02 - Sacred Flesh

by Robin D. Laws - (ebook by Undead)

  He straightened his arm to aim at Angelika. She dived behind a pile of carpets. “Now what kind of argument for mercy is that?” she said, ducking her head down. “I could’ve slit your throat, just now, you know.”

  “Point taken,” said Udo, edging across the basement floor, his bowlegged stance showing the toll of Angelika’s groin-kick. “Remind me to send flowers to your grave.” Snarling, he approached Lemoine, then saw that the monk’s bindings had been cut.

  Lemoine let loose with a garbled cry and leapt on the merchant, who cudgelled him neatly in the temple with the butt of his gun. The monk folded, toppling from the chair, onto his knees. Udo kicked him in the buttocks; Lemoine went prone. Udo bent down, placing a pistol barrel at the base of the Bretonnian’s skull. “Don’t give me cause to waste a valuable shot on you,” he said.

  Lemoine whimpered his obeisance; Udo straightened.

  Angelika popped up from behind a stack of rugs to hurl her dagger at Udo’s head. But the intricately decorated piece was not balanced for throwing, and it spiralled wide, missing the merchant by a good two feet. It clattered into the stone wall behind him. A grin unfolded like the bellows of a squeeze-box across Udo’s bearded face. Angelika ducked back behind the rugs, looking around for something else to throw.

  “I misjudged you,” she said.

  Udo inched cautiously toward the rug pile. “Is that so?”

  Angelika deepened her crouch. By her estimate, Udo would now be standing on the other side of the rectangular stack of rugs. If he went to the left, she could keep covered by going right, and vice versa. She wanted him to talk as he moved, so she could tell which way he was headed without peeking up and exposing herself to the barrel of his gun. “During the journey, Udo, you struck me as cynical, self-satisfied perhaps… but to learn you’re a torturer and killer—I admit, you had me fooled.”

  For a moment, the only noise was Lemoine’s low, injured wheezing.

  Then Udo obliged her: “I haven’t murdered anyone. Though that last leap is but one squeeze of the trigger away, isn’t it?”

  Yes, he was moving to the left. She scrambled to the right.

  “You were in league with Ivo all along?”

  “Not remotely. To be frank, I was never completely certain why I risked life and limb to go on that pilgrimage. It was not until the incident with the cart, when I beheld Mother Elsbeth’s body, that I finally knew why destiny had impelled me there.”

  “Destiny?” she prompted. She checked the flooring around her feet. There was nothing to throw at him, not so much as a stray pebble.

  Udo had turned a corner, and was standing at one of the rug pile’s narrow ends, facing roughly east. Angelika hunched down at the other end, her back near a wall, pointed west. The door out of the basement would be about twenty paces away, if she ran diagonally. Kramer could easily get off a shot, probably both of his shots, in the time it would take her to cross that distance.

  “Throughout my life,” Udo began, “I have dedicated myself to a single goal, the only one I consider important in an otherwise brutal and meaningless existence. That goal is the accumulation of wealth.” He paused to listen to her movements; Angelika stayed still and made no noise. “The hypocrisies of society being what they are, I would normally be loath to reveal this. But with you, Fraulein Fleischer, I feel free to say so, as you so clearly believe the same.”

  “I agree; gold is the only thing worth struggling for,” she said, a plan forming in her mind. “But Mother Elsbeth’s corpse isn’t composed of it.”

  “Ah,” said Udo, warming to his subject. “Gold is a mere representation of a higher goal, the achievement of superiority over others. A man may be the most influential of priests, or born with the bluest blood in his veins, but when he must come crawling to me for a loan, he is the basest of beggars, and I—I am the man with the gold. But do you know what, Angelika?”

  “No. What?”

  “Believe it or not, I came to a juncture where I had as much gold as I could possibly use. All around me acknowledged my brilliance and acumen. Then I reached that most sorrowful of days, when the most recent bag of gold to cross my threshold seemed, for all intents and purposes, identical to the last.”

  “Surely you were deluded.”

  She jumped up to lob an imaginary object at him. And by the time he had fired his matchlock, she was already back down again. Curls of grey smoke wafted past her and her ears rang. Now Udo was down to one shot. Even in the hands of an experienced gunner, pistols like these took nearly a minute to reload.

