But at least he was finding his feet at the physicians’ guild now. Nothing could truly quash his enthusiasm for the path he had set himself upon, and that was all that truly mattered. After only two or three years his training would be complete and he could return to Hangenholz and his beloved sister Katarina.
He saw her face now as his eyelids closed, her swan neck and almond eyes so like their mother’s, her shining hair, the sheen of her dark tresses like moonlight on a lake at midnight, framing her delicate, pale features. So like their mother. So unlike their father. And then, unbidden, the crow-black figure of his love-lacking father came into sharp focus in his mind’s eye.
No longer would he just be the loner son of Albrecht Heydrich, priest of Morr, Dieter determined. He would be Dieter Heydrich, doktor of physick, Healer of Hangenholz. Yes, he liked the sound of that. Hunched under his rough-haired blanket on the thin straw mattress of his bed he tried the title out in his mind, as weary sleep pulled at him.
Yes. Dieter Heydrich—Doktor Heydrich—the doktor of Hangenholz.
And then as sleep took him at last, one last, haunting image swam into his mind and his dreams. It was a face he had never seen before, one he could never have seen before. A horrific bandaged face with one baleful yellow eye peering through the bloodstained rags, its mouth a mess of drawn back gums and rotting elongated teeth. But he knew who it was nonetheless, although he knew not its import at that time.
It was the face of the Corpse Taker.
JAHRDRUNG
Krieger
Looking back now, it’s hard to believe that I was ever actually impressed by that blinkered old bigot, Theodrus. His mind was as closed to new thinking as a cast-iron strongbox. He could not bring himself to believe that there might be another way, another avenue of knowledge more far-reaching and powerful than his own. For he was a coward at heart, afraid of those who dared to question the primitive, out-dated understanding of the world that he held to be irrefutable truth, a way of thought that he would not let go of, like a mongrel with a scavenged leg of mutton. The guild master was a craven, opinionated sop whose position of power and influence was built on a feeble-minded adherence to the received knowledge and practices of others.
But looking back, however much I might despise the memory of Theodrus, it is nothing compared to the hatred and contempt I hold even now for that whoreson witch hunter, Ernst Krieger, Barakos take him.
Witch hunters! A pox on them! May they rot in the festering hells of their own creation, burning perpetually at the stake, throttled by their own intestines, as they have sent so many untold thousands to their deaths, innocent and guilty alike.
They dare to call themselves templars, divinely inspired holy warriors, knights of Sigmar. In truth they pursue their own obsessive hunts and exorcise their own daemons on the frail flesh of others.
They are a plague upon mankind, worse than anything the servants of the Ruinous Powers could ever conjure up. They claim piety and to be the true servants of Sigmar, yet they spread suspicion like a sickness. Their unbridled paranoia and pathological mistrust of others unnerves, terrifies and ultimately alienates the Heldenhammer’s otherwise faithful flock.
None can match their impossible, exacting ideals and expectations, so all—save Sigmar himself—are found wanting. And since they are the representatives, and instruments, of Sigmar’s divine retribution on the earthly plane, anyone they suspect of heresy is immediately considered to be guilty. And of course anyone who dares to disagree with them is a heretic.
They are mentally unbalanced, obsessive, irrationally paranoid individuals. They will burn, drown or put to the sword anyone—regardless of age or gender—without clemency. They are utterly without mercy and most of them are without reason of any sort. They encourage fanaticism and the mortification of the flesh, knowing little of its power. They breed discontent and spread antagonism in their wake.
Their idea of justice is to put the accused through one of their barbaric ordeals. They extract confessions, false or otherwise, by torture, many of those they abuse in this way succumbing before ever facing the ultimate punishment the witch hunters have proscribed for them—much to the villains’ disappointment and chagrin.
