Tales of the Old World (59 page)

“Shall I winch you down, or do you want a ladder?” the merchant asked.

Hoffman blinked with surprise. “Don’t you want to wait for your men to turn
up?” he asked, glancing around the deserted yard.

“No, I can do it. And anyway,” Reinhard continued, a certain bitterness
creeping into his tone, “none of them will come back until you’ve gone down and
come back up again.”

Hoffman snorted. “Just fasten the winch handle and I’ll shin down the rope,”
he said. “Quicker we get this over with the quicker I can eat. And just to
remind you, it was six crowns we agreed on, wasn’t it?”

“Oh yes,” Reinhard nodded, his eyes never leaving the blackness of the well.
“Six crowns. It’s all here.” He jingled the coin pouch reassuringly.

“Good.” Hoffman leapt nimbly onto the wall that edged the well and watched
the merchant fasten the winch handle. When it was secure he took the rope in one
hand, tested it, then swung out over and into the darkness below. He caught the
rope between his heels and shinned easily down into the depths.

As soon as he entered the darkness, a chill of captured night bit at him. He
shivered, and the bare flesh of his arms was soon stubbled with goose bumps.

When he was about half way down he stopped, dangling on the rope as easily as
a spider on a thread, and listened. Below him the only sound was that of
moisture dripping down into the well. He looked down at the glimmering liquid
beneath his feet, then gazed up at the circle of sky that lay above. It was a
perfect “O”, broken only by the silhouette of Reinhard.

Hoffman was about to carry on down when something about that silhouette made
him look up again. A sudden jolt of fear flashed through him as he saw what was
wrong with it. The arm that reached out to the rope wasn’t there to steady it.
On the contrary. As Hoffman squinted up, he could clearly see the glittering
blade of a knife lying across the hemp.

“What are you doing, you damned fool?” he roared, the stone-lined sides of
the well turning his voice to thunder.

By comparison, Reinhard’s voice was little more than a squeak. “Justice,” he
said.

Hoffman, deciding that the merchant had cracked up, began to quickly shinny
back up the rope.

“Don’t move or I’ll cut it!” Reinhard snapped.

Hoffman stopped, his hands gripping the hemp as he glared up at the
silhouetted figure above. “Alright,” he said, trying to keep the rage out of his
voice. “No problem. You can keep the coin. There’s no sign of anything down here
anyway.”

Reinhard laughed, a shrill sound that soon turned to sobbing.

Hoffman, so gently that the rope barely moved, began to slide surreptitiously
back up towards him.

“This isn’t about the coin, you fool,” Reinhard shouted down. “This is about
my father. You murdered him. You and that bastard Schilburg. And all for what? A
few lousy barrels of tannin.”

Hoffman crept further up the rope, pausing every time he thought that
Reinhard might be paying attention. It was damned lucky that the man’s insanity
had taken the form of hysterics.

“You’re wrong, Menheer Reinhard,” Hoffman shouted up. “I have never killed
any of your family. The man Schilburg paid me to… to talk to someone who was
called Klumper. Otto Klumper.”

“That is my name too,” Reinhard said, suddenly sounding very tired. “Just as
it was the name of the man you murdered. So you see,” he smiled a death’s head
grin, “there
are
vermin in the well after all.”

And with that he sliced through the last of the rope. Hoffman screamed as he
fell, although not for long. There was a booming splash as he hit the water, and
then the churning desperation of an armed man trying to tread water.

The man who had called himself Reinhard looked down into the darkness.
Hoffman, it seemed, wasn’t above begging for his life, but soon his pleading
turned to gurgling as, weighed down by the tools of his trade, he sank into the
icy embrace of the water.

The merchant sat in the silence that remained until the eleven o’clock cannon
boomed out from the gunnery school. Then he roused himself, took a final look
into the still depths of the well, and went back out into the street.

It was a fine day and, for the first time in a long time, he had one hell of
an appetite.

It isn’t often a man gets to witness his own hanging, but Reiner Hetsau was
being given the privilege. He didn’t much care for it.

