03 - Sword of Vengeance (23 page)

The three handmaidens stepped back, admiring their work.
Flesh was strewn all across the rushes, diced into neat segments. For a moment,
they paused, each breathing gently, lost in appreciation of their art.

Then one of them looked at the others, and the grin left her
face. A signal was given, and they limped back to the door. This quarry hadn’t
been what they sought, but killing was good. It reminded them of a life before
the one they had now, when there was more than simply pain and orders. For some
reason, the pleading for mercy, the desperate entreaties to be left alone,
appealed to them. Maybe they had done the same thing, a long time ago before
their minds had been taken away and all had descended into the long grind of
horror. There was no clear memory of it, just a vague sense.

They passed through the door, rattling as they went. Outside,
the wind howled around the farmhouse, and a loose shutter banged wildly. A gale
was coming, a storm wind from the Grey Mountains to the south.

The maidens departed. They knew they were getting close. They
never tired, they never gave in, they never lost hope. All they had was the
single word, the reason for their existence.

“Helborg,”
whispered the last of them, before they
stalked off into the night, heading south and east, away from the pastureland
and up into the gorse of the high moors. Their prey was drawing closer.

Verstohlen looked across the scattered fragments of parchment
again. The light was beginning to fail. His limbs throbbed from the long march
across country, and that affected his mind. Nothing came easily, and the cipher
remained firmly locked in place.

Over the past two days Schwarzhelm had driven them hard,
striding across the countryside with the iron resolve he’d used in the past to
lead armies. He spoke even less than normal. Apart from the Rechtstahl at his
side, he’d eschewed his armour, and seemed diminished both physically and
mentally. Something had broken within him.

Though Schwarzhelm never explained how, he seemed to know
where he was going. Every so often, he’d stop walking for no reason at all. Once
he’d drawn Helborg’s sword and held it up to the sun, turning the metal and
watching the reflection in it. Then he’d set off again, silent and brooding,
striding purposefully as if nothing had happened.

They kept clear of the roads, lying low whenever they sighted
Grosslich’s men on the horizon. Even so far into the wilds there were patrols.
They’d seen one column of men, at least five hundred strong, heading east. The
new elector’s reach was extending.

As the hours of furtive trekking had passed, Verstohlen had
watched his master carefully. There was none of the mania that had affected him
in Averheim. He now had a cold, calculated fury, directed inwards. The cure to
this sickness was obvious. If Helborg were alive, Schwarzhelm would return the
sword. Verstohlen didn’t like to speculate too much on what Helborg would do
when he got it—the Marshal wasn’t renowned for his compassion. Still, one way
or another it would bring some kind of resolution.

On the rare breaks between the marches, Verstohlen had plenty
of time to contemplate the coded messages taken from Lassus’ chambers. At first
glance, he’d assumed the code would be relatively easy to break. Ciphers used
for routine messages were rarely complex—if they were, uncovering the meaning
for the recipient would be too arduous and time consuming to be useful. In the
normal run of things, in a world where so few men could read, Imperial codes
were generally only used to keep messages secret from opportunistic thieves.

Lassus’ code, on the other hand, looked like total
gibberish. Verstohlen had started on the assumption that some kind of
substitution code was being used, and had drawn out a table of alphabets using a
stick of charcoal on parchment Schwarzhelm had brought from Altdorf. After that,
he’d worked on a single phrase, the opening words of the final letter. Every
variation produced a fresh line of nonsense. If he’d had more leisure to work,
Verstohlen might have been able to do things more thoroughly. Even so, after
hammering away at the problem, he knew he was missing something.

Schwarzhelm didn’t appreciate the difficulties. As they
travelled, he’d demanded answers. The man was a near indestructible master of
swordcraft, but he had little appreciation of the literary and philosophical
arts. He could read, it was true, but his penchant for language games didn’t
extend far. Verstohlen found it hard even to explain the nature of the problem.
Whenever he had to confess his lack of progress, Schwarzhelm didn’t fail to show
his frustration.

