02 - The Broken Lance

by Nathan Long - (ebook by Undead)

  Oppenhauer shouted back to the draymen over the thunder of their hooves. “Stop your carts left and right of the crate! We shall need their cover while we load.” He pointed at Reiner and Matthais. “Clear the men at the box, then take cover behind the carts.”

  Reiner and Matthais saluted, then raised their arms.

  “Pistols ready,” said Reiner.

  “Lancers ready,” said Matthais.

  The pistoliers held their guns at their cheeks. The lancers pointed their lances at the sky.

  “Fire!” cried Reiner.

  His men levelled their guns and fired into the cluster of bandits. A few dropped, a few fired back. The rest ran to their ponies, trying to remount.

  “Charge!” cried Matthais.

  The lancers lowered their lances and spurred their horses into a thundering gallop. Oppenhauer charged with them.

  “Sabres!” Reiner called.

  His men drew their swords and followed the lancers and Oppenhauer as they ploughed into the bandits, impaling them and running them down. The rest scattered, on foot or on horseback, racing for the woods as the carts pulled up around the crate. .More bandits were running up the road, most on foot—stragglers from the ambush—but when they saw the situation they too melted into the woods.

  Reiner and Matthais circled back quickly with their squads and dismounted behind the cover of the carts as the crossbowmen began firing bolts into the trees. They were answered by a storm of arrows that thudded into the wagons and cargo.

  “Lancers!” bellowed Oppenhauer, jumping off his horse. “Help me with the crate!”

  Matthais and three of his men stepped to the crate and grabbed the edges. Even with Oppenhauer joining them, they strained to lift it. Reiner’s questions were becoming suspicions. He saw that the lid had pulled up at one corner and stepped forward.

  “Let me give you a hand.”

  “We have it, Meyerling,” grunted Oppenhauer, but Reiner ignored him and helped lift. As they edged it up on the cart, next to another just like it, Reiner got a glimpse under the lid. It was filled with small rectangles of yellow metal that shone like…

  Gold.

  Before he could be sure of what he had seen, Oppenhauer pounded the lid shut with the heel of his hand.

  “Now, ride! Ride!” he called.

  Reiner glanced at the obercaptain as he hurried back to his horse, but Oppenhauer’s face was unreadable. Did he know Reiner had seen the gold? Had he been hiding it, or just closing the lid?

  The carts turned clumsily about as arrows whistled around them. The crossbowmen returned fire, shooting randomly into the woods until they got under way. Oppenhauer, Matthais and Reiner and their squads fell in behind, but the bandits didn’t follow, only stole out after the crossbowmen no longer had their range, to collect their arrows and see to their fallen.

  The train of wagons continued on toward Aulschweig with four dead and ten wounded. Reiner rode in silence, oblivious to his men’s nervous post-battle chatter. He had discovered where Manfred’s missing gold was going, though why it was crossing the border he had no idea. More important was its mere existence. The crate he had seen held enough gold to make a man one of the wealthiest in the Empire. And there were two of them, tucked amidst the rest of the cargo. Two fortunes. More than even Karl-Franz himself might spend in a lifetime.

  Reiner smiled. He wasn’t greedy. He didn’t want them both. He needed only one. One would be more than enough to pay a sorcerer to remove the poison from the Blackhearts’ blood—to buy their freedom.

  The only question now was, how did he get it?

  SEVEN

  A Man of Vision

  The castle of Baron Caspar Tzetchka-Koloman sat hunched above the fertile Aulschweig valley like a wolf looking down at a henhouse. It had been built to guard the mouth of the pass from the Empire, when in the wild days of long ago there had been danger of invasion from that quarter—a small, but sturdily built keep that seemed to grow out of the crags that surrounded it. The valley below was like a dream of how the Empire might have been, if not for so many years of war—a bright green jewel of wheat fields not yet ripe and orchards of apple, pear and walnut. Tiny stone and shingle villages nestled in the gentle folds of the land, the spires of their country shrines sticking up above pine spinneys.

