Swords of the Empire

by Edited by Marc Gascoigne

Vido followed his master out, practically running for the door and the promise of the reasonably clean Altdorf air outside.

  Konniger paused in the corridor, looking at his manservant. 'A dead fortune teller, her eyes and tongue missing. What does that suggest to you?'

  Knowing what was expected of him, Vido stumbled for an answer. Very little of his apparent cluelessness had to be feigned.

  'Uuuh…'

  'It suggests perhaps a killer who is more than some mad or random butcher,' continued Konniger, answering his own question, as was his habit. 'It suggests purpose, Vido. A fortune-teller sees the future with her eyes, and speaks of that future with her tongue. Do you see now where this could be leading us?'

  Vido nodded dumbly, not having a clue what his master was talking about, and all too willing to forget the whole business of missing eyes and tongues.

  They were outside now, moving through a crowd that had increased in size in the time since they had been inside. There were more watchmen there too, several of them pushing and cudgelling the mob aside to clear a path through for the two of them. An excited murmur rose at the appearance of Konniger, adding to the crowd's bloodthirsty speculation on the exact details of whatever terrible fate they thought might have befallen the old fortune-teller.

  'The Reikerbahn Butcher,' hissed a voice in the crowd. 'Sigmar protect us, it's the work of the Butcher! He's come back from the grave to kill us all!'

  This piece of speculation caused the murmurs of the crowd to increase accordingly, and brought a new note of fear into their collective voice. Konniger shot a reproachful look at the watchman sergeant. One of his men, or perhaps this fat fool himself, had clearly told someone in the crowd something of what had happened to the fortune-teller, and the collective imagination of the mob would embellish the grisly details to its own morbid satisfaction.

  'Continue your investigation, sergeant, and send word to the Temple of Morr for the body to be collected and the usual funerary rites conducted. Tell your superiors they will have my thoughts on the matter before the end of the day.'

  The man nodded enthusiastically, barely able to contain his delight at not being saddled with the problems of investigating such a ghoulish, and frankly unprofitable, case. After all, Vido asked himself, how were the brave patrolmen of the Altdorf city watch supposed to collect their usual quota of bribes and extortion dues if they were all out hunting for the murderer of some useless old hag of a fortune-teller?

  Konniger pushed past the man, ignoring his salute, and arrived at the decorated carriage that had first brought them to the Street of the Fortune Tellers. Their new patron, a well-to-do merchant called Gustav von Hassen, stood there waiting for them, delicately holding a perfumed silk handkerchief to his nose. Vido wasn't sure if this was intended to ward off the mystic smell of death, or merely just the odour of his fellow but less prosperous Altdorfers.

  'You have viewed the cadaver, Herr Konniger?' asked von Hassen, anxiously. 'You have agreed to my offer and will take up the case on behalf of the Vigilance Committee?'

  Konniger breezed past the merchant, climbing into von Hassen's carriage as if it were the sage-detective's own property. Vido nimbly scrambled in after him. 'Take me back to my quarters,' Konniger instructed. 'There are certain research materials there I must now refer to before we proceed any further with the investigation.'

  So compelling was Konniger's manner that von Hassen's coachman carried out the command immediately, almost leaving his master stranded in the street behind the departing coach. Von Hassen climbed in, accompanied by the ever-silent figure of the handsome and pale-skinned young man who had been with him ever since he had first turned up at Konniger's home earlier that morning. 'My nephew, Sigmund,' was how the merchant had first introduced the youth, although Vido presumed the blood-tie must be on Frau von Hassen's side of the family, since there was absolutely no trace of a family resemblance between the younger man and the corpulent, ruddy-faced merchant.

  If Vido had any thoughts on any other basis of a relationship between von Hassen and this ''Sigmund'', then he wisely kept them to himself.

  'Research materials?' asked von Hassen, eagerly. 'Then you already have some notion of what kind of a fiend you may be dealing with here?'

  'Perhaps,' said Konniger. 'But I need to know more information first. Information which, to save a great deal of time and inconvenience, I was hoping you would be able to provide me with, Herr von Hassen.'

