‘I rhyme of the lady, von Klatch…’
‘Not again, poet!’ At the sound of this voice - one Villon did not recognise - all eyes turned to a corner, a short way from the door. A heavy-set, red bearded man stood there. Where the bandits wore the rough fabric and oiled leather harnesses of professional cutthroats, he wore velvet and linen which would have been more suited to a merchant’s salon. The mere fact that he would dare to wear such clothes in the company of the inn’s other patrons left Villon in no doubt that this was the man he had been sent to find: Gerhard Kraus.
‘Bawdyhouse rhymes are all very well,’ Kraus declared, ‘and you have some facility with them, as I have been told.’
‘Thank you, my lord.’ Villon bowed. He didn’t imagine that Kraus would be too pleased to see the mocking smile that cracked his face. ‘Some facility’ indeed! This from a man who was better acquainted with the pleas of his victims and the screams of the dying than with meter, scansion and rhyme!
‘But there are forms of verse capable of stimulating Man’s higher functions, rather than merely pandering to his baser tastes,’ Kraus continued. Villon thought he was going to laugh out loud at the bandit’s slab-tongued attempt at literary critique.
With an absurdly foppish flourish Kraus produced from a pocket of his tunic a small book. It almost vanished in his ham-like grasp as he brandished it before the crowd. ‘Perhaps you would care to hear one of my most recent efforts?’
‘I’d be honoured, lord,’ was all Villon trusted himself to say; the urge to laugh in the bandit’s face was almost too great.
That urge died the moment Kraus began to read.
The subject matter - an episode from the youth of Sigmar - was traditional, unsurprising; but the seven-footed meter in which it had been composed, as well as being much older than the Heroic hexameter, was used with a flexibility that one in a hundred poets might hope to achieve after a lifetime’s practice.
This alone left Villon in no doubt: whoever had composed this poem, it was not Gerhard Kraus.
And the effect the poem had on its audience made Villon doubt the unknown poet’s humanity.
Every drunken thug in the place had turned his attention to the verse; they leaned forward, anxious to catch the next word, the next line, as if they were collegium-trained aesthetes in a Marienburg salon, not bandit scum, drunk out of their minds in the middle of nowhere.
And though he couldn’t have described it in words, Villon knew why.
It was there, in the back of his mind: a tingling, like an inaccessible itch. Not a voice. Something softer, more insidious, something that made it impossible to turn away. Villon felt as if he had gone without water for days and the words that fell from Kraus’s lips were droplets from a mountain spring. A quick shake of the head cleared his mind long enough for him to take in the rapt expressions of those around him. Looking towards the back of the room, Villon saw the effect it was having on Kraus.
He could have been a different person. Though physically unchanged, everything about him was different: his posture, his expression and, most of all, his voice. Kraus’s rough bass had become a delicate, flexible instrument, capable of octave-wide leaps and swoops. The verse sang through it, through Kraus’s entire being.
‘You will know it when you see it…’ Villon remembered the voice from somewhere. It had sent him here to find something. He struggled to recall the vague outlines of a face - a beard? - but the name eluded him. Had he been asked his own name, he realised, he would be hard put to provide an answer.
He was being drawn back, drawn back into the verse, whose words filled the tavern, filled the minds of everyone present…
THE SILENCE WAS deafening. Villon had no idea how long it had lasted, or how long it had taken him to realise that it was over. Looking around, he saw several of the tavern customers were shaking their heads and blinking stupidly, as if emerging from a deep sleep. At the back of the room Kraus hung between two of his bodyguards like a limp puppet; the power and elegance that had possessed him while reading was gone. He jerked his head drunkenly towards the door and was half-carried, half-dragged out into the night.
Villon waited as long as he dared then moved across the tavern and cracked open the door. The retreating silhouettes of Kraus and his bodyguard were already halfway down the street. Easing the door open further, Villon slipped after them.
