“It is about perception, Briony. Do you know what I mean?” She shook her head. “How other people see us, how we see our selves. If I do not deal with your transgressions I appear soft-hearted to other hungry widows and beg to be robbed again and again. Yet if I exact the full penalty as owed to the law I take your hands simply because you were starving. Why did you not come to me, Briony? Why did you not swallow your pride and knock on my door? I would have helped you.”
She had no answer for him.
“Are you not going to plead your case?”
“Your mind is made up,” she said, “so what is the point?”
“You presume much. Yes, I have deliberated your fate since Kaspar heard the charges against you, and wished they were some ludicrous thing that could easily be denied or even some serious crime that might be refuted by the intervention of witch hunters, witchcraft, consorting with daemons, not something so simple and undeniable as stealing a chicken for meat and bread for your table. Giles would have you publicly flogged, your hands taken and your babe too. That is what he sued for.”
“No!” Her hands went instinctively to her mouth in denial.
“I have no liking of the man, but he is aware of his rights and demands satisfaction, so what am I to do, Briony?”
“Take my hands, but not my child, please. It is all I have left of him.”
That was the truth of it. Artur Neumann had fallen before he even knew he was going to be a father. To rob her of her unborn child would be to rob her of her husband all over again, and no wife deserved that no matter what her crimes. Her husband had been a knight, one of his own, a man of honour. He deserved better even if she did not.
“If I take your hands how will you care for the babe, Briony? You are no common peasant, you are the widow of a knight, but even so you have not the coin to pay for a wet nurse and no indentured servants to see to your needs. So tell me, how will you nurse and change it? How will you cradle it and soothe its tears?”
“Not my baby.” Her heartache was wretched to behold but he had to make her understand.
“No, not your baby, and not your hands. I have another fate in mind for you.”
She met his gaze, challenging him to say what she thought he was going to say. “You can claim my flesh but it will not be given willingly, and with no love.”
For a moment the woman’s resignation hung between them like a challenge. Then he laughed sadly, shaking his head. “What kind of man do you think I am, Briony? All these years and you think that of me?”
“You are a man,” she said, as though that answered everything, accusing him of every fault imaginable and excusing them all by the root of his sex. “You have never taken a wife, and if my man was to be believed you never sired any bastards nor anything so ignoble, so perhaps you would claim my boy as your own? Is that what you have in mind?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head again, unable to meet her gaze, as though suddenly their roles had reversed and he was the accused, her would-be executioner. “I have never taken a wife, that is true, though I have no idea if I have sired any young. I like to think the Metzger line will not die out with this old fool’s passing, but I have no idea. You know me, woman, but you cannot know what happens in the aftermath of battle, as the frenzy of it wears off the flesh. Some men do succumb to the base need to confirm their immortality by sinking into flesh. It is inevitable. Mortality and mindless coupling are inextricably linked in the minds of some, but believe me, I have never forced myself upon a woman, not as the spoils of conquest, not when the blood was pumping and the need to prove my manhood raged hot in my veins, not even when I was angry at the injustice of the world and the death of a friend. There has never been catharsis in those darker passions, never, and I am not about to start.”
“I am sorry,” she said, and broke down into ragged sobs. He moved from behind his desk and went to comfort her, but held back, shy of embracing her even to allow her to weep on his shoulder.
There was a timid knock at the door, Rosamund with the mulled wine. He opened the door for her, “Just put it on the table and take a seat.” She looked at him askance. He nodded once, and said, “Please.”
She did as she was asked, settling down into one of the arm chairs beneath the largest of the three leaded windows. “Take a look at Rosamund,” he told the other woman. “Take a good look, ask her any question you see fit and she will speak the truth. She has a tongue on her that would cow any man.” The maid shuffled in her seat. Her black skirts trailed around her feet. She looked decidedly uncomfortable with being the centre of attention.
“I have no questions,” Briony said.
“You will, I am sure, but Rosamund can answer them when you are out of the door. Now, I must mete out justice, as law demands. You will hear my verdict?”
She nodded. “Yes, my lord.”
“Then listen and bide my words well, Briony Neumann, wife of Artur. In the matter of theft against the person of Giles, pig and poultry farmer of this protectorate, you are found guilty by your own admission. Your punishment will be to serve within the house as a scullery maid. It is a long way from the wife of a knight, make no mistake. You will be stripped of all nobility and recognition of rank and treated just as every maid is treated within this house. Rosamund will see that a room is made up for you. It will be nothing fancy, but you will receive three square meals a day in return for your service, to which Rosamund will give instruction. You are to abide by her decisions, for she speaks with my voice in this matter, and the voice of the law you broke. Now heed this warning, for I will say it only once, steal from me and you will be cast out, not only from this house but from all the lands the Silberklinge protect. You will be alone, banished but your child will not suffer the same fate, for it is a cruel man who sentences the child for the sins of the mother. Respect my house, respect Rosamund, and there will always be a place for you here, wife of Artur Neumann, disrespect those few simple rules and you are gone. Do I make myself clear?”
“I don’t know what to say,” she said, looking not at him but down at her hands.