  Baron Caspar was a restless young man a few years older than Reiner, but a child in temperament. A pale, sharp-faced fellow with jet black hair and dark eyes, he twitched and squirmed in his seat all through the generous dinner he laid before his guests in the high, banner-hung hall of his chilly keep.

  “So General Gutzmann is well?” he asked as he mashed peas onto the back of his fork with his dagger. He spoke Imperial with a lilting mountain accent.

  “Very well, my lord,” said Oppenhauer between mouthfuls. “And your brother, Prince Leopold? He is in good health?”

  “Oh, fine, fine. Never better, last I heard. Though it’s precious little news 1 get here on the edge of nowhere. From my brother, or General Gutzmann.” He stabbed his meat with more force than necessary.

  Oppenhauer spread his hands. “Are we not here, my lord? Did we not bring the mining supplies you requested? Did I not convey the general’s heartfelt greetings?”

  “Yes, but no news. No answer.”

  Oppenhauer coughed and shot a look at Reiner. “Let’s not spoil a good meal with matters of state, shall we? When we let poor Bohm and Meyerling go back to their men, you and I will speak of other things.”

  Caspar pursed his lips. “Very well. Very well.” But Reiner could see his leg jumping under the table as he bounced his foot nervously up and down.

  Reiner waited for Oppenhauer or Matthais to make polite conversation. When they didn’t, he cleared his throat. “So, baron, your mining goes well?”

  Oppenhauer and Matthais froze, forks halfway to their mouths.

  Caspar looked up at Reiner sharply, then snorted. “Ha! Yes. My mining goes well, indeed. We have been able to recruit many more men for the work, and with your new shipment of supplies we will be able to expand our operations even more. It is a great cure for my enforced idleness here, mining. I am looking forward to the day that I will be able to show my brother the steel we are bringing from that mine.”

  Reiner struggled to keep his face straight. Steel from a tin mine. Interesting.

  When the meal came to an end, Matthais invited Reiner to join him and his men in Caspar’s guardroom for a game of trumps, but though the temptation to shear these yearling lambs of their golden fleece was strong, Reiner instead pleaded weariness and an upset stomach and retired to his room. He did not, however, stay there long.

  Caspar and Oppenhauer had taken their after-dinner schnapps to the library to discuss “matters of state” by the fire. Reiner wanted to hear that conversation, and so as soon as the footman who had guided him to his room had departed, Reiner stepped back into the corridor and began making his way back to the lower floors. The castle was nearly deserted. Caspar had no wife or children, and only a few knights lived there with him—and those were playing cards with Matthais—so reaching the library meant only avoiding a few servants. Finding a way to hear what went on behind the thick carved-oak door was another matter.

  He pressed his ear to the wood, but heard nothing but a low murmur and the roar of the fire. Perhaps there was a balcony window he could listen at if he could get outside. He crept to the next door along the hallway and listened. He thought he could still hear fire, but there were no voices, so he risked opening it.

  There was indeed a fire, tightly penned inside an iron grate, and Reiner hesitated momentarily, fearing that the room was occupied after all. But though numerous eyes glittered back at him, they were in the heads of a silent jury of hunting trophies that stared accusingly at him from the walls. Deer, elk, bear, wolf and boar all were represented.

  Reiner gave them a mock bow as he closed the door behind him. “As you were, gentlemen.”

  He crossed to tall, velvet-draped wind
ows on the far side of the room and opened one. There was no balcony, only an iron railing to keep one from pitching headlong down the cliffside the castle was built upon. Reiner leaned out and looked to his right, towards the library. There were similar windows there. An agile man, with nerves of steel, might possibly climb over the railing, edge along the narrow ledge that ran between the windows, cling to the library window and listen. But even then he might not hear anything. The windows were tightly closed against the night’s chill and the heavy curtains drawn. Still, this was the sort of conversation that Manfred would most want him to overhear. Reiner looked down the cliff, where jagged rocks poked up at him. He swallowed.