  The merchant swallowed nervously. 'Me, Herr Konniger?'

  Konniger smiled. 'Indeed. For instance, although I have heard nothing concerning such events, I am almost certain that this has not been the first such murder in the city over the last few weeks, just as I am almost certain that you, my dear Herr von Hassen, can already tell me what I need to know about these other secret killings.'

  The merchant swallowed again. Konniger smiled in satisfaction and sat back in his silk-cushioned seat. And listened, as the merchant began to talk.

  KONNIGER AND VIDO had been away from Altdorf, visiting the Tilean city of Trantio, investigating the events that Konniger's biographers would later call The Case of the Screaming Statuary, when it all began several months ago. Despite his absence from the city, though, letters sent to Tilea from several of his most trusted information sources in Altdorf had kept him abreast of events back in the Imperial capital. He had a passing acquaintance with some of the events von Hassen talked about, but allowed the merchant to talk without interruption, keen to hear a version of those same events from the lips of one of their chief participants.

  'Tell me about the so-called ''Reikerbahn Butcher'' and the formation of this Citizens' Vigilance Committee of yours,' he had instructed the merchant.

  Von Hassen, eager to talk about the events that had catapulted him to his current position of almost universal popularity in the city, had been all too happy to comply.

  The Reikerbahn Butcher had been the name given to a mysterious madman who had cut a bloody swathe of murder through the poorest districts of Altdorf. Beggars, streetwalkers, drunks and petty criminals had made up the bulk of his victims, and, while his murderous exploits hadn't been exclusively confined to the Reikerbahn, it was the dark, rogue-haunted streets and alleys of that notorious waterfront district that had given him his name.

  Despite the Butcher's alarmingly high tally of victims, the city watch had been noticeably slow in their attempts to stop his murder spree. After all, whispered the watchmen in their precinct houses and the city's aristocratic overlords in their mansions and palaces, what real crime was being committed if some blood-crazed madman chose to relieve the city of the unwanted burden of some of its gallows-scum population, just as long as he confined his activities to the lower end of the city's social scale?

  As the murders continued, though, public anger intensified, and von Hassen and his now-famous Citizens' Vigilance Committee entered the picture. In a show of public-spirited altruism more or less unheard of from a member of the city's wealthy mercantile class, the man had petitioned his friends and business acquaintances and raised enough funds to form his Committee. Official permission was sought and the right people bribed. Generous rewards for information leading to the capture of the killer were posted. Weapon-carrying patrols of volunteer citizens were recruited, their task to walk the streets of the Reikerbahn at night and apprehend the Butcher at his bloody work. The Committee even went to the lengths, von Hassen whispered in the closest confidence to Konniger and Vido, of coming to a very private arrangement with none other than Vesper Klasst. Klasst was Altdorf's chief crimelord, a man whose grip on power over the city surpassed even that of Emperor Karl Franz itself, many people said. The Reikerbahn was the crimelord's personal fiefdom, and very little happened there that didn't eventually reach his ears.

  In the end, though, it had been one of the ordinary Vigilance Committee patrols that had brought about the Butcher's downfall. Alerted to the sound of screams, they had raced into a side street and caught the killer with his
latest victim. The Butcher, an insanely strong madman, had turned on his would-be appre-henders and killed or maimed three of them with his bare hands before escaping into the Reikerbahn's maze of alleyways. The alarm had been raised, though, and more Vigilance patrols had closed in on the area from all sides, sealing it off from any chance of further escape. The Butcher had been caught while trying to bend the thick iron bars of a sewer gate, and, according to those who inspected the gate later, had succeeded in bending them almost two feet apart before the Vigilance patrols caught up with him.

  Apprehended, beaten half to death by the cudgels and staves of the Vigilance patrol volunteers, he was dragged in chains to Mundsen Keep, the city's chief gaol. The authorities' intentions, to reassure an angry population that they were after all doing something, was to mount a very public trial and then an even more public execution. All such plans ended after they realised just what it was they had captured.