It was a week after the battle of Nordbergbusche, where Reiner and his
companions had helped Count Manfred Valdenheim reclaim his family castle from
the Kurgan who had occupied it since the Chaos invasion. This despite the fact
that Manfred’s younger brother Albrecht had turned on him, attacking him with
two thousand troops, all under the spell of the cursed banner Valnir’s Bane,
which had turned them into bloodthirsty automatons. If Reiner and his companions
hadn’t slain Albrecht and destroyed the banner, the day would have been lost.
And for this great service to Manfred and the Empire, Reiner and his companions
were to hang. At least it was to appear.

“Poor damn butcher lambs,” said Giano, the Tilean mercenary, as he peered
through the slats of the louvre-windowed coach Reiner shared with his fellow
condemned. Pavel, the scrawny pikeman, swallowed and blinked his one good eye.
“There but for the grace of Sigmar…”

Reiner nodded, squinting at the scene outside. The coach sat amidst Manfred’s
retinue of twenty knights in the square before the Middenheim gaol. A great
crowd surrounded them, all looking towards the gallows in the centre—a gallows
that could hang five at once. The crowd was in a cheerful mood. There was
nothing like a hanging to break up the monotony of rubble clearing and
rebuilding that had become the daily life of Middenheim, the site of the final
battle of Archaon’s aborted invasion. Sellers of pinwheels and sweetmeats wound
through the crowds, while on the gallows, five frightened men with passing
resemblances to Reiner and his companions were about to dance on air.

“Why do I feel guilty it isn’t us up there?” asked Franka, a dark-haired
archer who only Reiner knew was not the boy she pretended to be.

“Because yer a soft-hearted fool,” said Hals, a bald, jut-bearded pike-man.
“They’re villains. They’ll be guilty of something.”

“But not guilty of what they’re to hang for,” Franka pressed. “They’re being
hanged for looking like us.”

“They’re being hanged because Manfred doesn’t want his family name besmirched
by his brother’s infamy,” said Reiner. He affected Manfred’s statesmanlike
tones: ‘It would not do for the citizenry to believe their betters could be
corrupted as Albrecht was.’ Reiner snorted. “I’m sure if Albrecht were someone
else’s brother, Manfred wouldn’t be so concerned with the morale of the
citizenry.”

A drum roll began. The crowd fell silent. Reiner and his companions stared
through the narrow louvres.

On the gallows, Middenheim’s chief magistrate read the charges as Manfred and
a host of dignitaries looked solemnly on. “Reiner Hetsau, Hals Kiir, Pavel Voss,
Giano Ostini, Franz Shoentag, you are charged with the foul murder of Baron
Albrecht Valdenheim; of bewitching his troops by means of heathen sorcery;
causing them to attack his brother, Count Manfred Valdenheim, thereby bringing
about the deaths of countless innocent men. For these and sundry other bestial
crimes you are to be hanged by the neck until dead. May Sigmar have mercy on
your souls.”

As the hangman pulled sacks over the condemned men’s heads, Reiner looked at
the man chosen to be his replacement, a debauched-looking villain with a
pencil-thin moustache. Reiner wasn’t flattered by the comparison.

Beside him, Franka sobbed. “He’s only a boy.”

Reiner looked at the lad who had been picked to die for her. It was doubtful
he’d seen sixteen summers. He wouldn’t see seventeen.

The drums stopped. The trap banged open and the five men dropped and jerked
at the end of their ropes until the hangman’s apprentices jumped up and hung
from their knees. The crowd cheered.

“There’s another five deaths on our consciences,” sighed Pavel.

“Speak for yourself,” said Hals. “I put ’em square on Manfred. He’s the one
ordered ’em hung.”

But why he’d hung them instead of us, thought Reiner, is that we’re too
damned clever for our own good. Manfred had gone to the trouble of all this
subterfuge because he had been impressed by the guile Reiner’s companions had
demonstrated in their defeat of Albrecht, and wanted to employ it for himself.
As he’d told them, winning battles was not the only way the Empire stayed
strong. There were less honourable deeds that had to be done to keep the
citizenry safe, deeds no true-hearted knight could undertake, deeds only
blackhearts could stomach. Reiner and his companions were those “Blackhearts”.

So Manfred was having them “executed” so that they would be invisible men—perfect spies who did not exist in the eyes of the world. But because he also
feared they might abandon their new duties at their earliest opportunity, the
count had insured their cooperation by magical means.

