Kaslain prepared himself, but not as he would for any common final confession. The cult of Sigmar often received last testaments from dying men, promising them Sigmar’s blessings on their journey to the land of Morr.
The ceremony was relatively simple but often the man receiving the blessing had travelled too far on that journey to understand much of what was said. Sometimes he had something he needed to say, a long-held secret which had ceased to be important to anybody but its bearer: an evil deed, perhaps, a disloyal act or a petty criminal doing. Whatever the exact nature of the event, each man amputated the memory and gave it into the keeping of the priest so the doing would not accompany him into the next life.
Kaslain had heard many sordid and foul acts recounted to him in this manner but they seldom made an impression on the ageing priest. He had too many such tales of his own to be impressed by the petty wrongdoings of some mud-spattered farmer or bloodstained soldier.
This man he prepared to see, however, was neither of those. What reckonings had he to make with Sigmar? Kaslain, dressed in his ceremonial garb and ready to receive his dying visitor, reviewed what he knew about the man.
The Tilean Wasp, so called because of a supposed mastery of the vile arts of brewing and administering poisons. The Wolf in the Fold, or the Thousand Faces of Magritta—he had these names apparently because of an ability to disguise himself with consummate skill and infiltrate his victim’s camp.
For this he was perhaps most famous and there were numerous stories of his duping this guard or that official. The stories were often recounted as humorous rhymes, idle entertainment, and each ended with a corpulent public official having his throat cut or his belly stuck. One could make jokes out of the death of fattened bureaucrats as few cared for them, but Kaslain knew the truth was more grisly than such tales allowed.
Another name this man had acquired was the Coffin Builder, because of the sheer volume of murders attributed to him in a career which spanned almost twenty years. Everything known about this assassin was premised with “perhaps” or “supposedly” and almost nothing was held to be indisputable fact. No one knew his real name and nobody could recognise his face for what it was.
That, thought the priest, was about to change.
The boys carried the man into Kaslain’s private suite and laid him on a divan. The couch had been covered with a canvas curtain to protect it from the blood which stained the boy’s white robes and bare arms in generous brushstrokes.
Kaslain, not normally one for humorous comment, was unusually buoyant, commenting that the two boys were perhaps alone in having received wounds from the Tilean Wasp and lived to tell the tale. There was little laughter as the boys retreated and Kaslain pushed the heavy door closed.
The man spoke before the last echoes of iron and wood had been swallowed by the woollen mats and velvet curtains. “Father, I have come to make my peace.” The voice had a sheathed edge about it.
Kaslain steadied his own voice. “You can find here what you seek.”
“I know it to be true. It cannot be given by any man. You alone, father, can give me peace.” The man’s words were chosen carefully.
“You are a man surrounded by much evil but perhaps we need not speak of it all. What would you have my ears hear and my heart absolve?” Kaslain repeated the ritualised phrases with no greater conviction than was usual, but his body was taut.
“Father, I wish to tell you of how I came to kill a priest.”
Kaslain’s intake of breath was audible and abrasive, the extra air stabbing at his lungs. A priest! He would have to deal very carefully with the dying legend on the divan.
The legend coughed and opened his eyes. The blood staining his shaven chin underlined the eyes which stared at Kaslain. So devoid were they of any feeling that Kaslain thought the man was already dead. The priest froze in mid-gesture, as if his slightest movement might push the assassin over the edge before the all-important absolution.
The man called the Thousand Faces of Magritta struggled onto one elbow and looked straight at his audience. “My name is Hadrian Samoracci.”
Kaslain raised an eyebrow. If the man was who he said he was, that made him the son and heir of one of the powerful merchant-noble families of northern Tilea.
“My name is Hadrian Samoracci and I have been twice bereft. The first time was long ago and does not concern the matter of which I crave absolution, except in so much as it made me what I am today. The second time, however, the second time occurred in the autumn which is only now dying. Dying as I am.”
At first I thought her to be a farmer’s daughter. A simple farmer’s daughter covered with earth, testament to her daily exertions in the field. She had hair the colour of the chaff she spread before the swine on the manor estate of the man who owned her. I saw her beside the road as I rode up to the manor for the first time and she fixed me with a stare which I did not understand—though I understand it now. Like knows like. Like knows like, and now she is dead. Such is the way of things and few think much about it. Just as the hawk preys on the hare and it is never the other way about, so the peasant works for the lord…
But I have not come here to waste my last breath on politics, and in truth, she was no hare. I have come here to use my last breath on the things that matter, at least to me. I have come here to spend my last breath talking of love and death.
I am a seller of death, almost a merchant you might say, or an artisan, or even a whore whose body is her only ware. I am all these things. My work takes me to strange places and I often have cause to touch the lives of the noble, wealthy and fortunate. Few men pay gold for the blood of a cobbler or silver to have a blacksmith’s apprentice quietly drowned in the Reik.
The Count of Pfeildorf, a pole-cat of a man, maintained a manor house outside of the town of that name, for which he had nominal responsibility. A man had found me, found one of my men in Nuln and got a message to me: twelve ingots of Black Mountains gold for the death of the count. The gold safely in my vault, for I never extend the privilege of credit, I travelled to Pfeildorf, adopting the guise of a trapper of wolves—a subject I knew very little about, though I was to learn more.
