Blackhearts: The Omnibus

by Nathan Long

  The men caught the coins, grinning—at least most of them did. Jergen plucked his out of the air without a change of expression, and turned to the door while the others were still thanking Reiner and making dirty jokes.

  As they began filing out into the hall, Reiner put a hand on Franka’s shoulder. She looked back. He motioned for her to wait.

  When the rest had left, Reiner whispered in her ear. ‘We could easily be alone here. Truly alone.’

  ‘For what purpose, besides the obvious?’

  ‘Why, merely to be alone. To enjoy each other’s company uninterrupted. To talk, to hold hands…’

  ‘To take advantage of my weak nature,’ Franka said, wryly.

  ‘Beloved, I assure you…’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said sharply. ‘Make no promises you cannot keep. I don’t want to be disappointed in you.’

  Reiner sighed. ‘So you won’t?’

  Franka hesitated, then sighed in turn. ‘I know I am a fool, but… I will.’

  Reiner pulled her to him for a quick hug.

  ‘Do you start already?’ she asked, laughing and holding him away.

  ‘No, no, my love,’ said Reiner. ‘Mere exuberance.’ He looked toward the door, then leaned in to her. ‘Now, this is what we will do.’

  AFTER DRINKING FOR a short time with the others in the taproom, Reiner approached Mother Leibkrug and hired a girl, as both Hals and Abel had done before him. But unlike them, when he got his girl upstairs, he dismissed her, tipping her lavishly and telling her that he was meeting a secret lover there and only needed the room. Happy to make twice her usual fee, the girl agreed to closet herself above stairs for a while so that all would think she was still with Reiner.

  A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Reiner opened it cautiously, but when he saw that it was Franka, alone, he pulled her in and held her close. They kissed for a long moment, then Franka pulled away with a sigh.

  She straightened her jerkin. ‘So,’ she coughed, ‘conversation?’

  ‘Er, yes, of course. Conversation.’ Reiner turned and flopped down on the ridiculously ruffled and beribboned bed. Like all the furniture, it was too big, too elaborate, for the tiny, shabby room—the overstuffed chaise, the wildly curved and carved vanity with the flaking gold paint, the voluminous curtains over rickety windows, the armoire so pregnant with clothes the doors couldn’t close.

  Franka didn’t seem inclined to sit. She paced the room, examining the frilly furnishings and fidgeting. There was a blonde wig on a wig stand. She stroked it absently.

  ‘So what do we talk about?’ asked Reiner after a long silence.

  Franka shrugged, then chuckled. ‘Strange, isn’t it? Now that we are free to talk, we’re at a loss.’

  Reiner tucked a pillow under his head. ‘That’s because you don’t allow me my favourite topic.’

  Franka laughed and pulled the wig off the stand. ‘Seduction? Are you so limited?’ She sat at the vanity. She lowered her head and pulled the wig on, then flipped it back. ‘And you claim to be a man of the world.’ She turned to him, looking though the blonde tresses. ‘Go on. Speak to me of poetry, art. Or, what was your subject at university? Literature?’

  Reiner gaped, open-mouthed, at her. ‘You’re… you’re beautiful.’

  ‘Am I?’ Franka looked over her shoulder at the mirror, a cracked, poorly silvered glass. She smoothed the wig. ‘It looks strange to me now. I have become so used to living as a boy.’ She looked up at his reflection. ‘Do you like me better like this?’

  ‘Better?’ Reiner blinked, transfixed. ‘Er, I wouldn’t say better. But it makes a change.’ He sat up for a closer look. ‘A very nice change.’

  Franka began searching through the harlot’s powders and paints. She found some rouge and smoothed it into her cheeks, then applied a thicker coat to her lips. She looked up at the glass from under her lashes. ‘You aren’t speaking. I thought you were going to declaim about literature.’

  Reiner swallowed. ‘You are being disingenuous, you little wench. You tell me we mustn’t touch. That you are weak and I mustn’t tempt you, but you are tempting me! Deliberately!’

  Franka looked down, blushing behind her rouge. ‘I suppose I am. And I apologize. It’s just that… that it has been so long since I have looked like this. Since I have been able to flirt and be pretty.’ She turned to face him. ‘It is hard to resist.’

