03 - Sword of Vengeance (12 page)

All of the bodies had been stripped of their armour, and the
naked green flesh looked almost grey in the spare light. The limbs were bound
with twine, and there were bloodstains on all the corpses. There were nearly a
hundred of them, the best part of a company, all dead. As the carcasses were
produced, a howl of anger rose from the Keep.

“It won’t work,” insisted Kraus. “They’re obviously dead.”

“They can’t see that,” said Bloch, looking at the carnage
grimly. “It’ll look like an execution. And even if it doesn’t, would you watch
while
they
butchered your comrades’ bodies?”

The Averlander captain waited until the stricken orcs were
all out, then brought his sword down. One by one, working from right to left,
the cadavers were dragged forwards. With the maximum ceremony, the captain
sliced off their limbs. He didn’t work quickly, and lingered over every stroke.
If the orc had been alive, it would have been howling in agony. As it was, Bloch
hoped the distance would give a similar impression to those watching on the
battlements.

More orc corpses were sliced apart. The growling and cursing
from the Keep grew louder. Figures could be seen scurrying back and forth
against the battlements, and the rain of black-feathered arrows stepped up. They
were getting angrier.

“Maintain artillery barrage!” bellowed Bloch. “Keep those
arrows coming!”

He looked at the distance between the front ranks of his army
and the gate. There was plenty of space. He’d deliberately kept the ground open
and his forces in a loose offensive position. The orcs had to think that he was
ill-prepared for a sortie, that he’d left his men wide open to attack. Even now,
he could sense the boiling anger from within the castle walls. He knew the
orcish commander would be holding them back, but he also knew there’d be
hotheaded warriors burning to strike back. If the roles were reversed, he’d have
been one of them. Better an honest fight in the open than skulking in the
stinking halls of a human hovel.

“Come on,” he breathed, watching the walls intently.

A muffled cry told them that another archer had been slain. A
low tide of muttering reached his ears from the halberdiers around him. More orc
corpses were cut apart, their limbs thrown towards the gates with scorn.
Averlanders capered around with severed heads, throwing them back and forth like
children with snowballs. The cannon roared again, making the ramparts shudder
with the impact.

“Come
on…”

The gates stayed shut. The growling from within reached a
fever pitch. Bloch was running out of time. Kraus put his hand on his sword,
ready to draw it. His face was black with anger. Bloch knew what he was
thinking. The madness had to be put to an end. They had to withdraw. The plan
wasn’t working.

Bloch looked up at the ramparts. The gamble was blowing up in
his face, and good men were dying. Another shield-bearer went down in the front
ranks, his skull crushed by a rock hurled from the Keep. The cries of agony as
he writhed on the stone rent Bloch’s heart.

“By Sigmar,” he hissed, knuckles white with tension as he
gripped the shaft of his halberd. “Come
on…”

Verstohlen waited. He’d already been waiting for some time.
It had been hard to gauge how long, but it must surely have been two hours. He
was sitting in an antechamber in the Averburg. The room was almost entirely
bare. There were marks against the stone where furniture and paintings had once
hung, now just bleached emptiness. The one bench that remained was old and
battered. The place had been stripped, and was now not much more than a draughty
hall of naked rock.

Verstohlen crossed his legs and looked out of the window
opposite. Doubts ran through his mind, one after the other. It was the little
things that gave cause for anxiety. Traders spoke in hushed tones of a heavy
military presence all along the Aver. What little dissent had remained in
Averheim after Leitdorf’s departure had been ruthlessly crushed. Verstohlen
recalled Tochfel’s look of disbelief as he’d recounted the burnings.
Two
hundred.

And Natassja was still alive. She had to be. Despite all
Grosslich’s assurances that she and her husband were being hunted, there was
still no result. Only a body would satisfy him.

