by Nathan Long
‘Ah!’ cried Franka. ‘What did I put my hand in?’
‘We can’t stay here, captain,’ said Augustus. ‘It’s foul!’
‘Shhh, curse you!’
The ratmen were right outside the hole, passing by, squeaking excitedly. The Blackhearts held their breath. Suddenly the vermin’s voices rose and Reiner thought they had been discovered, but then, beyond the chittering, they heard the shouting of men.
‘Fall back! There’s too many!’ came one voice.
‘Ratties must have got ‘em,’ came another. ‘Back to Boellengen.’
Though Reiner couldn’t understand their gibbering, it sounded to him as if the vermin were similarly reluctant to engage. They backed past the rubbish hole again, squealing, then turned and ran. The passage fell silent, though they could hear shouting and movement in the distance.
‘They’ve gone,’ said Pavel. ‘Let’s get out of this midden.’
‘No,’ said Reiner. ‘We’ll wait here until things have settled a bit.’
‘But, captain!’ said Augustus. ‘The smell—’
‘The smell will keep anyone from looking here, won’t it?’ said Reiner. ‘When it’s quiet, we’ll follow the army back out, and see if we can make a try for the stone along the way.’
‘You think you can take it from five hundred men?’ asked Darius.
‘Easier than stealing it from the countess’s manor house.’
They sat silent for a moment, the buzzing of flies and the skittering of roaches growing loud in their ears. Reiner’s fatigue, which he had kept at bay while moving, caught up to him, and his limbs felt like lead.
‘What was that smoke?’ asked Dieter at last.
‘An invention of the ratmen,’ said Reiner. ‘A grenade of sorts, but it makes only smoke.’
‘Great trick,’ said Dieter. ‘Come in handy in my line of work.’
A party of men went by the hole and they froze. The party’s reflected torchlight illuminated the Blackhearts’ surroundings. Reiner wished it hadn’t. They sat hunched against a mound of rat-corpses, rotting grain, gnawed bones, offal, and broken machinery. The place crawled with rats and roaches. The Blackhearts grimaced, then the party passed and darkness fell again.
‘Nice work with Rumpolt, captain,’ said Hals after a moment. ‘Only wish it had happened sooner.’
Reiner swallowed. He’d nearly forgotten. The boy’s shocked, dying face flashed before his eyes.
‘A minute sooner would have suited me,’ said Augustus. ‘Mad infant cut me worse than them daemon-lovers did.’
Reiner sighed. ‘Damned fool boy. He left me no choice.’
‘I’ve no pity for him,’ said Pavel. ‘We might have the stone but for him. Trouble from the beginning, he was.’ He snorted.
‘Aye,’ said Gert. ‘Manfred made a mistake with that one, certain.’
‘He had no business being a soldier,’ said Franka. ‘Let alone a spy.’
There was another silence, then Hals chuckled. ‘The look on Pavel’s face when he bashed ‘im with that brick.’
Pavel laughed. ‘Woulda’ gutted him there and then if my hands hadn’t been full.’
‘And when he fell in the sewers?’ guffawed Augustus.
‘What a reek!’ said Gert.
‘We shouldn’t mock the dead,’ said Franka, but she giggled too.
They fell silent again.
Reiner put his head down on his knees, just to rest his eyes. ‘We’ll go in a moment,’ he mumbled. ‘Once we catch our breath.’
REINER’S HEAD SNAPPED up and he opened his eyes. Or had he? It was as dark with them open as closed.
Where was he? His hand went to his sword. It scraped on the ground. The noise was greeted by grunts and snorts.
‘Who’s there?’ mumbled Pavel.
‘Are we ready to go?’ Franka yawned.
A horrid odour assaulted Reiner’s nose and he remembered where he was—and what he was meant to be doing.
‘The companies!’ He leapt up and cracked his head on the midden’s low ceiling. ‘Ow! Curse it! We’ve… Ow! We’ve slept! They’ve gone!’ He crouched again, rubbing the top of his head. ‘Let’s have a light, someone.’
‘Aye, captain,’ said Pavel. ‘Hang on.’
There followed a stretch of grunting and cursing and scrabbling, then a flare of tinder and finally the orange, brightening glow of a torch. The Blackhearts were sitting up and yawning and rubbing their eyes.
