As they had drowsily boarded the carriage again at Vagenholt, as the village bell was ringing four of the clock that morning, none of the four temporary travelling companions had been particularly ebullient, not even the dowager. The fop had picked at his nails in silence whilst the merchant had been the first to doze off to sleep again.
Even though he was excited to finally arrive at the town where he would make his name, on being roused by a grubby-faced urchin—the keeper’s son—Dieter had sleepily struggled into his clothes, musty from days of travel, feeling the first biting chill of morning in the fire-bereft spartan room. He then gathered up his scrip and dragged himself downstairs and onto the coach.
The single trunk that comprised the rest of his luggage was still strapped to the top of the carriage, along with the possessions of his fellow travelling companions. In fact it barely seemed that there was any room for his one piece of luggage when he saw how much the dowager was transporting with her and the skeins of cloth the merchant had insisted on bringing with him, along with the strongbox, replete with three heavy locks that he kept with him, beneath his seat, at all times.
All the luggage certainly didn’t seem to leave much room for the driver, the Four Seasons’ pistolier watchman and the merchant’s personally hired bodyguard—a brawny man with a polished dome of a head, sporting a brutal scar that bisected his right cheek and continued on, down the line of his neck, beneath the collar of his battered hauberk. The strong-arm’s broken-toothed grimace and ugly broken nose was enough to deter most opportunist robbers, Dieter thought, but just in case they didn’t persuade everybody, his brutal-looking battleaxe and shoulder-slung crossbow probably would. If any thieves persisted in the face of all of those warning signs, then they deserved whatever they got for their pains.
Dieter had thought that the two employees of the Four Seasons Company looked by far the worse for wear, but the merchant’s incentive was more than enough to shake their hangovers from them long enough for them to get the coach back on the road.
As the carriage jolted on its way, Dieter’s thoughts were drawn back to the home, the village and the people he had left behind. His sister, his father.
The last thing his father had done for him, before he had left Hangenholz, was to open his personal coffer and give Dieter the money for the coach fare to Bögenhafen.
There had been no words of well-wishing or any suggestion that Dieter might be missed. It was as if he was glad to be rid of his son. Now eighteen, and a man, it was time he made a name for himself in the world beyond Hangenholz, if that was what he was determined to do. It was as if Albrecht Heydrich did not understand what Dieter was trying to do with his life, that he wanted to make a difference.
It was only Katarina who had shown any emotion at her brother’s departure, the tears falling freely from the limpid deep brown pools of her eyes. The memory of the sadness he had seen in those eyes Dieter knew would haunt him for a long time to come, particularly in the dark watches of the night and the lonely times that undoubtedly awaited him in the days, weeks and months of study ahead.
Then she had pulled herself together again and wished him every blessing and told him how proud she was at what he was doing. And then the sadness in her eyes had been tempered by the familial love he felt for her, and from her, and an ember of pride flared into glowing life.
The memory of her warm words expressing pride and love would temper those dark times and bring some warmth into his heart, no matter what the trials and tribulations of the forthcoming years of study would put in his way.
The persistent snores of the merchant, the irritated sighs of his younger travelling companion and the dowager’s heavy breathing whistling through her yellow-stained teeth, Dieter watched the world go by, feeling the anticipation and excitement rising within him with every bump of the carriage, his breathing frosting on the cold glass of the window.
He was almost there, at Bögenhafen, at last. He was on the verge of beginning to fulfil a life-long dream, a desire he had harboured for the last ten years, when, at the age of eight, three years after his mother’s death, he was at last able to express what he had wanted to do since the day he was told that the brain-fever had taken his mother from him, and the life and love he had known, were taken with her.
Within a matter of hours now—if that—Dieter Heydrich would be admitted to the grand guild of physicians of Bögenhafen.