  This was the part Konniger had been most interested in hearing, and he leaned forward to listen more closely as von Hassen's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, an evident note of fear creeping into the merchant's tone.

  The Butcher had barely been human, von Hassen told them. His broken bones had fully healed in a few short days. His teeth were like fangs, his maw like that of a beast than a man. His hands too were more like the claws of an animal, with long, black nails made of a material that could have been iron. He was never heard to speak anything remotely recognisable as a human word, and answered all his interrogators in bestial grunts and snarls. When the gaolers had stripped away the filthy rags he wore as clothing, they had found patterned marks all over his body, symbols that had been cut or even burned and branded into his skin. A priest of Sigmar was called in, and quickly confirmed what everyone else had now suspected but did not dare say aloud. The Butcher was a servant of the Ruinous Powers, his crimes revealed as some form of insane devotion to the gods of Chaos.

  No, there would be no public trial or execution for the madman, for, after his true nature was revealed, he was swiftly handed over to the untender mercies of the witch hunters.

  The witch hunters had gone to work on him with their whips and flensing knives, branding irons and thumb-screws, with all the torture devices and cruelly ingenious pain-inflicting methods at their disposal. They had broken his body many times over, but his damned soul retained its strength, and the lowermost levels of Mundsen Keep rang with the echoes of savage laughter that were all the Butcher's interrogators received back in answer to their relentless barrage of questions and demands to their victim that he repent and confess his sins.

  Finally, the Butcher's inhuman resilience had exhausted even the witch hunters' appetite for the inflicting of pain, and he had been condemned to death by the usual method decreed for those of his kind: to be burnt at the stake, his ashes collected and cursed then scattered to the winds or dumped into the cleansing waters of the River Reik.

  'AND YOU ARE certain the witch hunters' sentence was carried out?' asked Konniger. 'I heard his name mentioned just as we were leaving the Street of the Fortune Tellers. Some of our fellow citizens seemed to have a worrying belief in the possibility of his return.'

  Von Hassen smiled. 'I consider myself to be a man of the people, Herr Konniger, but I know just as well as you do that an educated man shouldn't give too much credence to the superstitious mutterings of an Altdorf mob.'

  He paused for a moment, bringing out a small silver hipflask from a pocket of his richly-embroidered coat. Vido was keen for a taste of something strong and suitably fortifying to wash away the taste and memory of the air inside the fortune-teller's quarters. Von Hassen, however, took a swig from the hipflask and then replaced it back in his pocket without offering any of the rest of them a draught. Vido's sensitive nose caught a brief but exotic whiff of the hipflask's contents, but was unable to place the scent anywhere amongst his halfling's customary prodigious knowledge of the Empire's many different kinds of strong spirits and liqueurs.

  'No, believe me, Herr Konniger. The Butcher is surely dead. We of the Citizens' Vigilance Committee were denied all access to the beast after he had been identified as a servant of the Ruinous Powers,' said von Hassen, making the traditional sign of the hammer blessing at his mention of the Lords of Chaos. 'But certain stories still filtered out from Mundsen Keep about what was happening in there, and we were sent official word by the witch hunters that the madman had been executed.'

  'And this was how long ago?' asked Konniger.

  'Two months or so ago, or perhaps a little longer.'

  'And yet your Committee haven't disbanded after the original purpose of its formation was achieved?'

  'The patrols were ended and their licences to bear arms on the city streets rescinded immediately after the Butcher's capture,' explained von Hassen. 'Myself and several others still felt, however, that there was still some need for an organisation such as the Citizens' Vigilance Committee. Altdorf is a large and often dangerous place, and the resources and fortitude of the city watch are sometimes found to be…. well, perhaps ''limited'' might be the best term to use.'

  Vido barely suppressed a laugh. If by ''limited'', the merchant meant lazy, brutal, corrupt and sometimes almost as much a threat to the citizens of Altdorf as the footpads, robbers, cutpurses and murderers the watch were supposed to be protecting them from, then, yes, ''limited'' was indeed the very best word to use.

