[Stefan Kumansky 02] - Taint of Evil

by Neil McIntosh - (ebook by Undead)

  Stefan took another spoonful of the thin, oily gruel and spat a knot of gristly meat back onto the table. Save for a few other drinkers—a group of labourers making a poor job of pretending not to stare at the two swordsmen—the inn was deserted. From the ramshackle look of the place, it hardly ever saw any custom. With food like this, it was hardly surprising. Stefan slid the bowl towards his companion.

  “Here,” he said to Bruno. “You have it if you want.”

  Bruno Haussmann gave his comrade the briefest of glances and then took the offered bowl, his own being already empty. “If you insist,” he said, and set about spooning the contents hungrily into his mouth.

  Stefan looked kindly upon his friend as he ate. Their ages were practically identical—both men had known twenty-four summers—but in other ways they were quite different: Bruno being the shorter and fairer of the two, and—despite the lean weeks on the road—still noticeably the stockier. And likely to stay that way, Stefan reflected. Bruno, always true, always dependable. Solid by look and solid by nature. And himself? Listless, forever searching. A traveller on a journey with no certain end.

  Stefan leaned forward, resting his head upon his cupped hands, his expression exactly mirroring his poor humour.

  “Cheer up,” Bruno said at last. “We’ll find him, Stefan, sooner or later.”

  Stefan took a measured sip of his beer. It was stale and slightly sour, but he drank nonetheless, to wash away the film of grease coating his mouth. He sat, pondering his friend’s words. It was a familiar routine by now, each taking turn to encourage the other whenever their spirits fell low. He didn’t know whether Bruno was right, but he took some comfort from his optimism.

  “The world is large,” he replied at length. “In truth, he could be anywhere.”

  “We’ll pick up the trail again,” Bruno said, firmly. “There’ll be clues, somewhere. He can’t hide from us, not forever.”

  Stefan Kumansky leant back eyes closed, and tugged fingers through hair that had grown long and matted over weeks of travel. There would be clues, there had already been clues. Too many clues, that was the problem. Too many trails, like this one that had carried them east from Kislev back into the Empire. Too many trails leading nowhere, going cold.

  Across the border in Kislev they had fought a war—he, Bruno and the countless others who had taken arms against the dark armies of Chaos. Erengrad had been saved, the forces of light had prevailed over the darkness. That should have been the end, but fate had offered an unexpected and unwelcome twist to the tail of their adventure. Alexei Zucharov had been amongst the bravest and strongest of their comrades at Erengrad. One of the first to lead the line, and the last to quit the battle. Zucharov had left the field alive, but not unscathed. Greed had found a weakness, a way to harm him where his enemies could not. The golden band upon the body of the Chaos knight had been too much to resist. Alexei had stripped it from the body as a prize, a trophy of war. In that moment, Stefan feared, the poisons of Chaos had entered his comrade’s blood.

  Zucharov had fled Erengrad a changed man. Now, Stefan had pledged, he could not rest until he had been found.

  “Do you know what day it is?” he asked. Bruno looked at him, quizzically.

  “No,” he said. “Do you?”

  “It’s Kaldezeit’s Eve,” Stefan told him. He had been counting off the days. Even though their journey had taken them roughly south they had not been able to outrun the seasons. Steadily the days had been growing shorter and the nights colder, and now they had reached the very cusp of fading summer, and the dawn of the autumn season.

  “Kaldezeit’s Eve,” Bruno repeated. He smiled, wistfully. “That’ll be a fair excuse for much beer and company back home.”

  Stefan nodded in agreement. Back home was where they, too, could already have been, many hundreds of miles to the south-west, in Altdorf. By his reckoning it was almost six months since they had left the city. On Kaldezeit’s Eve he could have been back, sitting in his favourite corner bar of the Helmsman, sharing a pot of beer with his brother.

  That had been one choice. And there had been other choices, other paths he could, perhaps, have chosen to take. He had been offered another. With the battle at Erengrad won, Stefan had been asked to join a war, a hidden, never-ending war against the powers of Chaos. A war waged in secret by a circle of men such as Gastez Castelguerre, the general who had led the army at Erengrad. There, perhaps, his restless crusade against the darkness would have found a home, a place where he was accepted, not mocked as a zealot who saw shadows where there was only light. But the choice Stefan had made had led him here. Right now, he wasn’t sure he didn’t regret it.

