Khreos groaned and closed his eyes. Jahama was paring his nails with a knife.
‘Oh, yes, after I’d finished dancing with them I was sure the Bretonnians would have been too stirred-up to read anything, let alone a map. But then how would I have delivered my lesson?’ The assassin rolled over onto his stomach, his face next to the lord’s. ‘You are so fond of your lessons, my lord, always so intent on giving instruction. Haven’t we done you a service, my mistress and I? Think of the lesson you will be remembered for! Imagine it! Anyone who thinks of the kind of stupid, clumsy little ruse…’ Jahama had started to spit his words, and controlled himself. ‘Anyone who thinks to treat myself or my brothers or the blessed Brides of Khaine as their sling-stones, their expendable pawns, will remember the lesson we have made of you.’
He sprang to his feet. ‘My mistress could have refused you, you know. She discussed it with her sisters, discussed this petty noble who thought he could make her dance on his strings. But then… then you would have gone on in your tricky little ways, believing you could try to betray the Scorpion’s Daughter and never be the worse for it. So why not fall in step with you, sir, dance on your strings until we could turn about and strangle you with them? I don’t have your mincing subtlety and I must be blunt. It’s important that you understand just why you die as you do.’
The lord’s face was twisted in despair, and Jahama nodded in satisfaction.
‘I’d offer to make sure, sir, that you aren’t alive by the time your enemies return to the field. But I want to give you plenty of time to think about my lesson. And for my part, well, the sun is up and the Ark must sail soon, with or without you at the helm. If your nephew has survived, I’m sure he’ll be happy to give the order. Excuse me, lord, I believe there’s a boat waiting for me at the bay.’
And Jahama the assassin turned away and left Khreos Maledict weeping in the dust as he disappeared into the forest, as the bright sun slanted down between the trees and the birds sang from the branches.
A GOOD THIEF
by Simon Jowett
IS THAT IT, Francois Villon wondered? The polite applause that greeted the end of his performance failed to rise above a ripple and was quickly drowned out by the babble of his erstwhile audience taking up conversations that had been interrupted by the Graf’s call for silence, which had also served as Villon’s cue to begin.
This evening’s poem had been Villon’s most ambitious work: the product of a week’s pacing through the town’s muddy streets and along the marshy banks that bounded the tributary of the Reik that provided Wallenholt with its connection to the civilised centres of the Empire. A week spent honing every line, shaping every verse and memorising each new version. And for what? To flatter the ego of his patron, Bruno, Graf von Wallenholt, and to interrupt the drinking of those townsfolk and travelling traders who made up what passed for ”society” in this boggy backwater.
Sigmar take them, Villon shrugged inwardly. It still beats working for a living. He reached for one of the wine-filled goblets on a passing servant’s tray, drained its contents and reached for another from the tray of a servant passing in the opposite direction.
Yes, he reminded himself as the blood-rich wine slid easily down his throat, it was better to live as a pampered pet in this out-of-the-way place, than to rot in chains in one of Marienburg’s danker oubliettes - which was where he would have spent the last months, had certain friends and drinking companions not warned him of the warrant that had been sworn against him by that hypocritical prig, Gerhard von Klatch.
Hypocritical prig or not, Villon would not have deliberately made an enemy of one of the Merchant Princes of Marienburg. It was just that everyone knew about the extra-marital activities of von Klatch’s wife and, when set against von Klatch’s pompous pronouncements on the subject of ”family values”, they seemed the perfect subject for a rhyme. Or, they seemed so to Villon’s wine-fuddled brain at some point in the midst of a week-long binge financed by the ”acquisition” of the collection money from the temple of a middle-ranking deity near the pleasure gardens.
