Genevieve 04 - Silver Nails

by Jack Yeovil

  'I'm sure.'

  'Harald,' Rosanna said, 'how can we question this man?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'He has no ears to hear what we ask, and no tongue to give answer.'

  'No tongue?'

  Stieglitz's mouth gaped open and Harald saw the scryer was right. Beyond his few remaining teeth was a black hole. Harald looked again at the governor.

  'He kept shouting Brustellinite slogans from his hole, slanders against the Imperial family and the electors. 'Throw off your chains, kill your betters, seize the land,' things like that. I thought it best he be silenced.'

  'If you acted this way within the city walls, Van Zandt, you'd answer to me. It'd be interesting to see the kind of treatment you would get from your fellow convicts if, through some malfeasance, you were yourself sentenced to serve time in Mundsen Keep.'

  Van Zandt turned a sickly colour. It must be his greatest nightmare, to wake up one morning chained on filthy straw, as an inmate rather than the master of this place.

  'Can he read?' he asked.

  'I don't know. I doubt it.'

  Rosanna held up a paper from Van Zandt's desk, and ran her finger along a line of writing, a question in her eyes. Stieglitz nodded. He could read.

  Harald gave the scryer the scroll. She showed the prisoner the list, pointing out his own name, then indicating the Warhawk's.

  Stieglitz's single eye narrowed. He was trying to understand. In his cage of abused flesh, he was still a thinking man.

  Harald gave Rosanna a pencil, and she wrote on the scroll.

  What was the Warhawk's true name?

  A ghastly keening came from the back of the prisoner's throat as he tried to give an answer. For some reason, he did want to help. Maybe he had no cause to love his old comrade in the Vanquishers? Maybe he was completely broken and pliable?

  'The stink in here,' complained Van Zandt, waving his handkerchief. 'These people have no concept of personal cleanliness. Myself, I bathe once or twice a month.'

  Van Zandt signalled to a trusty, who opened one of the casements, letting in a waft of forest-scented air. From the window, it was a hundred-foot sheer drop. The trusty, as much a prisoner as the ruin on the floor, looked out at the city walls, the trees and the road below, with a yearning that was like a knife in Harald's gut.

  Stieglitz stopped gurgling and Rosanna handed him a pencil and the scroll. His remaining fingers couldn't hold the pencil properly and he dropped it. Rosanna picked it up and slipped it back into his hand, keeping it there with her own fingers.

  'He was left-handed,' Van Zandt explained, 'that was why the duke, um, er you know'

  Harald knew.

  Between them, Stieglitz and Rosanna made a mark on the parchment. It was useless. The first letter might have been an M, or an A, or an E, or a dwarfish rune, or a meaningless squiggle×or anything.

  They gave up. Stieglitz sagged, dejected.

  Harald wanted to break Van Zandt's neck. In taking away Stieglitz's tongue, he was as responsible for the next death×and the one after that, and the one after that, and all the others×as the Warhawk himself.

  Rosanna sighed.

  'I'll have to scry him,' she said, reluctantly. 'The name must be uppermost in his mind. He's been trying to write it.'

  Harald knew why she was unhappy. Sharing what was in Stieglitz's skull×the pain, the suffering, the hatred×would be a filthy business, like fishing for a jewel in a cesspit.

  Rosanna took the prisoner's hand, and shut her eyes.

  From the window, the trusty screamed, and fell out of the way. Harald turned, his Magnin suddenly in his hand.

  The bird came into the office, its huge wings beating, and moved as fast as water on an incline. Van Zandt covered his head and dived behind a desk.

  A beak sliced down, across the trusty's chest, loosing a bright red trail of blood. Then, the creature went for Rosanna.

  Harald slashed, but missed. A heavy wing struck his wrist, stunning him, and his knife thumped against carpeted stone.

  Rosanna's hands were over her face, her contact with Stieglitz broken. With the hand that still had feeling, Harald grabbed at the bird. He felt feathers come free, but it dodged him.

  Then it struck at Stieglitz's neck, the force of the beak-blow breaching his artery. A fountain of blood splashed over the hawk, spattering its wings, masking its face. It attacked silently, not a squawking terror but a resolute instrument of murder as conscienceless and perfect as an arrow.

