“We are not sorcerers here, brother-captain!”
Ignoring Theodrus’ plea Krieger turned his chilling gaze on Dieter again. “Do you realise, Heydrich, that for centuries the proscribed punishment for the practise of this particular heresy was to be burnt at the stake, in agonising torment?”
“I-I did know that, y-yes,” Dieter stammered. To be accused of sorcery was still something that could shame a man, particularly a doktor of physick.
Krieger brought his face even closer to Dieter’s, his eyes wild, burning with the full fury of the retributive inferno. “And in my humble opinion, it still should be. And what is the practice of medicine but one step away from alchemy and that itself is but the first step on the path to the damnation that the study of the magic arts brings. And you, a son of a priest of the death-cult, making a study of the human body. It you ask me you are just a little too well-informed about the frailty of the human form, but obviously not well-informed enough, so you have to continue your study of anatomy by other means.”
“Anatomy is not a subject taught by the guild of physicians,” Theodrus angrily corrected the witch hunter. “As I thought I had already made plain, we are not back-street barber-surgeons, we are members of the most esteemed and venerable guild of physicians. We are men of medicine; men of science.”
“And that in itself is dangerous heresy.”
“Shallya help me, I shall report you to the town council and the elector count’s household myself and have the full might of his armoured fist brought down upon your chapter house!”
For a moment neither the Sigmarite nor the guild master spoke. Dieter saw the men exchange dagger-pointed stares. It was the brother-captain who eventually broke the silence.
“I come from a long family line of witch hunters and warrior priests, and we are proud of our heritage. My great-great-great grandfather scoured Mordheim in the years following the devastation caused by the comet-strike of the Hammer of Sigmar. Mark my words—Brother-Captain Ernst Krieger always gets his man.”
It appeared that a stalemate had been reached but Dieter wondered how long such a status quo would remain.
The witch hunter strode back to the chair to which Dieter was bound. He pulled a gleaming knife from his belt and held it under Dieter’s nose.
“And if you are that man, I will have you excommunicated from the bosom of the Holy Church of Sigmar and then I swear that I will come after you and hunt you down!”
With one sharp motion the witch hunter cut Dieter’s bonds, nicking the flesh of his arm in the process. Krieger turned on his heel to leave. But before he left he had one last warning to offer.
“Remember, I’ll be watching you.”
And then he was gone.
Dieter sagged in the chair where he sat and threw up.
PFLUGZEIT
This Mortal Coil
What is madness? Do you think that I am mad, one who would damn his own soul by practising the black arts? And to what end? For a few more decades of desperate decaying life? To become an outcast from the world of the living when it is precisely an unbearable desire to live that has driven one to study the proscribed rites of necromancy?
I shall tell you for what purpose I have done this. I have done it all for naught, for that is what I have now as I lay my soul bare before you: nothing. Nothing to show for two centuries of life, the lands that I once claimed as my own, the people who paid me fealty, all now forgotten.
And all I have now to look forward to is an ignominious end and an eternity spent in that twilight world of the realm of the dead, trapped between the worlds of eternal rest and glorious life, unable to exist in either, both tantalisingly, torturously out of reach. An eternity of torment. An eternity of damnation.
It has been said that the line between genius and insanity is a fine one and crossed all too easily. It has also been said that a madman sees things more clearly than any other, even more so than a man on his deathbed when suddenly his whole nefarious life is thrown into terrifying clarity for the first time in decades.
In times of insanity look to a madman for guidance. How true that saying is of this Chaos-riddled world in which we live, where nameless horrors forever wait in the darkness, ready to catch us, to trap us, and bring us to eternal ruin.
I believe that madness is an unshackling from the prescribed constraints put on us by the expectations of our culture, our race and most of all, ourselves. A madman does not care what others think of him. For what drives a person to madness is often the revelation that the world around them is not as safe and secure as they might like to believe, that it is a place populated by monsters that lurk just behind the thin veil of reality, that can rend a man’s soul apart as well as his body and destroy his mind.
You might ask whether I am mad?
If I deny it, would that be proof of my madness.
But then, if I were to say that I most certainly am mad, that admission itself would surely suggest that I possessed a sound and reasoning mind.
But I do not claim to be mad. As I have said, the only thing that brings a man a clear-mindedness that even approaches that possessed by the insane, is the knowledge that his own death is near. And I, for one, have accepted that truth, that inevitability.
Ironically, the lunatic does not believe himself to be mad for he sees the world with a clarity the rest of us could only hope for. He sees the world as it really is. For so often it is the realisation that there are horrors barely hidden beneath the surface of this world that drives men to madness. They have seen the world as it really is. And how can such a clear, unsullied view of the world be considered madness?
* * *
Mitterfruhl came and went that year in a haze of drizzle, dampening the spirits of the congregations of Taal and Ulric worshippers who thronged to the town to celebrate the spring equinox. And then Pflugzeit blew in, unseasonably cold but seasonably wet. The relentless overcast skies darkened the mood of everybody in the town, even though the Corpse Taker seemed to have decided to leave the populace alone for the time being. The rain was welcome, however, as it sluiced the slurry out of the streets that had collected in even greater quantities during the three days given over to the Mitterfruhl festival. But Dieter Heydrich had been virtually unaware of any of it.