Franka shrieked. She was covered with roaches. They all were. They brushed at them furiously.
‘Out! Out!’ said Reiner.
The Blackhearts scrambled out of the hole, cursing and choking, then recovered themselves in the passage. Reiner looked down it in both directions. There was no sound or light.
‘How long have we slept?’ asked Franka.
‘I’ll tell you next time I see the sun,’ growled Augustus.
‘I think a good while, curse it,’ said Reiner. ‘The companies must have removed the waystone long ago.’
‘Y’don’t think the ratties got it back?’ asked Hals.
Reiner shook his head. ‘I doubt it. Too scattered. Which means that the cursed stone is… is in the countess’s manor house.’
As the enormity of that truth hit him, Reiner groaned and slumped against the wall, then slid down to squat on the ground. The waystone was in the manor, guarded by thick walls and iron gates and a hundred guards. How could they get it out? They couldn’t. It was impossible. ‘Curse it,’ he muttered. ‘Curse everything. I’m too tired. I don’t care anymore.’ He looked down at his chest and pulled open his shirt, revealing the dark elf’s raw red cuts. ‘Valaris, you corpse-skinned sneak, do you hear me? I’m finished. Let Manfred say his prayers and put us out of our misery. I’m done with this poxy life. There’s not a thing in the world worth living…’
He stopped as he saw Franka gaping at him. They locked eyes. His heart thudded. She was furious. He knew her expressions well enough to see that—angry that he was giving up, angry that he was selfishly killing them all because he felt he couldn’t go on. But suddenly her angry face was the most beautiful thing in the world. He would gladly take a scolding from her. Happy or sad, mischievous or sullen or sulky, he loved her, and realising this—that he did have something worth living for—he knew he had to go on. He had no idea how he was going to do it, but as long as Franka lived and cared enough about him to be angry with him, he would keep trying to find his way to the end of this nightmare.
‘Er,’ he said, then forced a light-hearted laugh which sounded, to his ears, like somebody strangling a cat. ‘A joke, Lord Valaris. A joke, born of weariness. But I do not give up. I do not wish to die, and we will recover the stone if every knight in the Empire stands in our way, never fear.’
The Blackhearts stood motionless, eyes darting around as if expecting Manfred’s doom to come winging out of the darkness. When nothing happened they relaxed.
‘Captain,’ said Hals, exhaling. ‘Captain—’
Reiner held up a hand. ‘I know, and I apologise. I’d no right to include you in my little… joke. I’ll… we’ll have a vote next time, eh?’
Hals stared at him for a long moment, then guffawed and turned away, shaking his head. ‘Mad. He’s mad.’
Pavel snorted. ‘And what does that make us?’
The others chuckled nervously—all but Jergen, and Franka who looked at Reiner with big, baffled eyes.
‘Well,’ said Reiner, tearing his eyes from her with difficulty. ‘We better go back and see what they’ve done with it. Then we’ll see what we can do about getting it back.’
‘Er, captain,’ said Augustus as the others began to gather themselves together. ‘Being a good Talabheim man, I’m wondering…’ He paused, uncomfortable. ‘If it might not be the right thing to do… to do what you meant to just now.’
‘Eh?’ said Reiner, confused. ‘What do you say, pikeman?’
‘Well, everything’s as we’d want it, ain’t it?’ said
Augustus, slowly. ‘Er, if it weren’t for the count and the poison and all. The countess has the stone and Teclis will fix it. All we must do is nothing and all will be put right, aye?’
Reiner’s stomach turned. ‘Are you suggesting that we should sacrifice our lives for the good of the Empire? That we should betray Lord Valaris and die so that others might live?’
Augustus nodded. ‘Aye, I suppose that’s what I mean. Aye.’
Reiner sighed. From the moment Manfred had made his bargain with Valaris, Reiner had been trying to discover a way to defeat it—to deliver the stone to the dark elf, free Manfred, then bring the might of Teclis and the Empire down on the dark elf before he destroyed it. But with Valaris eavesdropping on every word anyone said in Reiner’s presence, he couldn’t tell the others his plans. He hoped his old comrades knew him well enough to guess what he had in mind, but there was no way for Reiner to reassure Augustus of his intentions. Instead he had to reassure Valaris that Augustus’s wishes were not his own.
