‘This is a cold house,’ moaned Rechts, huddled in his cloak. His gaze went longingly to the empty iron hearth and the weeks-old soot coating it.
On Karlich’s orders they’d kept the fire doused. Like much of the shack, it was well tended. Apart from the recent soot, the stones were swept and the iron grate that kept the logs in place was brushed. A small chimney poked from the canted roof. Smoke would be a certain signal that the shack was occupied. The road warden had picked his spot well. It was untouched because no one, save an expert tracker, would know it was there. Even Averland, with its abundance of plains, had its forests. Like all the places of the Empire, darkness lurked there too, out of sight in the shadows. With greenskins and other beasts abroad, Karlich had reason to be cautious.
As an added precaution, the sergeant had posted a watch. The small outhouse was a perfect location for sentry duty.
‘These are cold times,’ added Lenkmann, ‘as bleak as winter.’
With the bed occupied by Eber, most of the Grimblades squatted on the floor. It was cold but warmer than the outdoors, and at least they had a roof over their heads. Masbrecht sat on the stool, keeping an eye on his patient. He’d redressed the bandages and cleaned the wounds with water from a well around the back of the hut, but there was little more he could do for poor Eber. While he lived, there was hope. He was a strong man. Masbrecht prayed silently for him to pull through.
‘What do you make of the gold?’ asked Rechts, trying to occupy his mind with something other than how chill his bones were. It was the first time anyone had said anything of it or the assassination plot since they’d left the hillside. With the few words he’d spoken, Volker reckoned they were well over halfway to Mannsgard, possibly another day’s journey encumbered by Eber.
Prince Wilhelm would have returned already and by the time the Grimblades got back to town, preparations would be underway for the march to Averheim. Karlich hoped they wouldn’t be missed. Ledner probably hoped they were all dead.
‘Marienburg seal, clearly fresh,’ said Karlich, bringing the coin to his mind’s eye. Like her trappings, the coin had been buried with the dead assassin. ‘I’m not sure what to think. Honestly, I don’t really want to.’
‘I cannot countenance a prince of Reikland would be the victim of a blade in his own camp,’ added Masbrecht. ‘We are not savages. Sigmar-fearing men are godly and honourable, they–’
‘Stop your preaching,’ snapped Rechts with the weary ire of a frustrated drunk.
Karlich intervened before it went further. ‘First time was a warning, Rechts. Don’t make me come over to you.’
Rechts scowled behind his cloak, but backed down.
‘I only meant it is hard for me as a devout…’ Masbrecht paused when he saw Rechts glaring at him ‘…for me to believe a Reiklander could wish harm upon his own prince. Have we fallen so far?’
‘We are not on the Warrior’s Hill, if that’s what you mean,’ said Karlich.
Warrior’s Hill was where in ages past that Sigmar gathered his chieftains and had them swear allegiance to an ideal, to the birth of an Empire. It was an act of fealty, not just to an emperor, the first emperor in fact, but to each other and the realm of man as a whole.
‘Dreams fade with the dawn, Masbrecht,’ Karlich continued. ‘Like a wisp of cloud, they are at once beautiful and lofty, but also unreachable, transient. At best, they’re a memory. At worst, they’re entirely forgotten.’
‘Gods, but that’s bleak,’ said Lenkmann, shaking his head.
Karlich was impassive. ‘I’m a realist, that’s all. I’ve seen the dark things men do.’ His eyes met with Rechts’s out of reflex rather than design. He went on. ‘What remains after idealism is gone is life.’ Karlich was almost sanguine. ‘It is the pledges we make to one another, on the field of battle, in this very room.’ He spread his hands and looked at Masbrecht again. ‘Not all men are as pure-hearted as you, Masbrecht. Even I have… regrets.’
For a moment, Karlich went to a place inside him, where he kept his own dark truths. Whenever he opened that door, he smelled smoke and felt again his hands burning in the pyre, tearing at the ropes that held her… then pushing his face into the mud when he knew it was too late and they were gone…
Masbrecht wasn’t done. His voice brought Karlich back. ‘We’re expected to keep all knowledge of this to ourselves, of what we did,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I can do that.’