  Reiner licked his lips. ‘It certainly is. Try on a dress.’

  Franka raised an eyebrow. ‘And have you accuse me of provocation?’

  ‘I don’t care. I want to see it.’

  Franka smiled. ‘Are you sure it won’t act like a red rag to a bull? Are you sure you won’t go mad?’

  ‘I… I will be a perfect gentleman.’

  Franka laughed and stood. ‘That will be interesting. I have never met one before.’

  She crossed to the bursting armoire and began sorting through the dresses. She stopped at a deep green one—not as clean as it might have been, and a little frayed at the hem and cuffs, but well cut. She pulled it out and unlaced the stays at the back, then threw the whole thing over her head and tried to tug it down around herself.

  ‘Help me,’ she said with a muffled laugh.

  Reiner sprung from the bed and began tugging and straightening. ‘My lady is used to a lady’s maid?’

  ‘My lady is used to doublet and breeks,’ said Franka as her head popped out. ‘And has forgotten the intricacies.’ Her wig was askew. She straightened it, and began pulling the dress into place.

  Reiner laughed. ‘And I’m afraid I have more experience getting women out of dresses than into them.’

  Franka’s smile froze, then fell. ‘You needn’t remind me.’

  Reiner’s heart lurched. He went down on one knee and took her hand. ‘Lady, forgive me. You see I am as confused as you are. I forget if I speak to Franz or Franka. I will not mention it again.’ He kissed her fingers.

  Franka laughed and ruffled his hair. ‘Forget it, captain. I have no illusions about your past. I don’t love you for your virtue. Now stand and tell me how I look.’

  Reiner stood and stepped back. The illusion wasn’t perfect. Her jerkin and man’s shirt stuck up above the low cut collar of the green dress. But in all other respects Franka had become the woman she truly was.

  Reiner stepped forward. His arms encircled her waist. ‘You are beautiful. Heartbreakingly so. When we are free of our chains, I shall buy you a hundred such dresses, each more lovely than the last.’

  Franka giggled and bumped her head against his chest. ‘A hundred dresses? Do I want so much trouble and fuss? I think perhaps I’ve grown used to my breeches.’

  Reiner pulled her wig off and kissed the back of her neck. ‘As have I. I like knowing there’s a woman inside them. I like knowing your secret.’

  Franka purred. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I do. In fact, it maddens me!’ Reiner crushed her to him. Their lips met, then their tongues. Franka’s hands ran down his back.

  There was a scratching from the window. They leapt apart, afraid they were spied on. Reiner’s heart thudded. If they were caught, explanations would be difficult.

  ‘Is someone there?’ asked Franka.

  Reiner stepped closer, hand on his dagger. ‘I see nothing. Just mice, I suppose.’ He turned back to Franka. ‘Where were we?’

  Franka smiled sadly. ‘A place we should not have come to, and to which it would be better not to return…’

  The window flew open, knocking the curtains to the floor, and figures in dark robes, with burlap sacks over their heads, dived in with inhuman agility. There were at least six of them, though Reiner found it hard to count, they moved so quickly.

  ‘What’s this?’ Reiner cried, backing away and drawing his sword and dagger.

  Franka reached for her weapons as well, but they were trapped beneath the dress. She rucked at her skirts in frustration. The intruders swarmed her, ignoring Reiner in order to grab her arms and legs.
/>
  ‘Reiner!’ she screamed.

  ‘Unhand her!’ Reiner kicked one and jerked another back by the collar. They were small men, not much taller than Franka, and Reiner was surprised at how easily he booted and threw them across the room. But he was even more surprised by how quickly they sprang up again, seeming to bounce rather than fall, and turning on him with feral snarls.

  Franka clubbed one of her captors with the wig stand and kicked another in the head. The man fell back, upsetting the chair, and crashed to the floor. But the other two continued to drag her towards the window.

  ‘Reiner, help me!’

  ‘I’m trying…’

  The two Reiner had knocked down attacked him, and another joined them, daggers like curved fangs in their tiny hands. He blocked and parried desperately. They were blindingly fast. And their smell was an attack of its own. The reek was overwhelming. Perhaps it came from the filthy fur shirts they wore under their robes.

