[Warhammer] - The Wine of Dreams

by Brian Craig - (ebook by Undead)

One of the servants had set a lamp beside the bed, although the wick had been compressed so tightly that the blue flame was hardly brighter than the starlight outside. Reinmar had already decided to go straight to his bed, so he did not bother to turn up the light—but he had barely knelt down to unfasten his shoes when he heard soft footfalls on the floor above.

  Reinmar’s first thought was that it must be Godrich or one of the other servants, but he moved to the door nevertheless, then slipped outside into the corridor in the hope that he might be better placed to hear. He closed the door behind him to cut off the glimmer of the light and held himself perfectly still while he listened hard.

  The quality of the shuffling steps changed as whoever was abroad reached the head of the staircase leading down to the first floor, and Reinmar deduced from the sound that whoever was coming down was less sure of his footing than any of the servants would have been. A servant about his business would, in any case, have been carrying a candle—and this person was not.

  Reinmar did not know what to do. If he stayed where he was, outside his bedroom door, the intruder—if it was an intruder—would have to pass by him to get to the stair which led down to the shop. In all probability, the man—if it were a man—would walk right into him. He was tempted to call out and wake the household, but did not like to do so while he had no idea what might be happening, so he waited while the footsteps approached.

  He did not move, but he could hardly stop breathing, and the footfalls stopped abruptly while the other was still two paces away from Reinmar’s station. There was a windowslit at the far end of the corridor, but the faint light that filtered through it was insufficient to let him make out a shadow unless or until the other placed himself directly in line with it, and the man seemed instead to be pressing himself against the wall, using it to guide him.

  When he could bear the suspense no longer, Reinmar said: “Who’s there?” He felt direly foolish, for he was hardly likely to obtain a meek reply if the other had no right to be where he was, but it would have been worse to leap upon the other and engage in a tussle if it turned out to be Godrich or Gottfried.

  The reply he actually obtained was an urgent “Shh!”—a syllable which was inadequate to give him any clue as to the accent of the voice. Within a second or two, though, the sound was followed by urgent action, as Reinmar felt hands groping for his neck. Fearful that he was about to be strangled he tried to wrestle, but the other man was much stronger than he, and within three seconds he was tightly held, with a hand clamped over his mouth.

  “No need to wake the servants, cousin,” a voice hissed in his ear. “The fewer people know that I was here the better. Where’s the door of your room?”

  The hand relaxed to permit him to reply, although it remained poised to reassert its grip if he should try to call out.

  “We have only to step to the side, Cousin Wirnt,” Reinmar assured his captor, extending his free hand to push the door inwards.

  Wirnt bundled him through it, then let him go. After the darkness of the corridor the lamplight did not seem so dim, although it lent an eerie tint to the dark man’s features. “Who told you my name?” he demanded.

  “Great-Uncle Albrecht,” Reinmar told him. “Did my grandfather not tell you that I had gone to warn him?”

  “Uncle Luther told me far less than I had hoped,” said Wirnt, bitterly. “He’s scared half to death, perhaps because von Spurzheim still has your father. How did they catch up with me so soon? That barge must have been even slower that it seemed, and von Spurzheim must have hired horses so that he and his favourites could ride ahead of the troop. Do you know how many locks there are between here and Holthusen?”

  Reinmar knew exactly how many locks there were between Eilhart and Holthusen—the taming of the river’s flow was a great source of pride in the town—but he did not bother to number them. “You must go,” he said. “Great-Uncle Albrecht said that he would be glad to see you in other circumstances, but that he cannot give you what you seek or tell you what you want to know. If you go up into the hills you will find it exceedingly easy to lose yourself. When the witch hunter has gone there will be time enough to renew old acquaintances.”

  “To renew old acquaintances,” the dark man repeated, with a sneer in his voice. “That is not why I came, cousin—nor did I come to hear nonsense about secret passes to Bretonnia. I must make contact with the vintagers, for their sake as well as mine. Vaedecker’s platoon is the advance detachment of a much larger company, and von Spurzheim’s spies are already abroad in the region. There has been treason in Marienburg and the authorities there know far too much—more than 1, and more than your grandfather is yet prepared to admit.”

