CHAPTER TWELVE

Betrayals

 

 

They were taken to the chamber of the High Council, back to the place where they had first met with the Guides. It was where their encounter with Sigmarsgeist had begun, and where, Stefan now feared, it might now end. This time there were to be no speeches of welcome. This time the soldiers lined around the walls had a very different role.

Most of the places around the great table were empty. Whatever judgement would be reached here today would be reached without the wisdom of the council. Stefan wasn’t expecting much in the way of justice.

Konstantin von Augen sat at the head of the table, staring impassively at Stefan and Bruno. To his left, Hans Baecker, the same thin smile still playing about his lips. On his right, Rilke, his stone face revealing no hint of emotion. Of Anaise, there was as yet no sign.

When Konstantin finally spoke, his voice was filled with an angry sadness.

“You have betrayed us, Stefan,” he said. “You have betrayed our trust, and murdered one of our brothers. Every soul of Sigmarsgeist is treasured, you must know that. We opened our gates and our hearts to you, and you have repaid us with treachery.”

Stefan stood in silence for a few moments. Konstantin sounded truly wounded, a righteous man who had been wronged. For a moment Stefan had found his own anger punctured, tempered by something very like guilt. Could it be that he had made a mistake? Perhaps the blow that he had suffered had impaired his thinking. Perhaps, truly, he had got things badly wrong. If Konstantin von Augen was only acting a role, then he was playing his part exceptionally well.

“The girl, Bea, had no part in this,” Bruno said firmly. “However you choose to judge us, she is free of any guilt.”

Konstantin’s eyes narrowed. “That is a view shared by my sister,” he replied, coldly. “But we shall find the truth of that in due course.”

“Where were you going, Stefan,” Baecker interjected, “when we found you upon the stair?”

Stefan looked to Bruno. There seemed little point in subterfuge now. They would know the truth of this one way or another, and then learn the consequences.

“To the cells,” he said, simply.

Rilke raised an eyebrow, and flashed a brief, ironic smile. “I dare venture that your wish will be accommodated,” he said, dryly.

Konstantin leaned forward, perplexed by Stefan’s answer. “We held nothing back from you,” he said. “Why were you intent on going back? Why did you kill a man for so little gain?”

“I wanted to see who else had found their ways to the dungeons of Sigmarsgeist,” Stefan said. He took a deep breath. “I’d got things wrong,” he said, looking directly at Baecker. “The night we met you we had come from a village. Its name was Grunwald, though no one will ever have cause to speak it now. There must have been forty or more souls living there. By the time we arrived they were all dead—butchered and burned.”

“We took it to be the mutants,” Bruno interjected.

“We assumed they had destroyed Grunwald,” Stefan continued. “Our assumption was wrong.”

“Why are we wasting our time with this nonsense?” Baecker blurted out, angrily.

“Indeed,” Konstantin concurred. “It is you, Stefan Kumansky, who stands before me accused. Do you think that you can deflect that accusation by in turn accusing us?”

“I only ask to be heard,” Stefan replied, determinedly. “I ask that you hear me out.”

“You will be heard,” Konstantin granted him, coldly. “And then you will be judged.”

To his right, Rilke sat strangely silent, his eyes fixed all the time upon Stefan. Stefan turned his gaze from Konstantin back towards Hans Baecker.

“What had those people done to anger you?” Stefan asked him. “Was the toll they had paid for your so-called ‘protection’ not enough? Or had you just stripped out all you could? Was that why you attacked Mielstadt? Was that why the people of Grunwald had to die?”

Baecker stood up and flung his cup to the floor, the clay smashing on the hard ground. “We have heard enough of this insolence!” he roared. “Will you let this man—this murderer—speak his slander against us?” he demanded of Konstantin.

Konstantin reflected, his face an inscrutable mask.

“I will not countenance lies,” he said, quietly. “But I will hear you answer his question.”

“The mutants had been to Grunwald,” Baecker said. “Someone there had chosen to give them succour—food, shelter—who cares? It’s all the same.” He fixed Stefan with a disdainful stare. “They gave succour to evil, and suffered the consequences.”