Had he been sober - or even within hailing distance of sobriety - Villon might have thought twice before extemporising the poem that later saw print as ”Madame Klatch’s Menagerie”. A number of his other drunken satires had been transcribed and circulated around the docks and lower quarters of the city, but he would never have imagined that a transcript of his latest opus might find its way from the pages of Marienburg’s yellow papers - scurrilous rumour-sheets printed on stuff better suited for use in the privy than for the absorption of ink - to those of a more respectable journal, more usually associated with political and economic news. Obviously, von Klatch had enemies and Villon’s rhyme was a convenient weapon to hurl against the old windbag’s political ambitions.
‘The Heroic hexameter,’ the voice came from behind Villon as he waved to a flagon-bearing servant with his now-empty goblet. ‘An unusual choice.’
Villon turned. The speaker was a stranger to Wallenholt - one of a small group of visitors in whose honour the Graf had ordered this soiree. Villon had assumed them to be of greater-than-average wealth and power to warrant the full deployment of the Graf’s hospitality, though the man he found himself looking at as the servant refilled his goblet showed very little outward sign of wealth or power. Dressed from head to toe in close-napped black velvet, he was over average height and build. His features, though edging on the handsome, were pale grey eyes, a narrow nose, a black beard, neatly trimmed and peppered with grey - a description that might apply equally to an uncountable number of men.
What marked this man out to Villon’s eyes, eyes which had years of practice in judging the relative wealth of potential victims and/or patrons, was an absence of certain details: he wore no house, guild or family insignia.
And he recognised the Heroic hexameter, a six-beat rhythm that had passed out of poetic favour centuries ago.
‘It was an experiment,’ Villon replied, adopting his most refined accent and most polite form of address. ‘I heard La Rondeau de Sigmund when a child and the six-beat metre struck me then as very strange and beautiful. And very challenging to those like us who are more used to the pentameter that is the fashion of today’s verse. You are a man of rare sensibilities, sir, to recognise it.’
‘I have no use for poets,’ the stranger cut across Villon’s attempt at flattery. ‘The Graf tells me that you cannot read or write. Is that true?’
‘There is more to writing than the mere act of making marks on paper,’ Villon shot back, more forcefully than was seemly. Despite his privileged status within the Graf’s household - he had no other duties than to compose verse to flatter his lord’s vanity and act as a living example of Wallenholt’s rising status within the Empire - he was still a servant. And the man whose aesthetic sense he had just insulted was an honoured guest.
Mouth running away with you again, Francois, he scolded himself. He cursed the third goblet of wine and searched for a form of words to ease the situation.
‘But I… I know enough to make my mark,’ was all he could find to say. That ”mark” was no more than a shaky ”V” which could be found on the very few documents he had ever been required to sign - mostly papers recording his appearances in court to answer charges of street theft, swindling and burglary. When one had been born in the gutter and set to thieving almost as soon as one could walk, the learning of letters was not a priority.
The stranger cocked an eyebrow. To Villon’s surprise, he seemed amused.
‘An illiterate poet,’ he murmured. Villon was unsure whether he intended anyone to hear him. ‘An interesting contradiction.’
At that moment, the Graf swept up to them. Villon’s heart jumped - had he heard that his pet poet was arguing with one of his guests? If so, the best he could hope for was to be escorted beyond the town walls to return to the sorry state in which he had fetched up in Wallenholt after fleeing the warrant in Marienburg. Villon didn’t relish the thought - day u
pon day of muddy roads, eating roots and berries and sleeping up trees to avoid roaming predators.
‘Magister,’ the Graf began without sparing Villon a glance. ‘There is someone I have been meaning to introduce to you…’
Villon’s heart resumed a more sedate rhythm as the Graf lead the stranger away. Villon took this as his cue to quit the evening’s festivities; the longer he stayed, the more he would drink; and the more he drank, the more likely he would be to say something else that he would regret.
He moved towards the doors to the hall unnoticed and unmolested by any of the other guests - proof, he believed of the regard for poetry among Wallenholt’s elite. He had been lucky, shortly after arriving in the town, to hear that the Graf had a taste for verse. What was it about men of power that they desired some recognition of their finer sensibilities? The Graf had begun to talk of a printed collection of Villon’s verse - calf-bound, subscription only - though the von Wallenholt name would be the only one to appear on its pages.