AS FAR AS Villon had been able to ascertain during his evenings at the inn, the town’s original inhabitants were not under curfew. Evidently, the back-breaking work on the fortifications and the type of person one was likely to meet of an evening in Krausberg were enough to keep them indoors after sunset. The main street was empty as Villon made his way through the shadows towards the former mayor’s dwelling. He hung back in the lee of a barber-surgeon’s shop until they had bundled Kraus inside, then made his way cautiously around the house, looking for a way in.
A small outbuilding leaned against the rear wall of the house. A running jump gained Villon a finger-hold on the edge of the roof and he hauled himself up. The roof inclined towards a narrow window; Villon edged towards it, wary of the roof’s stability. Overconfidence - usually as the result of over-indulgence - had delivered him into the hands of the local law or more than one occasion. Should that happen tonight, he doubted that he would be lucky enough to spend any time in a cell.
Upon reaching the window, he drew a short, thick-bladed knife that had been among the articles he found in the Magister’s saddlebags. A few minutes work with it between the rough-fitting window at its frame and he was able to flip the catch and slip silently inside.
He found himself in an unlit corridor, where he paused to take in the sounds of the house. Muffled conversation reached him from one end of the corridor; he edged towards it, careful to keep to the middle of the passage and thus avoid banging into furniture or ornaments. A corner revealed the house’s main staircase. Dim light reached the landing from below, as did the voices; they faded as he listened - probably the bodyguards heading for the kitchen.
A table stood at the head of the stairs. A lit candle in an ornate wooden candelabrum stood on the table. Villon took it with him as he padded softly down the corridor that lead away from the staircase at an acute angle.
The first door was unlocked - a linen cupboard. The second was locked, but the latch was not the work of a craftsman. A few seconds’ work with the knife and the latch gave. After a glance back down the corridor, Villon cupped his hand around the candle flame and stepped inside.
ONE LOOK AT the figure sprawled across the bed told Villon that he didn’t need to worry about the candle light waking the room’s occupant. Kraus might have been dead drunk but Villon hadn’t seen him take a drop. His performance at the inn had robbed him of all but the strength required to maintain the shallow breathing that barely lifted his over-fussy shirt front.
And there, under one out-thrown arm, was the book.
Tucking his knife back into his boot, Villon reached out and prepared to gently ease it free.
Nothing could have prepared him for the shock of touching the book. It felt as if he had placed his hand into a bucket of freezing water. The chill ran quickly up his arm, hitting his chest with enough force to make him gasp involuntarily, then seemed to dissipate, leaving Villon at first shivering then sweating profusely.
Villon glanced at Kraus. The bandit hadn’t so much as twitched at the sound of Villon’s gasp. Villon took a breath, then eased the book from under Kraus’s arm. Again, the bandit didn’t move. Villon stepped away from the bed and stared down at the slim volume’s plain calfskin cover.
Had it been real - the racing chill he felt when his fingers touched the soft brown cover? It was just a book, probably a privately-printed volume of the kind von Wallenholt had planned for Villon’s verse. And the Magister was just a collector of such volumes with too much money to spare and a sideline in parlour magic.
But Villon knew this was untrue. What had happened in the tavern was not natur
al. The chill that shot up his arm had been real. And there was something else about this book: it felt heavier than it should for a volume this slim, as if something had found a way to slip between the words, conceal itself among the fibres of the parchment pages, but could not prevent its weight giving away its presence.
The Broken Bough, Altdorf. He should already be on his way, not standing here staring at the book he had agreed to steal. He should be heading for the door, then padding down the corridor, past the stairs and on to the window over the outbuilding.
But he remembered what had happened in the tavern. The audience had been unable to turn away. Even he had been sucked into its world. What kind of verse could do such a thing?
He didn’t remember putting the candle down on the table beside the bed. His hands might have been moving under their own volition as, with something approaching reverence, they opened the book.
Words. Page after page of marks in faded ink on slightly yellow parchment. Words that Villon could not read.