“There were no mutants in Mielstadt,” Stefan retorted, furiously “But that didn’t save the people there.” He turned his gaze back upon the Guide. “You know what your people have done!” he shouted at Konstantin. “Or is it simply that you choose to be blind to their deeds?”

lust for a moment, Stefan thought he saw a glimmer of doubt in the Guide’s eyes. Then Konstantin seemed to banish the thought, waving it away with a gesture of impatience.

“Baecker is a loyal servant of Sigmarsgeist,” he proclaimed. “I am satisfied that he speaks the truth.” He spread his hands, drawing the matter to the close, and sighed, deeply.

“I thought Sigmar had delivered us a great gift in you, Stefan Kumansky,” he said. “And in you, too, Bruno. Perhaps I allowed myself to see what I wished to see, rather than the truth that is now laid before me.” He closed his eyes, and sat for a few moments in contemplation.

“Is there anything more?” he asked Baecker. “Anything at all you have not told me?”

“My lord, every deed I have ever done has been for the glory of Sigmarsgeist,” Baecker replied. “You know the power that evil has. You know that it can take the most innocent of forms.”

Konstantin lowered his head, and deliberated. When he raised his gaze once more, any doubt or pity had been swept aside.

“You have betrayed our trust, and betrayed the cause of Sigmarsgeist,” he said to Stefan and Bruno. “The clear penalty for such deeds is death.” He looked to his two lieutenants. “Unless you find argument to the contrary?”

Baecker shook his head. The faint, almost cruel smile had returned, and he was looking directly at Stefan. Stefan could scarcely believe this was the same man he had been glad to call comrade. To the right of the Guide, Rilke at last broke his silence.

“Death would be more than they deserve,” he said. “It is of little consequence to me, but I would put them to work in the mines, or upon the walls. Let them give their blood to atone for their crimes. After all,” he said to Konstantin, “once they have given their all, they can still be put to death.”

Konstantin nodded. “As ever, Rilke, you are wise.” He stood to address Stefan and Bruno. “You will serve Sigmarsgeist,” he pronounced, “by one means or another. Your deaths are postponed for as long as you may labour in our service.” He sat, and the shadow of sadness passed across his features once again. “Do not think I pass this judgement lightly,” he said. “Nor should you think that my judgement is a mercy.” He signalled to the guards for the prisoners to be led away.

“Before your penance is served, you may be wishing for death as your deliverance.”

 

Anaise sat patiently by Bea’s side, waiting for the girl’s sobs to subside. Bea cried unashamedly. Days of conflict and confusion had come to a head inside of her, and now the dam had burst. She felt miserable and powerless. Since they had found her, tending the wounded guard, she had spent all but a few hours confined within Anaise’s quarters. She was not a prisoner, Anaise had explained, yet neither was Bea any longer free to go as and where she chose. If not guilty of the crime, then she had at the very least been tainted by it. Anaise had made it very clear how she had intervened in person to spare Bea from Konstantin’s rage. Now Anaise was her protector, and, to all intents, her custodian, too.

After what seemed to her like an age, Bea lifted her face and looked around. They were sitting facing the ring of stones that lined the ancient well—the Well of Sadness, Anaise had called it. The name seemed particularly appropriate to Bea now.

Even through the numbing grief, she could feel the energy radiating from the well, like the heat from a great fire. She shuddered. She was not ready for this yet.

“Why have we come here?” she asked.

Anaise ran her hand through Bea’s hair, brushing the strands back from her tear-streaked face. “There is nowhere safer than here,” she whispered, soothingly. “This is the one place Konstantin will dare not come. This is my place alone.”

“Konstantin is searching for me?”

“He does not understand you,” Anaise said. “He doesn’t understand us.”

Bea uttered a cry, a nervous, fearful half-laugh. “I don’t think I understand, either,” she said. “I don’t understand what’s happening. And I don’t understand why you are choosing to protect me.”

Anaise plaited Bea’s hair between her fingers. “Because I do understand you,” she said at length. “You were confused. Your loyalties were torn. You felt you owed a debt to Stefan and Bruno, that’s why you helped them. But you also wanted to do the right thing. That’s why you stayed to tend to the wounded guard.” She smiled, and drew back. “It’s all right. I understand.”

