Swords of the Empire

by Edited by Marc Gascoigne

  Konniger calmly took in all this information. 'Even supposing all this were true, it seems strange that the College masters would do nothing to defend themselves and their kind from this mysterious enemy.'

  'They do nothing, because they can do nothing,' replied the merchant, staring at Konniger with an eager intensity. 'With all their magical abilities, they are powerless to stop or even identify the killer. Go to the Colleges of Magic, Herr Konniger. Knock on their doors and enquire about the whereabouts of the college masters. You will be told they are indisposed and are unable to receive you at present. The truth is, they are afraid. Those who have not fled the city have retreated into their innermost lairs, surrounding themselves with the most powerful magical defences their abilities can command. They will not come out again, and those who have already fled will not return, until they are all assured that the threat to them has passed.'

  Von Hassen broke off, taking comfort again in the contents of his silver flask. Outside, the city rolled past. They were crossing the Reik now at the Ostlander Bridge, just about to climb the cobbled slope of the Volker Weg towards Konniger's town-house home.

  'You see, of course, the pattern that is developing now, Herr Konniger?'

  The answer was immediate. 'A holy man of the Church of Sigmar, three senior members of the Colleges of Magic and now a devotee from the Street of Fortune-Tellers. If everything you have told me is true, then someone is killing magic-users in Altdorf.'

  'Then you understand exactly,' said von Hassen with a smile of satisfaction. 'The Church and the Colleges can take care of their own, of course, but who will protect the ordinary Altdorfer from this killer? Last week it was the members of the Colleges of Magic the fiend was stalking. Today, it was a humble fortune-teller. Tomorrow, it might be an even more humble herbalist or charm-seller, or, after that, the ordinary people who buy such things. It is like the case of the Reikerbahn Butcher, Herr Konniger. How many of our humblest and most defenceless citizens must die before the authorities finally sit up and take notice?'

  'You argue a powerful case, Herr von Hassen,' said Konniger, as the coach drew up outside his home. 'Consider the services of myself and my manservant to be at your Committee's disposal. I will begin my investigations immediately.'

  THEY STOOD IN the street and watched as the coach drove away.

  'An interesting man, our new patron. Tell me, Vido, does he strike you at all as a very likely champion of the people?'

  Vido shrugged. 'Not going by all the sparklers on those fingers. You could feed every beggar and street-waif in Altdorf for a lifetime, and hire enough mercenaries to clean out the Reikerbahn in a night, with the fortune he was wearing today.'

  Konniger nodded, keeping his own opinion to himself. 'Ah, yes, the rings. What did you notice about them?'

  Vido thought about it for a moment. He had a thief's customary good memory for the sight of wealth that had been flashed before his eyes. Added to that was the extra memory recall skills Konniger had taught him. Concentrating, Vido tried to remember what he had seen on the merchant's fingers.

  'A big gold ring with an amethyst stone on the left index finger… next to it, a pair of plain platinum bands, although one of them had a dragon's head on it, with maybe ruby chips set in as eyes… on the left index finger, there was a silver band inlaid with gold scrolling, and with a cluster of jade stones set in it… something similar on the right index figure, except the one there had one of those big, fancy Araby fire-rubies set in it…'

  Konniger nodded in approval. 'Very good, Vido, but now think again. Except this time, don't tell me what you see. Instead, tell me what you don't see.'

  Anyone else might have been confused by the suggestion, but Vido had been with Konniger for long enough to make some sense of his riddles. The halfling closed his eyes, concentrating, his mind trying to remember what his eyes had already seen. Suddenly, it came to him.

  'His right ring finger, his signet ring finger. There was nothing on it! It was the only one of his fingers not wearing a ring!'

  Konniger smiled. 'Better and better. Now, if you didn't see a ring there, then what else did you see?'

  Vido thought about it again, concentrating harder, using all the memory recall tricks his master had laboured long to teach him. Proper observation is vital, Konniger had always said, but what was the point in observing every minute detail if you were later unable to remember what it was you had seen?