  Harald had his knife again, and threw. It sliced cleanly through the distance.

  The bird was out of the way, and the knife jammed to the hilt into a wooden panel by Stieglitz's hanging head, vibrating fiercely.

  The mercenary revolutionist was dead, what was left of his life ripped from him, his blood soaking the rags on his chest and pooling around him. The flow of his own blood washed part of him clean, revealing white skin beneath the grime of the Keep.

  Harald tried to catch the bird, but it was gone through the window in an instant, flapping back towards the city. It circled a tall tree a quarter of a mile off, and landed in the branches as if finding a nest. He could see a tiny figure, all in black, receiving his murderous pet.

  He made huge fists and slammed them against the windowsill, imagining laughter on the wind.

  IX

  He slithered down the tree like a monkey, gripping with his knees, Belle on his shoulder. Number Eleven had been the trickiest yet, but it was a clean kill, a clever kill. The Device was functioning perfectly.

  Kleindeinst had been there, as he had expected×known×he would be. He had almost guided the watchman himself, directing him as he would one of his birds.

  He let Belle go, and leaped from tree to tree, relishing the moments he was in open air with nothing beneath him. When he began to plummet, he would put out a hand and catch a branch. Over the years, his body had become creaky through disuse. But, with the Device in motion, he had been training himself as rigorously as he trained his birds. When he had wings, he would need to be agile, to bend himself to the ways of the sky.

  With an inevitable disappointment, he finally came to ground, thumping against the softly-grassed forest floor. The jolt shot through his entire skeleton, making him bite his tongue, and he stumbled against the bole of a tree, gripping until his balance returned.

  On the ground, he was clumsy.

  He held out his wrist and Belle settled.

  'Two to go,' he said. 'And we'll be together always.'

  X

  Captain Viereck was back in the office at the Atrocities Commission by the time they returned from Mundsen Keep. He must have spies everywhere. Rosanna was not surprised.

  She had been too close to Stieglitz at his death, and the tongue-less scream that poured from his broken mind still echoed inside her. In the carriage, Harald had been slumped and brooding. He felt his defeat keenly. Sometimes Rosanna was surprised at the depths of fellow-feeling 'Filthy Harald' was capable of. She wondered about his wife. The dead one he didn't talk about. Ever.

  By the end of the day, it was official. Harald Kleindeinst was back on the Dock Watch, and the Warhawk investigation was Viereck's responsibility. By the end of the evening, the case was back on its original course, with an acrobat×who had been accused in an anonymous letter×under arrest and on his way to Van Zandt's pet torturers. Harald disappeared while Rosanna was being seen to by the Luitpoldstrasse station physician, getting salve pasted on her superficial cuts.

  Of course, she was off the case too.

  She had tried. She went to Viereck, and found him with Rasselas, toasting their capture of the Warhawk. She explained their line of inquiry to them, laying out all she knew about Vastarien's Vanquishers, the first Warhawk, and Stieglitz.

  They thanked her for her concern and had her escorted out into the streets.

  It was a cold evening, with the first traces of an Altdorf fog. She looked up at the night skies and imagined a bird passing across the face of the visible
moon. A bird of prey, alone and hungry, impersonally cruel and casually deadly.

  As so often happened since she left the Order of Sigmar, where she had been cloistered since girlhood, Rosanna felt alone and uncertain. She could see so many things×random and useless information poured from the heads of passersby, from the cobblestones under her shoes×but if she turned her scrying in upon herself, there was just a blank space, a vacuum in the centre of a whirlpool.

  She supposed she should go back to her lodgings. And sleep.

  XI

  Until his captaincy could be reviewed by a board which×including, as it did, Rasselas of the Imperial Bank and a colonel of the watch he knew to be in the pay of Hals von Tasseninck×would recommend either his demotion to beat-pounding serf or dismissal (again) from the watch, Harald still had his copper badge. And he would always have his Magnin.

  The heaviest throwing knife in the world, the Magnin had been his friend through innumerable bloody nights. He noticed Rosanna shrank away from it as if it were a red-hot poker, and assumed she must be able to flash visions of the knife's past experiences.