Bea shook her head, uncertainly. Everything made sense, and yet no sense. She thought hard about what she needed to say. “Stefan and Bruno are good men,” she declared. “I know that their souls are pure.”

“But why did they kill a man, and grievously wound another?” Anaise asked, gently. “Can you explain that?”

Bea shrugged. The tears started to well up inside her again. She did not know, yet she sensed that something was wrong, something that she could not yet explain. It was there in the fabric of Sigmarsgeist itself, the unceasing, barely controlled growth of the citadel each day. And it was there in the energy that swelled, like restless waves upon a sea all around her. But the explanation was still beyond her reach.

“They are good men,” was all she could say.

“You say that, but—” Anaise paused, and inclined her head, looking deeper into Bea’s eyes. “Wait—there is something else, isn’t there? You hold a place in your heart for one of them.” She hesitated, put a finger to her lips. “Is it—Bruno?”

Bea averted her eyes, and gave the slightest of nods. She felt her eyes prickling with tears again. Anaise drew an arm around her shoulder to comfort her.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” She reached for a glass, and placed it into Bea’s hand. “Here,” she said. “Drink some of this.”

Bea lifted the glass to her lips, and sipped. The clear liquid burned in her throat. “Merciful Shallya,” she exclaimed, coughing. Her head felt light, faintly giddy. “What is it?”

Anaise laughed, and took the glass from her. “At least it brought some colour to your poor face,” she said. “Just a simple herbal elixir,” she explained. “All the way from Talabheim. Come, drink a little more. It’ll put the fire back in your heart.”

Bea looked at the glass with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity, her troubles momentarily forgotten. “But I thought—” she began. “I thought you said—”

“That such things were not allowed in Sigmarsgeist?” There was a note of mockery in Anaise’s suddenly stern tone.

“Quite right. We must set an example for our people, to guide them along the true path.” She raised the glass to her lips, and drained it in one draught. “This is different, though,” she continued. “Besides, there is no wrong in acknowledging our desires.” She refilled the glass from the stone flask at her side. “So long as it is only to understand them.”

She offered the glass back to Bea. “We must set examples, Bea,” she said. “That does not mean we must be enslaved by them.” She smiled. “Konstantin might not agree with me,” she said. “But you can share my secrets.” She stood, and lifted Bea to her feet. “You shall be a part of all of them.”

“I should leave,” Bea said, hurriedly. “It is not right for me to stay here.” She tried to shrug Anaise aside, but the Guide was in no mood to let her go.

“Where will you run to, Bea?” Anaise asked. “To Bruno, to join him in his miserable cell? You won’t be of help to him that way, be assured of that.” She turned the girl’s face towards her own. “Or to Konstantin, perhaps? I hope you wouldn’t be so foolish. I can only do so much to ensure your safety.” She reached to Bea’s cheek, tracing the line of her tears with one finger. “Once things are quieter, it will be safer for you,” she said. “Until then you should rest here. With me.”

“What do you want of me?” Bea asked. “What can I have that is so valuable to you?”

By way of answer, Anaise steered Bea towards the centre of the room. As her eyes fell upon the shadowed hollow of the Well of Sadness, Bea felt herself begin to fall, as though the ground beneath her feet had suddenly dropped away. She walked—or glided, so it seemed—towards the well as if drawn by irresistible gravity. She stopped herself, just short of the edge, and stood clutching at the low stone wall for support.

“I’m not ready for this,” she stammered. “I’m not strong enough. The drink has made me confused—”

“The magic is summoning you,” Anaise insisted, brushing her protests aside. “It is your strength that it has recognised. The waters of Tal Dur, Bea. They are waiting to be found once more. They wait for you to release their power.” She drew her on, insistent. “It is your calling, Bea. Your gift. It is your duty to heed that call.”

For all her fear, Bea found herself staring down into the depths of the ancient well. The shaft dropped away into darkness, an empty, arid void. And yet, as she looked down, Bea felt the brush of air light against her face. A slight fluttering breeze, as if, far below, something stirred. And she thought that, just for a moment, she heard a sound, the sound of water; single drops falling upon the parched earth. A needle-thin trickle of cool water snaking across the base of the dead well.

