure; maybe a sign of a more sedentary life. The thick, rust-coloured curls of his hair were a little shorter, and the beginnings of a beard emphasised a similar fattening of his face. But it was still Bruno; still the man that Stefan would trust above all others. Trust with his very life.

As he looked into Bruno’s eyes, Stefan saw again the emptiness where the light had once shone bright and strong. It was a look that mirrored Stefan’s last memory of his comrade, on the final day in Stahlbergen. If their adventure had ended with the orcs put to the sword, and the gemstone destroyed, then things might have been different. Victory would have been glorious, and untainted. Neither of them was to know that their mission was to have an unexpected and unwanted epilogue.

The two men walked for a while without speaking, picking their way through the foundry and the smelting yards outside the armourer’s shop. In the end it was Bruno who chose to break the silence. “Before you say it, before you say anything. My answer is no.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to say yet.”

“Stefan, I know what you’re here for. The answer’s no.”

They walked on, Stefan a pace or two behind his former comrade. It felt as though the short passage of time had worn a path of a thousand miles between them.

“You’re doing all right for yourself here,” he said at last. “Working for Schaffner. It seems to be going well for you.”

“He pays me a living wage,” Bruno said. “Plenty enough for my purposes. And he respects my needs and skills. That’s all I want.”

“Weren’t those needs and skills always respected before?” Stefan asked.

Bruno turned away, unwilling or unable to face the question in Stefan’s eyes.

“We’ve never talked about it properly,” Stefan continued. “What happened in the mountains. I don’t feel good about how things ended. It was hard for all of us.”

“I made my choices,” Bruno replied, “and you made yours.” He started to walk away, so that Stefan had to pick up his pace to keep abreast of him. He tried to catch his comrade’s eye as they fell in step.

“I was right about Krenzler,” he said at last. “And right about the stone. Krenzler betrayed us all.”

Bruno pulled up short and turned to face Stefan. His eyes burned with a deep-buried anger. “Did he? Well, I’m glad you’re vindicated at last,” he said, walking on.

“I’m just trying to explain what happened,” Stefan told him. He hadn’t expected Bruno to forgive him easily. But he had hoped he might come to understand.

“Look,” he said at last. “You’re right. I’m here to—I don’t know. Ask you to reconsider. To ‘coax you from retirement’—whatever you want to call it. The thing is—” He caught Bruno by the sleeve, forcing him to stop and turn towards him.

“Bruno, you’re a soldier, not an armourer’s apprentice or whatever it is you do here. You were born to the sword. It’s your life. I know it.”

Bruno tugged himself free and strode on. “My sword arm gets plenty of exercise here,” he replied, tersely. “As you see. I nearly spilled a man’s guts back there. Spilled them for nothing.” There was a tremor in his voice as he spoke. “Thanks for your concern, Stefan. But there’s plenty enough here to satisfy the soldier in me.”

“Wait,” Stefan said. “I’m not just here to sign you up like a hired hand. The cause—” he hesitated for a moment, wondering how much he should say.

“The cause that brings me here is just. An important cause, very important indeed. I need good men to ride with me, men I can trust to the very core of their soul. There’s none I’d trust before you, Bruno.”

Bruno halted, and turned back to face Stefan. His face softened momentarily.

“Don’t think your words mean nothing to me, Stefan,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten that life, not one moment of it. A day doesn’t pass when I don’t find myself there, right there as though it were yesterday.”

He hesitated, and the warmth faded from his features. “But this is my life now,” he said. “That other life—Stahlbergen, all of it—is over, forgotten. All things come to an end, and that’s how it is with me. Don’t try and change my mind. You’ll be wasting your time.”

He started to walk briskly past Stefan back in the direction of the armourer’s shop. “Schaffner has a customer with him,” he said. “I’d better get back.”

“Bruno,” Stefan called after him. Bruno paused, his head half turned towards Stefan.

“We never really talked about what happened at Stahlbergen,” Stefan said, quietly. “You did your best for those people, and they still died. I had to leave you to deal with that on your own, and that means as much to me as it did to you. But there wasn’t anything else I could have done. I had to try and find Krenzler, Bruno. I had to.”

“You don’t know what it meant to me,” Bruno muttered. He stopped once more, and turned about. “I’m going back now,” he said. “There’s nothing left to talk about.”

“Tell me at least you’ll think it over,” Stefan shouted after him. “In Taal’s name, man, you at least owe me that.”

“I owe nothing to any man,” Bruno shot back. “I owe nothing—to any living soul.”

Bruno quickened his pace. He finally stopped, a few paces short of the yard, and looked back at Stefan for a last time.

“Goodbye, Stefan,” he said. “It was good to see you again.” He placed a hand upon the gates and pushed them open. “But my life is here now, as you see. There’s nothing more to be said. Nothing at all.”

By late afternoon, the Two Moons in the heart of Altdorf was nearly full. Most of the seats around the scattered tables of the ale house had been taken. A motley assortment of apprentices, potboys and dealers were making swift work of their quarts of ale, swapping tales before getting back to the business of the day. Only one table, in a corner, stood empty, occupied by a lone figure who seemed to take no interest in the proceedings around him.

The man might have been a cleric of some kind, a novitiate of the priesthood, perhaps. Small, lightly built, he cut an unassuming figure amidst the loud, sturdily built men around him. Unlike them, he seemed in no hurry to drink or to move on. An observer might have noticed that he had nursed the same half flagon for almost an hour. Unlike his fellow drinkers, he seemed only concerned with the traffic passing outside, his gaze focused upon the green door of a house on the far side of the street. Every so often, two or three of the labourers standing drinking by the bar would approach the table, intending to avail themselves of the free space. The solitary drinker would look up, his eyes meeting the newcomers. Without a word being spoken, they would turn about, leaving him alone.