‘Pikeman,’ Reiner said, ‘there is a reason that Count Manfred has named us his Blackhearts. It is because we have no honour. We are criminals over whose heads he holds a noose. We do his bidding because we value our lives more than we value any friendships or loyalties to country, race or family. I don’t like what happens to Talabheim, but if I must choose between Talabheim and my own skin, I will choose my skin, and drink to Talabheim’s memory when once again we return to Altdorf. Do you understand me?’
Augustus blinked at him for a moment, blank faced, then lowered his head, his jaw clenching. ‘Aye, I begin to. I guess I thought ye might have more honour than that backstabbing jagger.’
‘More honour than a count of the Empire? Don’t be ridiculous,’ laughed Reiner. ‘We’re gallows birds. Now,’ he said, turning to the others, ‘enough of this. Let’s be off.’
The others were looking at him with the same sullen stares Augustus had turned on him.
He snarled. ‘What? Does it pain you to hear it put so baldly? We are villains! Now, onward.’
THE BLACKHEARTS SKIRTED the mine chamber, taking side tunnels and hiding from the ratmen patrols, until they found their way back to the top of the plateau where the army of men had formed their line. They stayed low and well back from the slope, for below them, in the fan-shaped valley, the ratmen were regrouping and returning to work. Soldiers of the green army were shackling their brown rivals into long coffles, then turning them over to whip-wielding overseers, who put them to work digging at the warpstone workface and carrying the stuff to the waiting carts.
The army of men must have retreated with the waystone in a hurry, for they had left their dead where they had fallen and the plateau was thick with them—men of every company, staring through sightless eyes, blood staining their colourful uniforms.
The Blackhearts robbed the corpses of their gear and their gold, happy to strap on human weapons and armour again, as well as stuffing themselves with the scraps of food they found in the dead men’s belt pouches and taking tinderboxes and torches. Reiner wolfed down a half-eaten chicken leg and some mouldy bread. He was so hungry he didn’t care.
Hals ground the butt of a tall oak-shafted spear and pushed against it. It hardly flexed. ‘That’s more like it,’ he said. ‘That’ll take a knight’s charge.’
Franka found a bow and Gert a crossbow and they filled their quivers with arrows and bolts plucked from the bodies of dead ratmen.
Once they were all kitted out, Reiner signalled them again, and they began the long walk up through the sandy tunnels.
IT WAS MID-MORNING when they at last returned to the surface and began making their way again through the Tallows. Again, the denizens of the corrupted ward seemed more interested in fighting each other than preying on the Blackhearts, and they passed through it, unmolested, the roiling clouds and strange glowing aurora churning unceasingly above them.
As they made their wary way, Reiner motioned for Franka to fall back a bit.
‘Yes, captain?’ she said, stiff.
‘Aye,’ said Reiner quietly ‘I know you’re none too pleased with me at the moment. My little tantrum was uncalled for, and I apologise. But I want to tell you what it was that called me back from the brink. For I think I might have gone through with it—killed us all out of peevish misery, but when I saw your face…’ He blushed. It sounded mawkish and juvenile to him now, but it was the truth. ‘Well, I no longer cared to die.’
Franka looked at the ground. She held the pommel of her sword very tightly. ‘I see.’
‘I’ve been an idiot,’ Reiner continued. ‘Not trusting you, I mean. I’ve let my suspicious nature rule me. I know one of us is Manfred’s spy. But I also know—I’ve always known, really—that it isn’t you. I just haven’t let my head trust my heart. They… they are now of one accord.’
‘And so you expect me to forgive you?’ she asked.
Reiner’s heart sank. ‘No, I suppose not. I should never have mistrusted you in the first place. The original crime cannot be undone, and I would not blame you if you never forgave me, no matter how much that would grieve me.’
‘Ask me again,’ she said coolly, ‘when once again we return to Altdorf and drink a toast to Talabheim’s memory.’
Reiner stared at her. ‘You, er… When…? Do you mean that…?’
She turned and poked him in the chest, directly on top of one of Valaris’s cuts. Reiner hissed in pain.
‘You’ll have no further answer from me until then, captain,’ she said, and turned away.