  Reiner backed away, bleeding from a handful of cuts, and tripped over the chamber pot, left by the door. He kicked it at his attackers. They ducked, and the tin pot smashed the vanity mirror behind them. Glass shards rained to the ground.

  One of the robed figures looked back at the noise, and Reiner ran him through. He fell, hissing. The others only pressed Reiner all the harder. Their thrusts rang off his sabre like clanging bells.

  ‘No, you little daemons!’ Franka shrieked. ‘Let me go!’

  Reiner risked a look her way and saw three of the men trying to drag Franka out of the window. She grabbed one by the burlap mask and pulled it askew so that the eye-holes were on the side of his head. The villain let go and fumbled at the sack, blinded.

  ‘Franka!’

  Reiner threw his dagger as Franka looked up. It stuck, point first, into the window frame beside her. With a grateful look, she snatched it up and began stabbing indiscriminately at all who held her. They fell away, shrieking thinly.

  Suddenly the door slammed open and Hals shouldered in, bare to the waist and dagger drawn. ‘What’s all the noise?’ he bellowed.

  Abel and a few other half-dressed brothel patrons stood behind him, harlots peering over their shoulders.

  A robed man launched himself at Hals and the pikeman defended himself. Reiner called to the men in the hall as he fought. ‘Hurry! Stop them! They’re trying to take…’ His voice fell off as he remembered who the attackers were trying to take, and how she looked. And as if to confirm his fears, he saw Hals goggling at Franka in her dress. He almost took a curved dagger in the belly before he recovered and returned to the business at hand.

  No one else entered the room. Abel backed out, wide-eyed. ‘I… I shall protect the women!’

  But it seemed the three Blackhearts wouldn’t need the help. Hals clubbed his man to the ground with a fist. Reiner kicked his back with a well placed boot, and they were advancing on those grabbing at Franka when one of them looked around, then drew something from its sleeve and threw it at the ground.

  Reiner got the briefest glimpse of it before it smashed on the bare floorboards—a small glass ball. But then great billows of smoke erupted from the shards and the room was quickly filled with an impenetrable, acrid cloud that had them choking and their eyes tearing.

  Reiner threw an arm over his face. It did no good. He heard scrabbling at the window. ‘They’re retreating!’ he shouted, and stumbled forward, blind.

  ‘Come back, y’wee villains!’ coughed Hals.

  But at that moment there was a piercing scream from the hallway and Hals stopped so suddenly Reiner bumped into him. ‘My girl!’ cried the pikeman. ‘They’re taking Griga!’

  He charged back out of the door.

  Reiner followed. ‘Franz! Hurry!’ he called over his shoulders. ‘I want to talk to one of these assassins.’

  ‘I’ll protect the women,’ said Abel again as they ran past him.

  Hals and Reiner burst into another dingy boudoir, but they were too late. The window was open, frilly curtains blowing in the breeze, and the rumpled bed was empty. Reiner looked up as he heard feet scritching across the roof above.

  ‘Hals,’ he said, turning back to the door, ‘you and Abel go up from this window, Franz and I will…’ He stopped. Franka wasn’t there. He grunted. But of course not. She was still in her dress. She wouldn’t have dared join them. Unless…

  Reiner swallowed.

  He started back down the hall, terror dragging at his guts. ‘Franka?’ he called. ‘Franka?’

  Hals followed behind him, and they entered Reiner’s room together. The smoke had thinned enough to see that the room was empty, but for the corpse of one of the mysterious attackers. Franka wasn’t there.

  ‘Sigmar,’ hissed Hals. ‘Look at his hands!’

  Reiner glanced down at the body as he ran to the window. What he had thought a fur shirt looked now like furry arms, and the hands at the ends of them were scaly, long-fingered claws. But even this unsettling curiosity couldn’t distract Reiner from his fear. There was a scrap of deep green velvet caught on a nail in the window sill. He stuck his head out. ‘Franka!’ There was no response. He climbed out onto the shingled roof, from which rose the second storey, and began pulling himself up the stone wall.

  ‘Who the devil is Franka?’ grunted Hals as he ducked out after Reiner.