Following his dire experience at the hands of the witch hunter Brother-Captain Krieger, Dieter had thrown himself into his studies even more than he had done before. He also spent even longer hours in the guild library and then continued with his note-taking late into the night in his garret room, spurning Erich’s offers of an evening’s relaxing entertainment away from his studies. It was as if he was determined to prove that any ability he might have was purely down to diligent labour and nothing more sinister than that. What did it matter that he was a son of a priest of Morr? He had been brought up in a gods-fearing household and he knew full well the difference between right and wrong. He was certainly no bodysnatcher or, Morr forbid, a necromancer!
But that did not change the fact that Dieter had acquired a sinister new nickname, given him by the other students, that of the daemon’s apprentice. Professor Theodrus had also taken pains to distance himself from Dieter. Although Theodrus had initially stood by his star pupil, incensed that Krieger should demonstrate such a flagrant disregard for the establishment of the physicians’ guild, which itself held great power and influence within the town, now that the matter was resolved, for the time being at least, the guild master had decided that to protect his interests he had needed to loosen the bonds between himself and his apprentice.
There had been long-held distrust between the Templar Order of Sigmar and the physicians’ guild. The templars held an almost psychotic hatred for magic users and spell casters—seeing the miracles their own warrior priests performed as exactly that, the divine intervention of the Heldenhammer himself—and considered the potion-brewing physicians as little better than conjurers or alchemists themselves.
So when Leopold offered him the opportun
ity to visit the Temple of Shallya, only a little further into the town from the guild, Dieter jumped at the chance to further his studies in another setting, no matter how brief that change might be. Here was a chance to prove that he was dedicated to the healing arts rather than a practitioner of the black arts, and at the same time practise his skills on live patients, rather than merely helping the licensed guild members prepare treatments that the qualified physicians would ultimately administer themselves, or simply cleaning up after them in their filthy laboratories.
The infirmary was a surprisingly large, open space that seemed to swallow up the echoes of the footsteps on the flags and absorb the muffled moans of the patients. It had been arranged inside a long hall, the cross-beamed roof the height of a two-storey building. Simple pallet beds lined the whitewashed walls, some separated from the others by wooden screens. The priestesses of Shallya glided between the beds in their dove grey and white gowns with a gold-embroidered heart over the left breast, each woman wearing a wimple that kept her hair hidden and out of the way.
The women ranged in age from young girls, barely out of adolescence, admitted to the temple as novices, to plump old dames, many of whom were widows who had come to the order late in life, after their duties to family were done, as a way of making the last years of their life mean something.
But they all had a calm demeanour about them and a ready smile for those poor souls in their care.
Standing before the two apprentices was Sister Marilda, a tall woman whose age Dieter found it hard to determine. Her face was handsome enough and she held herself with delicate poise and grace that also suggested that when challenged she could be as immovable as a rock in her expectations and attitudes. Dieter and Leopold had been sent to the temple with a letter of introduction from Doktor Kalt, and arrived as the sisters were processing out of matins.
“Good morning, gentlemen, and how may I help you this morning?” Sister Marilda asked. She patently knew they were from the guild and why they were there. Leopold had visited the infirmary-temple before with his master, Kalt. It was merely out of courtesy that she asked.
“Good morning, sister,” Leopold answered confidently, giving the priestess his most winning smile. Dieter stood behind him, trying not to draw attention to himself. “We have been sent here by Doktor Kalt, from the physicians’ guild.”
An apprentice could expect to visit the infirmary of the Temple of Shallya on a semi-regular basis, as part of his training, to help the priestesses tend to the sick. It also provided the medical students with an opportunity to try out new treatments on patients who, on the whole, had no family left to care what happened to them if something went wrong and they did not recover. So many of those in the care of the sisterhood of Shallya were in a state of terminal decline that they had nothing to lose in acting as guinea pigs for the apprentices to practise on, other than perhaps a few days or weeks of miserable life.
“Very good. You must thank Doktor Kalt when you return,” she said matter-of-factly.
“We have brought a new unguent, made from the flower of the meadowflax, for the treatment of open sores and ulcers and to see if there is any other way in which we can help.”
“And your help is much appreciated. There are certainly those who would be grateful for a salve to ease the pain of their afflictions. If you would come this way.”
Sister Marilda led the way across the infirmary, the two students following.
“But of course we must also continue to pray for the absolution of their souls,” Marilda said as she walked, “for you know, of course, that illness and disease are a physical manifestation of sin.”
“Yes, sister, of course,” Leopold agreed, then glancing back over his shoulder at his companion threw Dieter a theatrical wink.
They spent the next two hours cleaning and dressing the suppurating sores and raw flesh-eating ulcers of beggars, the elderly of the town cast upon the Shallyan temple to be ministered to in their final days and even an aging cleric from the temple of Bögenhafen’s patron—a thoroughly unpleasant, foul-mouthed and unappreciative curmudgeon who showed not one ounce of sanctity about his person.
