“You should have put these in to soak, Master Warble. I don’t know how many times I’ve told you, cold water’s the best thing for blood.” She tutted under her breath, and turned his shirt over, assessing the damage with a professional eye. “I’ll do the best I can with it, but I’m not promising anything.”
“I have complete confidence in you, Frau Gutenburg.” Sam bit into a fresh herring sausage with undisguised relish. “Your powers as a laundress are exceeded only by your talents in the kitchen.”
“Get away with you.” Mollified as always by his appreciation of her cooking, the middle-aged woman hesitated in the doorway. “There isn’t going to be any trouble around here now, is there? Things have been going really well since that nice Mineer de Wit got rid of van Groot. We wouldn’t want that sort of element getting a foothold in the Winkelmarkt again, would we?”
“We certainly wouldn’t,” Sam agreed, and went off to look for the nearest example of that sort of element he could find. The task was hardly difficult. Van Groot had operated out of a small fish smokery, which his chief lieutenant, Jan Alten, had inherited along with a low-grade smuggling ring and a brisk traffic in stolen goods. A bordello catering mostly to the local merchants had passed to the late crime lord’s other trusted confederate, Karin van Meeren, and so far neither had shown much overt interest in moving in on the other’s business; which hadn’t stopped them from circling one another like sharks, alert for the first sign of weakness. Van Groot’s other main money-making enterprise, a far from subtle but nonetheless effective protection racket, had been allowed to quietly wither away by both his heirs, at least for the time being; neither seemed willing to risk the wrath of the local tradesmen, who might just follow de Wit’s example and refuse to cave in, with lethal consequences for the would-be extortionists.
“Sam. Come in.” Alten looked up from behind a battered wooden desk in the sparsely-furnished office he clearly liked to think gave the impression that he was running a legitimate business. “What can I do for you?”
“You can talk to me.” Sam stepped over the groaning thug who had tried to bar the door. “Your snotling here didn’t believe I had an appointment.”
“Mineer Warble always has an appointment,” Alten told the chastened guard, who climbed slowly to his feet and closed the door with a venomous look at the halfling as he did so. The racketeer sat back in his chair, his relaxed posture at odds with the unease in his eyes that he couldn’t quite conceal. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Someone tried to kill me last night,” Sam said. He shrugged. “Petty-minded of me I know, but I tend to resent that kind of thing.”
“That was nothing to do with me,” Alten said hastily. It was precisely what Sam would have expected him to say, but he let it go for now. “Can you think of anyone who might want you dead?” Sam shrugged again.
“How long have you got?” he asked rhetorically. It was true that there were plenty of people with power and influence who might sleep a little easier knowing he was at the bottom of the Doodkanal, but there were just as many who valued his services, and most of them were the same individuals. “But the chances are it has something to do with the job I’m on.”
“I see.” Alten nodded. He hadn’t risen to his current position of eminence in the League of Gentlemen Entrepreneurs by being stupid. “And this job involves…”
“Your old boss,” Sam told him. “Luther van Groot.”
“Luther’s dead,” Alten said flatly, with a trace of unease. “That scrawny little baker stabbed him. Everyone knows that.” He shook his head. “Never would have thought he had the guts. Just goes to show, you should never underestimate people.”
“Sound advice,” Sam said dryly. It had been a couple of hours since breakfast, and the smell of smoked fish was making him feel hungry again. “And speaking of de Wit, do you know if he had any sort of dealings with van Groot before he killed him?”
“Only the usual,” Alten said. “Luther sent a couple of the boys round to talk about fire insurance, avoidable accidents, that kind of thing. When they came back empty-handed he went himself.” A reminiscent smile ghosted across his face. “One thing you can say for Luther, he never minded getting his hands dirty.”
“Not if there was money in it,” Sam agreed. “Know many magicians, did he?”
“Magicians?” Alten looked blank for a moment. “I don’t think so. But then he never talked much about his personal life.”
“I didn’t know he had one,” Sam said.