The old year had been and gone and now, with the buoyant new year celebrations of Hexenstag, and the eerie witching night of Hexensnacht eight days past, the first signs that spring was on its way were already upon the land, showing themselves on the trees, in the undergrowth, even in the scent of the air. New life would soon come to the Empire, following the dead months of winter, just as new life had come to the Empire twenty-two years before, when Magnus the Pious and the armies of the Empire had met and defeated the Great Enemy at the gates of Kislev and the Great Incursion by the North had been halted.
A subtle mist was rising from the swathes of meadow beyond the trees lining the road, the warming golden rays of the sun’s first light lifting the night’s dew from the ground. The first fresh green growth of spring almost seemed visible on the elms and alder, the still-lifeless fingers of the trees’ branches clawing at the grey sky and forming a canopy over the road.
In only a matter of days Dieter would begin training that would set him on the path to become one of the greatest healers the Empire had ever known.
And then, there between the trees, on the other side of the mist-shrouded meadows, he saw it, the grandeur that was Bögenhafen.
Dieter gave an audible gasp and felt his scalp tighten, his skin turning to gooseflesh. He had never seen anything like it. Dark stone walls rose up to crenellated battlements thirty feet high, containing the riot of even taller, steeply sloping-roofed town houses, tenements, mysterious towers and temple spires. The town had stood for hundreds of years and from first impressions Dieter thought it looked like it would stand for centuries more.
Port, market town or seat of learning; it was all these things and more to the overwrought Dieter. To him Bögenhafen embodied hope, deliverance from the peculiarities of his childhood, a future. It offered a life away from Hangenholz and the spectre of his father’s disappointment, dispassionate disinterest and deathly influence.
Dieter was fully awake now, exhilarated at the prospect of reaching Bögenhafen and commencing a new, more optimistic, chapter in his life.
It was claimed that town was the third largest in all the Reikland with a huge population at around the five thousand mark, and that did not include the passing travellers, bargemen, merchants, guard contingents, peddlers, pilgrims, livestock farmers and dispossessed, vagabonds, beggars and travelling actors, troubadours and other entertainers.
This wooded stretch of highway ran parallel to the imposing eastern wall of the town that looked like it could hold an army at bay for weeks, if not months. Fortunately for the people of Bögenhafen, during the Great Incursion of the Imperial year 2302, the invading armies of the north failed to reach as far south as the Reikland, although there was a rise in the activities of proscribed cults at the time and herds of beastmen ran amok throughout the forests, terrorizing the roads through for the best part of the year. Roadwarden patrols had been doubled at the time and templar purges of their forest strongholds were increased to deal with the growing menace.
At the north-eastern corner of the towering town wall another, much lower dry-stone wall enclosed the town’s graveyard, covering an area of some two acres, by the looks of it. Dieter could see only one gate leading into Morr’s field and he caught sight of a squat, grey chapel through the pillars and lintel of the lych-gate, hunched between the tumble of ancient gravestones and statues of mourning angels. For a moment, on seeing this, Dieter felt strangely at home. The sight of the cemetery was strangely comforting to him.
Beyond the graveyard a stand of trees ran down to the banks of the River Bögen in the distanc
e.
The carriage continued along the main highway until it reached a broad, churned and rutted crossroads. The winter had made a muddied mess of the road here and work crews had yet to be sent to put it right. The last frost of winter still speckled the muddied channels formed by the passage of cart wheels and the hoof holes of animal traffic, making it look like the ground had been liberally sprinkled with tiny, glittering diamonds.
They turned right, approaching the town’s imposing east gate. It certainly was an impressive edifice, two tall, arrow-slitted towers dominating this view of the town wall, rising as they did on either side of a narrow, unassuming gateway. Lacking a castle, the walls and guard towers of Bögenhafen were impressive fortifications in their own right.
Hearing the strident, croaking caw of a carrion bird, Dieter turned his gaze on the thick oak post he could see firmly hammered into the ground beside the road. Looking up, he saw a cartwheel silhouette starkly dark against the dove grey sky. Hanging from it by the wrists were three naked corpses—those of thieves or murderers no doubt—secured by their ankles to the post itself. The carrion birds were already taking their breakfast from the peck-hole riddled cadavers, the flesh greening, the congealed blood black.