There are few who escape the prying suspicious intentions of witch hunters, not even others of their accursed kind. They are dangerous individuals whose merest word can stir up mass hysteria among a town’s populace and encourage a mob mentality that results in rioting and causing an otherwise peaceful crowd to bay for blood. Anyone who is slightly different can end up dead—strung up from the gallows or burnt at the stake—killed by people’s fear of what they don’t understand.
I hate them all with a burning black passion—this I do not seek forgiveness for—and none more so than that daemon Ernst Krieger.
The rest of the month of Nachexen passed in a whirl of excitement for the newly inducted apprentice of Bögenhafen’s physicians’ guild. Despite the promising signs that had appeared earlier in the month that spring was coming, now it seemed that winter showed no sign of releasing the town from its icy grip. In fact the weather seemed to worsen and the temperature dropped again as the days and weeks passed, to the point where on the twenty-first day it seemed that the relentless River Bögen itself might freeze and bring the barge traffic on the river to a standstill. Despite this fact, there still seemed to be a fair number of barges passing through the town bearing cargoes from as far away as Talabheim and the port of Marienburg.
But the cold weather did nothing to deter the increasingly enthusiastic Dieter Heydrich from his studies. As each day passed, he began to feel that he had truly found his calling in life, his vocation. Indeed his passion for his subject blazed so strongly within him that he barely noticed the cold of the attic room he shared with fellow student Erich Karlsen, a damp cold that seeped through his robes and even the blankets on his bed, as if his enthusiasm warmed him and kept the cold at bay at this dead time of the year.
For Dieter, Nachexen passed with daily attendances at the physicians’ guild listening to lectures given by the Guild Master Professor Theodrus and other senior members. Much time was also spent preparing the ointments, solutions, syrups, unguents and powdered remedies used by the physicians when practising medicine.
To begin with, Dieter was put to work preparing those medicines required by the respected sage Doktor Hirsch, who counted members of the noble merchant families of the town amongst his patients.
But then on the morning of Backertag the following week, after only five days’ service to Doktor Hirsch, Dieter received a summons to the chambers of Professor Theodrus himself.
“You show promise, Heydrich. You appear to have an almost intuitive understanding of the human body and its humours,” the professor told him at their meeting.
And that was that. Dieter was now apprentice to the head of the guild himself.
When he wasn’t attending to those duties he now fulfilled for Professor Theodrus, Dieter spent as much time in the library as he could. The keeper of the books, one Kubas Praza, quietly boasted that the Bögenhafen physicians’ guild’s library rivalled that of the guild house in Altdorf and contained some rare texts that could not even be found in the Shallyan temple in the city of Couronne over the Grey Mountains in the land of Bretonnia, the centre of the Cult of Mercy.
Erich continued to attend to his duties at the guild haphazardly and once it became common knowledge that Dieter was his roommate, the errant apprentice’s mentor—or rather overseer—Doktor Panceus stopped Dieter in the corridors of the guild house on more than one occasion to berate Erich and put the onus on Dieter to cajole his slovenly, defiant fellow lodger to attend.
One such incident occurred when Dieter and Leopold were making their way to a lecture on the last Konigstag of Nachexen. Leopold was updating Dieter with regard to the latest outrageous rumours about the phantom Corpse Taker when a wild white-haired man, as bony as a skeleton and as drawn as a plague victim, burst out of a door only a matter o
f feet in front of the two. He looked up and down the corridor, his soot-smeared face a portrait of fury. Dieter recognised the aging physician at once.
“Shallya damn him!” the old man exclaimed, his outburst making him cough phlegmily. “Where is that insolent whoreson wretch?”
Then his wild, bradawl eyes fixed on Dieter. “Heydrich! Where is Herr Karlsen, eh? Where is he, the blackguard?”
Dieter and Leopold were pulled up abruptly. Everyone knew Doktor Panceus. Panceus was Erich’s long-suffering master at the guild. He was renowned as an expert in the field of alchemical chemistry and was also slightly feared as being an irascible, unpredictable character.