  “You are not safe here,” Reinmar said, stubbornly. “And while you are here, neither are we. You must go.”

  Wirnt’s expression was twisted with anger as well as anxiety, and for a moment Reinmar thought he would refuse—but then he relaxed. “Aye,” he muttered. “So I must. Will you come down with me, to let me out and bar the door behind me? I climbed up the same way I watched you climb down, but I nearly got caught half way in and half way out of the window, and I wouldn’t care to try it again.”

  “With pleasure,” Reinmar assured him, insincerely, as he turned to pick up the lamp. “I hope you won’t take it amiss if I say that I hope I shall not see you again for quite some time.”

  The other man laughed dryly. “No, cousin,” he said, as he followed Reinmar out of the room. “I won’t take it amiss. Now that I’ve seen Uncle Luther I know how the land lies—but don’t think that this affair will be over when you bar the door behind me. Von Spurzheim won’t stop searching, and it won’t be easy to convince him that none of you can point him in the right direction. You’ll be carefully watched, so you’d best not put a foot wrong.”

  “How can I,” Reinmar protested, as he made his way to the shop door, “when I know nothing?”

  “That might not save you,” Wirnt said, while he waited for the bar to be removed. “When witch hunts begin, all kinds of old resentments surface. Your neighbours might be denouncing all three of you as addicts of the wine and active sorcerers even as we speak. You might soon have to make new estimates as to who your friends are—and you might regret your rudeness to me.”

  Reinmar decided then that he did not like his cousin Wirnt, and regretted that he had accidentally shown him a way into the house—a way that he could obviously use in spite of his generous girth.

  “We are honest tradesmen,” Reinmar said, stiffly, as he held the door open to let out his unwelcome visitor.

  “I’ll be sure to remember that,” Wirnt promised—but the promise was a sneer, ill-befitting a man who had just exposed his kin to danger, and had refused to warn them when he had the chance, because they could not give him what he sought. Reinmar watched him until he had vanished into the night, and then took himself swiftly to bed.

  Tired as he was, he could not sleep. It seemed to him that within the space of a few hours his whole world had been turned upside-down. Everything was different: his father, his grandfather, Eilhart and the wine trade. Every one of them had seemed so straightforward when the day dawned, dull and settled and secure. Now, they had all exposed to his sideways glance the suggestion of a darker underside, as ominous as it was mysterious. How could that be factored into his life? And how could it be factored into his dreams? Was there hope in this sudden upsurge of mystery as well as danger? Was there opportunity as well as threat?

  Of one thing he was certain: he must discover more. And he must not do so meekly, waiting for others to tell him what they cared to when they cared to do it. He must work on his own account, with his own aims and his own ambitions. He was a child no longer, and he must reach his own accommodation with the enigmatic wine of dreams and its even darker kin. He would take nothing as given, no man’s word as final. He must be his own man now—but he must discover more, if he was to be the kind of man he was anxious to become.

  Chapter Six


  In spite of the sleep-denying effect of all the ideas seething in his brain, Reinmar contrived to rouse himself in time to open the shop at the designated hour. He was almost immediately swamped by customers who had far more on their minds than a simple exchange of coin for jugs of wine. Several of them assured him that they had been expecting “this” for years, although they were disinclined to specify exactly what “this” might be. None of them mentioned dark wine in so many words, but more than one commiserated with Reinmar over the fact that the legacy of Luther’s sins now seemed to be descending to his son and grandson.

  “Not that the old man ever meant any harm,” Frau Walther assured him, “or even that stuck up brother of his—but meaning no harm isn’t the same as doing none, and chickens always come home to roost. There are evil things abroad in the forest now, so they say. The poachers always say so, of course, but when the woodcutters join in you have to take it seriously. You stick fast to the roads, now, when you go off on your tour of the vineyards, and watch out for the gypsies.”

