CHAPTER EIGHT

 

 

It was well after sunset, but the benighted street was still busy. Filthy and stinking, many labourers were only now shuffling home after a long day of toil, even as the night people, painted whores, slinking cutpurses, and their ilk, began to emerge from their lairs.

Which meant Dieter had to wait for a break in the traffic. When it came, he glanced about. As far as he could tell, no one was paying any attention to him. He stooped, picked up a pebble, and used it to scratch a triangle divided by a diagonal slash on a grimy brick wall.

It had been easy enough to slip off on his own to inscribe the sign. Mama Solveig had come to trust him. But as he trudged back the way he’d come, he wondered if leaving the mark would actually do any good. If Krieger’s agents hadn’t actually been observing him a moment ago, would they find that one bit of graffiti amid all the enormous bustle that was Altdorf?

What if no one made contact? Dare he take it as proof the witch hunters had lost track of him, and if he did, would he then see fit to run?

Behind him, a male voice said, “It’s about time.”

Startled, Dieter whirled to behold Krieger. The big man had exchanged his black garb for nondescript clothing and now, with his sword and pistol, looked like a bravo or mercenary.

“Is something wrong?” Krieger asked.

In fact, the moment had the jarring, disjointed quality that too many situations possessed of late, but Dieter saw no reason to go into that. “You just surprised me. I wasn’t expecting someone to pop out at me almost as soon as I drew the sign.”

Krieger grinned. “I told you, somebody’s always keeping track of you. It happened to be my turn. Come on, I know a good place to talk. I’ll even stand you a mug of ale.”

Krieger led him to a tavern, its four-panelled door crudely painted with bottles and overflowing flagons. Excited voices jabbered on the other side. When the witch hunter opened the door, a stench composed of stale beer and sweaty, unwashed bodies wafted out, and Dieter spied a number of soldiers among the crowd in the candlelit common room.

He froze. “Are you out of your mind?”

The witch hunter chuckled. “Those fellows may have been told to keep an eye out for you, but I promise you, none of them is likely to recognise you at the moment. Not when they’re all at least half-drunk, and intent on their sport.” He pushed Dieter over the threshold.

Once inside, immersed in a stink compounded of beer, sweat, and blood, Dieter saw that a fighting pit yawned in the centre of the floor. Two bare-chested dagger-men, their muscular bodies gleaming with oil, stood glaring at one another at opposite ends of the sunken arena. Most of the patrons were indeed preoccupied with the contest to come, either arguing over who was likely to win or placing bets with a fat man behind the bar, who employed a chalkboard to keep the tally.

Krieger insisted on placing a wager of his own, and in the process bought two mugs of ale and hired what in this seedy establishment passed for a private room: a cramped alcove with a curtain to isolate it.

The witch hunter sampled his drink and made a sour face. “Tastes like they emptied the latrine back into the barrel to stretch the supply. Still, foul drink is better than none, especially when there’s cause to celebrate.”

“You mean, because I’ve found the Master of Change? I haven’t.”

Krieger gave him a stare. “I told you not to draw the mark until you did. It’s too risky.”

“You don’t understand. The man has hidden himself too well. We’ll never find him using the approach you dictated.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Yes, two—”

The spectators beyond the curtain roared as, presumably, the fight began. The sudden bellow drowned out Dieter’s voice. He waited for the clamour to partially subside, then began again.

“Two of them. The first is, arrest Mama Solveig, the old midwife—”

“Who leads your coven. I know who she is, and I explained to you why it won’t work.”

“It will if we manage it correctly. I’ll be with her when you come for her, and I’ll use my magic to make sure she doesn’t escape or kill herself.”

The crowd howled, possibly because one of the fighters had landed the first slash or stab.

“We had a wizard working with us when we tried to arrest one of the others,” Krieger said. “It didn’t help.”

“But she trusts me, and I’ll be standing right beside her.”

Krieger shook his head. “You said you had another idea?”