“Um. I don’t know, Doktor Panceus,” Dieter said nervously, hoping that he didn’t sound as uncertain and as wavering as he felt.
“You don’t know? You don’t know? You lodge with him don’t you? Isn’t that what I heard? Eh?”
“I haven’t seen him today, doktor,” Dieter added, feeling that he was being blamed for Erich’s absence from the guild.
Leopold looked from Dieter to the wild-eyed doktor and back again, but said nothing.
“Probably drinking his poor father’s fortune away, I expect, down in one of those seedy dockside bars. Or still under the covers with some schilling and farthing whore!”
Panceus suddenly grabbed Dieter roughly by the front of his robe and pulled his face close to his own hooked beak of a nose. The doktor’s visage was pockmarked and wild white hair seemed to burrow up out of every part that wasn’t smeared with soot and the residue of Shallya knew what bizarre, unstable experiments. His breath stank of sulphur for some reason.
Indeed, Doktor Panceus had a reputation for being one of the only guild members who still actively experimented and tried to advance the boundaries of his science, rather than merely passing down previously received knowledge and honing delicate handiwork skills such as suturing, cauterising and amputation.
Dieter found himself staring into the bulging pinprick pupil eyes of the crazed master apothecary.
“Is it any wonder I give him the midden jobs if he never bothers to turn up? That boy has to learn respect. How can he hope to practise medicine if he has no respect? Damn his eyes! I’ll have to get Georg to do it.”
Dieter glanced over Panceus’ shoulder, unable to bear the doktor’s needling gaze any longer. The room beyond the Panceus’ open door was a smoke-darkened chamber, the brickwork of a huge fireplace dominating the room blackened with soot. Dieter could feel the heat radiating from the brickwork inside the laboratory. Cowering beside the chimney breast was an even more soot-stained urchin whose job it was, for a measly three farthings a week, to keep the fire hot and keep a watch on the cauldrons hanging over the flames. The birch Panceus used to beat the boy, if he ever failed in his duties, hung on the wall next to him. The rest of the room was cluttered with wooden work benches littered with alembics and various pestles and mortars full of brightly coloured compounds.
“Well when you next happen to bump into Herr Karlsen, tell him that if he lets me down again I shall have to have words with the professor about his position within the guild,” Panceus spat.
From what Dieter had gleaned from his occasional conversations with Erich in the Cutpurse’s Hands, the heir to the Karlsen estates was in truth assured as long as his father kept paying the guild fees. And his father would, as long as it kept Erich away from his family estates.
In terms of his practical ability, as well as his mental acumen, it soon became apparent that Dieter was a fast learner and a skilled practitioner. By the time the lightening skies and thawing frosts of Jahrdrung had supplanted the bitter chill of Nachexen, it seemed that Dieter had learnt as much in the past month as his roommate Erich had learnt in the past two years, if not more.
However, despite his unabashed resentment and bitterness, which he made no effort to hide in front of Dieter, his roommate’s passion for physick did seem to be rubbing off on Herr Karlsen, who began attending the guild on a more regular basis. Or it might just have been a result of the warning he received following Panceus’ latest complaint to Theodrus, Dieter was of course prepared to admit.
But perhaps Dieter’s passion intrigued him. Perhaps it was just the challenge—the mutual competition—he needed to buck his ideas up and make an effort once again. However, Dieter soon learnt that part of the reason for Erich’s apathy had been because no matter how hard he tried, he simply did not have the natural aptitude for the subject that the country boy from Hangenholz did. So it was that Erich also harboured a growing jealously towards Dieter.
“I like you, Herr Heydrich,” he had said once as they shared another bottle of Reikland Hock that Erich had procured, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t envy you and hate you with a passion. You’re a simple country boy, naive and innocent and no mistake, but you have an intellect as sharp as a Carroburg broadsword and an ability that could rival that of Theodrus himself.”