  With his Magnin in its sheath on his hip, and his badge pinned on the breast of his tunic, he strolled into the Sullen Knight, a hostelry that fully deserved its reputation as the rowdiest, most dangerous, most violent on the Street of a Hundred Taverns. Normally, watchmen only ventured into the Sullen Knight in groups of four or more, with swords drawn and pistols primed. But tonight, he was alone.

  He elbowed his way between two young men who were attempting to strangle each other and glanced around. Several brawlers looked up from their fights, alerted by the flash of copper.

  A broad-shouldered Kislevite, beaded braids hanging from the unshaved half of his scalp, roared and charged Harald, seeing only the badge. It was Bolakov, a perennial visitor to the cells in Luitpoldstrasse when there were enough watchmen available to subdue him. By the time the foreigner got to him, Harald had a fist out ready for the thug's, face.

  Bolakov crumpled and fell. He must be too drunk to recognise Filthy Harald. No one else made his mistake. Still feeling acid in his guts from his bad day, Harald sunk his boot into Bolakov's side, denting his ribs. A few grinding broken bones would take the Kislevite bully boy out of the brawling business for a few days.

  Harald ordered a bottle of schnapps from Sam the barman and looked around, wondering if there were any other heads he should bother to thump. He saw a thin man in a black leather jacket trying to slip out the back way and knew he was in luck.

  'Stop, Ruger,' he shouted, 'or find out if I can throw this knife faster than you can get through that door!'

  Mack Ruger froze, hands well away from the docker's hook on his belt, and turned.

  'Good choice,' Harald told the weirdroot vendor.

  Ruger looked guilty, wondering which of his crimes was coming back to haunt him. Harald knew there was quite a list.

  'Drink with me,' Harald ordered.

  'I uh no thank you, sir, I was just leaving'

  'That was not an invitation, Ruger.'

  'No, of course.'

  Ruger, a Hook×a member of one of the waterfront gangs×sat down, and Harald pulled a chair up to his table, setting the schnapps down between them. Someone thought that Harald turning his back gave them an opening×evidently not noticing the useful full-length mirror behind the bar×and reached for a leadweight at his belt. Harald tossed a heavy pint-pot over his shoulder, and smashed the cosh-man's wrist without even turning to look.

  'Still in business?' he asked Ruger.

  'This and that, you know,' the Hook replied.

  'You usually set up shop at the Breasts of Myrmidia so you can sell your foul stuff to the students from the University, don't you?'

  Ruger didn't bother to deny it. He could probably lay his hands on more arcane herbs and potions than one of the university's tame wizards or a palace physician.

  'Of course, what with the Fish taking over the Breasts, you must have had to find a new territory.'

  Ruger tried a shrug. The Fish were the Hooks' deadliest rivals, and the two factions had been feuding for generations. Harald had personally ended the last Waterfront War, and his reputation was etched into the gangs' consciousnesses as if by acid.

  'Nothing is certain in this life, Ruger. Are you carrying?'

  Ruger began to say no, but gave up.

  'I need something,' Harald said. 'Something in your line.'

  A crack of a knowing smile started, but Harald slapped it off the degenerate's face. 'Don't think you know anything about me, Ruger. Don't ever make that mistake.'

  'No, captain.'

  The angry mark on the vendor's cheek was like a birthmark.

  'The berserkers of Norsca snort a herbal powder before they go into battle,' Harald said. 'It takes away their pain, makes them feel stronger, almost invincible.'

  'Daemon dust.'

  'That's the stuff. Give me some.'

  Ruger was about to protest, but Harald took the Magnin out and laid it on the table.

  'Look at the beautiful line of the blade,' Harald commented, 'a work of art.'

  The vendor sorted through his pouch, and came up with three bundles, dried leaves twisted into balls.

  'This is expensive,' Ruger said.

  'I get a watchman's discount.'

  That meant he was stealing the daemon dust. Ruger knew there was nothing he could do about it.

  Harald took the first leaf and crumbled it. A blue powder spilled into his palm. He pinched it like snuff, and shoved it up one nostril, inhaling sharply.

  Turning to the barman, he said, 'Sam, find the four biggest, meanest, hardest, toughest bruisers in the place and tell them from me that their mothers enjoyed sexual congress with farm animals.'

  The daemon dust exploded in his brain as he swallowed half the schnapps. This was dangerous, but he needed something to make him not care how hurt he got in the next few hours. Liquid fire ran through his veins, and he held his breath to keep himself from exploding.