Karlich looked serious now. ‘Well you must. We all know what’s at stake.’
‘If we don’t, yes I know. But what’s at stake if we do keep our mouths shut?’ He put it to all of them. ‘One killer has failed, but who’s to say others won’t be sent for the prince. He must be told his life is in danger.’
‘We’ve been through this already, brother.’ Rechts’s upper lip curled into a snarl.
Karlich sighed deeply. ‘Yes, there may be others. Perhaps this is also an end to it, we can but hope. But I doubt they’ll strike now Wilhelm is back in Mannsgard with the army. Assassination will be the least of his concerns. Greenskins await us at Averheim, a horde the likes of which we’ve never seen if the scouts are to be believed.
‘There is much we don’t know here, Masbrecht. Don’t act before being certain of the facts at hand.’
Masbrecht wasn’t happy about it, his moral code was a strict one, but he nodded his agreement all the same.
‘Ledner knows more than he’s saying,’ said Volker, sticking to the shadows, a few feet from the rest of the group. Lenkmann offered him a strip of salted beef but he declined.
‘You could hang princes on that man’s secrets,’ Karlich replied in a bitter voice. The irony of the statement was not lost on him. By using Wilhelm as bait to draw out the assassin, Ledner had almost done just that.
There were rumours that Marienburg desired independence from the Empire. Karlich had heard traders in Altdorf and on the Reik claiming as much. It was so far fetched an idea that it had become something of a joke, an idiosyncratic quirk of a people joined by land but divorced in ideology. A rich state wanting to get richer. Even the underclass were well heeled.
There are no peasants in Marienburg, so the popular myth went, because they can’t tend fields with all those rings on their fingers.
‘And what if he hangs us?’ added Volker.
Lenkmann raised an eyebrow. ‘A dour thought, Volker.’
‘I have plenty to be dour about.’
Lenkmann was closest to him and reached over to pat his shoulder. The gesture was a little awkward, but his expression conveyed sadness. ‘It was a brave animal.’
Something dark flashed across the huntsman’s eyes as he looked back.
‘It was a mean bastard.’
Karlich was looking around. ‘Speaking of which, where is Brand?’
All eyes went to one corner of the room. Brand had been sitting there, almost invisibly in the deepest shadows. Now he was not.
‘I could’ve sworn…’ Lenkmann began.
Karlich was on his feet. His anxious mood passed to the others, a sudden sense of urgency charging the air. He asked a question to which he already knew the answer.
‘Who is on watch?’
Masbrecht was the first to answer. ‘Keller.’
Karlich left the door banging loudly in the wind as he bolted from the shack.
Slipping out was easy. It was gloomy in the shack and filled with shadows. A few candles had been scavenged from a drawer but they were stubby and weak. Karlich was wise to light only a few. Any more and the fiery glow would have attracted more than just moths. Just like smoke from a chimney, larger nocturnal predators would be drawn to a flame, drawn to the warmth it promised and that of the humans crowded round it.
A back door led out into a small yard where they’d found the well. Without a handle or any discerning marks, it was hard to see. Brand had found it easil
y enough, though. Easier still was disappearing when the debate about Wilhelm’s would-be killers was going on.
No one noticed the slightest flutter of the candle flames or the faint draft of cold air, so fleeting it could have been imagined.
Brand was out in the rain. To some it would be a cleansing experience, but no amount of rain could purify the taint Brand felt on his body like a second skin. Rain reminded him of drowning, only by degrees, one drop at a time. He’d led a violent life, and associated everything with death. Brand circled around the back of the hut, staying low and moving steadily but calmly. Sudden movements, even out in the rain-drenched darkness, might attract the attention of his comrades, and they had no part in what he was about to do.
Brand knew his chance would come again. Keller was a slave to his guilt now. He couldn’t stand to be in the presence of others for fear that the sickening lump behind his ribs would make him speak out and confess his sin. Blood, Brand knew, especially old blood, was heavier than it first appeared.