“I suggest you say thank you,” Rosamund said, rising from her chair to pour two goblets of warm wine. She handed one to Metzger and another to Briony.
“In respect of the woman you were, this is the last glass of wine you will share at my table,” Metzger said. “When the last sip is supped your new life will have begun. Welcome to our house.” He raised his goblet. “It is a most peculiar house, but we are rather fond of it.”
“I… thank you. Thank you,” Briony stammered, at a loss. She clenched her left fist as she raised the goblet to her lips. As she swallowed she placed her palm against her swollen belly and Metzger knew that she was thinking about how close she had come to losing both.
Kaspar rapped once on the study door and opened it without waiting to be bidden to enter.
Reinhardt Metzger sat alone nursing the last of the now tepid wine. He looked bone tired, carrying every one of his fifty years heavily on his broad shoulders.
“You’re a soft-hearted old beggar,” Kaspar said, sinking into one of the armchairs. He put his feet up on the waxed side-table and teased off his gloves one finger at a time. “But if it means anything, you did the right thing.”
“We’ll need to give that moaning swineherd some satisfaction. No doubt he will be hammering on the door the moment word reaches his cauliflower ears that she hasn’t lost her hands, her child or her life. Have I told you lately how much I loathe men like Giles?”
“This morning, last night, and at least twice more since he sued for the Graf’s justice.”
“Yes, well, let me just state for the record, men like him ought to be fed their own bloody tongues to put an end to their merciless bloody tittle-tattle. They’re worse than old maids.”
“A few coins will buy him off.”
“It’s blood money.”
“Aye, it is. But we both know if the shoe was on the other foot and Artur was dispensing justice to
our widows we’d expect some kind of compassion from an old friend.”
“Damned right we would,” Metzger agreed, “and he’d give it.”
“Still no word from Orlof?” Kaspar Bohme said, changing tack as artfully as any midshipman.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not like him.”
“Did I ever tell you you had a talent for stating the bloody obvious, my friend?”
“Well, there was that one time, at Essen Ford,” Kaspar said, pushing back up out of the upholstered chair. He paced the room like a caged animal, prowling back and forth, back and forth. “Have you sent scouts?”
“No, I thought I would sit here like a blind man in the dark rooting for navel fluff. Of course I have, two good men. One last week, one this.”
“And neither have returned?”
“That’s a real talent you have, Kaspar.”
“I say we ride out,” Bohme said, bracing himself on the wainscotting of the wooden window, feeling out the grain with his calloused fingers. Each knot and whorl in the wood depicted more years than either of them had been on the planet. Even at the simplest of times nature was a humbling thing.
“Two old men against the evils of the world?”
“I can think of no one better suited.”
“Go to bed, Kaspar. We’ll talk in the morning.”
But they did not; they met in the middle of the night on the landing, drawn by the reflections in the streaked glass and a thicker, unnatural darkness.
“Some foul miasma clouds out the moon,” Kaspar said. “You know it and I know it, and where there is roiling darkness like this there is some unnatural curse beneath it.”
“We don’t have a choice, do we?”
“Would you send someone else out?”
Metzger shook his head.
“I didn’t think so. Get dressed, I will meet you in the courtyard.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“You weren’t planning on sleeping were you?”
“No,” Metzger said.
“Neither was I. I believe they call that a coincidence. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go drain the snake. The old bladder isn’t what it used to be.”
A quarter of an hour later, still hours before dawn, the two men set off towards the clouds, grim-faced, all joking cast aside. Bohme roused the stable boy and had him saddle up two of the Knight Protector’s horses while Metzger woke Briony and had her bag up travel rations for them. They opted for speed over power, leaving behind the chargers they would ride into battle in favour of sleek, fast mares. They knew better than to gallop, moving out at an easy canter at first, resting the animals often as their long strides ate the ground, and still exhaustion claimed the beasts along with the first cry of the dawn chorus.
They were not the young men they had once been, of that the night had made them painfully aware. By midday they were forced to take shelter in the ruins of an old temple. The stripped roof offered little in the way of respite from the elements, but with the statue of Sigmar still standing sentinel in the corner it offered other protections.
They talked little during the morning, wrapped up in their own thoughts as to the origins of the miasma. It appeared every bit as thick in daylight as the darkness had threatened it would be. Bohme struck tinder and saw to the small gathering of deadfall that he had scavenged to make a fire, while Metzger unwrapped two slabs of meat from the greased paper wrap and skewered them on his long dagger to cook them over the fire. The fat sizzled and spat as it dripped onto the hard stone beneath. The meat, when they ate it, was gamy, and still slick with fatty juices that had them licking their fingers and smearing the stuff on the grass that had slowly begun to reclaim the temple. Done, they grabbed a few hours of sleep before rising again to stalk the miasma through the early evening.