  “I doubt we’ll see much in the way of joyous celebration in this dump,” Bruno continued, sourly. He set the bowl to one side, even his hearty appetite now blunted. He looked around disdainfully at the bare, empty quarters of the tavern. “I can’t imagine they go much in the way of celebration around here.”

  Stefan smiled. He knew that Bruno, at least, was not mocking him. “What do they call this place, anyway?” he asked.

  “Mielstadt,” a flat, soulless voice answered. The innkeeper snatched the two bowls off the table and glared accusingly at Stefan and Bruno.

  “Another?” he said, indicating the mugs of beer still left on the table. Stefan looked up at the man. It was more of a challenge than an invitation, but, in any case, Stefan wasn’t interested in staying around.

  “No thanks,” he replied. “We wouldn’t want to outstay a welcome. We’ll finish our beer and then—”

  He was interrupted by a sudden commotion coming from somewhere outside the tavern. A scream, followed by voices raised in anger or agitation, and a clatter of wood and steel. Stefan and Bruno exchanged a single glance and got up quickly from the table.

  “Here,” Stefan said, throwing down some coins. “Thanks for your hospitality.”

  They stepped from the door of the inn onto the street. Something in the clamour of voices coming from the town square away to their left communicated a sense of urgency, and soon they were running. Mielstadt wasn’t big—not much more than a warren of cluttered streets clustered around a central square. Stefan and Bruno were soon at the heart of the disturbance.

  The streets around the inn had been deserted, but the dusty clearing that served as the town square was full to bursting. The crowd was about the size that might gather in a place like Mielstadt on a carnival day. On Kaldezeit’s Eve, indeed. But there was nothing festive about the mood of the people—mostly men—jostling each other in the square. Fear and anger hung in the air, and Stefan sensed that, yet again, he had found trouble without looking for it.

  They pushed forward, the crowd parting grudgingly for the outsiders. Instinctively, Stefan scanned the faces obscured by cowls or a mask of grime, searching for that one familiar, elusive face. Nothing, as always. No sign.

  The crowd was milling around a crude wooden structure that had been set up in the middle of the square. As Stefan and Bruno looked on, a thickset man with a face blotched red from exertion, hatred and too much drink muscled his way through and stood facing the newcomers, hands planted squarely upon fleshy hips.

  Here we go, Stefan said to himself. He’d met this type plenty of times before. His hand stroked the hilt of the sword hanging at his side. To a man, the watching mob fell silent.

  Red Face extended a finger, and jabbed it towards Stefan. “You! You’re in the way,” he said. His breath smelt of something that should have been long buried. Dabs of spittle flecked Stefan’s face as the self-styled leader addressed him.

  “I’ve got a job to get on with,” the man said. He extended one stubby finger, and pointed at his chest, self-importantly. “Witch-hunter, me,” he said. “Business to attend to.”

  “If you’re a witch-hunter,” Bruno muttered under his breath, “then I’m the Emperor Karl-Franz.”

  “I’ll give you a chance, since it’s clear you just arrived.” The man ran a yellowed eye over the two
of them. “Young gentlemen, I don’t doubt,” he sneered. “Fancy yourselves as explorers, maybe, adventurers. Thing is-' he gestured towards the wooden platform up behind him. You can’t come adventuring round here.” He smirked at Stefan, and was rewarded by a ripple of laughter from the men standing round.

  “Really?” Stefan replied, politely. He made a rapid sweep of the activity in the square. “And why would that be?”

  But he already had the answer to that question. A young woman, slight and wiry with cropped, bronze hair was being jostled through the crowd towards the platform. Her blouse was torn and dirty, her expression defiant but very, very scared. Up on the platform, a length of rope knotted into a noose hung expectantly from a crossbeam.

  “This looks like a rough kind of justice,” Bruno said.

  “Looks like no justice at all,” Stefan corrected him. Red Face twisted his mouth into a snarl, infuriated that the intruders were still there.

  “I told you once,” he said. “We’ve got a witch to deal with here, and you’re in the way.”