“Yes. The cultists are sending me into the forest to carry supplies and a new recruit to the mutants.”

Krieger cocked his head. “And so?”

“And so you have some scouts or skirmishers or some such shadow me, and a company of soldiers follow them. They can find and exterminate the raiders, and isn’t that the main thing? Every day, I hear people grumbling about how the mutants butcher innocent people, hamper trade, and affect the price and availability of goods. Every day, folk lose more of their faith in an Emperor, who, despite all his knights and men-at-arms, can’t seem to deal with a threat lurking just outside the walls of his capital city.”

Krieger leered. “I didn’t realise you were such a keen student of politics.”

“Damn it, you know I’m right!”

“Maybe you are, wizard, maybe you are. But when mutants stop concealing their deformities, run away to the wilderness, and turn brigand, I don’t have to worry about them anymore. At that point, they become the army’s problem. My job is to ferret out the corruption hiding in our midst, and at the moment, my target is the Master of Change.”

“It’s possible Leopold Mann—the leader of the bandits—knows the Master’s identity. If you take him alive, maybe you can get it out of him.”

“Not the worst notion I ever heard, but I’m inclined to stick with the original plan.”

Dieter had to clamp down hard on an urge to jump up and strike the big man in the face. “That isn’t sensible or fair! I’ve brought you more than you had any right to expert, and I’ve explained how it can be used to deal with the Master of Change and the marauders as well. I deserve to be set free and cleared of the charges against me.”

“That’s one point of view, but for better or worse, I’m the one who decides when your work is done.”

“Do you want me to die? Because that’s what’s likely to happen if I go into the forest, and then you’ll derive no benefit at all from all my spying.”

“You tell me your sorcery’s potent enough to manage this Mama Solveig. Then it ought to be strong enough to protect you out in the woods as well.”

“Even if it is, I can’t stay where I am, doing what I’m doing. I—” Dieter abruptly realised what he was babbling, and stopped short. He didn’t dare tell Krieger that he’d come to find dark lore fascinating if not addictive, or about the incipient changes in his mind and body. Bargain or not, the witch hunter might well deem such an admission ample justification to send him to the fire when his task was done.

Krieger studied him. “Go on, finish your thought.”

“Never mind. What’s the point? You aren’t going to change your mind no matter what I say.”

The big man grinned. “Now there’s the discernment a good spy needs.”

The crowd beyond the curtain roared, most likely in appreciation of the death stroke. Then they started chanting, “Tzeentch! Tzeentch! Tzeentch!”

Dieter cried out and jerked in his chair. His flailing hand knocked over his tankard, spilling beer across the tabletop.

Quick as a cat despite his heavy frame, Krieger jumped up and put his hand on his pistol. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Dieter said, “just my ears playing tricks on me.” The spectators were actually shouting, “Zeyd”, no doubt the name of the victorious pit fighter.

The tender spot on his forehead throbbed to the beat.

 

The armoury was a massive, ugly limestone building, a small fortress in its own right. Standing beside the wagon with Adolph and Lampertus, Dieter stared at the recessed double doors in the centre of the wall and tried to avoid picturing what was happening on the other side.

Adolph chuckled. “It galls you, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“Knowing that right now, behind those doors, Jarla’s lifting her skirts for another man. Better get used to it. It’s what whores do. It’s the reason I cast her off.”

Dieter sneered. “You cast her off.”

“Did she tell you it was the other way around? Well, she would, wouldn’t she?”

Dieter thought how satisfying it would be to blast Adolph with his magic, or simply to hit him. Perceiving the barely restrained hostility between his companions, Lampertus looked from one to the other with perplexity and trepidation manifest in his expression. Dieter could scarcely blame him for his reaction, considering that he was entrusting his life to them.

Lampertus was a smallish, middle-aged coppersmith with a round, jowly face. Troubled by aches in his hips and knees, he’d submitted himself to Mama Solveig’s poisonous ministrations. Now some new extremity grew from his chest and periodically squirmed of its own accord, the motion perceptible even beneath his layers of baggy clothing.