“This is important, Pieter,” he’d say.

“I know it is.”

“We don’t have time to speculate.”

“I know we don’t.”

“Then crack it.”

On the second day out from Averheim, they’d come across an
abandoned farmhouse on the edge of what looked like fallow fields. There were no
settlements within eyesight. The light was beginning to fail, and even
Schwarzhelm looked ready to halt the march.

Verstohlen looked at the roofless building before him,
watching the way the evening sun struck the stone. Around them, beyond the
margins of the ploughed and empty fields, the endless seas of grass whispered.
Schwarzhelm looked as if he was remembering something. Whatever it was, the
memory wasn’t a happy one.

“How close are you?” he asked again.

“Are we stopping here?” replied Verstohlen. “If so, I might
be able to concentrate.”

“I’ll gather wood for a fire,” Schwarzhelm said, stalking
off. “Do what you can.”

So it was that Verstohlen found himself huddled in the corner
of the ruined farmhouse, surrounded by scraps of yellowing paper. The
characters, all written in a small, discursive hand, began to stream in front of
his eyes. He ran the substitution tests again, this time isolating a different
phrase in the letter, near the end. He worked on the sentences in his head,
trying to spot patterns emerging for each shift. Whatever he tried, nonsense
emerged. By the time Schwarzhelm came back, Verstohlen was tired and frustrated.
Lassus was no fool. Verstohlen needed time, space, the use of a desk, quill and
mathematical tables. It was hopeless.

Schwarzhelm crouched down some distance from him and began to
pile the wood. A few moments later he’d struck his flint and the kindling at its
base began to burn. It wasn’t until Verstohlen saw the fire flare into life that
he realised how cold he’d been getting. The nights were drawing in across
Averland, turned chill by the gathering storms in the east.

“Progress?” asked Schwarzhelm curtly, sitting down with his
back against the wall. Verstohlen shook his head, knowing the reaction it would
provoke.

To his surprise, Schwarzhelm didn’t admonish him. The big man
stared into the growing flames moodily, watching the dry wood catch. All around
them, the shadows began to lengthen. Another day had passed and they were no
closer to their goal.

“We’ll have to work without the letters, then,” he said.
“Maybe things will become clearer when we’re back in Averheim.”

Verstohlen raised an eyebrow. Schwarzhelm clearly had the
future all mapped out. Verstohlen almost asked him to explain what he had in
mind, but then decided against it. He was too tired. As far as he could see, the
quest to find Helborg was doomed to failure, and the march across the
countryside was merely a way for Schwarzhelm to exorcise his inner demons. He
sighed, and began to collect the scraps of paper together. He could start work
on them again in the morning.

“I need to get my bearings,” said Schwarzhelm, looking like
he was speaking half to himself. “This whole place seems foreign to me.”

“So it should,” muttered Verstohlen. “It’s changed since you
were a child.”

Schwarzhelm grunted in agreement. Verstohlen returned to the
fire and held his hands against it.

“You never told me much about your time here,” he said.

“What do you want, my life story?”

“Not all of it.” Verstohlen was inured to Schwarzhelm’s
prickliness. “But you’re a hard man to understand, my lord. Is there a man alive
who knows anything about you?”

Schwarzhelm remained stony-faced.

“Not alive,” he said.

Verstohlen took the hint and fell quiet. For a while, the
only sound was the crackle of the fire and the sounds of the land. In the
distance, a triangle of geese flew low across the setting sun, crying as they
went. Below them ran the sound of the grasses, rushing endlessly in the wind.
Verstohlen resigned himself to a long, sullen evening, but then Schwarzhelm,
against all expectation, spoke.