Once in Pfeildorf, I took up residence in a boarding house of roaches and wenches and went to work. It was a simple enough matter to steal a horse and ride out to the estate each night. The count’s personal security was extensive—a pole-cat but a paranoid one. His underlings were more accessible, however.
The count’s chief man, castellan and gamekeeper, was a greasy pudding named Hugo. The count’s flocks strayed on the hillside while Hugo plotted to increase his consumption of Bretonnian cakes, or pursued some similar activity.
For four nights I crept close to the flock, stealing a lamb. I would wrap the struggling creature in my cloak and carry it away so its noise wouldn’t wake the dogs. Here my plan almost faltered for I could not bring myself to slaughter the animals with their fleece still yellow from their birthing. They were guilty of nothing. All my victims are guilty of something. Whatever you may say, you choose to be a killer’s victim.
I left the lambs in my rank room where they consumed the straw mattress and soiled the floor, similar behaviour to most of the patrons of the establishment. Each morning I stood on a crate in the market and plied my new trade. A wolf trapper I was, on the trail of a rogue female, a killer from the north, a huge brute of a creature which had taken halflings from out of their houses. I made the creature into a fearsome scourge for the whole district. Many farmer’s woes were no doubt erroneously blamed on this fictitious blight and some even sought to hire me to rid them of it. My fee was correspondingly high, high enough that the poor shepherds could not afford my services. You may imagine that I found the work tiring but there is an easy calm in playing out my strategies and I find great delight in the invention of tantalising detail.
Eventually it happened. Hugo waddled into the square escorted by one of the count’s men. The duo approached me and, after a brief haggle over th
e price, which I pointedly refused to drop, engaged me to kill the wolf which had been taking their lambs.
I was given lodging in the servant’s quarters on the estate, a pallet on an earthen floor. I have slept in worse places and I have lain between silken sheets. My unique profession has given me the opportunity to learn about the way others live their lives, miserable and bleak, often before I take those very lives. Take them and break them. But I am not without compassion, as you will see. As I have said, I saw the girl as I rode in and her face stayed with me, though I did not know why.
My plan was simple: to range the estate making a show of setting snares during the day and to scout by night, and decide on the best way in which to gain entrance to the count’s wing. I was to be there three days, no more. Once I have devised a plan I do not like to be distracted. Thus it was that I was angered by Hugo’s rousing me early on the second morning and demanding that I explain the two missing lambs, taken the night before. All of my snares lay empty and yet the animals were gone. Hurrying because I feared my mock snares would not stand close examination, I dressed and followed the track up to the flock just as the count was being served fig and pheasant breakfast in his feather bed.
I have some skill in reading prints in the ground and what I saw surprised me. In the mud near the stream where the flock drank I found signs of the abduction: here were drag marks to indicate the demise of the lambs, here a little wool caught on a thorn, here the prints of the shepherds arriving late on the scene—and everywhere were the indentations of a large wolf. The wind, already cold along the stream bed developed a cutting chill. I followed the prints until they crossed and re-crossed the stream; a smart wolf, this killer I had supposedly created. A smart wolf manifested from thin air and imagination. I could do little but wait for the night which is usually my friend.
I am not a man who frightens easily, nor one who is used to fear. As the night settled over me, as it fell gently to earth and blanketed the greens in a cobweb shroud, a bead of sweat found the scar at the base of my neck and settled there. Most foolish of all, this man, this killer who is scared of nothing, was frightened of a beast of his own creation. After a brief discussion with the shepherds, who informed me they had had this wolf problem for some months, and who, gratifyingly, were more scared than I was, I positioned myself in the low branches of a large oak which spread itself over the flock like a priest blessing the multitudes.
There was no question of my falling asleep. Such vigils are common in my profession and besides, the perch was religiously uncomfortable. I watched as the moon traversed the sky, describing a pearly slice through the low western horizon. Morning was only a few hours hence and I had long ceased jumping at the shadows of the dogs, shaggy brown brutes from kennels in Averheim. It was one of these mutts who saw her first, however, or more likely smelt her. Even though she came from downwind, we could all smell her stench. It was a smell I have smelled before, many times. When a man is about to die, when he knows he stares death in the face, he has a certain smell. It is in his breath, or comes from his skin, I don’t know, I am no physician. I smelt that smell that night on the wind. When I looked down from my perch she was there.
I have seen wolves before, but only in cages, rolling, barred wagons in the streets or in fairgrounds: “Come bait the ferocious wolf, feed a mad killer with yer own hand!” She was a killer all right, but far from being mad. She moved with determination and poise. I slithered lower in the tree, silent as she, hunters both. Her approach put me downwind of her and I was almost overpowered by the stench of death which was her musk. As in an old Kislev folk tale, I had made a lariat from heavy twine and I balanced on the low bough, watching her. She was fascinating, huge certainly, but agile and sure-footed. I imagined her yellow eyes as I watched the muscles shift beneath her flanks.