The smell of infection as they worked was appalling, and Dieter was glad of the posy of strong-smelling herbs he carried now in his pocket. Between patients he held the posy close to his nose and inhaled deeply of its heady fragrance, so that it might at least in part mask the stench of putrefaction.
Throughout, Leopold talked to the patients about what he was doing, his manner jovial, and in turn listened to them unburden their hearts about the miseries that their lives had brought them. Dieter was secretly impressed by the way his friend conducted himself and wished he could be more like him. Leopold had obviously known what to expect from his previous visits, but it was more than just that. He had a manner about him more like that of a confessional priest than a doktor, from what Dieter had seen in his short time at the guild.
Sister Marilda approached Leopold and Dieter as they were washing their hands in the bowl the priestesses had provided for them, as the temple bell was chiming the hour of noon. Despite the stench of the work and the repulsive sores they had seen, Dieter could still feel hunger knotting inside his belly and was looking forward to sating his hunger at the Pestle and Mortar.
“Are you gentlemen finished?” Marilda asked demurely.
Leopold straightened from leaning over their last patient’s bed. “Yes, sister,” he said. “Is there something else we can do for you before we go?”
“Yes, there is,” Marilda replied. The image in Dieter’s mind of his next meal was devoured by stomach-gnawing hunger, “Just one more patient who might benefit from your salve. But I must warn you that he is a poor lunatic whose wits have left him.”
“Really?” Dieter suddenly found himself saying, morbidly curious. He had only ever encountered the wandering lunatics and drink and drug-addled vagabonds who could be found in every Imperial town or city, or wandering the highways and byways of the land, some in semi-feral packs. He had spent long hours studying ailments of the body over the past two months. Now here was an opportunity to study a sickness of the mind.
“Yes, his sins weigh heavy upon him,” Marilda said, lowering her eyes and shaking her head sadly.
“What is his name?” Leopold asked, surprised at his friend’s unaccustomed outburst, whilst at the same time being just as fascinated and excited by the prospect of meeting one of the mentally ill.
“His name is Anselm.”
“Anselm,” Leopold repeated. “Is that it? What is his family name?”
“Anselm is all he told us,” Sister Marilda explained. “It might well be all he knows. Come, he is this way.”
Within the harsh world in which the people of the Empire lived, the mentally ill were often forgotten; for the most part a misunderstood, untolerated and feared underclass. Very few places actually existed to make provision for their care. At best they were an embarrassment to their families, to be locked away from the world to save their relations embarrassment as much as for their own protection. At worst the insane were accused of being possessed by daemons and burnt as witches, or were, driven to join crazed Chaos cults in which they found some kind of acceptance. And every once in a while the mentally ill were taken to be divinely inspired messengers of the gods. Such was not the case with the poor wretch Anselm.
He was huddled on a pallet bed in a small cell with a sturdy iron-banded door. Dieter was immediately taken aback. Where the other patients they had attended to were old or at least prematurely aged by the hand life had dealt them, there was no mistaking that Anselm was still a young man, despite the sunken cheeks and hollow-eyed stare. His long hair, hanging in matted knots down as far as his shoulder blades, was prematurely white, making him look older than his years.
“Is it safe?” Dieter asked anxiously, seeing that Anselm was restrained within a harness-like jacket that kept his arms tied tight around his middle, secured with buckles behind so that he could not fre
e himself.
“Oh yes,” assured Sister Marilda. “We had to restrain him to stop him harming himself.”
“Harming himself?” Leopold asked, looking at the bound man.
Dieter looked again too, the red-eyed stare of the madman looking sorrowfully back at him. But his eyes were drawn to infected areas of exposed flesh on the man’s legs, where circles of skin had been peeled away, revealing the raw flesh underneath.
“He did it to himself in his madness,” the priestess said, following Dieter’s gaze. “The sores are where he has pulled the skin away and picked at the scabs. Perhaps your salve might bring him some alleviation from the stinging soreness.”
Marilda turned to leave the cell and fixed both Leopold and Dieter with her suddenly stern gaze. “Pay no heed to anything he tells you,” she said in barely more than a whisper. “His mind is addled and his wits have left him. You would do well to remember that.” And with that she was gone.
Dieter stood looking at the lunatic Anselm, who stared back with an expression of pure terror in his eyes, not knowing quite how to approach this patient. But the ever-confident Leopold knew, of course. He spoke calmingly, and almost incessantly, as he approached the pallet bed, continually explaining to the wretch what he was doing and reassuring him. Dieter attempted to follow his friend’s example. Leopold truly had a way of putting people at their ease, madman and sane man alike.
Anselm shied away from the two of them at first, flinching as Leopold pulled up the torn leg of his britches to inspect the self-inflicted injuries. Then slowly but surely Leopold’s words seemed to have a calming effect on Anselm.
“A-are you from the g-g-guild?”
Hearing the thin, reedy voice so unexpectedly and for the first time made Dieter physically jump and his heart race. He took a step back from the lunatic’s cot, worried what other surprises he might have in store, readily believing that the wretch would attack them at any second, falling on them with gnashing teeth and clawing fingernails, having somehow freed himself of the jacket. But no such thing happened.
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