Reiner rubbed his chest, wincing. His heart pounded in excitement and confusion. What had she said? Did she mean that she forgave him? Or did she mean she believed him the villain he had told Augustus he was? She couldn’t believe that, could she? Surely she knew him better than that? Surely… He caught himself. The little witch! She had turned the tables on him and no mistake. She was showing him how she had felt when he hadn’t trusted her. Unless she truly didn’t trust him. Could she be so blind?
All the long way back to the Tallows barricade his mind turned in tight circles of worry, and at the end he was no more reassured than when he started.
FIFTEEN
We Have Tonight
REINER TURNED A sausage over the small fire Jergen had made in the cellar of an abandoned cooperage in the merchant district. Bloody light filtered down through the caved-in floor above. Reiner, Franka, Jergen, Augustus and Darius sat in the fires red glow, making a meal of sausages, black bread and beer, for which they had paid ten times the normal fare. Reiner didn’t mind the price. He’d paid for it with dead men’s gold. At least they had found food to buy. That was getting harder as the farmers outside the city were staying away out of fear of the madness, and the looting and robbery in the neighbourhoods got worse.
Reiner looked around at his companions and chuckled mirthlessly. This was the band of brave adventurers who were going to storm the countess’s manor and steal the waystone out from under the noses of a hundred guards? Franka stared into the fire with glazed eyes. The fingers of Jergen’s cut left hand were so swollen he could barely make a fist. Dieter rotated his head around like he had a kink in his neck. Augustus was as silent as Jergen. Darius muttered under his breath. No one seemed inclined to conversation.
Unsteady boot steps clunked on the floorboards above. They looked up. Hals’s voice reached them.
‘Izzis the one?’ he slurred. ‘All look alike t’me.’
‘Think so,’ came Pavel’s voice. ‘I ‘member the barrels.’
The boots moved to the stairs.
‘Don’t matter if it ain’t,’ said Gert loudly. ‘We can lick any beasties might be hiding in th’ shadows. We’re ‘ard men, we are.’
The three pikemen stumbled down the stairs and cheered loudly as they saw the others.
‘Here we are, lads!’ cried Gert.
‘Told ye it were the place,’ said Pavel.
‘Long live the Blackhearts!’ crowed Hals.
‘Quiet y
ou pie-eyed fools!’ whispered Reiner. ‘Have you drunk the city dry?’
Hals put his finger to his lips and the other two giggled. They found places around the fire.
‘Shorry, captain,’ said Hals. ‘Took a bit of drinking to get mouths moving. These Talabheimers can put it away a bit.’
‘Hope they told ye nothing,’ muttered Augustus.
‘No no, they tol’ us,’ said Pavel. ‘But izz bad news.’
‘Aye, very bad,’ said Gert. Very bad.’
‘How bad?’ asked Reiner, grimly.
‘Well,’ said Hals, sticking a sausage on a stick and holding it over the fire. ‘Met a few of von Pfaltzen’s lads at the Oak and Acorn. Just come from eight hours in the deeps under the countess’s manor, guarding they didn’t know what in her treasury vault.’
‘Secret ain’t out to the common soldiers,’ said Pavel. ‘But they knew something was up. All the jaggers been grinning ear to ear and patting themselves on the back about some great victory.’
‘An’ we know what that is, don’t we?’ said Gert, winking.
‘So it’s locked in a treasure vault?’ asked Reiner.
‘Aye,’ said Hals. ‘Vault’s three floors down under the old barrel keep, below the kitchens and the store rooms, by the dungeons. Guard’s been doubled at the vault, and at the gate up the head of the dungeon stairs.’
‘That ain’t th’ bad part,’ said Pavel. ‘Th’ bad part is that the vault has three locks. And the three keys for the three locks are held by three different captains on three different watches.’
Reiner held up four fingers. ‘So, we’ve the Manor district gate, the gate to the countess’s manor, the gate to the dungeon, and the door of the vault to get through, and out of, carrying a half tonne block of stone. Lovely.’
‘And ye can’t just waltz through the house, neither,’ said Pavel. ‘There are guards and servants everywhere. Someone would be sure to notice.’
‘Do you know the names of the captains who hold the keys?’ asked Reiner.
Hals, Pavel and Gert looked at each other, frowning.