Dieter tried to produce a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. We like to mock and taunt one another, but it’s all in fun.”

“If you say so,” Lampertus replied.

The right-hand leaf of the double door cracked open. Jarla beckoned from the shadows. Adolph climbed back up onto the wagon, flicked the reins, and the two mules started forwards. Dieter and Lampertus jogged alongside, swung the doors open wide enough to admit the conveyance, and closed them behind it.

The interior of the armoury was a square, high-ceilinged box of a place, with barrel upon barrel, rack upon rack and shelf upon shelf of swords, poleaxes, shields and helmets that looked like severed heads in the gloom. Enticed by Jarla’s charms, a bargain price, and the offer of a swig or two of wine to sweeten the transaction, the sentry had fallen victim to the same sleeping powder that had once rendered Dieter insensible. He now lay snoring on the floor with his breeches undone and his manhood peeking out. Jarla noticed Dieter looking at the fellow, and winced and lowered her eyes.

Dieter reminded himself that she’d done only what he and Adolph had asked of her, and dredged up the resolve to react as was her due. He smiled and squeezed her shoulder. “Well done. Did you take his purse?”

Jarla nodded. “I remembered.”

With luck, when the guard found his money missing, he’d believe the whole point of the incident had been to rob him, and would fail to notice someone had stolen from the arsenal as well. If so, it was unlikely he’d report the crime, considering that he’d forsaken his responsibilities to consort with a streetwalker.

The cultists scurried about the store, taking swords here, shot and arquebuses here, never too many of any one item or too much of anything from any one place, and stowing them in the hidden compartment beneath the wagon’s cargo bay. Throughout the process, Dieter’s nerves jangled with the fear that someone would walk in and discover what was happening. But nobody did, and in less than half an hour they were ready to claim the final prize: two casks of gunpowder. The item Leopold Mann supposedly needed most of all.

The barrels were too bulky to fit in the concealed compartment. The robbers lashed them down in the wagon bed and draped a tarpaulin over them to conceal the marks of the Imperial forces and the Blackpowder Men. Then they made their exit.

If there’s another sentry, Dieter thought, peering down from the ramparts, or if anybody else is looking and decides it’s strange for four civilians, one of them a whore, to be driving out of the armoury at such an early hour, we’re as good as dead. But their luck held, and, the team’s hooves clopping and the wagon wheels rumbling on the cobbles, they rolled on while the first grey hint of dawn appeared in the eastern sky.

They stopped in the miniature lumberyard behind Hanno’s shop, where the stacks of wood concealed the beer barrels stolen two weeks previously. They loaded and secured the kegs on top of the gunpowder, and then Jarla kissed Dieter goodbye. “Be careful,” she whispered.

Dieter, Adolph and Lampertus donned caps sewn with the badge of the Brewers’ Guild. Thus disguised, if one could call it that, they climbed back onto the wagon and drove on towards the northern gate.

As planned, they reached the immense arch, portcullis and iron-bound valves shortly before the soldiers who’d stood watch through the night were due to be relieved. Tired, the guards had little inclination to question any of the merchants and other travellers lined up in hopes of an early start. They simply waved Dieter and his companions through with the rest.

Lampertus twisted around and stared back at the metropolis slowly dwindling behind them. He’d probably spent his entire life in Altdorf, and was now trying to come to terms with the truth that he was unlikely ever to walk its streets again. Rather, he must now struggle to survive in a wilderness infested with bears, wolves, beastmen and countless other perils.

Dieter squeezed the coppersmith’s shoulder. “It will be all right,” he said. “Mann and his people will take care of you. You’ll be safe with them as you could never be in Altdorf. There, it was only a matter of time until the witch hunters came for you. Here, you’re going to live.”

Lampertus took a deep breath. “You’re right,” he said. “You got me out, I’m going to live, and I’m grateful. Thank you both.”