A trundling farmer’s cart laden with bales of straw was on the road ahead of them, being drawn by two lumbering oxen. They passed the cart as it turned off the road and passed between the hazel hurdles demarcating the perimeter of the livestock market. The Schaffenfest, renowned throughout the Reikland as one of the greatest livestock fairs to be held in the Reikland, was still two months away, but there was always a semi-permanent market based here for most of the year, only really closing down for the coldest winter months of Ulriczeit and Vorhexen. With Nachexen already a week old, the market had started up again.
Beyond the hurdle fence Dieter could see that the tents and temporary lean-to structures of the livestock market had already been erected for the new season. In truth, however, many of the barns had become semi-permanent also, possibly only changing location within the market field itself between the monthly gatherings there, but never really being taken down or dismantled entirely.
The gentle lowing of cattle and the pitiful bleating of early lambs, separated from their dams, drifted to Dieter’s ears across the wet meadow, along with the distinctive manure smell of livestock markets everywhere.
A heavy shadow fell across the carriage, a pall that reduced the bright morning light to a dusky twilight, as the imposing town wall rose up to meet them.
Buried at the heart of the massive gatehouse was the east gate itself. The town watch were in the process of changing shifts. A weary-looking older man saluted the two, yawning, unshaven men who had come to replace him before trudging through the gate himself, no doubt heading back to the guard barracks and thence to bed. All of the watchmen wore the yellow tabards over their leather armour displaying the town’s coat-of-arms—a merchant vessel above, the image of a fish below, separated by a bar set with three roundels.
Now that they were actually at the gates, which were already open to the day’s traffic, Dieter could see that they were in fact wide enough to admit two carts together, at a push. This realisation only served to make the towering gatehouse seem even more threatening and impressive. That, combined with the macabre reminder of the town’s justice system he had already seen outside the gates, gave an ominous message indeed to the young, would-be physician: once you are inside these walls you will live by our rules, follow our edicts, or pay the ultimate price.
The driver stopped the carriage at the gate. There was a rustling of papers and a muttered exchange between the driver and the watchmen. One of the two gate guards opened the door to the carriage and stuck a broken-veined, unshaven face inside, much to the chagrin of the dowager and the merchant. Then the carriage was moving again and they were through the gate, and Dieter enjoyed his first proper view of the town that was to be his home for the next two years at least.
Dieter sat in his seat at the window, his jaw agape as he took in the wonders of Bögenhafen. The carriage followed the main road, the Nulner Weg, into the town, rattling over the cobbles of the paved streets.
Dieter had visited towns before in his eighteen years, of course. Once or twice a year he had accompanied his father to the market-hub of Karltenschloss to collect alms from the Church of Morr and obtain supplies for the Chapel in Hangenholz. But Bögenhafen was something else again, three times larger than Karltenschloss, with a population four times the size. It was wondrous for the young scholar to behold.
The houses rose to a height of three, four or even five storeys above the street, with many of the upper floors jutting out further than the walls of the buildings. This meant little on the main thoroughfares through the town, but down the side-streets, the upper storeys jutted out so far that they turned the streets into darkened tunnels, where the sun, if there was any, only penetrated their chill depths for a few minutes during the hour when the sun was at its zenith. In the winter months this could mean that the streets saw no light at all and so only those who did not want their business known, or those who preyed on the business of others used those streets. It was worst in the poorest areas of the town.
The streets of Bögenhafen were still quiet this early in the day. In a few hours’ time they would be thronged with people going about their daily business. For the moment they were still the preserve of watchmen returning to their barracks following the night shift, market traders arriving early to set out their stalls and business-minded clerks ready to make the most of the day, having left late the evening before. A town like Bögenhafen was only as successful and as wealthy as its mercantile classes.