  “Did I hit you?” he asked, his voice raised to compensate for the damage he’d done to his own hearing.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” she called.

  She heard his shoes scraping her way. He turned a corner and now stood along the rug pile’s southern edge. She in turn moved to its opposite side. They had exchanged positions. Lemoine lay directly behind her and if she dared to risk it, the door was back there too. She reconsidered her position. Udo did not seem especially proficient with his expensive weapons. It was possible, even likely, that she could make a break for it without getting herself shot. That, however, would leave the injured Lemoine behind, and herself no closer to her original objective.

  “You were saying,” she said, “that you lost your faith in money.”

  “A man unanchored by eternal verity is lost. I did not undertake the trip to Heiligerberg merely to impress pious business acquaintances. I sought a new system of meaning, to replace what I’d lost.” He aimed his gun at a spot just above Angelika’s head. “I admit now that I felt utterly alone among the other pilgrims. I aspired to all their fine feelings. Yet, try as I might, I could not summon them. I pretended, Angelika, to be just like that quaking buffoon on the floor behind you, but could not do it.”

  “Then you saw Mother Elsbeth’s body.” Her fingers crept up, sliding surreptitiously beneath the top carpets on the pile, brushing under its fringed, silky hem. “And you knew why you were there.”

  “Yes,” said Udo.

  Angelika moved her legs beneath her torso, coiling them. “You were looking at a treasure infinitely more important than mere gold.”

  “Yes,” Udo breathed.

  “And your alliance with Ivo Kirchgeld—a momentary convenience?”

  “Naturally. I’ll dispose of him once I’ve got the relic safely stashed away. I think I’ll have a secret crypt dug for her. I’ll top it with a tower, perhaps. A pity no one else will know what’s in it, but I will, and that’s what truly counts, isn’t it?”

  “To be the one who has what everyone else desires.”

  “Yes. Yes…” Udo intoned. “You do understand me, Angelika.”

  She nodded to Lemoine, who by crawling on all fours, had finally come within an arm’s-length of her. He set the dagger, which he’d retrieved, on the floor beside her boot. “And now,” she said, “you’re going to tell me what a pity it is you have to kill me.”

  “I apologise for my predictability,” he replied.

  She sprang up, taking the rug in both hands and flipping it out like a washerwoman folding a sheet. She swiftly brought it up into the air and then dropped it over Udo’s head, blinding him. He fired his pistol, blasting a hole through the rug. It filled the air with a dust of atomised threads. Angelika swept back, took up the dagger, jumped onto the rug pile, dived on Udo, and stabbed. She stabbed and stabbed. Udo, still thrashing under the rug, sank down, his throat gurgling, crimson quickly spreading through the pricey carpet.

  Angelika kicked the rug aside to be sure he was dead. He was. She released it back over his surprised, frightened face. Backing up, she bumped into Lemoine.

  “To think, we treated him like one of us,” said the monk, “when, all along, his heart was a nest of churning vipers.”

  “He gave greed a bad name,” shrugged Angelika. Her body quivered, as it sometimes did in the wake of sudden violence. She gripped the stack of rugs, trying to hide this embarrassing show of weakness. “Where’s
Ivo?” she asked.

  Lemoine touched his forehead, bloodying his fingertips. “Gone to an abattoir near the piers. Ivo stopped here first, to get some guns Udo’d stored here. They were illegal, I gather.”

  “Not to mention phenomenally rare and expensive. The Emperor prefers to keep powder weapons out of the hands of all but state forces.”

  Lemoine retrieved his chair, threw the ropes aside, and sat, dropping his head between his knees. “When they started speaking openly in front of me I knew they’d slay me, no matter what I told them.”

  “What did they say?”

  “The Chaos winds plaguing the city—Kirchgeld reckoned he knew who was responsible for them. The abattoir—it’s a meeting place for Chaos cultists, he said. Followers of Tzeentch, the god of dark manipulations, he said. Though it seems to me that the creation of a pestilence is more the modus operandi of a different dread deity, Nurgle, the lord of decay—”

  “Stifle the tangents, Lemoine.”