“You’d have to ask Karin about that. He used to borrow girls from the knocking shop now and again.” He glanced at Sam, with a surprisingly prudish expression. “Nothing sordid, mind you. Just escorts for those dinners he used to go to.”
“Dinners?” Sam said, trying to ignore the growling of his stomach. Alten nodded.
“Luther was going up in the world. He’d been asked to join this dining dub.” An expression of puzzlement crossed his face for a moment.
“Ranald knows why, they didn’t seem like his sort of people at all. Guild masters, aldermen, people from the university; maybe one of them owed him money, and put him up for membership to pay off the debt. But they all seemed to like him.”
“When did they meet?” Sam asked. Alten shrugged.
“Couldn’t tell you. It seemed to change from month to month. They never had a fixed date for it that I could see.”
“Did the venue change too?” Sam asked. Alten shook his head.
“They met at some house in Zweibrugstraat. That’s all I know.”
“Thank you.” Sam nodded, and dropped a shilling on the counter. “I’ll take a couple of your mackerel on my way out.”
As he’d expected, Karin van Meeren was no more happy to see him than her business rival had been, but greeted him anyway with the practiced smile of a professional hostess.
“Sam, my dear. This is an unexpected pleasure.” She gestured to the nearest of the blank-eyed young women lounging around the over-decorated parlour with an air of apprehensive boredom. “Liserle, get some refreshment for our guest.” Then she turned back to Sam. “I assume you want to talk in private?”
“I assume you do,” Sam said, following her through a door into a more comfortably appointed room. After a moment Liserle appeared with a decanter of indifferent wine and a plate of pastries which looked a couple of days old at least. At a look from Karin she put them down hastily on an occasional table and fled, closing the door behind her.
“Luther van Groot,” Sam said, as the wooden panel clicked into its frame. “I hear he used to dine out in the Zweibrugstraat from time to time.”
“Then you’ll have heard he used to take one of the girls with him,” Karin said, draping herself across an overstuffed chaise, which brought her overstuffed bodice down to the halfling’s eye level.
Sam blinked, and tried to concentrate. “The same one every time?”
Karin shook her head. “No, just whoever happened to be around. I could have done without it, to be honest.”
“Why’s that?” Sam asked.
Karin shrugged. “I’ve got a business to run. All right, it was his at the time, but I was the one taking care of everything. The customers expert things to be nice around here. It doesn’t help if the girls are getting upset.”
“Upset?” Sam took a small bite from the nearest pastry, and replaced it hastily on the plate. “I’d have thought they’d enjoy an evening out.”
“So would I,” said Karin. “But they came back spooked. They thought some of the guests were a bit strange. I mean, you get all sorts in a place like this, don’t get me wrong, but this was something else. And then one of them never came back at all. Luther said she’d hit it off with some rich merchant from the Oudgeldwijk and gone off with him, but she never sent for her stuff.”
“When was this?” Sam asked. Karin shrugged again.
“A couple of days before he died.”
“I see.” Sam considered trying the wine for a
moment, then decided against it. “Do you know where this dining club met?”
Karin nodded. “I can give you the address if you like.”
“I’d appreciate it. And a list of the dates too, if that’s no trouble.”
“I can remember a few,” Karin said, dipping a quill into an inkstand carved to resemble a pair of feminine buttocks. She scribbled for a moment, and handed Sam a slip of paper. “Those nights, I think. And that’s the address.”
Sam scanned it briefly. “Thanks,” he said. “That’s all I needed to know.”
“You were right,” Kris said, glancing up from the slip of paper. “These were all nights when Morrslieb was in the ascendant.” He tapped the last date speculatively. “And it was full the night the girl disappeared.” His chubby face seemed unusually pale, even in the shaft of sunlight striking through the shutters of the Dancing Pirate. “You think she was sacrificed by a Chaos cult?” Sam nodded grimly.
“It’s possible,” he said. “The man who attacked me last night was using dark magic, you said so yourself. And where there’s one witch there’s often a whole coven of them.” Kris nodded too. “Got any leads on who he might be?”