She moved quietly towards the flock. One of the dogs found the source of the smell and loped over. The well-trained mongrel bared its teeth and crouched on its forequarters, a language that the she-wolf would surely understand. As soon as she turned I was ready to spring my trap. She did not sway from her purpose, however, ignoring the dog’s threat, and I detected something strange in her gait. She was hungry like a wolf, certainly, but she did not crouch low as a hunter would, walking rather at her full height past the snarling dog.
This was too much for the mongrel which threw itself at her throat, a studded collar wrapped about his own. She turned, acknowledging the brutal assault. With a flick of her neck, which might equally have been contemptuous or desperate, she flipped the attacking dog and snapped its spine against the hard ground. Her unfortunate assailant yelped and rolled away trying to straighten a body which would never be right. I say “contemptuous or desperate” because I could not read this strange creature, I had not the language. I should have sprung then and there but I waited, crouching in the darkness, in what could equally have been curiosity or fear.
The shepherds came then, with the other dogs. No doubt they wondered why I had done nothing, had not sprung my trap. Three young, strong men of Averland, armed with stout staves picked clean of bark during long, all-night vigils. Two more dogs, angry and frightened after the scream of their pack-mate. They would drive her off, perhaps before she took a lamb; anything else was unthinkable.
At the last minute I knew it would not be so, something in the way she moved, something in the unreadable curve of her ribs. I almost shouted a warning, but then I am no stranger to death, and these men were nothing to me. Besides, they outnumbered her. I have, I must confess, a sentimental attachment to the underdog, the lone wolf.
What followed was a lesson for a killer in killing. Again she waited until the last instant, turning as the two dogs came crashing in with their heavy skulls set in a charge. She rolled to the side and opened a gash on the flanks of the closest one with her bottom jaw, sending her victim in a scything skid down the stream bank. Before the other dog could recover she was on her feet and charging herself. She ducked under its guard and clamped her maw about its neck, spinning the animal in the air and crashing it sideways into a rock. The dog coughed once and lay still. The shepherds paused, fear and anger competing for their countenances. Anger won, as it so often does with younger men. They gripped their sticks tightly and strode in. The lariat hung loose in my hand.
She turned to look at the men and to my surprise she cowed. She looked away and lowered her tail, which flickered like a flame above her hind legs. The men rushed her and I read the signs an only instant before her ruse was revealed. The first shepherd was on his back with her paws on his chest before the second caught his brother’s hand with a wild blow of his stick. The brother screamed and dropped his weapon. He brought his hand to his mouth as if the benediction of his lips might heal the shattered bones. The second shepherd turned in time to see their companion’s throat rent by the wolf.
She was magnificent. I stood as I might in a theatre, watching the players enact a drama of such intensity that I dared not shift lest I disturb their concentration. The other two stood together, defensive now, not believing what they knew to be true. She circled them once, slowly, and then rushed in, felling them with an axe-like blow of her head. The three rolled on the ground and wrestled but there could be only one outcome. Eventually she shook herself free of the corpses and spun her coat like a hound who has come in from the rain. I watched, knowing somehow that there was more to see.
The wolf had hurt her hind left paw and she limped to the base of my tree. My breath was caged in my chest and I strained to keep it there. She sat against the roots and shook her coat again. The moon passed for a moment behind a cloud, or so it seemed, and suddenly I was looking at a woman, or perhaps a girl. A naked girl at the base of the tree, her shoulders slick with blood, her left foot stretched up to her face where she licked a cut on the soft skin beneath. I had stayed silent thus far but on this transformation I let the night air escape from my lungs in a rush and gasped for some to replace it. The girl’s head snapped up and our eyes
met, as they had met before. I understood her gaze then, as I had not before. A killer looked at a killer. Like knew like.
In an instant she rolled and before I could say anything, least of all that I intended no violence to one so magnificent, she was gone. She sped across the field, once again lupine, once again perfect. I crept back to the manor slowly, avoiding the blackest shadows, shaking my head as if to dislodge the images of the night from my memory. When I awoke late the next morning, however, they remained as clear as the day which greeted me.
After that my elegant plan had to be postponed and the count’s security was doubled. They found the bodies of the three shepherds and the prints in the ground were clear enough that even fat Hugo could read them.
“Werewolf,” he said, grimacing as if he had put his toe into a bath too cold to sit in.
What angered me as I stood there, not far from the tree in which I had perched the night before, was the man’s demeanour. An assumption of superiority over something he could never hope to understand. From that moment I decided I was on her side: wild, frightened, perfect killer over fat, tame gamekeeper. After we held a solemn meeting about the best way in which to trap the ferocious beast—my contributions were fatuous and deliberately impractical—I went to seek her.
The farmers and workers on the count’s estate lived in a village outside of the walled manor, a collection of huts and thatched cottages huddled around the mill as if they wanted to take up as small an amount of the count’s fertile fields as was possible. I felt eyes regard me from dark windows as I walked up, stopping periodically to beat the sticking mud from my boots with a switch of hedgerow. She was not hard to find. I asked a few questions, not to be denied, this man from the manor. The answers I got were not co-operative but the villagers said more than they meant.
Tales of the Old World Page 64