She pulled her face away. At once the sound was gone, and the air resolved once more to stillness. She felt light-headed, giddy from much more than the sip of liquor.

“I must have imagined it,” she said to Anaise. “I thought for a moment I heard something.”

“There is nothing false in your imagining,” Anaise replied. “All that you saw and heard will come to pass.” She smiled. “Tal Dur is waiting for us, Bea. Waiting for you to find the key.”

 

They were not to be taken down to the cells, not yet at least. Konstantin had decreed that their punishment was to be hard labour in the service of Sigmarsgeist. And the punishment was to begin at once.

Stefan and Bruno were led from the High Council to an outer yard of the palace, where they joined a gang of perhaps twenty or thirty other men. Some were in pairs or small groups, but most stood or sat upon the ground on their own, lost in some dream, or some private misery of their own. Few if any were speaking, and none seemed to notice the newcomers’ arrival amongst them.

Stefan cast his eyes around, trying to fathom whether these might be allies or enemies that they now found themselves amongst. There was no clear answer to that question that he could see. All of the gathered prisoners looked human, with no obvious marks of mutation upon them. But whether they were men who had marched beneath the dark flag, or simply villagers who had found themselves on the wrong side of the Red Guard, there was no way of telling.

But they were all quite unlike the healthy, vigorous volunteers Stefan had seen on their arrival in the city. To a man, the crowd in the courtyard were ragged and filthy, bowed down from days of toil. Their clothes hung in tatters, coated in dust or a dark brown grime. And they reeked, their unwashed bodies ripe with the stench of long labour, deep below ground. They looked and smelt like nothing Stefan had seen in Sigmarsgeist before, until now.

The guards moved Stefan and Bruno forward, prodding them with their swords, herding them further into the confined space of the courtyard. Soon they were jostling for space amongst the ragged mob. A figure bumped against Stefan; a lank-haired man approaching middle years, but sturdily built. He still had the hawk-like look of the hunter about him, despite having clearly taken a beating from someone only recently. He eyed Stefan and Bruno warily He might not have been a man to trust, but Stefan sensed no particular evil in him, either. He doubted such a man had ever been part of any Chaos army.

“How did you come here?” Stefan asked the man. “Were you taken in Mielstadt?”

“Mielstadt?” the man turned the word about in his mind, then looked at Stefan as though he were deranged. “What would I be doing in a scum-hole like Mielstadt?” he demanded of Stefan, irritably. “No,” he went on. “I’m only here because of a misunderstanding. They owe me money. I captured one of the beasts, brought it all the way here.” He tugged urgently at Stefan’s sleeve. “They’ve made a mistake,” he insisted. “You tell them for me. I brought them—”

Stefan heard the crack of a whip, and felt the sharp sting of the lash against his face.

“Enough talk,” the guard shouted out. “From now on you can hold your tongues, the lot of you. Save your energy for the walls. Now, get moving.”

Stefan reached out to catch hold of the other man, suddenly anxious to know who or what he claimed to have brought to Sigmarsgeist. But he was gone, lost in the river of souls beginning their weary progress through the courtyard.

Stefan scanned the rest of the group. The prisoners were certainly not all followers of Chaos, but that didn’t mean that none of them were. His eye fell upon three Norscans, walking apart from the main group, heaping guttural curses upon anyone who came within earshot. For a moment he wondered if it could be true—perhaps a number of the mutants and their Norscan allies really had found their way to Mielstadt. There was a part of Stefan that perhaps wanted to believe that. But his heart and his head were in one accord. Wherever these Norscans had come from, it was not Mielstadt, nor any other wretched village that the Red Guard had chosen to wreak their revenge upon. Baecker was lying, and therefore Konstantin, too. He began to wonder if all of Sigmarsgeist was not a lie.

One of the Norscans—a flaxen-haired man with a bull-like stature—he recognised from the gang of prisoners being marched through the streets as Stefan and the others had taken their first tour of the citadel. The Norscan looked at Stefan and seemed to recognise him too. He gestured, unmistakably, drawing a line across his throat with one finger. A shouted command from a guard brought him back from his thoughts. A gate at the end of the courtyard had been opened, and the prisoners were lining up ready to file out. At their head, a single White Guard stood ready to deliver their instructions.