At the doors he paused and looked back into the hall. He spotted the Graf and the stranger; they were talking to, or rather being talked at, by another of the out-of-towners. Probably a travelling representative of the Nuln Cheesemakers Guild, Villon chuckled to himself. Now, perhaps, the stranger would feel more appreciative of the conversation of poets.
‘VILLON!’ HE WAS back in the Blind Monk, on Grosse-festenplatz, down by the docks. He had drunk far too much cheap wine to be sure of exactly how long he had been in the tavern - longer than a day, not so long as a full week.
‘A verse!’ the cry went up around the room. ‘A verse from Villon!’ The cry was repeated; a steady drumming of tankards and fists upon the tavern’s tables beat against the fetid, belch-ridden air.
This was how it always happened: such was his reputation that, if he spent long enough in one tavern and drank enough wine, one of his fellow drinkers would think to call for a verse. And, because he had spent enough time in that tavern and had drunk more than enough wine, he would, after a moment’s thought, oblige:
‘I rhyme of the lady, von Klatch…’
‘FRANQOIS!’ THE YEARS had fallen away; he was in Brother Nicodaemus’s study. A bitter winter breeze was slicing through the shutters of the room’s single window.
‘Francois!’ the old priest repeated. He was the only adult the young urchin could remember taking the time to repeat an instruction. More usually, his lack of attention was rewarded with a slap about the head.
‘Yes, father,’ Villon looked at the priest. He had been thinking about how cold he felt. Nicodaemus never seemed to feel the cold, not did any of the other priests - though Villon could tell by their expressions whenever they saw him that his presence in their monastery was as welcome as the stench of an over-full privy pot.
‘I asked you to explain the pentameter, Francois,’ Nicodaemus told him. The old man had caught the young Villon trying to steal from the vegetable garden within the monastery walls. He was surprisingly nimble and strong for an old man and, despite his gentle demeanour, more than willing to administer enough of a beating to pacify the struggling young thief.
But that had been the last time he had touched Villon. Nicodaemus, it seemed, had certain theories about the training of the young and, before he died, he wished to test them. Villon had appeared at just the right time and presented quite a challenge.
‘A pentameter is a line made up of five feet,’ Villon parroted.
‘Very good. And what is a foot?
‘A foot is a poetical unit of two syllables,’ Villon replied. ‘The Gothic pentameter is the most popular of these, in which the stress is placed on the second syllable.’
‘Very good!’ Nicodaemus smiled. He had not asked Villon to explain the Gothic pentameter, but he could see that, of all the subjects he had introduced to the child, poetry was the one that most drew him in. It seemed that his theories may bear fruit after all.
‘Extemporise upon the Gothic pentameter for me,’ Nicodaemus continued. Villon had already begun to exhibit his peculiar gift for creating verse on the spur of the moment and the priest regularly used this as a means of maintaining the boy’s interest. ‘I shall beat time.’ He began to stamp rhythmically upon the flagstone floor. Villon began:
‘The twin-tailed comet crossed the sky, Bright Sigmar’s birth to prophesy…’
‘VILLON!’ THE VOICE was louder, rougher, more insistent. The drumming had also changed. No longer the slapping of the old monk’s sandals on the bare flags, it had the demanding, heavy quality of a fist on wood.
‘Villon, in the name of the Graf, open this door!’
Villon opened his eyes. He was in his small room in the servants’ wing of the Graf von Wallenholt’s manor house. Weak, early morning sunlight leaked in through the room’s high, narrow window, running in a shaft to the door. The door jumped and shuddered with each impact from the other side.
This, he quickly realised, was not a dream.
HIS ROOM MIGHT have been small, Villon reflected, but it had been dry and private - unlike the space he now found himself in: set well below ground level, it was broader than his room, but the moss-covered stones of its walls ran with damp, it stank like an open sewer and a set of bars, each as thick as a man’s wrist, ran from floor to ceiling, bisecting the space and standing between Villon and the door.