  'There was no ring, but there was the mark of the ring there, on the flesh of his finger. The mark of something he must wear a lot, except he didn't have it on today.'

  They were through the main door of the house now, Konniger shrugging off his cape and, as was his daily habit, throwing it over the arbalester bust of Magnus the Pious that stood on a teakwood bookcase in the hallway. Later, when Konniger had retired to his study, Vido would retrieve it, brush it down and return it to its usual hanging place.

  The sage-detective was already halfway up the stairs and heading towards his study before Vido had time to take off his own cloak. 'Excellent observation, Vido,' he called back down to his manservant, pausing on the staircase. 'But observation is only the servant of deduction. Tell me, what would a man like Herr Gustav von Hassen normally be expected to wear on that finger?'

  'A signet ring, probably,' Vido decided. 'Something flashy with his family crest on it, that he'd probably had specially made for him. Or maybe something to show which one of the Imperial merchants guilds he was affiliated to.'

  'Yes,' nodded Konniger. 'Something to show where his loyalties lay, whether it be to family or guild. He does wear such a ring, but, for whatever reasons of his own, he had taken it off before meeting us today. Think about that, Vido, and remember to be on your guard in his presence, should we meet with him again.'

  With that, Konniger was gone, retreating towards his study.

  'It'll be midday in an hour or so, sir. Will you be requiring lunch in your study?' called up Vido.

  The answer came back down to him. 'Just a light lunch, I think. A little meat and bread, and some wine. Nothing too heavy, since we'll be back out later this evening.'

  'Anywhere special?' Vido tried to sound enthusiastic, knowing just how often Konniger's cases led them to the most squalid or most forbidden regions of Altdorf.

  'Someplace where you should feel right at home, Vido,' came the reply, an unmistakable note of amusement in the sage-detective's voice. 'We'll be making a brief stopover in a place near the Kaiserplatz, but, after that, we're off to Mundsen Keep.'

  THE KILLER WAS pleased with its latest acquisitions. Added to the others it had collected, it had increased its power immeasurably in the last few days. The heart of the holy man, the minds of the three spellcasting weaklings, and now the eyes and tongue of the fortune-teller witch, and the blood and souls of all of them. Each one added to its growing strength, added to the power of its new body, as it took the souls of its victims and made their power its own. Soon, no weakling spellcaster would be able to harm it. Its new skin was black and iron-hard, able to harmlessly deflect the power of most magics cast against it. The brains of the three magicians, scooped out and eaten raw and bloody, had given it this new ability, just as the consumed blood, soul and heart of the holy man would protect it from the spells of the witch hunters and their brethren amongst the priesthood of the hated man-god Sigmar. The items it had taken from the witch protected it from the mystic gaze of her kind. No spellcaster or prayer-mumbler could see it with their sorcerous farsight, or speak any words of divination about it.

  There were many kinds of spellcasters in the city, of course, and other items it could take from them, but patience was not a quality its patron lord looked favourably upon, and the blood-hungry thing that the killer shared its new body with gnawed angrily on the stuff of its soul, demanding it hurry up and complete its mission of vengeance.

  Dimly, the killer could still remember a time when it had still been human. It had been a soldier or mercenary, although what its n
ame had been, or what lord or cause it might once had served, was now long forgotten. There had been a battle in some far-off cold and northern place. It had fought well. Too well, as such things are judged by mere humans. A battle-madness had taken possession of him, and he had fought with an insane strength and fury, killing all around him, friend and foe alike. Finally, only he and his inhuman foes had remained alive on the battlefield. They attacked, cutting him down, losing another dozen or more of their number in the process. They had spared his life, though, if ''spared'' could ever be the way to describe what they had done to him next. The favour of the Blood Lord was with this one, they fearfully whispered amongst themselves after witnessing the unholy fury of his battle-madness, and so they had set about the bloody business of making him one of their own.