  “Well,” Stefan replied, evenly. “We’re sorry about that, aren’t we Bruno?”

  “Absolutely,” Bruno concurred, drawing closer to his companion as he spoke. “We hate getting in people’s way.”

  There were uniformed men milling uncertainly round at the edge the square, at least a dozen of them. Stefan reckoned them to be local militia. Most were busying themselves trying not to notice what was happening under their noses. Stefan guessed they would wait to see which way the wind was going to blow before wading in. No use looking for any help there.

  Red Face had drawn a few like-minded townsfolk to his cause. Now Stefan and Bruno were inside a tightening ring of six or seven heavily built men, all clutching daggers or wooden staves.

  “Maybe your ears are no better than your eyes,” one of the roughnecks said. “Maybe you’ve not heard about the troubles over in Kislev. Cities burnt to the ground. Armies of mutants running amok. All manner of trouble, no mistake, and creeping this way.” Voices joined in loud agreement.

  “On the contrary,” Stefan told him. “We know all about that.” Somewhere in the crowd, he heard a voice mutter, “Easterners,” and another, “Snow in their beards.”

  “Aye,” Red Face went on, taking encouragement from his supporters. “And we’re not about to let evil take root around here! No witchcraft in Mielstadt!”

  The crowd roared their approval. “So then,” Red Face drew a long knife and waved the pitted blade before Stefan’s face. “Why don’t the two of you turn around and get out of our way. We’ve got a hanging to finish.”

  Stefan met Bruno’s gaze. The look that passed between them was almost imperceptible, but it signalled agreement.

  “I don’t think so,” Stefan replied, firmly. Red Face took a step back. The tiniest of doubts mixed with the disbelief on his face.

  “You don’t think so?” he demanded. Stefan ignored him, and turned towards the figure tethered on the gallows. “Hey, you!” he called, “What’s your name?”

  It took the young woman a few seconds to realise that Stefan was now talking to her. Then she replied, in a clear but faltering voice: “Beatrice. Beatrice de Lucht.”

  “Very well, Beatrice. Tell me this: is there anything in your heart that is not loyal to the memory of our Emperor Sigmar or true to the teachings of the goddess Shallya?”

  The young woman shook her head, vigorously.

  “Have you done any wrong?” Stefan demanded of her. He looked around at Red Face and his unsavoury companions. “Anything to harm these good people?”

  “Nothing,” the girl answered. “Nothing, I swear.”

  Stefan turned to Bruno and shrugged. “See? A simple case of mistaken identity.”

  “That’s how it looks to me,” Bruno agreed.

  Red Face spread his arms wide in a gesture to the crowd. His face cracked into an unpleasant grin. “Better make room for two more on the gallows, friends. Looks like we’ve got our work cut out today.”

  The big man moved with surprising speed, grasping hold of Stefan’s tunic near the neck. Stefan was tugged forwards, fighting to hold his balance. He fastened onto Red Face’s wrist with his right hand, and drew his sword with his left. Red Face was fast, but Stefan was faster. Unlike his opponent, his judgement wasn’t clouded by drink. He could kill the other man in an instant, but he didn’t want to do that, at least not yet.

  Still gripping Red Face by the wrist he swung around, striking the other man with a carefully aimed blow from the flat of his sword. Red Face toppled back into the crowd as Stefan closed in upon him. Behind him, Bruno brandished his sword for the benefit of other would-be aggressors. The crowd backed off.

  Red Face had fallen to his knees. His face streamed with perspiration. He lunged at Stefan, aiming the knife at his gut. The younger man side-stepped the blow and brought his own blade down in a single stroke, skewering his attacker through the hand. Red Face squealed like a pig as blood flowed out onto the dry dust of the town square.

  “Murderer!” he screamed, scanning the faces around him for support. “Ralf! Helmut! Get the bastard!” But his friends had now gone very quiet. Like the rest of the mob, they sensed the change in the wind. Stefan pulled his sword clear. His opponent scrambled to his feet, his wounded hand stuffed inside his shirt. Red Face was about to try his luck with the dagger again, but, before he could move, Stefan had the point of his sword tucked neatly underneath the other man’s chin.