Dieter could see other streets running off to the left of the Nulner Weg, into the well-to-do mercantile district of the town. To the right narrower streets wound more torturously into the artisans’ quarter and the poorer parts of the town to the east.
And then, only two hundred yards along the cobbled street, a sign, creaking from a rusted iron bracket outside a solid stone building. The building was an imposing four-storey edifice with small, lead-paned windows on every floor, rising to a proliferation of turret rooms and slate-tiled pitched roofs.
Dieter glanced at the sign as it creaked in the gentle morning breeze being funnelled along the main street into the town from the river, bringing with it the aroma of stagnant mud and rotten fish. And then he was no longer glancing but staring, his heart racing and an elated smile breaking out on his face. The sign bore an image in peeling paint of a pestle and mortar: the sign of the physicians’ guild.
Dieter wanted to jump up, to cry out that the coach should stop and deposit him here, at his goal, the place that would mark the beginning of a new direction in his life, here in Bögenhafen. But Dieter had never been the most confident of individuals and his inherent shyness got the better of him now. He remained where he was, saying nothing.
And then the carriage had passed the guild house and Dieter saw the street opening out ahead of them, his attention drawn back to Bögenhafen as new wonders of the town were revealed to him. The carriage passed out of the Nulner Weg and into the paved expanse of the Göttenplatz. The wide-open space of the square was in stark contrast to the close-clustered tenements, shops and town house offices of the rest of the town. And a grand sight it was too, for the acre of the Göttenplatz contained the principle temples of the town.
The square was dominated by the grand Temple of Sigmar, a great hall of a building with a towering spire at either end, contained within its own walled grounds. The dowager made the sign of the hammer, while the merchant—also now awake—was busy pointing out the colonnaded hall that looked more like a merchants’ basilica court than a holy place. It was the centre of worship of Bögenhafen’s own patron deity, the merchant-boatman Bögenauer.
The carriage was currently passing a smaller building adorned with carved stone likenesses of wolves, this temple being dedicated to Sigmar’s rival within his own holy Empire
, Ulric, god of war and winter. Ulric was more highly favoured in the northern provinces of the Empire, particularly in and around the city of the White Wolf itself, Middenheim. Beyond it, Dieter could see parts of a dome and tower belonging to another, more elaborate structure.
The frost was fading from the cobbles and slabs of the square. Dieter suddenly felt very small and insignificant in the face of such enduring, heavenly majesty.
To the right was the plain, unassuming frontage of a Temple of Shallya, goddess of healing. The temple-infirmary appeared to take the form of two wings surrounding an inner courtyard.
A few of the most dedicated, or desperate, faithful were already making their way to morning prayers at the various temples, most heading for the dominating presence of the Sigmarite temple. The clear tone of a tolling bell could be heard ringing out over the spires of the other temples across the Square of the Gods.
Then the carriage had passed through to the other side of the Göttenplatz and into the town’s administrative hub, the Dreiecke Platz, beyond. It was only a short journey from there, past Bögenhafen’s impressive town hall, with its pillared facade and impressive spires, and past the huge building housing the merchants’ guild, arriving at a two-storey coaching inn going by the name of the Reisehauschen.
Dieter eagerly disembarked from the Four Seasons coach, clutching his scrip, containing his few precious books and what little money he had, tightly to him. But he then had to wait to have his trunk unloaded as the dowager bossily demanded that the coachman help her down from the carriage before doing anything else.
Dieter was tired and sore from the journey but full of excitement and quiet enthusiasm for the adventure that lay ahead, for he was here at last, in Bögenhafen.
The corpulent merchant anxiously oversaw the unloading of his possessions as soon as he could and then disappeared inside the inn, followed by the fop and their bodyguard. The last thing Dieter heard from him, through the open door of the establishment, was the merchant demanding a room for him and the young man, who he was at pains once again to introduce as his nephew on his sister’s side.
Necromancer Page 2