The outhouse was ahead, little more than a silhouette, like a piece of driftwood sticking up from a clinging sandbank. The earth around it, despite being sheltered by the canopy of the forest, was sodden like a quagmire. Brand trod lightly and swiftly once away from the shack and in the open.
He barely noticed the rain anymore as he approached the door. Somewhere behind him another door was banging. It was hard to hear, muffled by the weather. The door to the watchtower was unlatched. Easing it open with his foot, Brand drew his dagger. Inside, Keller was waiting.
Nearly slipping several times on the mud, Karlich reached the watchtower a little out of breath. He drew his sword, vaguely aware of the others behind him. Throwing open the door, he rushed inside expecting to see Brand murdering Keller. It had taken him a few days, but he’d realised there was something between the two men. He didn’t know what precisely, but suspected it had something to do with Varveiter’s death. He’d watched Brand ever since, but had let him slip from his sight when his guard was down.
Keller was dead, but not from Brand’s dagger. He swung by a rope tied around his neck. A stool lay on its side nearby. The tips of Keller’s boots barely scraped the floor. By the pallor of his skin, he’d been dead for some time.
Brand was sitting on the floor, sobbing into his hands. For a moment Karlich was taken aback. He’d never seen the man cry. Ever.
The others were coming in from the outside.
Karlich slammed the door in their faces, locking it shut.
‘Get out! Go back to the hut,’ he said, shouting so they wouldn’t question him. Someone tried the door. He heard Lenkmann’s voice but the meaning of his words was lost in the rain. ‘Do it now. That’s an order.’
When he was sure the others had gone, Karlich turned back to Brand. His gaze drifted upwards to Keller’s swinging body. The rope groaned with the weight. In that gruesome moment he realised what must have happened at Blösstadt.
Keller had murdered Varveiter in retribution for humiliating him at the camp, and the guilt of it had driven him to hang himself. Brand had known it too, much sooner than Karlich, and had planned revenge of his own. Only Keller had robbed him of it, too afraid to face the consequences of his actions.
‘I would’ve done it,’ sobbed Brand, as all of his grief flooded out. ‘I wanted to do it.’
Karlich sheathed his sword and knelt down beside him.
‘I know, brother.’ He made to touch Brand’s arm but stopped short, letting his hand fall to his side. When soothing a wounded wolf, it’s wise to keep your hands to yourself. Karlich had heard that spoken in Middenheim once. ‘It’s all right.’
They sat like that in the silence and the dark for a while, until Brand stopped crying and Karlich decided to cut Keller down.
No one would ever know the truth, nor would they ask for it. The Grimblades had been through much together and knew when to leave things alone.
Keller was dead. Karlich had told them he thought the man simply couldn’t take the pressures of the war and the burden placed upon them by Ledner, and it was left at that. All had noticed how withdrawn he’d become since their first engagement at the slaughtered village. It wasn’t so beyond reason – men had taken their own lives for less.
An unmarked grave was Keller’s only legacy. Volker had found a suitable spot in the forest that was shaded and the soil less like the sucking bog surrounding the watchtower. Masbrecht had delivered a short sermon, a soldier’s prayer. Rechts had stayed, but made his discomfort obvious. It wasn’t that the drummer didn’t believe in Sigmar, far from it. His faith had been shaken, yes, but it was priests and dogma he had issue with. Karlich knew that, and recognised himself in that conviction. It was why he tolerated the outbursts and the drunkenness.
Even Brand had attended in the end. Karlich assumed he had his reasons.
When it was done, when Keller’s bones were laid to rest, Rechts had sung a solemn lament. It was a marching song of Reikland, My brother in our Land, one that commemorated the fallen and asked their comrades to remember them. The rain had persisted until morning and framed a sullen scene around the grave.
There was no time to tarry. As soon as Rechts was done they left the road warden’s rest and headed back to Mannsgard. The mood was grim, but Eber, at least, had shown some signs of life. Masbrecht had performed his task well. The burly Reiklander would live.