“I might.” The portly young mage said. “There’s a research student at the university who’s got a reputation for unorthodox theories. Nothing to get the Temple Court excited, he’s too discreet for that, but rumour has it he’s been looking into things better left alone.” He looked narrowly at Sam. “And no one’s seen him since last night.”
“Haven’t they?” Sam drained his ale tankard thoughtfully, and pushed aside the plate which had once held a fish stew. “Is that unusual?”
“Not really. He often disappears for a day or two, especially if he’s been to some dining club he belongs to.” Kris looked narrowly at the halfling. “What? What have I just said?”
“What exactly are we doing here?” de Wit asked, huddling a little more deeply inside the doorway where he and Sam had taken refuge from the thin blanket of drizzle enveloping the Zweibrugstraat. Sam shrugged.
“Waiting for the show to begin.” Dusk was falling, and so far he’d counted twelve people entering the house Karin had named. De Wit made a small sound of exasperation as a trickle of water slithered from the brim of his hat down the neck of his shirt.
“If you’ve got nothing new to tell me, I’m going home.”
“The note was sent by Karin van Meeren,” Sam said. “I got another sample of her handwriting earlier today, and the match was perfect.”
“Van Meeren?” De Wit shook his head slowly. “How does she fit into all this?”
“Because she was waiting for van Groot outside your shop the night he died,” Sam said. “She wanted answers about one of her girls who’d disappeared, and she knew he was going there to threaten you in person. He had to. If one man stood up to him, everybody would, and his whole protection racket would crumble.” He glanced up at the white-faced alderman. “The only thing I don’t understand is why you’d take a risk like that. No offence, Alfons, but you never struck me as the heroic type before.”
“I wasn’t,” De Wit nodded sombrely. “I was terrified. But I just didn’t have the money. Business had been so bad the past few months I was on the verge of going bankrupt.”
“So let me guess. You saw him coming, and slipped out the back.”
De Wit nodded. “That’s exactly what happened. But I wasn’t quick enough.” De Wit paled a little in the flickering torchlight, the memory of his old terror still uncomfortably fresh. “He came after me, and cornered me in the blind alley behind the slaughterhouse. I thought I was done for, then he suddenly dropped. Someone else had stabbed him from behind.”
“But you didn’t see who,” Sam said flatly.
De Wit shook his head. “No, just a flicker of movement in the shadows.”
The halfling nodded, and de Wit went on. “I went over to make sure he was dead, and the next thing I know I’m surrounded by people, all cheering and calling me a hero.” He looked beseechingly at Sam. “I couldn’t just turn my back on that. It’s the sort of opportunity that only comes along once in a lifetime.”
“Unfortunately van Meeren knows the truth,” Sam said. “She must have seen you checking the body, and realised that someone else killed him.”
De Wit nodded, and made a valiant attempt to match Sam’s businesslike tone. “Any idea of what she wants?”
Sam nodded. “She’s been eyeing Jan Alten’s little empire for some time, my guess is she’ll want you to keep official attention looking the other way when she decides to make her move. Once you get your seat in the Burgerhof, though, she’ll start to get more ambitious, you can bet on that.”
“I see.” De Wit took a deep breath. “And if I don’t agree to her demands, she’ll denounce me as a fraud. It’ll all be over.”
“Maybe not,” Sam said. “Who are people going to believe, a hero like you or a lowlife like her?”
A flicker of hope appeared in de Wit’s eyes as he considered this. “Especially after your reputation gets another boost. By this time tomorrow you’ll be feted throughout the city, not just the Winkelmarkt.”
“How do you mean?” de Wit asked, clearly out of his depth again. Sam gestured in the direction of a party of grim-faced men approaching them, all armed. Most wore the floppy black hats which marked them out as members of the city watch, and the exceptions were clad in the blue tunics of templar marines.
“Luther van Groot was a member of a Chaos cult, which meets in that house over there under the guise of an innocent dining club. When they heard I was investigating van Groot’s affairs for you they tried to kill me, which wasn’t the brightest thing they could have done, all they did was bring themselves to my attention.” He shrugged, and indicated the men leading the group as they approached. “May I introduce Brother Josephus from the Temple Court? Sergeant Rijgen I’m sure you already know.”