  Being a detective hadn't helped him catch the Warhawk. Now, he would try being a berserker.

  By the time he was ready, Sam had more than four roughs for him. It took him nearly a minute to disable them all. He broke a stool over Ruger's head as a thank you for the dust and hurled his empty bottle at Sam's head, then tossed a table at the long mirror, enjoying the tinkling of the broken fragments as they showered onto the floorboards. This shut everyone up, and got the attention of even those so absorbed in their own fights that they had ignored his devastation of the bruisers. Then, he made an announcement he intended to repeat in every tavern on the street.

  'My name is Harald Kleindeinst, captain of the Dock Watch, late of the Atrocities Commission. Filthy Harald. I'm declaring my own war on the crime on this street. Every whore, every weirdroot vendor, every cutpurse, every Hook, every Fish, every non-aligned thug, every pimp, every fortune teller, every assassin, every cudgel artist, every knifeman, every burglar, every mountebank, every swindler, every dwarf-molesting mother's ruin of you, take notice. My war will continue until someone gives me the name I want, or the name of someone who knows the name I want. Then things will be back to business as usual. All of you, listen, and remember. My war will go on, until I have the true name of the man they call the Warhawk.'

  Harald stepped over Bolakov on his way out of the Sullen Knight. The dust put off any pain he should have been feeling. His face must be bruised badly, and he felt himself bleeding into his shirt. He didn't want to think about what would happen when the daemon dust wore off

  XII

  He was on the Street of a Hundred Taverns, buying a paper of roast chestnuts from a stall by the Drunken Bastard, when Kleindeinst exploded out of the Sullen Knight, spilling bodies all around him.

  Even though the watchman was off the case, he knew Kleindeinst would not stop searching for him. Kleindeinst stumped across the road as if wearing a heavy suit of armour and pushed into the Drunken Bastard, an establishment that cat
ered exclusively to miserable, solitary drinkers and the nimble-fingered pickpockets who preyed on their depleted coin-pouches.

  Chewing on a nut, he wandered near the door, and listened to the speech Kleindeinst made to the surprised sots. It gave him a thrill, and he was pleased.

  The Device was moving smoothly.

  Kleindeinst strode out of the Drunken Bastard and pushed through the queue by the chestnut stall.

  'You have your Imperial permit?' he asked the trader.

  The man fumbled in a satchel, not for the permit but for a bribe. Kleindeinst grinned down at the pathetic coins in his hand and flung them to the ground, whereupon a pack of urchins appeared from the alleyways and descended on the pickings like hungry wolves, fighting and tearing.

  Kleindeinst took the chestnut trader's brazier and poured it over his stall, spreading hot coals.

  'You're closed, criminal,' he spat.

  The watchman stalked away from the mess he left×other stallholders in his path shutting up their belongings and retreating×and shoved his way into the next tavern, the Beard of Ulric.

  Warhawk chewed his chestnuts, and waited.

  A body came flying out of the Beard of Ulric and skidded into the gutter.

  Warhawk tittered.

  XIII

  By the time the sun came up, Harald had covered the entire Street of a Hundred Taverns, and spread his message throughout Altdorf. He broke the neck of a Fish who tried to knife him outside Bruno's Brewhouse and he stopped the heart of a poison-clawed Hook with the heavy wedge of his Magnin in the tap room of the Wayfarer's Rest. In the Holy Hammer of Sigmar, the gathering place of professional murderers, he beat Ettore Fulci, the noted Tilean strangler, to a bloody pulp. Then he had impressed the cultivated Quex×acknowledged fashion leader of the city's assassins×with the need to find some way of ending the career of the amateur Warhawk if he wanted to be able to ply his trade without extraordinary difficulty. Quex was reluctant, so Harald broke three of his fingers and shredded his best cloak. Venturing into the Crescent Moon, haunt of the unquiet dead, Harald slipped his Magnin into the dry throat of a thousand-year-old hag, letting air whistle into her skull as he told the assembly of the thirsty dead what his conditions were for letting them remain in this world. In the rooms above the Crown and Two Chairmen, he used open hands on the girls, not hurting them overmuch but bruising their faces enough to dent their trade for a few nights.