Adolph responded with a smile. “You’re welcome,” he said.

For his part, Dieter felt irrationally touched by the mutant’s jubilation, and envious of it too. What a wonderful thing it must be to escape! He certainly hadn’t. Even out here in the countryside, he was still enmeshed in a web of danger, deception and puzzles without answers, of fear, hope, ambivalence and unhealthy fascination. He drew what solace he could from contemplating the sky as it ought to look, with no tangle of spires eclipsing it and without smoke or smog besmirching it.

People spoke of raiders lurking just outside the city walls, but, of course, the situation wasn’t quite that bad. The capital rose amid a circle of farmland. It took all morning to cross the fields and reach the forest beyond. Uncomfortable as it looked, Lampertus eventually managed to stretch out atop the barrels and doze. The growth beneath his shirt switched back and forth like a cat’s tail, more active when he was asleep.

Adolph forsook the highway for a secondary road, and when it forked, took the narrower of the two branches. After every such choice, there was less traffic than before.

Late afternoon found them jolting along a track scarcely better than a game trail. Brush swished and rattled on the underside of the wagon, and walls of mossy tree trunks pressed so close on either side that the vehicle only barely had room to pass. Resentful of the hard going, the mules baulked repeatedly, and Adolph, no expert teamster, snarled obscenities and lashed them with the reins to goad them into motion once again.

“If the track gets any worse,” Dieter said, “we won’t be able to continue.”

“I know what I’m doing!” Adolph snapped.

Dieter resisted the impulse to take a similar tone. “I wasn’t suggesting that you don’t. After all, you’re the one who’s visited the raiders before. I’m just saying, I hope we didn’t overload the wagon.”

Adolph grunted. Then, after a pause, he drew back on the reins, halted the team, and said, “I admit, I thought someone would make contact with us before now.”

“Could the raiders have moved their camp?” Lampertus asked. The constant bumping and swaying had long since put an end to his napping. “Mama Solveig told me they sneak around a lot to stay ahead of the soldiers.”

“The Master has ways of keeping track of them,” Adolph replied, “and he told Mama this is the right area. Still, if something’s happened within the last day or so…” He turned to Dieter. “Is there any chance you can locate them with your magic?”

Dieter hesitated. “Perhaps.”

“Then give it a try. I’d rather sunset found us in Leopold’s camp, not alone and bewildered on the trail. The god’s children aren’t the only things living in these woods.”

“All right.” The branches arched and tangled so densely overhead as to virtually hide the sky, but Dieter recalled a better view a turn or two back down the track. The trick would be to take advantage of it without providing further evidence that all his magic derived from the heavens. “But I think I’ll focus better if I don’t have the two of you looking over my shoulder. Do you mind if I walk a little way back down the trail?”

He actually expected Adolph, ever avid to observe and master all the sorcery he could, to insist on accompanying him, but the scribe surprised him. “Fine. Lampertus and I will guard the wagon, just don’t go too far.”

“I won’t.” Dieter hopped down from the bench and hiked back the way they’d come. Even with the undergrowth clogging the path and making walking strenuous, it felt good to stretch his legs after hours of perching on a hard, unsteady seat.

When he sighted the patch of open sky, the tender spot in his forehead squirmed. No, he told it, I’m going to cast a spell, but not your kind—the kind I was born to cast. He took a deep breath, then declaimed the words of power and swept his hand through the proper passes.

The wind whispered to him and ran its cool fingers across his face. Grey and silver ripples streamed through streaks of wispy cloud to point the way. It appeared Adolph had been heading in the right direction after all. Dieter felt both relieved and disappointed, the latter because it would have gratified the spiteful part of him to inform the scribe he’d blundered.

Then, for just an instant, the streaming bands of dull and bright took on a crimson tinge, and though the resemblance was tenuous at best, Dieter instantly thought of blood flowing from an open wound. He stared, trying to read the significance of the additional and unexpected portent, but the manifestation ended before he could interpret it.