“Alderman de Wit,” Rijgen said. “It seems we owe you our thanks again.”
“Indeed.” Josephus echoed the gesture. “Master Warble told us it was you who pointed him in the direction of these heretic scum.” He drew his sword, while a couple of the burlier Black Caps kicked open the door of the house. With a final nod of acknowledgement he led the templars inside, most of the watchmen perfectly happy to let them go first.
“Why did you give me the credit?” de Wit asked, his face bewildered, as hoarse shouts and the sound of clashing blades began to echo through the street.
Sam shrugged. “Because you’re an honest man, at least by the standards of this place, and you just might do some good with the influence you’ve gained. If Karin’s still stupid enough to try blackmailing you now, all you have to do is point out that she’s a known associate of a Chaos cultist, and you have the ear of the witch hunters.”
“That ought to keep her mouth shut.” A bemused smile spread across the alderman’s face. “There’s only one thing I still don’t understand. Who did kill Luther van Groot?”
Sam shrugged, remembering the expression of shock and surprise on the racketeer’s face as he’d died. The man had been stupid as well as brutal, the city authorities would turn a blind eye to a certain amount of smuggling, so long as the appropriate bribes were paid, but attempting to deal directly with agents of the Empire intent on breaking Marienburg’s stranglehold on foreign trade had been tantamount to suicide. Given de Wit’s known defiance of van Groot’s protection racket, all Sam had needed to do to collect a generous bounty on the traitor’s head was find a dark alley near the baker’s shop and wait. Joining the gathering crowd of onlookers had been easy, and getting them to applaud the accidental hero had been the perfect cover for a neat and profitable assassination.
“Some things are best left a mystery,” he suggested, his attention suddenly shifting to the house across the road. A number of cowed and battered cultists were being escorted from the building, and he’d just recognised the second man who’d tried to kill him the night before. “If you�
�ll excuse me, that fellow still has his purse, and the son of a goblin owes me a new shirt.”
TALES OF
REVENGE & BETRAYAL
THE FAITHFUL SERVANT
Gav Thorpe
The sky was filled with the beating of black wings and the screeches of ravens, crows and buzzards. The odour of decay was strong in the air as the flock circled in the warm thermals that rippled above the burning Kislevite town. Brought from many miles around by the rotting scent of food, the huge black birds circled lower, seeking the source.
Below them, Gorlensk was a scene of carnage and wanton destruction. Many of the buildings were little more than heaps of smoking ash, and all of those that still stood bore signs of the slaughter that had occurred. Bodies were piled haphazardly where clusters of men, women and children had been cut down where they cowered by their psychopathic attackers. However, the flickering flames and billowing smoke deterred the hungry scavengers, until the chill wind brought a much stronger scent of death. The flock moved onwards and downwards, seeking out the larger feast it promised.
The scene outside the town walls was no better than inside. The shadowy shapes of the scavengers skimmed low, using the trail of dismembered bodies to trace a gory path to the main battlefield, a mile or so north of Gorlensk.
The flock’s excitement grew as the rotting stench of death grew stronger. Their cries becoming more raucous, the hungry birds scattered into smaller groups that flapped low over the battlefield, each picking out a tasty-looking target. Here the potential banquet would sate the hunger of even this massive flock. The armoured bodies of knights lay next to the gouged and hacked corpses of their steeds. The blocks of infantry had been run down as they fled, and the piles of their carcasses blocked the road and the scattered farmsteads they had tried to defend.
There were more than human bodies littering the field. The feasters of the dead cawed in alarm and avoided the unnatural corpses of Chaos warriors and half-animal beastmen which lay heaped by the dozen in some areas, their armour rent by massive blows. The ground was red with drying blood, a crimson testament to the ferocity of the battle. Rats scurried everywhere, their sleek bodies matted with dried gore, as they weaved through the carnage, disturbing lazy clouds of fat, blue flies. The heavy, bloated sun was perhaps an hour from dusk, giving the scene of death and decay an even bloodier cast.
Tales of the Old World Page 34