  ‘Franz, I meant,’ said Reiner, and then realized he shouldn’t have. He should have said that Franka was the name of his whore, and he was afraid she was taken. Now Hals would associate the names Franka and Franz, and likely draw unfortunate conclusions. But it was too late to call back the words.

  He pulled himself up onto the cedar-shingled roof and clambered up the steep slope to the peak. ‘Franz!’ There was no sign of the robed men, or Franka, or Hals’s harlot. He turned in a circle, peering out over the low roofs of Brunn.

  ‘Captain…’ said Hals, struggling up the wall.

  ‘There!’ said Reiner, pointing. A tangle of shadows slipped around a corner a few blocks away. In the midst of them Reiner had seen a flash of pale flesh. He leapt down to the first floor roof, then slipped and bounced down the shingles on his posterior before pitching over the edge and landing on his ribs on a pyramid of kegs of finest Averheim ale. He slid down this, groaning and wheezing, and ended up sitting in an icy puddle of what he hoped was water.

  Hals dropped down beside him in a more controlled fashion. ‘Captain…’

  Reiner staggered up. ‘No time. We can’t let them get away.’ He ran for the street in a half crouch, clutching his bruised ribs and limping. As they came around the front of the brothel they were met by men and harlots spilling out of the door, including Pavel, Giano, Dag, Abel and Gert. Only Jergen and Karel were absent.

  Reiner waved to them. ‘Follow us, lads. They’ve got Fra… Franz!’

  Reiner started off as quick as his laboured breathing would allow, Hals at his side, in the direction the robed men had gone.

  As they wound through the streets, Hals coughed uncomfortably. ‘Er, captain…’

  ‘I know, Hals. I know,’ Reiner interrupted, thinking desperately. ‘I know what it looked like, but I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth. You see, we… er, we meant to play a trick on Karel. The poor boy. I don’t think he’s ever had a woman, so Franz and I thought it would be a good joke to rile him up a bit. Franz would dress up like a woman, you see, and… and make advances, then, when Karel got all hot and bothered, Franz would pull off his wig and we’d see what shades of crimson young Karel could turn. Amusing, hey?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hals, flatly. ‘And did you mean to dress up as well?’

  ‘What?’ said Reiner. ‘No, of course not. Who in their right mind would ever mistake me for a woman?’

  Hals nodded, his face a blank. ‘Then you might want to be wiping yer lips. Y’ve rouge all over ‘em.’

  TEN

  They Were Not Men!

  REINER AND THE Blackhearts found no trace of Franka, Hals’s harlot, or the robed men, though
they searched Brunn from end to end. The kidnappers and their prey had disappeared utterly. Even eerier, when the search party returned to the brothel to see if anyone else had seen anything, they found that the corpse with the furry arms was gone, vanished when no one was looking, though patrons and whores had been in and out of the room constantly. The only evidence that the whole incident hadn’t been some mad fever dream was a small glass ball that Reiner spied under a chair. It looked like the one that had filled the room with smoke, but this one was unbroken, and churned within with a greenish murk. Reiner pocketed it. Combined with the vision of the robed man’s clawed hand, it began to stir memories of things he had read in forbidden books while at university.

  He stepped out of the brothel and joined the other Blackhearts, who were huddled in a circle before the door.

  ‘We must return to the fort at once,’ he said. ‘I want to tell Gutzmann of Franz’s kidnapping and the new evidence we have about the disappearances.’

  It was obvious to Reiner that Abel had told the others all he had seen when he and Hals had burst in on Reiner and Franka, for none of them would meet his eye, and they answered him with surly grunts and mumbles.

  Reiner cursed inwardly all the long cold walk back to the fort. Foolishness on top of tragedy. Just when he needed them most, when the life of one of their number was in deadly peril, his men had become suspicious, nearly mutinous. The maddening thing was that if he could tell them the truth all would be well again—at least with him. Things would be much worse for Franka. Only Reiner and Manfred knew the girl’s true sex. If it were revealed to anyone else, her usefulness as a soldier would be over, and the count might have her killed. And this didn’t take into consideration the reactions of her comrades. Franka loved Hals, Pavel and Giano like brothers. If they turned their backs on her, it would break her heart.