“I was born a few days’ ride from here,” he said. He
continued to look into the flames, and they lit his eyes with a dancing light.
“In a village like any across the Empire. Less than a hundred souls, all of them
poor. Getting into the army was my dream then, just like any other lad’s. I
didn’t expect much from it, just a schilling in my pocket and the chance to
escape the grind. Turned out I was good at killing. My one true talent. I got
noticed, then got sent to Altdorf. After I started to train with Lassus, I never
came back. Even now, I’ve never been back. The Empire became my home, and my
roots seemed unimportant. Maybe that was a mistake.”

By Schwarzhelm’s standards, it was an unprecedented
confession. For a man who rarely strung more than a few words together, and
those usually curt commands, his answers to Verstohlen’s questions were a
revelation. Perhaps it was necessary. Maybe the wounds opened up by his failure
in Averheim needed some kind of purgation before they were closed. Even the
Emperor’s Champion could be damaged.

“Close to here, eh?” said Verstohlen. “So this is your
country.”

Schwarzhelm nodded. “That it is. Wenenlich, the village was
called. I don’t even know if it still exists.”

At the mention of the village’s name, Verstohlen froze.

“What was it called?”

“Wenenlich.”

Verstohlen felt his mind start to race. That wasn’t the first
time he’d heard that word. Someone had uttered it recently, somewhere important.
He sat back, leaning his head against the wall and looking into the darkening
sky, trying to think.

“Holy Verena,” he swore, feeling the memory return. “They
used that word.”

“Who?”

“It was the password. To get into Natassja’s sanctum. The
soldier at the gates required it.”

Verstohlen got to his feet, brushing his clothes down as he
rose. Something had occurred to him. Schwarzhelm followed him more slowly,
clambering to his feet stiffly.

“What is it?”

“An idea,” said Verstohlen, taking out the letter again.

He scrabbled for the crude table of characters he’d drawn up,
talking rapidly as he did so.

“Suppose you create a table of characters, each axis being
the alphabet in sequence, and each row starting with the letter in the leftmost
column—like this one. This is what Menningen uses, based on a system devised
by Vignius. Now suppose you read an ‘a’. Take the first letter of the key, say
‘w’. Find the row starting with the key, and move along to the cell containing
the cipher character. The character of the column header will be the one you
write.”

As he spoke, Verstohlen turned one of the parchment scraps
over and scribbled on it with the blunt charcoal. Schwarzhelm looked completely
blank, watching Verstohlen work with little comprehension.

“If you say so.”

Verstohlen kept writing, referring back to the original
letter. The stream of letters looked as impenetrable as ever.

jlyvrataakpnwgxmuzwkrpfdmpaoshxusquiwrtvhaxguerblugwipkkryctccpdwpqvrxikuossgbxuuawjsavwtdlsmgllzcuvkrpeaywvoapcjrpttlcvrxszzrhnxvrgsqudwwgmzpejljpbzropkllvwfsapdgujsihbywvadmaojttnininorlaksutespprnfzfslvbzbfpoxeipomrvomgicfdmebniycmvtgsoivrulvfzpmypplcvpkrnkntvuadiyfbcodbpcbyzlsgvsrzmaocrhbxrvzfkjdkvxkepmpzgmawepiffpscpnjxcyphrjrykgzsinorymfhjhsyaoatlyfsoflngsuly

“The important thing is the key. Using the word unlocks the
meaning.”

“Why Wenenlich?”

Verstohlen shot Schwarzhelm a wry look. “Perhaps their idea
of a joke. Lassus knew you like no one else.”

His fingers ran across the table, cross-referencing each
character in the letter with the one the key pointed to. Letters emerged. As he
wrote, Verstohlen could feel his hands begin to shake. It didn’t exactly make
sense, but it wasn’t gibberish. The letters followed one another without a break
as Verstohlen decoded them.

ndfundsrecbfksafehl

Verstohlen stopped transcribing and ran the charcoal stub
back along the letters.

“It’ll still be truncated, and may start mid-word.” He began
to draw a line between the likely words, watching for abbreviation and filling
out the expansion. “Some of this is guesswork, but maybe this will make more
sense.”