  'And the murder of one impoverished old fortune-teller is enough to draw the Committee's attention and make it vote to go to the not inconsiderable expense of engaging my services?' asked Konniger, with an air of mock innocence.

  Von Hassen fidgeted with the jewelled rings on his fingers. Vido had noticed them earlier, the former thief in him immediately doing an estimate of their approximate total worth. Whatever manner of trade the merchant was engaged in, business was clearly prospering at present. The wealth on show on just one of those fingers would probably cover a month or more of Konniger's standard fee arrangements.

  'As you've already ascertained, Herr Konniger,' answered von Hassen, 'this has not been the first such murder in the city, although it's the first one that will be spoken of openly. I'm afraid I can't tell you how I came by the information - certain vital and secret confidences are involved - but I know for a fact that there have been four other such murders in the city over the last month. You're aware of the recent death of Archlector Heiggler, for example?'

  'Of course. He died alone and at bed-prayer in his private quarters in the cathedral palace. His heart gave out, according to the Church's official Proclamation of Mourning,' answered Konniger.

  Von Hassen licked his lips, his voice dropping to a quiet whisper again. 'The archbishop died in the House of Sighs, in the bed of one of the employees of that establishment. They were both found together, brutally slain. The archbishop's heart had been torn out and taken by the killer.'

  Konniger nodded in understanding. The House of Sighs was one of Altdorf's most exclusive bordellos. Coincidentally, on the same day the archbishop's death had been announced, the city watch, assisted by priests and even Templars from the Church of Sigmar, had mounted a crusading raid on the House of Sighs, declaring the place to be a danger to the moral dignity of the good citizens of Altdorf. The establishment's owner, the formidable Fraulein Heidi Flampt, and her employees, had been herded into caged wagons and transported away to imprisonment in some far distant nunnery, where they would be rigorously educated in the righteous and moral ways of the Faithful of Sigmar. The good citizens of Altdorf, some of whom would surely have sampled the pleasures of the House of Sighs for themselves at some time or other, had sent them on their way, lining the streets and hurling jeering insults and handfuls of mud and dung at them as the wagons rumbled past.

  'The Church has always been adept at keeping its own house in order,' noted Konniger neutrally. 'And the other deaths?'

  Von Hassen nervously licked his lips again. 'Three of them, all within the space of a week an
d a half. All of them occurring within the walls of the Colleges of Magic.'

  Vido almost fell off his seat at this piece of news. Altdorf's famous Colleges of Magic contained the greatest repositories of magical lore in all the Old World, and were generally held to be the most impregnable locations in the whole city, far more secure than even the Imperial Palace itself. Mere men guarded the walls and gates of the Emperor's residence, but other, far stranger and more dangerous guardians kept watch over the boundaries of the Colleges of Magic.

  The inhabitants of the Reikerbahn's thieves' dens lay awake at night dreaming of the untold riches and priceless sorcerous items stored within the colleges' treasure houses. Many optimistic and foolhardy thieves had tried their luck over the years. None of them, as far as Vido knew, had ever succeeded. Or been heard of again, frankly. Their fates were something best not thought of, although Vido had heard certain stories about sorcerous experiments conducted on those unlucky enough to fall into the hands of the magicians there, with the outside world and the guardians of the city's law and order none the wiser about some of the darker things that went on behind the closed doors of the Colleges of Magic.

  The idea that some nameless killer could have penetrated the Colleges' invisible defences not once but on three separate occasions in so short a period of time was almost unthinkable.

  'Yes, three deaths,' repeated von Hassen. 'Three of the Colleges' most senior practitioners. In all three cases, no magical alarms were tripped, no hint of the killer's passage in or out of the buildings was detected.'

  'And the manner of the victims' deaths?'

  'Similar to that of the archbishop and the remains of that poor fortune-teller,' confirmed von Hassen, his voice dropping even further, to the level of a horrified whisper. 'Torn to shreds and inhumanly violated. In at least one of the cases, the victim's skull was pulled apart, and the brains inside removed. Consumed, I was told, according to some of the evidence found at the scene.'