Nor was he alone. A rotund imbecile, who Villon decided looked more toad than man, squatted in the dampest corner of the cell. He hadn’t moved since Villon had arrived: thrown through the then-open gate in the bars by the constables who had burst into his room the moment he opened the door, bullied him into his clothes and dragged him down seemingly-endless flights of stairs, each one darker and damper than its predecessor.
‘A new friend for you, Tobias,’ one of the constables shouted after the gate had clanged shut. His fellow law-keepers laughed. Tobias the toad-man regarded Villon with eyes that bulged so far from his face that Villon expected them to burst like water-filled bladders thrown by mischievous children. And while he stared at the new arrival, Tobias licked his lips.
For all Villon knew, Tobias might still be licking his lips. The constables had taken their lanterns with them and left the dungeon in complete darkness.
This wasn’t a new experience for Villon. Incarceration was a hazard he had lived with since he stole his first loaf, at the age of four or five; not knowing his exact date of birth, he couldn’t be sure. Every one of his companions had likewise spent time in various cells, but Villon was a better thief than most, was rarely spotted in the commission of his crimes and was caught less often still. Even when the constabulary or militia knew he was the culprit, he was usually able to evade them in the narrow maze of Marienburg’s rookeries - sprawling acres of close-packed slums into which a wanted man could disappear and into which the officers of the law would not enter unless equipped as if for war.
There were taverns in the rookeries, buyers and sellers of stolen goods and women who were more than happy to entertain a man flushed with loot from his latest job. By the time his money was spent, the constables would be occupied with other crimes and the way would be clear for Villon to set about refilling his pockets.
But, since his arrival in Wallenholt - or since the Graf decided to become his patron, at least - Villon’s conduct had been exemplary. The allowance he received from the Graf, though not extravagant, was sufficient; he ate with the servants, when not performing for the Graf, and avoided indulging in prolonged bouts of drinking, hence the poetry he had composed since his arrival had been of the most proper and decorous type. In fact, the three goblets he had drunk the night before his arrest had been the most wine he had consumed for close to a month…
That had to be it. The guest in black. Monsieur ”I have no use for poets”. The pompous lick-spittle must have taken offence at something in Villon’s tone after all. Not for the first time, he cursed the foibles and caprice of the wealthy, then set to thinking about how best to effect his escape from th
is pit. His accuser would be gone in a few days’ time - he might already have left Wallenholt. All Villon would have to do was re-establish himself in the Graf’s favour. Knowing the Graf, a poem of the most astonishing and shameless flattery would do the job. Vanity was one of the foibles of the wealthy he had used to his advantage many times in the past.
He had begun to sift through possible subjects for his verse when he heard a soft scraping from the far side of the cell. This was followed by a wet-lipped, child-like giggle, then the scraping resumed. It sounded as if something soft and heavy was being dragged - or was dragging itself - across the rough stone floor.
‘You want to keep those bloated guts inside your scab-ridden skin, Tobias,’ he spoke into the darkness. ‘You’ll stay exactly where you are.’
VILLON WAS ON his feet as soon as he heard the door opening. ‘Ah, good constable, at last,’ he began. ‘There has clearly been some egregious error, but I believe I know a way to solve the problem and smooth any ruffled feathers. If you would only take a brief message to the Graf, this unfortunate affair will soon be at an end.’
‘You may have received little schooling, but you have certainly mastered the art of buttock-kissing.’ A lantern’s shutter hinged back with a clank. Villon blinked in the sudden light until, as his eyes grew accustomed to the lantern’s glow, he was able to make out the features of the speaker: fine, but not quite handsome; regular, but unremarkable.
‘Kind sir, we meet again,’ he adjusted his approach, determined not to give his accuser further offence. ‘I had hoped to find a way to mend any injury I had caused you when we last met. Though doubtless I deserve the time I have spent in this darkness, cut off from the light of those such as your good self and my lord the Graf-‘
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