  “Whichever god these cultists follow, whatever their ultimate allegiance, Ivo knew them from a transaction several months ago, when he tried to sell them a set of consecrated implements.”

  “The alchemical equipment he stole from Heiligerberg the first time around.”

  “These items, if desecrated, could then be used to great effect in certain dread rituals. But the cultists would not pay Ivo’s price. As the negotiations dragged on, he came to suspect that they meant to kill him and take his goods. So he sold them elsewhere and thought little of it—until he got back to Averheim and found it gripped by this plague. Then he remembered his dealings with them and seemed quite delighted. He was hopping up and down, testing the firing mechanism of Lido’s blunderbuss, practising his reloading. He also borrowed a hand-axe and chuckled as he swiped it through the air. I knew not what to make of it, except to shudder.”

  “I know what to make of it,” said Angelika. “Udo wouldn’t have any other weapons stashed here, by any chance?”

  Lemoine fell to his knees, clasping his fingers, shaking them beseechingly. “I beg of you, Mademoiselle Angelika, there must be no more weapons! No more bloodshed!”

  “I agree with the general sentiment, but there are particular persons who’ll have to bleed copiously before this is over.”

  “No, mademoiselle! Violence begets only violence!” His Bretonnian accent seemed thicker now that he was burbling and crying.

  “If he had guns hidden here, I bet he had other weapons too. Where do I look for them?”

  Lemoine wrapped his arms around Angelika’s legs and held on tight. “The world’s gone mad! All thought, all reason, all analysis—pointless, utterly pointless!”

  It suddenly dawned on Angelika that Lemoine was not staring blankly off into some religious haze, but that he had his eyes fixed on a real, concrete point behind her. Still clamped in his blubbering embrace, she turned to see a rumpled, disarrayed carpet on the stone flooring in a corner, about twenty paces distant. Extricating herself from Lemoine’s scraped and clutching hands, she swept over to the carpet and yanked it out of place.

  Lemoine wailed. “Humanity is left with but one hope—utter prostration before the gods!”

  Below the rug was a board. Angelika heaved it out of the way.

  Lemoine’s wounded face contorted. “We must be scourged!” He pulled at his monk’s shift, hauling it up over his head. “The only blood we may shed must be our own!”

  Beneath the board was a hidden recess in the floor. In the recess sat a large, wooden chest, its exquisite surface gleaming with thick layers of lacquer. Angelika hopped down into the recess, flipped up the chest’s filigreed silver latches, and opened the chest.

  Except for a linen wrap precariously twisted around his waist, Lemoine had stripped himself bare. “Our only salvation,” he danced, “is self-flagellation!”

  The chest was full of guns, placed haphazardly, like pick-up sticks. Angelika whistled. Udo truly did have more gold than he knew what do with. On another day, she might have carted these prize pieces off for resale, but now she needed armaments she knew how to use. She dug through the rifles and pistols, tossing them aside without regard to their value.

  Lemoine lurched to Udo’s body, freed the dagger from the dead man’s chest and, gritting his teeth, used it to dig a narrow slice across the length of his own pectoral muscles. Gobbets of sweat gushed from his pores, mingling with his blood. “Sigmar! Shallya!” he screamed. “Hear a sinner’s humble plea!”

  Angelika found a sabre for Franziskus, its scabbard dripped with silk tassels. She tore them off, set the sword carefully aside and then resumed her digging.

  Lemoine dug another line in his chest, marking himself with an X. “I suffer for you! I suffer for you!” He ran at a black-timber support beam, smacking his face into it. He fell back and flopped on the floor like an eel.

  Angelika unrolled a supple sheet of leather the size of a washcloth, on which four thin, silvery daggers hung. She slipped a dagger from its leather slats, wrapping her fingers tightly around its blued, swept hilt. Immediately she could tell that it was a good, sharp blade. It seemed the right design for throwing, too. To test this hypothesis, she whipped it at the support beam Lemoine had just head-butted, using as a target the irregular blot of a bloodstain he’d left on it. The dagger hit the beam and vibrated proudly. It had hit the spot precisely. Angelika crossed to the beam, circumnavigating Lemoine’s wriggling limbs, and tugged the dagger out.