  They had tied him down and gone to work on him with all the boundlessly cruel imagination of their kind. They cut away his manhood and hammered iron spikes into the ends of his fingers, transforming his hands into the claws of a beast. They had smashed out his teeth and replaced them with fangs pulled from the mouths of their own dead. They had wrenched apart his jaws and mutilated his face, stitching it back together to resemble their own bestial features. He had screamed for mercy, pleaded for death, but neither had been forthcoming. They had cut and burned the symbols of their god into the flesh of his body. Then, when they had finished, they had let him go, releasing him to find whatever fate the Blood Lord had decreed for his new follower.

  He had wandered south, to this place, the great city on the banks of the Reik, drawn by some secret call. Once here, he had gone about his business, carrying out what he believed to be his duty to his new patron god. They had caught him eventually, of course, imprisoning and torturing him, but he understood now that this further ordeal had all been part of Lord Khorne's plan for him.

  They had broken his body, but his soul belonged to Lord Khorne, and that they could never take. Lying on his cell floor on the night before his appointed execution, his smashed and useless limbs bound in chains, he had prayed to the Master of the Skull Throne. His lord had been listening, and had responded to his chosen follower's prayer.

  The voice, more cold than the dank flagstones it seemed to seep forth from, had spoken to him from out of the darkness of the lightless cell. It told him what he must do, telling him the full horror of the ordeal he must undergo next, but also telling him of the glories that would soon be his forever afterwards.

  He had done as Lord Khorne had commanded, undergoing the ordeal, joining with the other, willingly submitting to the agonies of his bloody baptism of rebirth.

  He had been human once, and then something less than human. Now he was something different again, something far greater and more terrible than any mere human. The favour of Lord Khorne was with him indeed. He was now set on the path to true daemonhood. All he had to do to take his first significant steps on that path was deal with the coven of the Blood God's most hated enemies that were hidden in the city, the same coven responsible for his own capture and imprisonment.

  With his new farsight senses gained from the eyes of the fortuneteller witch, he could sense their presence in the city. Hiding in their mansions and counting-houses, weaving their foolish plots and schemes against his lord.

  The knowledge of their presence awoke the anger of the thing inside the killer. It screamed in silent rage, pushing against the restraints of its new and unfamiliar flesh-bound prison. The killer quelled its screams with a single, harsh command. His control over the other was getting better and better, another sign that Lord Khorne's favour was with him.

  Patiently, the killer bent himself to the task at hand, sharpening his new finger-blades against the flesh-shorn skull of one of the weaklings who had inhabited the house that had now become his new lair.

  MUNDSEN LUNTZ WAS neither a happy nor a popular man. He was not a popular man, because, for the last twenty-two years, he had been assistant chief gaoler at Mundsen Keep. Mundsen was not his real first name, of course, but that was what everyone called him, to his face, at least. Mundsen greatly suspected they called him other, less polite, things behind his back. No one liked a gaoler, Mundsen knew. They were, like watchmen, witch hunters and Imperial tax collectors, a seemingly necessary evil of life. And, although he didn't know it, the fact that Mundsen had the charm, wit, intellect and, most crucially, the personal hygiene of a sewer rat, was also an important reason for his unpopularity with his fellow Altdorfers.

  He wasn't a happy man either. By his reckoning, he'd spent longer in Mundsen Keep than just about every prisoner in the place, and, unlike any of them, had little chance of escape or remission. Like the condemned prisoners kept in the lowest levels, or the lifers in their west tower, he was stuck in that place for the rest of his life. No, gaoler-work was all he knew and all he was good at, so that was what he was stuck doing.

  There were compensations, of course. Bribery and corruption were a way of life in any Old World jailhouse, and Mundsen Keep was certainly no exception. The families of prisoners often bribed gaolers to give their incarcerated loved ones better treatment, more food or even clean water. For a small price, messages could be smuggled in and out of the Keep, so that bankrupt merchants and imprisoned ganglords alike could carry on their business uninterrupted while being detained at his Imperial Majesty's pleasure. For a larger price, certain doors could be left unlocked and gaolers bribed to be looking the other way at certain crucial moments, making a prisoner's escape all that more easy. For a larger price still, deaths could be arranged within the walls of the Keep, although that was a service that Mundsen Luntz no longer offered to even his most select customers, not since that time when…

  'Ah, Herr Luntz. Just the man we were looking for.'