Now Tochfel had thrown doubt on the elector himself. Part of
him couldn’t believe the ebullient, golden-haired warrior could have been
corrupted; the other part of him dwelt on the possibility endlessly. Averland
seemed to have developed a knack for turning the minds of its governors. First
Marius, then Schwarzhelm, now Grosslich. There had to be something deeper going
on. For all his supposed acumen, all his long experience, he couldn’t see it.

Verstohlen sighed, letting his head fall back against the
bare stone wall. There was no pleasure in this work anymore. There never had
been, really. He was just Schwarzhelm’s tool, the keenest of his many
instruments. With the Emperor’s Champion gone, Verstohlen was bereft, like a
plank of old wood washed up on the shoreline. Some men made their own destinies.
Verstohlen hadn’t been like that since Leonora. For all his peerless attributes,
the wound of that parting had never closed. He was a follower, not a leader, and
the shadows were his home. Now exposed, held out in the open as the architect of
Grosslich’s rebellion, he was useless, a liability, an anachronism.

“My lord?”

Verstohlen snapped back into the present. He’d been drifting.
Reverie was replaced with irritation.

“What is it?” he asked, looking up sharply.

An official wearing the robes of a loremaster had entered.
The man’s face was curiously white and smooth, rather like a woman’s. He was
gazing at Verstohlen with a faint air of smugness, as if glad to have caught the
famous spy napping.

“I’m sorry to inform you that His Excellency is not able to
grant you an audience after all. I regret extremely that you’ve waited so long
for no purpose.”

“His
Excellency
? What in Sigmar’s name is that? And
who’re you?”

“I am Holymon Eschenbach,” replied the official, still as
smooth and untroubled as cream. “The new under-Steward. And His Excellency has
issued a proclamation on the titles and ranks to be observed in the new
dispensation. You would do well to note them, counsellor.”

Verstohlen felt his frustration begin to rise. He was being
snubbed, and crudely so. Or perhaps this was another message. He rose fluidly,
pulling his leather overcoat closed around him.

“Well then, under-Steward,” he said, letting a note of
contempt sink into that title. “It seems I have no more business here. Perhaps
you would let His Excellency know that I need to see him as soon as is
convenient.”

Eschenbach bowed. “I’ll do so.”

Verstohlen made to brush past him when a faint whiff of
something familiar caught his attention. He paused.

“I assume you work for Dagobert Tochfel now?” he asked.

Eschenbach couldn’t suppress the ghost of a sneer across his
full lips. “Naturally.” In that one, short word, much information was conveyed.
Verstohlen caught the meaning perfectly clearly. So this Eschenbach was after
the Steward position. Tochfel had better watch his back.

Then he placed it. The aroma wasn’t strong, but Verstohlen
had spent enough time trying to trace its origins to recognise its presence.
Joyroot. The man was either a user, or he’d worked on the trade in it. Grosslich
couldn’t possibly have missed it. So much for all the promises.

“Are you all right, my lord?” asked Eschenbach, his tone
profoundly unconcerned.

“I’m fine,” said Verstohlen. His mind was working quickly,
teasing out the possibilities. Tochfel had been right. This Eschenbach was a
minor player, but his presence here was no accident. Perhaps the joyroot on his
collar was a slip. Or perhaps he was being given a warning, a reward for the
work he’d done to drive Leitdorf out and deliver the throne to Grosslich.
Verstohlen felt the first stirrings of a deep nausea. More than anyone else,
more than Schwarzhelm, he’d done this. He’d brought it about, the man who hated
Chaos with a fervour unequalled even by the witch hunters. The irony nearly
killed him.

“This has been an instructive conversation,” he said, and
pushed the door open. Outside, the guards stood to attention. There was fear in
their faces. How could he have been so blind? The fear had never gone away, it
had just been hidden for a while. Long enough for the damage to have been done.

Verstohlen hurried down the corridor, anxious to get into the
fresh air again. He could still smell the joyroot. A dozen thoughts crowded into
his mind at once. He had to find Tochfel. He had to find Schwarzhelm. He had to
find help.

And then he remembered Natassja, the masks on the walls, the
dreams.