It indicated danger, that much seemed clear. He hesitated, wondering if a second casting would provide additional insight. But if the peril was imminent, it might be better to rejoin his companions as quickly as possible. He turned and ran back up the trail.

The wagon was still where he’d left it, with the mules standing stolidly in their traces. But at first he could see no sign of Adolph or Lampertus. He had to run closer before he spotted the motionless form all but buried in the brush.

It was Lampertus, unblinking eyes staring at the sky, mouth twisted. His deformity, a thick, warty tentacle terminating in a round, fanged mouth like that of a lamprey, had burst through his clothing but now lay flaccid and inert. Though disgusted by the unnatural growth, Dieter forced himself to kneel down to determine if the fugitive was still breathing.

He wasn’t. Something had killed him, although the cause of death wasn’t immediately apparent.

Dieter rose and turned, peering, seeing only rank upon rank of trees, wondering who or what was watching him. Wondering what had become of Adolph.

Adolph strode through the forest, trying to hurry but move quietly as well. He didn’t want Dieter to track him by the noise.

He still felt rattled from the close call he’d just experienced, and wished he’d had the prudence to open a wider distance between Lampertus and himself before hurling his shadow knives. But he’d expected the other man to go down instantly. Most people did.

Lampertus, however, hadn’t. Perhaps his transformation had made him inhumanly tough. He’d pivoted and rushed his attacker, and the eel-like growth on his chest had punched through his clothing to strike at Adolph like a snake. Adolph hadn’t expected such an assault, and it was pure luck that the tentacle hadn’t snagged him with that nasty ring of fangs.

He was lucky, too, that the deformity only had time for one bite. Then, at last, Lampertus’ legs buckled, and he swayed and toppled over backwards.

It was actually too bad about Lampertus. Adolph had had nothing against him. He’d even fell vaguely moved by the coppersmith’s gratitude. But a man had to do what was necessary to look after himself. It was simply the way of the world.

He resolved to put Lampertus out of his mind and concentrate on the next phase of his scheme. Everything was going even better than anticipated, for he hadn’t expected that Dieter would be obliging enough to wander off on his own and so facilitate matters, and in fact, the rest should be easy enough. The raiders knew and trusted him. Still, a ready tongue and an earnest manner would serve him well.

Suddenly a green and brown mass surged up in front of him like mud and liquefied grass and dead leaves flowing in defiance of gravity. It rapidly took on a degree of definition, sprouting limbs and a hairless bump of a head, but remained a sexless and unfinished-looking thing. It stuck a three-fingered hand inside its own semi-solid torso, extracted a javelin, and hefted it to throw.

“No!” Adolph said. “I belong to the Red Crown! I’ve seen you before. Don’t you recognise me?”

The sentry hesitated. “Red Crown?” it asked in a mushy voice.

“Yes.” He prayed the bandit understood. Sometimes the god’s mark diminished a person’s intelligence, and the guard appeared a case in point.

“Sweetmeats?” asked the sentry, peering past him. “Treats?”

“I brought supplies,” Adolph said, “but something’s wrong. I need to speak with the others immediately.”

The sentry simply stood, seemingly struggling to comprehend, until he wanted to scream at it. At last it said, “Come,” floundered around, and led him onwards, its boneless gait somehow awkward and flowing at the same time. With each step, it looked on the verge of collapsing and melting back into shapelessness again.

The raiders had pitched their tents, built their lean-tos, and dug their fire pits and latrines in what passed for a clearing in the dense and ancient wood. Many of the band were simply lazing about, and, curious, came scurrying when the sentry conducted Adolph into view. In moments he found himself surrounded by faces with beaks, scales, doglike muzzles, or set upside down so the mouth split the top, the nose was inverted, and the eyes blinked and shifted at the bottom. Voices, many barely intelligible, croaked, growled, and hissed greetings and questions. As Adolph had learned from past experience, not all such creatures stank, but enough of them did that when they clustered around him, the eye-watering funk was like the reek of a dirty kennel mixed with the foetor of a plague pit.