  With a shrug that hid a shiver, he swung his leg over the railing. A booming laugh erupted behind him. He flinched and almost lost his footing. He looked back. He could have sworn the laugh had come from within the room. Another laugh burst forth, and this time he pin-pointed its source. The fireplace.

  Reiner pulled his leg back over the railing and closed the window, then stepped quietly toward the fireplace. Muffled voices came from it. He peered into it, and was surprised to find that beyond the flames, he could see into the library. In fact he could make out Caspar’s booted feet tapping nervously as he sat in a high-backed leather chair. Reiner had seen such fireplaces before, cleverly constructed to warm two rooms at once, but in intrigue-riddled Altdorf where privacy was at a premium, most of them had been bricked up.

  “But when?” came Caspar’s voice. “Why won’t you tell me when?”

  Reiner leaned in as close as he dared. The heat from the fire was intense, and its roar nearly drowned out all other sound, but if he held his breath he could hear Oppenhauer’s rumbling reply.

  “Soon, my lord,” the obercaptain said. “We have just recruited the last men we need, but it will take some while to train them, and to discover which are sympathetic to our aims.”

  “But curse it, I’m ready now! I tire of this waiting. Rusting here in the wilderness while Leopold sleeps through his reign. To think what could be made of this land if there was a man of vision on the throne!” He slapped the arm of his chair with his palm.

  “It will happen,” said Oppenhauer. “Never fear.”

  Reiner leaned in closer as the obercaptain’s words got lost in the crackling of the fire. His cheek felt aflame. His left eye was as dry as paper.

  “The general is as eager as you, my lord. You know his history. He too has had his ambitions thwarted. Wait only a little longer and you and he will sweep your sleeping brother from his throne and place you upon it instead. Then with you as king and Gutzmann as the commander of your armies, Aulschweig will become all you want it to be. The other border princes will fall before your might, and you will unite the Black Mountains into one great nation. A nation that might one day rival the Empire itself.”

  “Yes!” cried Caspar. “That is my destiny! That is as it will be. But how soon? How soon?”

  “Very soon, my lord,” said Oppenhauer. “Very soon. Two months at the most.”

  “Two months! An eternity!”

  “Not at all. Not at all. By next month, when I return with more ‘supplies’, I will bring you the general’s final plans. And the month after that we will slowly ease our forces into position so that we may spring our trap without losing the element of surprise.”

  Reiner stepped back from the fireplace, rubbing his stinging face. So that was the plan. If it were true, then it certainly met Manfred’s criteria for “removing” Gutzmann. Reiner could kill the general and get out of these freezing mountains as soon as they returned to the fort. On the other hand, there were some very good reasons to wait. Some golden reasons.

  It was time to have a talk with the old Blackhearts.

  EIGHT

  Manfred’s Noose

  In the mining town of Brunn the next night, Reiner strolled into Mother Leibkrug’s house of joy like a man coming home. The look of the low ceilinged, dimly lit tap room, with the forms of men and women huddling in its dark corners, the smell of lamp smoke and cheap scent, the sounds of laughing harlots and dice in the cup, were a balm to his soul.

  From the time he had left his father’s home to attend university in Altdorf, until the day Archaon’s invasion had made it impossible for even the least patriotic of Imperial citizens not to answer the call of honour, Reiner had lived his life in brothels such as this. In their salons had he and his friends argued points of philosophy, while bare-bottomed bawds served them beer and fritters. In their boudoirs had he lost his innocence and gained the bittersweet knowledge of lust, love and loss. In their card rooms had he learned and practised his preferred trade, and paid for his lodgings and his tuition with money won from rubes and rustics. He had been away from these hallowed halls so long it nearly brought a tear to his eye to enter them once again.

  Franka, however, hesitated on the threshold.

  Reiner looked back. “What’s the matter, young Franz? They don’t bite unless you ask.”

  Franka’s eyes darted about the dark room. “Are you certain you couldn’t find a more suitable place to meet?”

  “There is none better,” Reiner said. He put an arm around her shoulders. “A brothel is a place where all soldiers can go, regardless of rank. And a place where one can buy some privacy. Name another place within a hundred leagues that offers as much.”