With a pang of fear, he knew then what his principal
objective was. They weren’t quite ready to kill him in the Averburg, not while
his name was so well known and there were loyal personnel still at their
stations. They’d come for him at night, when he was alone, when the last of his
friends had been despatched. Nowhere was safe now, perhaps not even the forge.

As he passed through the winding passages of the ancient
citadel, the message Tochfel had been trying to convey to him became painfully
apparent. The corruption had never been defeated, never been banished, never
been suppressed.

It had always been there, and now it was coming for him.

At last, the rain had stopped falling on Altdorf. The skies
remained a low grey, heavy with sodden cloud, but the dull thud of water against
stone and tile ceased for a while. That didn’t make much difference to the
stench hanging over the old city. Though much of the water drained down into the
vast network of catacombs and sink-holes far beneath the foundations of the
clustered buildings, plenty of the filth and slurry had nowhere to go but the
street, and large pools of foetid water sat stinking across the thoroughfares.
Folk trudged through it while going about their business, making the sign of the
comet to ward off pox and plague. It didn’t help much. In the aftermath of the
deluge, dysentery and cholera spread with the same speed they always did, and
the tight-knit terraces of wattle houses were soon racked with coughs, splutters
and phlegmy expirations. The gravediggers and the priests of Morr were the only
ones who profited, revelling as they always did in misery.

Set some distance from the sprawl and splendour of the
Imperial Palace, as streaked with rain as every other building in the city, was
the Cathedral of Sigmar Risen and Transformed. It had been purposefully set away
from the Imperial Chapel, whose priesthood were part of the Emperor’s retinue
and therefore loyal to the master of the throne. The Grand Theogonists, with
their long tradition of independent thought, had always seen the danger in
letting the Emperor’s pet priests monopolise the worship of the warrior-god in
Altdorf, so funds had been set aside to create a rival institution within the
city. The first stones had been laid in the year 580, before Altdorf had even
been recognised as the pre-eminent settlement in the Empire. Successive masters
of the Cult of Sigmar had augmented, rebuilt, extended, demolished and
refashioned the structure until it came to dominate nearly half a square mile of
prime Altdorf real estate.

In a conurbation already rammed with massive, vulgar piles of
stone, the Cathedral of Sigmar Risen and Transformed was a serious contender for
the most massive and vulgar of them all. The Church was rich, and no expense had
been spared on its decoration. Huge murals had been commissioned, some by de
Buenosera himself, which adorned every inch of the plastered ceilings. They
mostly depicted Sigmar slaying some beast or other, although the famously
dissolute Michaelangelico had managed to insert spurious vignettes of buxom
Reikland maidens being carried off in various states of undress to a fate worse
than death at the hands of improbably proportioned Norscans.

Every pillar was encrusted with bands of gold, studded with
semi-precious stones and ringed with ingots of silver. The floor was made up of
a dizzying array of marble flags, each a different colour, some engraved with
trader’s marks indicating passage from furthest Cathay. The windows were a riot
of brightly-stained glass, most illustrating moral tales of dragon-slaying,
mutant-hunting or witch-burning. In the very centre of the colossal building,
where four vaulted naves met under a domed roof nearly two hundred feet high,
the Altar of the Ascended Warrior stood in gaudy magnificence, crowned by a
thirty-foot-high statue of Sigmar wrestling with the dragon Gauthmir cast in
ever-polished bronze and ringed with forty-two censers containing the finest
spices of Ind and Araby.

Every day, whether the rain was falling or the pox raging,
thousands of pilgrims made their way to the holy site. Some fell on their faces
before the splendour, mumbling prayers to Sigmar before being dragged away by
the small army of impatient priests. Others fell into silent contemplation,
marvelling at the labour required to create such a daunting monument to the
human spirit. Still others, perhaps over-educated or seduced by the thin-lipped
creed of Verena, found the whole thing mildly distasteful and regretted handing
over the three-schilling entrance fee to the heavily-armed zealots at the north
gate entrance.