  Luntz swallowed his mouthful of ale the wrong way at the sound of that voice. He fell off his stool, coughing and spluttering. Noticeably, none of the other patrons in the bar rushed to help him stopping from choking to death. The Stout Cudgel, situated near the central city watch building just off the Kaiserplatz, was popular with watchmen, which more or less ensured that no one else ever went there. Even here, though, amongst his fellow members of Altdorf's law enforcement community, Luntz wasn't a popular figure. Too many times had the watchmen here caught some villain and delivered them into Luntz's care, only to see the same criminal inexplicably back on the streets weeks or even days later.

  Luntz looked up, already knowing what he was going to see. The stern features of Zavant Konniger stared back down at him. That wretched little gallows-scum manservant of Herr High-and-Mighty Konniger lurked in the background, smirking.

  'H-herr Konniger!' spluttered Luntz, climbing back to his feet, doing his best to ignore the sniggers of amusement from the tables around him. Konniger was known here, and nodded a few polite greetings to some of the regulars. There were still plenty of good men amongst the city watch, men who provided Konniger with information, or who occasionally did him services in return for any unofficial help or advice he might have given them in the past.

  'No need to be alarmed,' said Konniger. 'At least, not this time. All I want from you is a small favour.'

  The occupants of the other tables deliberately turned their attention away as Konniger settled himself on the seat beside Luntz. A mug of wine and a plate of bread and sausage appeared as if by magic on the table in front of the sage-detective. The owner of The Stout Cudgel was a former sergeant in the city watch, and owed the life of one of his daughters to the success of one of Konniger's investigations. Konniger politely sampled the food and drink, nodding in thanks at his host.

  Luntz almost started choking again. 'A favour, Herr Konniger?'

  'Consider it a return favour, Luntz, if that helps matters any. For helping you keep your job, and maybe for keeping you from becoming an inmate in your own prison.'

  Luntz blanched at the memory. Two years ago, one of the sage-detective's cases had centred on Mundsen Keep. As a sideline of the main investigation, Konniger had uncovered th
e full extent of Luntz's extra-curricular financial activities within the prison.

  'I told you before, Herr Konniger. I don't do that kind of stuff any more. I'm a changed man. I—'

  Konniger held up a hand, commanding silence. 'I'm not interested in the miracle of your supposed reformed character, Luntz. What I am interested in is the execution of the criminal called the Reikerbahn Butcher, two months ago.'

  The colour drained out of the gaoler's face. A not inconsiderable feat, thought Vido, watching with interest, considering how red-faced the fat, smelly idiot was normally.

  Luntz's voice dropped to a horrified whisper. 'The scarlet cell! You know about that?'

  Konniger smiled. 'Not as much as I'd like to. That's why you're going to tell me all about it. And show it to me too, if possible.'

  'But it ain't possible, Herr Konniger. Outsiders ain't allowed into the Keep, not without a letter of permission from Governor Krantz. And when the witch hunters ordered the cell sealed up, they said—'

  'Vido, do you still have that letter? The one I was drafting to the city authorities? The one concerning some of the matters I uncovered during our last visit to Mundsen Keep?'

  'I've got it right here, sir,' answered Vido making a show of fumbling about in a pocket containing nothing other than his tinderbox, a few coins and an extra throwing knife. 'If you want to check it and sign it now, I can deliver it in person to the Alderman's office or the city watch first thing tomorrow morning.'

  'Maybe another time, Vido,' said Konniger innocently, as Lutz's shoulders slumped in resigned defeat.

  Konniger gestured to the owner. 'Good man, Luntz. I see now your claims of being a reformed character perhaps aren't so exaggerated, after all. We'll have another drink together, and maybe some of this delicious sausage, and you'll tell us everything that happened two months ago. And then, when we're finished, you'll take us to Mundsen Keep and show us this famous scarlet cell of yours.'