“Today you will have the honour of working upon the citadel walls,” he announced. “Building the fortifications that will one day protect us from the dark flood of Chaos.” He stared out at the crowd of prisoners, seeking out any who would make eye contact. Bruno tightened his fists into balls, his face taut with rage.

“By all the gods, Stefan,” he declared. “Now, truly, we see the other face of Sigmarsgeist.”

Stefan shook his head, slowly. How different things had come to look, and in so short a space of time. The line of men began to trudge slowly towards the gate. A line that would have looked not much different from any other of the bands of workers they had watched during their first days in Sigmarsgeist. Nothing, and yet everything, was changed.

“There’s no middle road with these people,” he declared. “You side with them, or against them. Truly, my friend, we’ve moved to the other side of that line.”

“We’ve got to escape,” Bruno muttered. “We must find Bea. Pray to the goddess that she’s all right.”

Stefan looked round at the guards, sizing up their number and the weapons they carried. “Little enough chance of that at the moment,” he replied. “They’d cut us down like dogs before we got ten paces. The opportunity will come,” he assured Bruno. “But we’re going to have to bide our time.”

The procession moved through the open portal and out into the streets. It was the first time in days that he had seen the outer reaches of citadel. Time enough, apparently, for Sigmarsgeist to change beyond all belief. Stefan’s first thought was that the citadel had somehow shrunk become smaller. Everywhere there seemed to be so much less space, so many more people. He quickly realised that, on the contrary, Sigmarsgeist had continued to grow, and grow at such a rate that the very buildings at its heart seemed to be competing with each other, jostling for precious space. Every inch of land was now given over to brick and stone, and not so much as a blade of grass had been left to grow between the tall buildings that now sprouted up on all sides.

He could not fathom how so many new buildings could have sprung up in such a short space of time. But he understood clearly now why their lives—and those of the worn-down wretches around them—had been reprieved. The equation was simple. Sigmarsgeist was growing at an unimaginable rate, far outstripping the capacity of its workforce. Labour was their most precious commodity, and for as long as he and Bruno kept their strength, he guessed that they would be spared.

He slowed his pace to take in the strangeness of it all. In several places, houses had been damaged, walls broken down or roofs ripped apart by pale alabaster columns that seemed to have nothing in common with the surrounding structures. The columns rose, straight and tall, out of the wreckage of brickwork, before looping and bending like branches of a tree, lacing together like a bizarre stone latticework.

“What do you make of that?” he asked Bruno.

“I don’t know,” Bruno replied. “But I’ve seen something like it before.” He held his hand out towards Stefan. “That’s how I got my injury, remember? Bea has seen them, too, in other parts of the city. It looks almost like something alive, growing, not built.”

“All part of Konstantin’s grand design?” Stefan mused. “Or something moving out of control?”

He was answered by a jab to his ribs from a sword. “I told you once,” the guard barked. “Shut up. Keep moving.”

Stefan eyed Bruno, and walked on in silence. For the next thirty minutes or so, they marched through the streets towards the edge of the city. The townsfolk who crossed their path weren’t greeting them as heroes now, and many hurled abuse or spat upon the prisoners as they passed. Finally they had left the crowded streets behind, and had come within sight of the high walls that encircled the citadel. Walls to keep intruders out, and Stefan realised now, to keep prisoners in.

The prisoners were driven left, herded like cattle along the line of the fortification by the guards. After a while they came to a gap, a breach the width of a pair of wagons. The stonework had been deliberately demolished, knocked through so that a new wall could be erected further out, extending the outer boundary of the citadel. The new wall already stood at twenty feet, and teams of workers were labouring upon the ramparts, building up the walls layer by layer. Along the wall was placed a row of ladders, up and down which figures streamed like ants, each weighed down with sack-loads of fresh stone for the artisans working up above. It would be back-breaking work for even the fittest of men.

“That’s the end of your stroll,” the guard announced. “Get in line over there. Each of you’ll be given a sack. Make sure it’s filled—there’s a beating waiting for any man who doesn’t.”