  She stuffed it into the empty sheath on her belt and made to exit. But she hesitated. Something in the bottom of Udo’s gun chest had caught her eye. She darted back over to the chest and took a careful look at an irregular bundle of raw tapestry fabric, which was loosely wrapped around an object a few inches in diameter, tied off with a strip of blackened leather. With the tip of her finger she gave it a cautious prod. Her head bowed down as queasy realisation dawned. She tore loose the leather strip, unwrapping the bundle. As she’d feared, it contained Mother Elsbeth’s severed hand. An impulse made her touch it; its flesh was at least as fresh and pliable as it had been when she’d last seen it, attached to a living owner. In fact, a pleasant burnt sugar smell wafted from it. The touch of Elsbeth’s hand suffused Angelika with a feeling of peace. She hastily got it bundled again, to block its influence over her.

  Devorah had told her all about the hand incident, but Angelika hadn’t expected to recover this particular bit of the abbess. She wondered what to do with it. She looked to Lemoine; could he be trusted with it?

  Lemoine stood, unsteadily, and touched the welt rising in the middle of his brow. If he’d seen the hand, or understood its significance, he made no show of it. “You must scourge yourself as well,” he told Angelika. “All must scourge themselves.”

  “I need you to do something for me,” Angelika said.

  He held out clawed, palsied hands. “The knife. Take the knife. Cut yourself. Cut me.”

  “This is for Mother Elsbeth.”

  He covered his face. “She’s dead. Dead. Our impiety killed her. Mankind’s grossness and corruption and changeability—”

  “Lemoine, concentrate.”

  He lunged. She tripped him. He went ludicrously sprawling onto the floor. No, he was in no condition be a custodian of anything. Angelika moved to the stairs and headed up them.

  “All must scourge themselves,” said Lemoine. He rose to take a second run at the beam, but collapsed before reaching it, and lay on the floor, weeping impotently.

  Though time was in short supply, Angelika had no intention of poking into a den of Chaos by herself. She ran back to the Blue Ball and found Franziskus sitting glumly on his own in a corner of the tavern. A dish of pork hocks had grown cold on a plate in front of him.

  “The girl’s upstairs?” she asked.

  “Sleeping,” he said, turning his head listlessly toward her.

  She tossed a sabre, liberated from Udo’s weapon collection, onto the table. “I need you,” she said.

  He stoo
d and took the sword. She detoured up to her room, where she hid the hand inside the straw of her pillow. It was not the best hiding place history had ever known, but at least there was no risk of the proprietors cleaning the bedclothes.

  A few minutes later, Angelika and Franziskus strode together through deserted midday streets. As they traveled, she told him where they were going, and why. He unsheathed the sword and tested its weight. “A quality weapon,” he said.

  “I’m sure Udo would be pleased by the compliment, if he were still around to hear it.”

  They walked through the centre of town without further words. They reached its docklands district, which smelled of river and wet, rotting wood. Long, single-storey warehouses sullenly sat along dark, bowed piers, doors and windows shuttered tight. Indignant gulls patrolled flat storehouse rooftops, hoping that the workers would reappear to spill scraps of food for them. They screeched at Angelika and Franziskus, bobbing their heads in outrage when their plaints were ignored.

  “You’d think a fellow would be cheerier,” said Angelika, “after having had his first tumble since… how long have we known each other?”

  Franziskus ground his teeth. “If you’re trying to make me angry, so I fight better, keep on going.”

  “Oh, I understand,” said Angelika. “She lacked accomplishment, between the sheets.”

  Franziskus stopped, his expression hot. “Not everything in this world is a joke.”

  She softened her tone. “I know that.”

  He strode onward. “A man can feel used, you know.”

  “Forget I spoke.”

  “Not everything is a joke.”

  Angelika held up her hands, relenting.

  Franziskus kept on. “It was not me she wanted. Not specifically. I just happened to be at hand.”

  “Couplings of convenience are not to be underestimated. Some of my most satisfying times have been—”

  He clapped his hands over his ears. “I will not hear this!”

  Angelika shrugged. “If you don’t want cheering up…”

  “I shouldn’t have given in. I wronged her, and I wronged myself.”