There was more to what Metzger had told Briony than she might have understood, more about his debt to her man. There were different types of leader, as many as there were types of men, but a man like Metzger felt responsibility for those in his service. His scouts had not returned: two good men with five children between them. The loss weighed heavily on his shoulders, and it was a loss. He did not for one minute think that they had suddenly become derelict in their duties. They were either dead or captured, and then as good as dead if they were. He studied the miasmic clouds as they amassed, amazed that the sky could harbour such black hatred for the land beneath it. They had yet to spill their ire on the landscape, but when it came the deluge would be apocalyptic.
It was ever the way of the earth. It cleansed evil and good with equal disdain, scrubbing them from the land as though they had never existed.
“You know what we face as well as I do,” Metzger said after a while.
Kaspar Bohme pushed to his feet and scuffed up dirt to kick out the fire. “I know nothing, Reinhardt. Neither do you. It’s time to move on.”
And so it was for three straight nights, though without the stars they were forced to orientate themselves in the oppressive press of the trees with a loadstone on a string that pointed true north. The pair of them pushed their mounts to the point of exhaustion. Where they could they followed tracks carved into the forest, where it was impossible or impractical they wove their own paths through the trees. Sleep was a luxury for man and beast, though they grabbed an hour’s rest here and there, until they woke on the morning of the fourth day to a shivering earth.
Kaspar came awake instantly, sensing that something was fundamentally wrong. He placed both of his hands down, palms flat on the grass, feeling the violent tremors rippling through the soil. He counted out the gaps between the ebb and flow of the shivers, judging the nearness and size of the enemy they faced.
“An entire army is on the march,” he whispered, “and they are close.”
“The earth never lies,” Metzger said.
The horses whinnied and shied, spooked by their unseen enemy, kicking at the dirt and deadfall and prancing sideways as far as their tethers allowed.
Bohme surveyed the landscape around them. To the left there was little in the way of cover, scrub land leading towards the foothills, to the right, tree-lined slopes, and straight ahead a declivity leading down to the stream-bed cutting through a large U-shaped valley that ran for thirty miles and more. From his vantage point the valley floor was obscured by the overhanging cliff, making it ideal for the safe, unseen, passage of a substantial force.
“I’m going out, give me five minutes and follow,” said Kaspar.
Metzger stayed low, hunkering down beside Kaspar and said, “Just watch yourself.”
“You worry too much, old man.”
“And you don’t worry enough,” Metzger said.
He watched his back as Bohme moved off, skirting the low broken stones of the temple wall. He moved fast, running hard and keeping low. The weight of his body was always on the front foot. Metzger saw the subtle flash of silver in his left hand and knew that Kaspar was not taking any chances. A moment later he disappeared behind a crumbling spar of stone. Metzger wasn’t about to sit by idly and wait. He set off in the opposite direction, running for the trees.
They offered little in the way of cover, but anything was better than nothing. He sprinted across the open ground, crashing through the undergrowth. He pushed through low, dragging branches, snapping them back in his haste.
The nature of both men was evident for any observer to see, the bull charging recklessly on, flattening anything in his way, the wolf moving with terrible swiftness, low, sleek and fast. A thoughtful enemy could deduce much from this simple observation, enough, perhaps to win a war.
Metzger hit the thick trunk of a withered tree. Chest heaving, he glanced back over his shoulder. For all the skeletal shadows and long sighs, the trees appeared empty of any real threat. He crouched and rummaged through the deadfall. There were no obvious signs of passage to announce the enemy’s advance, whoever they might be, no broken twigs or brown leaves crushed into the mud. He c
raned his head, listening, but there were no sounds either, no signs of life; the stillness was eerie and unnatural. In the dusk so many of the forest’s natural foragers ought to be stirring, but the place was dead. He cupped his hands to his mouth and, shaping his lips, hooted twice, mimicking the cry of an owl. It was greeted by silence as the forest rose to engulf it. Reinhardt Metzger shivered despite the relative warmth of the early evening.
When he placed his hands flat to the dirt he felt them again, the telltale tremors of marching feet, thousands upon thousands of them causing the ground to revolt at their vile advance.
“Talk to me, mother earth,” he whispered, digging his fingers into the dirt.
There was no miraculous revelation.
He crept forward, deeper into the trees. The first blush of moonlight filtered through the canopy of leaves, scattering its reflection across the forest floor like a wealth of ghostly coins. He moved on, deeper into the trees until quite suddenly the land dropped away steeply beneath him.
What he saw snatched his breath away: a shuffling river of death, rolling back across the countryside for league upon league, rotting skin and bone, dragging feet. He stared in absolute horror, scarcely able to take in the enormity of the force: a crusade of the armies of death, shambling corpses, moving blindly on, staggering and lurching mindlessly.
The column was so wide that he could not see its far edge. Several of the marchers carried torches that threw eerie light across the ranks of the vile army. The dead had no need of light, he reasoned, which meant that the living marched with them. He saw flesh that hung in grey tattered strips and all he could think was to pray to Sigmar that the dead passed by his homestead, knowing the selfishness of that prayer even as he thought it. Their salvation was someone else’s damnation and yet he could not bring himself to care about those nameless others. He would willingly carry the burden of their deaths if their sacrifice saved even one of his own people.
Warhammer - Curse of the Necrarch Page 6