In other words, the bandits provided a glimpse of the glory that would reign everywhere once Chaos obliterated the conventional human world, and on previous visits, Adolph had always tried to rejoice in the promise they embodied—and to quash the weak, unregenerate part of himself that persisted in finding them hideous and dreaded the day when he too would change and join their company.

Today, however, both adoration and repulsion were beside the point. He needed to enlist the marauders’ help as expeditiously as possible. “Is Leopold here?” he asked.

“I am,” a shrill voice answered from overhead.

Adolph looked up just in time to see a grey-black bundle hanging upside down from a tree limb unfurl the furry wings wrapped around its body. Then the claws on its toes released their hold and it dropped, not to take flight as a true bat might, but to bound from one branch to another like a squirrel. Some of the boughs snapped beneath the considerable weight, but still provided momentary support sufficient to prevent a bone-shattering plummet all the way to the ground.

Leopold Mann landed with a thud. Despite his stunted legs and forward cant—leaning his weight on his knuckles, he generally used his arm-wings like crutches when he walked—he was so huge that his eyeless head with its enormous pointed ears showed above the heads of his followers even before they parted to make way for him. He swung himself forwards, the golden, wire-wrapped hilt of his greatsword gleaming above his shoulder and folds of alar membrane dragging on the ground like an overlong cloak.

“You look upset,” Leopold said, although how Adolph could “look” any way to a being without eyes, he couldn’t imagine.

“I had trouble,” he answered. “I was bringing you supplies and a recruit. A new member of the coven rode along with me. Mama Solveig thought it was time for him to meet you.”

“Go on,” Leopold said, still in the soprano voice that was so incongruous squealing from his barrel chest.

“He’s a magician, too,” Adolph said, “and he used a spell to murder Lampertus, the recruit. Then he tried to do the same to me. It all caught me by surprise, and I only just managed to escape.”

“Why would he do that?” Leopold asked.

“I don’t know.” Adolph hesitated, making a show of pondering. He didn’t want to seem too facile producing an explanation. “Unless… suppose he’s a spy, who infiltrated the Red Crown in the hope we’d lead him to you. As, to my regret, I did. But as we approached, his nerve failed at the prospect of actually meeting you. Perhaps he imagined that, what with all the amazing gifts the Changer of the Ways has given you, one of you would see through his disguise. At any rate, he decided that he’d discovered the general vicinity of your camp, and that was good enough. He’d kill his companions, flee, and lead the army back here to wipe you out.”

Leopold snorted. “We’d be far away by the time the soldiers came.”

“But only if you knew they were coming. If Dieter—the spy—had succeeded in killing me, too, you wouldn’t realise anything was amiss.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Leopold’s mouth was no longer shaped much like that of an ordinary human, but it managed something approximating a fang-baring leer. “Anyway, I don’t feel like moving camp just yet.” He turned to his followers. “Find the spy and kill him.”

And that’s that, Adolph thought.

Much as he would have liked to learn every secret Dieter might conceivably have taught, it had become clear to him that if he was ever to regain his privileged position within the coven, his woman, and, if he was to be honest with himself, his pride, the wyrd had to go. Yet he’d hesitated to attempt the deed with his own hands, partly because he’d acquired a healthy respect for Dieter’s powers and partly because he worried that Mama, Jarla and the others would suspect him if the hedge wizard turned up dead inside the city.

Fortunately, it was inconceivable that Dieter’s sorcery, formidable though it was, would suffice to fend off a small army of brigands, and afterwards, if anyone asked questions, the outlaws would support Adolph in his claim that his companion had been a spy. Having slaughtered Dieter, they could only assume the act was warranted. It was human nature to justify oneself, and Adolph was confident that even the most extreme transformations hadn’t cured his dupes of the habit.

As he watched them lope, hobble and even slither on their bellies in search of their prey, he had to clamp down hard to stifle a laugh.