Villon sucked in a deep breath, surprised to find that his chest felt as if it had been squeezed tight since he had first touched the book. Something had withdrawn from him, leaving only a vague sense of disappointment floating on the air.
He shook his head, closed the book. Definitely time to go.
The sound of creaking bed boards and rustling fabric told him that he had waited too long already. There came the smooth rasp of a sword leaving its scabbard and Villon threw himself away from the bed - a heartbeat before the heavy cavalry sabre cleaved the air where he had stood.
Villon landed and rolled into a half-crouch in the middle of the room - and cursed his luck for not taking him closer to the door. Kraus was off the bed and standing between Villon and the door. At least, it looked like Kraus…
The bandit seemed to sway as he stood there, like a puppet held too slackly on its strings. The sword, which he had drawn from a scabbard propped against the other side of the bed, hung in a loose, almost careless grasp. His head lolled unpleasantly and, in the flickering of the candle, Villon saw that his eyes, though open, had rolled back in their sockets. The candlelight played across the exposed whites.
Villon backed away from Kraus, mind racing, eyes flicking about the room, seeking a way out. Slack-mouthed, Kraus stared after him, the tilt of his head giving him an air of detached curiosity, as if he were an astrologist studying the movement of the heavens. Villon began to entertain the hope that he might be able to step gingerly past the immobile imbecile and slip out the way he had come.
Then he heard it, rising in volume: a reedy ululation, that seemed to come from Kraus’s mouth without any effort on his part. It echoed from him as if from the distant recesses of a mountain cave - a mountain cave in a very cold part of the world.
Villon had heard it before - as an undertone to the verse Kraus had performed in the tavern. Villon felt again a rising chill in his bones. Without the poetry to sweeten it, the sound was repulsive, but this did nothing to dilute its effect: as he had been drawn into the world of the verse, Villon felt himself being drawn into the world from which the sound emanated. Somewhere cold and dark.
Instinct saved him again. Some animal part of his brain knew that, after rooting his prey to the spot, Kraus would strike. It was only a stiff-legged stumble, but it took him backwards and out of the range of the descending sword. The sound of the heavy blade biting into the floorboards jolted Villon back to proper wakefulness.
After jerking the sword free of the floorboards, Kraus came for him again. Villon had snatched up a chair and used it to fend off the attack.
Kraus hacked at the chair, severing one of the legs - whatever power motivated him had endowed him with strength beyond the human. He might well carve his way through the chair even before Villon tired of holding it.
‘Boss!’ the shout from the other side of the door was accompanied by the sound of running footsteps. ‘Boss! You all right in there?’ Whoever was in the corridor didn’t wait long for a reply. There was a loud thump. Luckily, the catch which Villon had refastened after entering the room held. But it would not hold for long. Still backing away from Kraus, and now holding a two-legged, one-armed chair, Villon, risked a glance behind him, judged the distance between himself and the chamber’s heavy, diamond-leaded windows.
Kraus drew back his sword-arm, ready for another hacking strike and Villon hurled the remains of the chair at him. The impact would have knocked a normal man to his knees. Kraus took two steps back, then came forward again.
Villon still did not dare turn and work at the window latches. He had already pulled his knife from his boot for the purpose, but, as Kraus charged towards him, he knew he’d have to use something else to open the windows.
Kraus swung for Villon with all the force he would have used against the chair. Villon ducked beneath the neck-level swing of the blade, then rose and slammed the knife into the bandit’s right eye. For the first time since he woke, Kraus uttered a human sound - a low grunt of pain - as his sword fell from his suddenly nerveless grasp and he keeled over, landing heavily on the floor.
At this, the shouts and thumps from the other side of the door increased in volume and frequency. The door creaked, began to give way.
Leaving his knife in Kraus’s socket, Villon once again hefted the chair. This was no time for subtlety, or for struggling to free his knife, should it have wedged itself into Kraus’s skull.