  “More soldiers are coming,” he was told by one of the constables’ wives. “All well and good for your trade, I suppose, but where there’s soldiers there’s trouble. They’ll pass through, it seems, as soon as they’ve figured out where to head for next, but they’ll be back when they’ve done whatever they’ve come to do, dragging trouble in their wake. There are advantages to being at the limit of the river’s navigability, you know—this has always been such a decent town. We never needed soldiers here. Never.”

  Gottfried still had not returned by the time the first rush was over, and Reinmar was becoming worried, although one of his loyal customers would have been sure to pass on the news if his father had actually been arrested. When Marguerite turned up, hungry for news, he had not the slightest idea what to tell her.

  “People are saying that it’s your grandfather’s fault,” she informed him, hesitantly. “They say that he first got sick because he dabbled in magic. Some even say that your Great-Uncle Albrecht is some sort of necromancer and that his housekeeper is a witch.”

  “That’s nonsense,” Reinmar assured her. “Albrecht’s just a harmless old man. His housekeeper might be a gypsy, but she’s just a housekeeper. My grandfather just got sick—magic had nothing to do with it.”

  “I don’t think you should go out with the wagon next week,” she said. “It’s not safe.”

  “We’re wine merchants,” Reinmar said, patiently. “All but the dregs of this year’s harvest will have been trampled and casked by now, and last year’s will have matured in the wood. We need to restock the cellar. It’s just a matter of doing the usual rounds, filling up the cart. I’ll have Godrich with me, and one of the labourers—probably Sigurd. Godrich and I have both been schooled in swordplay and Sigurd’s practically a giant. Nobody’s going to attack us—and if there are Reiksguard cavalrymen and foot soldiers in the region the roads will be even safer than usual. I’ll be back inside a fortnight.”

  “There are tales of monsters in the woods,” Marguerite persisted.

  “There have always been tales of monsters in the woods,” Reinmar countered, “and monsters in the mountains, and monsters everywhere else, but who do you know who’s ever been harmed by one? All travellers tell tall tales, Marguerite—I’ll probably bring back a couple myself—but the fact that they always live to tell them suggests that the danger isn’t quite as bad as they make out. I’ll be fine.”

  Marguerite would probably have said more, but the door to the shop opened again, and when she saw that it was Gottfried she suddenly remembered whatever errand she had been running for her mother and beat a hasty retreat, leaving father and son alone.

  “Have they let you go?” Reinmar asked, awkwardly.

  “They never arrested me,” Gottfried was quick to insist. “They wanted my advice, and I gave it freely.”

  “They searched the cellars,” Reinmar pointed out.

  “As I invited them to do. We have nothing to hide—nothing. I wanted to make that clear.”

  “Everyone says that more soldiers are coming,” Reinmar said, tentatively. “Do you know why?”

  “Politics,” Gottfried said, succinctly. “There is trouble in Marienburg, and the Empire is always intensely interested in trouble in Marienburg. Even after all this time, the secession still rankles. There are many in Altdorf who would be exceedingly glad to welcome Marienburg back into the Imperial fold, even if the opportunity were bought in blood. The witch hunter has friends in the Reiksguard who are prepared to indulge his whims, it seems, and he thinks that he might find something hereabouts to give him useful leverage over the burgers of Schilderheim and Marienburg.”

  “The mysterious source of the dark wine, in which we do not deal,” Reinmar said.

  Gottfried looked at him sharply. “You’ve been talking to my father,” he said disgustedly. “What did he tell you?”

  “That there is no secret pass through the mountains,” Reinmar said, offhandedly, “and that the dark wine isn’t as black as some would like to paint it.”

  Gottfried scowled. “Old fool,” he said. “I’ve decided to bring forward the buying trip. You leave tomorrow. It’s been a good summer—the harvest must have come in on time, and the more industrious vintagers will be ahead of their normal timetable. You won’t be expected so soon, so Godrich might have to improvise a little, but he and I will plan a route tonight.”

  “You want me out of the way,” Reinmar said, flatly.