If he had a name, it would be Varik. Over countless lifetimes he had been known by many different names, but this was the name by which he was beholden to his master. His lord had gifted him with immortality; the form he now inhabited was merely borrowed flesh, nothing more than a temporary vessel for the emissary of Kyros. For the moment, it was a vessel that suited his purpose very well.

Through the flawed lens of the window, Varik scanned the mortal forms that passed to and fro outside the tavern. Students hurrying along with their scrolls tucked under their arms; domestic servants carrying bundles of garments; market traders bowed under the weight of baskets of reeking fish. How many of them would number amongst his master’s flock? He doubted that even he, Varik, knew the true number. Some would be willing followers, enthusiastic disciples of Chaos drawn like moths to the purging fire of transformation. Others—many more—would not even be aware of the destiny that lay hidden within their souls. They were the sleeping soldiers of Tzeentch; less willing servants, perhaps, but they would serve, nonetheless.

For the moment, those nameless, numberless others did not interest him. He was searching for one face amongst the crowd, and one only. At length, a figure passed by the window of the tavern and crossed the busy street towards the green door. Varik looked again to confirm the figure’s identity, then stood up, carefully and without hurry. He stood, leaving his flagon of beer unfinished on the table, and turned to make his way through a gang of apprentices standing drinking by the tavern door.

The young guildsmen eyed Varik suspiciously as he eased his way past. The emissary met their accusing gazes with the same mild, blue eyes. If I so wished, he reflected, I could snap your thick necks apart in the fingers of one hand.

“Please,” Varik said. “Take my table. I’ve finished my business here.”

The green door had been fastened shut by the time Varik left the tavern and crossed the street. He raised his hand and laid it flat against the grain of the wood, and closed his eyes. He felt a tremor run through the heavy oak and heard the dull click as the oiled mechanism of the lock sprang open. Varik pushed gently and the door yielded to his touch, swinging open before him.

The emissary stepped inside, savouring the sights and smells of the building. He had never been in this place before, and yet it seemed almost as if he knew it. Varik realised he was already penetrating the waking thoughts and memories of his unwitting acolyte. This one, he knew instinctively, would not resist his will for long. Noises of movement percolated through the stillness of the house. He followed the sounds up a flight of stairs to an upper room. The door lay open. A figure stood inside, the hood of a thick cloak drawn up over its head. Whoever it was stood with their back to the emissary, staring out from the window into the street below. Perhaps, Varik thought, they realised they were being followed. If so, like so much knowledge, it had come too late.

He allowed a sound to escape his lips; the faintest of sighs, little more than a breath exhaled. It was enough. The watcher at the window spun around as though they had been stung, and stood staring, stupefied, at the emissary.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

Varik saw something glint in the light: an iron bar, perhaps a rod from the hearth, being raised. Varik smiled, and stepped forward into the full light of the room. He watched the iron lift into the air and then suddenly stop, the energy of the blow suspended. He smiled, and walked towards his acolyte. With one hand, he prised the iron from the frozen grip.

“You wonder what I am doing in your rooms,” he said, mildly. “You wonder who I am.” He turned his head upon one side, a knowing expression settling upon his features.

“You truly don’t know me?” he asked. “No, of course you don’t. Why should you?” Varik turned the iron bar through his hands, then tossed it upon the ground. “But I know you,” he said softly. “I have known you for almost all of your life.”

The figure on the other side of room stood like a statue before the hearth, eyes locked upon Varik in an unblinking stare, breath suspended. Varik drew a chair away from the single window and settled himself down upon it. Now that he had his prey, he was in no hurry.

“I shall tell you something you will never have heard before,” he said. “When you were a child, you were gravely ill. Yes, you remember that. How could you forget? Your parents may have told you that you almost died, that only the blessed mercy of the goddess Shallya spared your life.”

He smiled, indulgently. “But that was a lie.” He waited for a moment, holding the gaze of the other. “You did die,” he said, softly. “You died, and only the intervention of a far, far greater power could save you.” Varik got to his feet and went to the window. Down in the street below, a verminous flood of humanity continued to push and shove against one another in their futile struggle for survival, oblivious of the greater presence now amongst them.

“Your loving parents made a bargain with my master,” Varik continued. “My master, who holds in his hand the keys of transformation. Transformation of light into darkness. Of movement—” He paused, and circled slowly around the other. “Into absolute stillness. The gift that my master bequeathed you was life,” Varik explained. “And the price of that gift was the pledge of your soul.”

He laid the palm of his hand upon the other’s forehead, all the time holding the gaze in those frozen eyes. “Now the time has come for that pledge to be redeemed,” he said. “Now, I am your master, and you will serve me. You will be my ears, and—” he touched his fingers against cold, immobile lids—“and you will be my eyes, on the long journey that lies ahead.”

He ran his fingers down the contours of the face in front of him. He could feel the muscles beneath the skin convulse and then harden, as if paralysed by a serpent’s venom. Which, in a way, Varik reflected, was exactly as it was.

“Spare yourself any futile struggle,” he advised. “Your struggle ended long long ago, at the moment your soul was offered in pledge. From now on,” Varik whispered, “you have no further cares or concerns of your own. From now on, you shall know no other will but mine.”