The window exploded into fragments of lead and glass as the chair flew through it. Villon was halfway through the resulting gap when he heard movement and something approaching a groan. He looked back into the room.
Kraus was halfway to his feet. With one hand he scrabbled after his sword. With the other - his right - he reached up to his face.
‘I’D NOT HAVE believed it if I hadn’t I seen it with my own eyes.’ Villon paused to smile ruefully at the unintentional pun. ‘He - Kraus, whatever it was - just pulled the knife free as if it were a splinter in his thumb.’ He took a long swallow of the wine the Magister had ordered before ushering him into a small private room at the rear of The Broken Bough.
Villon wiped his lips and continued: ‘The door gave in at that moment and I decided it would be much to my advantage if I was elsewhere. I had to drop to the bare ground, but it’s not the first time I’ve done such a thing - I know how to land to avoid sprains or breaks.
‘On my way to the livery stables, I stopped off at the tavern to raise the alarm and sent Kraus’s men to the mayor’s house to defend their leader from a monster with one eye. It was all nonsense but, fortunately, those in the tavern were very, very drunk.’
‘You got away unseen.’ The Magister had barely touched his own goblet. The well-banked fire that burned in the grate seemed to have no effect upon him, while Villon was beginning to sweat.
‘Yes. The livery was close by the gate, but the guards had answered the general hue and cry. And anyway, I doubled back along the inside of the fortifications until I came to a gap. Kraus’s men will have assumed I took the track from the gate. Thanks to your map, I was able to follow a less obvious route. I didn’t want to risk missing you, so I rode as hard as I could for Altdorf. I took a room and stabled my - I mean your - horse and came straight here.’ Villon decided not to mention his brief visit to the collegium library en route to the tavern.
‘And the artefact?’
‘You mean this?’ Villon withdrew it from his tunic and placed it on the table between them. ‘It seems a strange thing to risk one’s life for.’
‘Many have lost more than their lives due to its malign influence,’ The Magister replied. He picked up the book and flung it into the fire. Villon leapt up, reaching involuntarily towards the flames.
‘Leave it!’ The Magister commanded. In the grate, the fire had already begun to consume the book’s old, dry pages.
‘You will already be aware that it was no ordinary book of verse.’ The Magister seemed to be enjoying Villon’s surprise as he took his seat a
gain. ‘It is the last surviving copy of the work of a damned poet - his name is of no matter, since it belongs in the lists of those lost to the darker powers. Some say he was a sorcerer, others that he was possessed, a mere conduit through whose verse those unseen powers sought to render other men susceptible to corruption, possession and eventual damnation. From what you say, they had already seized control of Kraus’s soul and was beginning to twist the minds of his men. You will have felt something of its power when he read from the book.
‘Kraus fell victim so quickly after acquiring the book for me because he could read. The power behind the verse could reach out to him directly from the page.’ The Magister smiled. ‘Who would have predicted that of a wandering cutthroat?’
‘That’s why you were so interested in me at the Graf’s reception,’ Villon interjected. For the first time, he had the sense that he understood at least part of the Magister’s actions. ‘Because I cannot read.’
‘Your ignorance was to you as armour is to a warrior on the battlefield,’ the Magister smiled again. ‘Why else would I bother to save you from trial in Marienburg? I have no time for poetry and no use for poets.’ He dropped a heavy purse onto the table, motioned to Villon to take it.
‘Thieves, however, always have their uses.’
‘THIEVES, HOWEVER, ALWAYS have their uses!’ Villon parroted the Magister’s final words to him as he strolled back towards his lodgings - a tavern tucked under the city walls. He felt the weight of the purse inside his tunic, next to the slim calfskin volume that had nestled there since his arrival in Altdorf. He had slipped the book stolen from the collegium next to it before making his way to The Broken Bough, where the Magister had helpfully disposed of the evidence of the theft.
Warhammer Anthology 07 Page 24