Erich emptied his glass and poured himself another half glass. Dieter had hardly touched his wine. He had discovered that it went to his head too quickly if he wasn’t careful. Erich, on the other hand, seemed to be able to down a bottle by himself and not show any ill effects at all.
“I don’t think you realise how talented you are,” Erich went on, “but others do, including Theodrus. That could go either way for you. It could make you his rival, in his eyes, and have him put you down at every opportunity. But I think he’s too arrogant for that. So it could mean he’ll look on you with favour. And either reason could be why he has you apprenticed under him now; it could be to nurture you, or to keep you in your place. I might not have the ability to become a renowned healer but I know people.”
Throughout the weeks of diligent study, Dieter also received regular missives from his sister Katarina back in Hangenholz. They would come in whenever there was a delivery with a coach running from Karltenschloss, the nearest settlement on the major routes through the Empire, the letters having been taken that far initially by any willing farmer taking his wares to the town to trade.
And amongst all this hustle and bustle of Dieter’s new life, he was still reminded of the life he had left behind whenever he received a letter from his devoted and loyal sister. Katarina’s letters kept him up-to-date with all that was happening in Hangenholz and let him know that his sister was coping there without him, caring for their father, seeing to his needs. They were a comforting reminder to him of home. There were never any letters from his father.
To begin with, Dieter dutifully replied to each and every one of Katarina’s missives, as he had resolved to do, sending them back via the Four Seasons Coach Company, operating out of the Reisehauschen inn. But as time went on and Dieter’s waking hours became more full by the day—preparing medicinal compounds, studying the treasured texts in the guild library and spending time shadowing Professor Theodrus as he went about his doctorial business amongst the rich and titled members of Bögenhafen’s population—he found that resolution starting to slip.
At first his replies became more concise. In contrast, his sister’s epistles were as detailed as ever, telling Dieter all that was happening at home and roundabout with the changing of the seasons, and expressing pride and love in equal great measure for her noble brother the scholar.
But it was only when another such missive arrived on the second Angestag of Jahrdrung that Dieter realised that not only had he not replied to his sister’s previous communiqué, he had not even finished reading it yet. He truly had become less conscientious about replying to them, so caught up was he in his studies.
Looking at the half-finished essay on common diseases of the Reikland—their causes, prevention and cure—that he had been in the middle of composing before the urchin delivering the letter on behalf of the coach company interrupted him, Dieter pushed the parchment to one side with a sigh.
He took up the unread letter that had been sitting on his desk under a pile of books for a week and read it through, poring over every
last phrase and syllable, enjoying his sister’s cursive hand and the patterns the words made on the page, feeling a forgotten warmth growing within his heart again. His own handwriting had become little more than a scrawl now, as he tried to jot down everything he wanted to as quickly as possible, so that he might fill his mind with yet more knowledge.
Dieter broke the seal on the more recent missive and read that through too, noting with only a cursory concern that their father had taken to his bed of late and his curate, one Engels Lothair from the nearby hamlet of Gabelbrucke, had been fulfilling more and more of his priestly duties. The son wondered how long the father would, or even could, continue in his work.
Then, both letters read, Dieter took a fresh piece of parchment from the sheaf on his desk, picked up the quill with which he had been writing his essay, and dipping it in the ink well, with a contrite heart began.
My dearest Katarina,
I must confess that your brother has been lax in his filial duties, so inspired and preoccupied have I been by my studies at the guild here in Bögenhafen. I know I have told you before what a wonderful place it is. So much more than a mere market town, it is a veritable seat of learning. It would seem that all the secrets of nature and the spheres are here to be uncovered among the myriad precious volumes that array the shelves of the guild libraries of this town. I can hardly believe that anywhere can have more knowledge contained within its bounds, not even noble Nuln or Altdorf.
I was pleased to hear that you are not finding the work of caring for our father too onerous and that Josef Wohlreich has been helping keep the garden.
Necromancer Page 4