  “Believe me, friend, if I’d wanted to murder you we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.” He looked round for Bruno and found his comrade circling the gallows, clearing a space between the platform and the crowd. “All well?” Stefan asked.

  “Quiet as the grave,” Bruno assured him. Stefan turned his attention back to Red Face and pressed home his sword until it nicked at the leathery flesh on his opponent’s neck. “Don’t let’s repeat this,” he suggested.

  Red Face started to gather himself for a final onslaught then thought better of it. He turned away from Stefan with a muttered curse and vanished into the crowd.

  “Right,” said Stefan. “I think this woman’s been up there long enough. Who’s going to help her down?”

  Faces in the mob looked cowed rather than bloodthirsty now. Red Face’s capitulation had had a sobering effect. A few men and women stepped forward, hesitantly, at Stefan’s command. As if on cue, the militia now waded in, suddenly keen to impose their authority. Stefan found a brace of crossbows aimed at his head. He sheathed his sword and raised one arm to head height.

  The militia chief cleared his throat self-consciously. “You and your friend better come with us,” he said. “And you others-” he glared at whoever in the crowd was prepared to meet his eye. “Get back to your homes before I decide to take some of you in too.”

  Augustus Sierck, acting graf of Mielstadt, was a man who disliked change, especially the kind of change which, of late, had caused him to fix iron bars across the once elegant windows of his office, the only half-decent building in Mielstadt. Change which had persuaded him, against his better judgement, to allow the daubing of crude protective runes on the walls of houses in the town. Now change had brought him two outsiders, and a little matter of a domestic problem which otherwise might have sorted itself out.

  “The point is,” he said, leaning against the expanse of oak desk for emphasis, “we don’t really want or need your sort troubling us here in Mielstadt.”

  Stefan stood before the graf impassively, Bruno and Beatrice flanking him on either side. Since their “rescue” by the graf’s militia, they hadn’t been badly treated, but welcome was still being kept to a minimum. The chamber they were standing in was shabby and austerely furnished but for a gilt-framed oil painting on one wall. The picture showed a fashionably dressed man posed on bended knee before an aristocratic, pale-skinned woman. It looked oddly out of place amongst the ugly trappings of Mielstadt.

  Stefan bowed, non-committally He as
sumed that the graf was applying his remarks to all three of them. Sierck pulled back his chair and drew himself up to his full height, which wasn’t that much. On tiptoe he would barely reach to Stefan’s shoulder, though his girth went some way to lending weight to his aura of self-importance. His face was fleshy but unlined, his hands likewise. Someone, perhaps, who had overseen hardship but not, Stefan reckoned, one who had had to endure it. Sierck made a slow circular tour around his visitors, appraising them with obvious mistrust.

  “So, I’m to believe you’re just humble travellers,” he said at last, “travellers just ‘passing through’ on your way back west? You came to Mielstadt looking for a friend?”

  “Another traveller,” Stefan corrected him. “He may be ill, perhaps a danger to himself, or to others. We need to find him, make sure no harm is done.”

  Sierck snorted. “We’ve had more than our share of that sort. But I doubt you’ll find your man here.”

  “Nonetheless,” Stefan replied, “We thought it worth our while looking.”

  Sierck circled again, fingering his chain of office. Stefan imagined the graf doubted his story, but lacked the wit to imagine what the truth might be.

  “Dab hands with a sword, for everyday travellers aren’t we?”

  “The road’s a perilous place,” Bruno replied. “We need to be able to look after ourselves.”

  The graf paused, distracted by some thought or calculation. “I’m not a simpleton,” he said at last. “Don’t think I’ve spent my entire life cooped up in a Morr-forsaken hole like this. I’m a civilised man.” He gestured towards the painting on the wall: “A distant cousin, you know. The playwright, Detlef Sierck.”

  Stefan returned his look blankly. “Thought you might know the name,” the graf continued, “because you seem so fond of play acting yourself.”

  Stefan shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The graf’s face reddened with irritation. “Let’s stop the pretence,” he barked, abandoning his own pretence of civility. “We both know why you’re here. Why your sort always come here, sniffing about, consorting with troublemakers like—like her,” he spat, indicating the girl.