“We are just as much hanged men as those poor devils,” said Reiner. “For the
cursed poison Manfred put into our blood is a noose around our necks—and he
could drop the trap at any time.”

Outside they heard Strieger, the captain of Manfred’s retinue, call
“Forward!” and the coach lurched into motion. As they rode out of the square
Reiner took a last look at the five hooded bodies swaying in the breeze.

They were travelling to Altdorf, where Manfred had a townhouse and where he
advised the Emperor on matters of state. Locked in the louvred coach, the
Blackhearts saw the passing world as dim light, shadow and sound. At least they
were alone, with no one to overhear them, and this allowed them to plot their
escape, however fruitlessly.

“Why not we kill the mage who know the poison spell?” suggested Giano.

“Manfred would get another, and have
him
unleash the poison,” said
Reiner.

“What if we broke the mage’s fingers until he removed the poison?” asked
Hals.

“And if he said the spell that killed us instead of the spell that freed us,
would you know the difference?” countered Reiner.

Pavel folded his arms, “Alright then, captain, what do we do? Let us poke
holes in yer ideas for once.”

“Well,” said Reiner, leaning back, “perhaps we could pay a hedge witch to
remove the poison.”

“If we could find one, and that would require a lot of gold,” said Franka.
“Something we are sorely lacking.”

Reiner nodded. “True. But fortunes change. While helping Manfred we may find
opportunity to help ourselves.”

“But a hedge witch could cheat us as well,” said Hals. “He could spout any
sort of mumbo jumbo and we wouldn’t know if he’d removed the poison until we
tried to run and fell dead on the spot.”

And on and on it went, an endless circle of argument as monotonous as the
sound of the wheels rolling below them. Only occasionally would the monotony be
broken when Reiner would look up to find Franka’s eyes hot upon him. She and he
had first shared that look after they had killed Albrecht. Since then, each time
they locked eyes, visions of Franka’s lithe body stripped of her boyish
trappings danced through Reiner’s head. But even these pleasant dreams led to
frustration, for none of the others knew Franka was a woman, so their desire
could not be acted upon, and the cycle of lust stirred followed by lust denied
became as grinding and dull as everything else.

The agony continued for three days, with the Blackhearts only let out of the
coach when the company made camp. Then, on the third afternoon, the sudden
booming of the coach wheels rolling over wood woke them from their stupor.

All five crowded to the slatted windows. The narrow view told them little
more than they were crossing over a drawbridge into the courtyard of a castle.
After a moment the coach came to a stop amid hails and responses from Manfred’s
retinue and the house guards.

One voice rose above the rest. “Count Manfred! Well met, my lord.”

“And you, Groff,” came Manfred’s voice. “I see you survived the troubles.”

“Barely, my lord. Only barely.”

The coach door was unlocked and the guard in charge of the Blackhearts’
transport, a sour veteran named Klaus, swung it open. “Fall out, vermin,” he
growled. “And no nonsense. We’re staying with quality tonight.”

“We’ll be on our best behaviour,” said Reiner stepping out. “Lay out my
finest suit and ruff, won’t you, Klaus?”

“That’s just the sort of thing I’m talking about,” snarled Klaus.

“We were hit very hard, my lord,” Groff was saying. He was a short,
dark-haired man with a flabby, careworn face. “We held supplies for Baron
Hegel’s cannon, and somehow the devils got wind of it. Tried for three days to
get in before Boecher’s garrison came up and chased them off, by the grace of
Sigmar. But by then three-quarters of my men died, and as you can see…”

Groff gestured around at his castle, which was in terrible disrepair. Crews
of peasants laboured to close up holes in the outer walls that one could have
led a company of lancers through, but they were making little progress. The roof
of the stables had burned, and one of the turrets of the keep had collapsed, and
now lay across the courtyard like the corpse of a dragon.

“But we seem to have bested one evil only to have another spring up. Indeed,
I am glad you have graced us with your presence, m’lord, for something’s brewing
in the forest that I would have you warn Altdorf about.”

Manfred looked up. “Remnants of the Chaos horde?”

Groff shrugged. “Something in there is carrying off the villagers and driving
the woodsmen mad. And they’re getting bolder. I’d appreciate you asking Altdorf
to send reinforcements. We’re in no state to face any—”