For a moment the troop of prisoners stood where they were. The open wall stood before them. For many, this was probably as close to freedom as they would ever get again. More than one must have thought of escape, a last desperate bid for freedom. But the soldiers guarding the work party now almost outnumbered the prisoners, and all of them were armed. In any case, Stefan realised, they were in no position yet to leave Sigmarsgeist, not with Bea still somewhere inside the citadel.

“Come on,” he muttered to Bruno. “We’ll see this out.” He marched to the head of the line, and took a coarse fabric sack from the pile. The quarried stone was stacked in a series of wagons, waiting to be carried up to where other teams of prisoners were at work, raising the level of the walls. Stefan walked to the first of the wagons and began loading stones into the sack, all the time watched by a brace of guards. When the sack was filled he hefted it over his back and carried his load over to a ladder. The ladders were at least securely fixed against the walls; the builders of Sigmarsgeist had no intention of killing their slave workers, at least not by accident.

Stefan put a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, and, after shifting his load to get a better balance, began to climb up. In a few seconds he was at the top, and swinging the laden sack down off his back.

Bruno was right behind him, both men now standing atop of the growing wall.

“This isn’t too bad,” Bruno said, gulping down breath. “We can take it.”

“At the moment,” Stefan agreed.

The second sack that he loaded upon his back seemed heavier by far than the first. By the time he and Bruno had carried three more sack-loads to the top of the ladders, the burden felt as though it was doubling each and every time. Others amongst the prisoners fell by the wayside, dropping where they stood, unable to lift another stone, or toppling from the ladders under the weight of the sacks.

The guards spared no mercy for those unable to go on. Stefan had to look on as they rained blows down upon one prisoner who had collapsed under the weight of his load. The Red Guard beat the prisoner until his whimpers turned to screams, and then they beat him some more. Casualties were of no interest to them. There would be plenty more where they had come from.

The prisoners worked on through most of the day, without food or a break. Long before the end, Stefan’s whole body ached, and his back felt like it would break under the punishment, but he kept going. They had to get through this. The prisoners fell into their routine, hauling the laden sacks from the foot of the walls to empty them for the work party laying the stone up above. It was a routine that got harder with every load. All the while, the sun beat down upon them, unyielding and relentless. Finally, late in the day, they were allowed to rest, and food—bread, and a little water—was handed out. Even the guards acknowledged they would get no more work out of their prisoners until they had been given some rest.

Their vantage point gave them a commanding view over the citadel. Sigmarsgeist lay spread before them through the gap in the old fortifications. The bizarre expansion of the city was now all too plain to see. From above it looked like some inexplicable multiplication was underway, a growth that was barely controlled or contained. Structures—recognisable and unrecognisable—sprouted everywhere, crammed into every available plot or space, haphazardly blocking roads and streets.

“It looks like a city gone insane,” Bruno said quietly. Stefan agreed, but it looked like more than that. Many of the new buildings reached skywards then stopped, unfinished and without purpose, and at least half seemed to bear no relation in design or function to those that they stood next to.

“Like a city feeding upon itself,” Stefan reflected. “Forever destroying and remaking itself anew.”

Bruno lay back, exhausted. His hands were bloodied and chafed, and his face and hands were covered in a fine white dust from the stone, giving him the look of a man already dead.

“Where will it all end?” he asked.

Stefan shook his head. He had no answers now. No way of telling where the path they found themselves upon would lead.

A party of guards moved along the line of prisoners resting on top of the walls, prodding bodies with staffs and swords, pushing those that still had strength left in their bodies back to work. Most struggled back to their feet; those that could not were thrown without ceremony from the walls. Stefan watched the bodies being collected like refuse in one of the empty wagons below.

“Is this the great bright future that Sigmarsgeist was created for?” Bruno asked. “By the gods, they have become the very evil that they would oppose.”

“And now we must set our face against them,” Stefan replied. “Our allies are become our enemies.”

The prisoners were being moved on again. “Make the most of your day in the sun,” a guard sneered. “It’ll be the mines for you tomorrow. A few hours down there and you’ll wish you’d never been born.”