  Gottfried hesitated momentarily, but then nodded his head. “Yes, I do,” he admitted. “We have nothing to hide and should have nothing to fear, but people hereabouts have long memories and agile tongues. Von Spurzheim will want to talk to Luther, and Albrecht too—and they may not find it easy to persuade him that they cannot help him. Old animosities might flare up again, and things could become unpleasant. I don’t think anything bad will happen, but I want you out of harm’s way, just in case.”

  “I want to know what this is all about,” Reinmar told him, firmly. “If I’m old enough to take a full part in the business, I’m old enough to be let in on all its secrets.”

  “There isn’t any secret.”

  “Yes there is,” Reinmar insisted. “Or there was, once—and however dead and buried it seemed to be this time yesterday, it’s definitely not dead and buried now. You might be able to stop Luther talking to me, but you can’t stop Albrecht and Wirnt—and if you won’t tell me what this is all about, they will.”

  “Who’s Wirnt?”

  “Your cousin. Albrecht’s son.”

  Gottfried raised an inquisitive eyebrow, and seemed to be on the point of asking how Reinmar knew that—but he had already deduced that Reinmar had been talking to Luther. In the end, he sighed and said: “I’ve never known the half of it myself, and I’ve always been glad of that—but I suppose the time has come when it might be more dangerous to remain ignorant than to know what my father knows, and perhaps what Albrecht knows too. The authorities in Marienburg seem to have stamped out their end of the trade in dark wine, at least for the time being, but they won’t be satisfied with that. They want the source eliminated, and having traced it back as far as this they won’t be in any mood to stop short of their goal. If we can’t help them, they’re likely to assume that the ‘can’t’ is really a ‘won’t’, so we must hope that we can. You’d better come with me while I talk to my father—Godrich can mind the shop for an hour or two, given that it’s so quiet.”

  Reinmar felt a thrill of triumph as he realised that for the first time in his life he had forced his father’s hand. He went up the stairs far more lightly than his heavily-treading father, although he had only had a little more rest.

  Luther seemed distinctly uneasy when his son and grandson confronted him—unsurprisingly, given that Gottfried was in such a grim mood. The old man’s gaze flickered uneasily from one to the other. “I couldn’t help it,” he said defensively, shrinking back beneath the coverlet. “It wasn’t m
e who let him in.”

  Gottfried was startled, but not completely astonished. “The stout stranger came back,” he quickly deduced. “Albrecht’s brat. He wouldn’t take no for an answer—not from me, at any rate. He’s not still here, I hope?”

  “No, he’s not,” said Reinmar. “I saw him as he left. He’s gone into the hills to hide—unless he decided to call on his father first.”

  “What did you tell him?” Gottfried asked of Luther.

  “What could I tell him?” the old man retorted, resentfully.“ We have no dark wine, and we don’t know where it’s made.”

  “And what did he tell you?” Gottfried demanded.

  “That his mother, when he found her, seemed hardly old enough to have given birth to him—but that she did acknowledge him, and that he continued to see her in spite of rumours that she was involved in dark magic. She was proud of him, it seems, and told him not to hate his father too much for having gone away and left him in the care of strangers. She introduced him to the wine. He said that the dreams were like coming home—as if they filled a hole in his heart that he had never quite been aware of before. It was as if he had never properly begun to live, until that moment. It was as if… but you have heard such talk before, and did not like it then.”

  “I haven’t,” Reinmar put in, quietly.

  Luther was still staring at his son, waiting for permission to continue. Gottfried only hesitated briefly before he said: “Tell him everything.”

  Luther nodded, and made an obvious effort to collect himself, then shifted his gaze to his grandson. “The dark wine is also called the wine of dreams,” he said, in a voice that was strangely dry as well as weak. “There are other wines from the same source, all darker of hue than the sweetest Reikish and all of which give rise to dreams, but those who know what they are about speak of dark wine in the singular, and the wine of dreams likewise. A few who have had the opportunity to tire of the wine of dreams manage to cultivate an appetite for one or other of its peculiar kin, but their use has always been… esoteric.”