Chapter Sixteen
Marshalling for war
The town of Mannsgard, Averland,
383 miles from Altdorf
An army was growing outside the town by the time the Grimblades returned. Imperial banners caught on the wind, snapping against their poles as if fighting to be free. Soldiers in the colours of Averland, Middenland, Reikland and Carroburg gathered. There was a hubbub of voices and the dull clang of metal from breastplates and tassets as the soldiers slowly formed into regiments. The lines of men filing from the gates seemed endless. An entire town emptied, leaving only its graven citizens behind. Karlich would later remark that he couldn’t tell if they were pleased or distraught to no longer be harbouring soldiers.
Pikemen, spear, swordsmen and halberdiers stood shoulder to shoulder with archers, crossbowmen and handgunners. Militiamen roved in loose bands until their sergeants bellowed for order. To their credit, the free companies made rank and file quickly. Mules dragged baggage caravans or hauled cannons and mortars, gunnery crews shadowing them like dutiful hounds. Engineers rode in the wagons themselves, together with their best journeymen. Karlich saw one muttering to his war machine and smoothing the barrel in the same way he’d stroke a beloved pet.
Madmen, he thought. Blackpowder was as dangerous as sorcery. Only the insanely brave or the bravely insane dallied with it. Exploding shrapnel could kill a man just as easy as a blade or bow and before an enemy had even deigned to launch its first attack. He remembered an incident a few years back when a gunner had lost his head to a spinning axle flung from his machine when it misfired. The irony of it was the battle was already won, and the guns were being fired to salute their victory. Since that day, Karlich had vowed to give war engines and their like a wide berth.
Mad they may be, but compared to the footsloggers the gunners looked positively sanguine. Most of the infantry were drawn and pale, moving with the uncertain purpose of condemned men. It wasn’t so far from the truth.
Karlich had yet to see the cavalry as he and the others walked past the processional exodus from Mannsgard. He assumed they’d be last, after the foot soldiers were readied to march.
It was mid-morning, the sun was rising quickly and the last of the night patrols were returning. Karlich had blended his own troops in with them, so as not to arouse suspicion. Passing the last of the thronging soldiers on their way through the gate, he noticed von Rauken and his Carroburg Few. The hoary old veteran nodded with the slow certainty of iron. Karlich returned the gesture and tried to hide h
is nerves. Though he was the last man he wanted to see, he had to find Ledner and tell him what had happened.
Karlich found the spymaster at the counting house where they’d met in secret two nights ago, gathering up maps and charts from the desk.
It was still gloomy, though the window slats were open and allowed a little light in. Dust whirled about the air in thick, grey clumps. Karlich coughed, giving away his presence.
Ledner did well to mask his surprise when he looked up at him.
‘It’s done.’ Karlich was in no mood for niceties. He wanted to get away from this man and this place as soon as possible. He was alone, having left the others to find the rest of the regiment. If Captain Stahler asked, Karlich was giving his report to one of Wilhelm’s scriveners for the prince’s perusal later.
‘Fine work,’ said Ledner. Something flashed behind his eyes. Karlich thought it was amusement, but the kind of emotion shown by a snake as it circled a plucky mouse.
‘Not without cost.’
‘Yes, I heard you lost a man. And the one who was injured?’
‘He’s with the chirurgeon. He’ll live, but won’t fight at Averheim.’
‘You’ll miss his blade.’
Karlich was downcast. ‘Aye, I will.’
Ledner went into a drawer in the desk and tossed a heavy-looking bag in front of Karlich.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, not bothering to keep the angry tone from his voice.
A few coins spilled out onto the desk, the weight of the pile inside the bag pulling it over.
‘Your payment.’ Ledner didn’t look up as he sorted the last of the charts and scrolls. ‘There’s five crowns each in there. Two more for you as sergeant.’
Karlich dumped a large bundle on the desk. It struck the bag of coins and scattered them over the scarred wood.
‘Your guns and blades,’ he said.
Ledner barely glanced at the leather skin binding the weapons together.
‘And the cloaks?’ he asked, rolling up the last of his scrolls.
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