  “I understand. Nevertheless…”

  Reiner stopped and turned, a look of amused shock on his face. “You’ve never been in a brothel before.”

  “Of course not,” said Franka, disgusted. “I’m a respectable woman.”

  “You were. Now you’re a soldier. And soldiers and brothels go together like… like swords and sheathes.”

  “Don’t be vulgar.”

  “Beloved, if you removed my vulgarity, there would be precious little left of me.”

  As he and Franka crossed to the bar he saw Pavel, Hals and Giano at a table, deep in conversation. He waved, and they rose and joined them.

  “Here, barman,” Reiner called. “I want a private room for me and my lads.”

  “Certainly, sir,” said the barman. “Would you care for company?”

  “No, no. Just a bottle of wine for me and beer for the rest. As much as they want.”

  “Very good, sir. If you will just follow Gretel.”

  A serving girl led the party down a narrow hall and let them into a cramped room with a round table in the centre and grimy tapestries hiding bare-plank walls through which the wind whistled. Two oil lanterns provided more smoke than light and made their eyes water. But there was a brazier for cooking sausages in the middle of the table that kept the room warm. Giano was still arguing with Pavel and Hals as they sat down.

  “Is ratmen!” he said. “I smell their stink!”

  Pavel sighed. “There ain’t no ratmen, lad.”

  “Something down there,” said Hals. “That’s certain. Plenty of the lads have seen shadows moving where there shouldn’t be none. And the boys what pull graveyard duty say the ground shakes under their feet late at night.”

  “You see!” said Giano. “Is ratmen! We must fight!”

  “Lads, lads,” said Reiner, holding up his hands. “It matters not what it is. And with luck we won’t have to fight anything. With luck we’ll do a quiet month here and be off to Altdorf with enough gold in our kit to win our freedom and be rid of Manfred and his intrigues once and for all.”

  All heads turned his way.

  “What’s this?” asked Hals.

  “Is this why you didn’t want the others?” asked Pavel.

  “Aye,” said Reiner. “I think I’ve found our salvation at last.” He leaned forward eagerly. “Here it is. Gutzmann means to desert to Aulschweig and help Baron Caspar usurp his brother, Prince Leopold, where he will become commander of Caspar’s armies.”

  “Bold dog,” said Hals, laughing. “Won’t that teach Altdorf to leave its bright sparks at loose ends, hey?”

  Pavel nodded. “Thought i
t might be some such.”

  “What concerns us,” said Reiner, “is that he helps to fund Caspar’s army with regular shipments of gold.” He turned to Pavel. “I escorted a shipment of it to Aulschweig yesterday, disguised as ‘mining equipment’. And there will be another shipment of ‘shovels’ next month. Which, with some luck, will be ours.”

  The others stared at him.

  Giano grinned. “This good plan, hey? I like!”

  “Aye,” said Hals. “I like, too!”

  “Free of Manfred’s noose at last,” said Pavel.

  “But can we do it?” asked Franka.

  “Well, it will take some work, that’s certain,” said Reiner. “We can’t just cut and run. We’ll have to finish the job Manfred’s set for us, or he could kill us before we find someone who will take our gold and remove the poison. We’ll have to return to Altdorf and pretend…” He paused. Pavel and Hals’ faces had fallen. “What’s wrong?”

  “We still kill Gutzmann?” asked Pavel slowly.

  Reiner nodded. “Aye. We’ll have to.”

  Hals grimaced unhappily. “He’s a good man, captain.”

  Reiner blinked. “He’s won you over, too? He means to betray the Empire.”

  “Ain’t that what we mean to do?” asked Pavel.

  “We just want to save our own lives. He’s leaving our border unguarded and taking his whole garrison with him.”

  “Yer starting to sound like Manfred,” grunted Hals.

  “None of that.” Reiner sighed. “Listen, I agree. Gutzmann’s better than most. He loves his men, and they love him. But is he worth dying for? For that’s your option. If we don’t kill Gutzmann, Manfred kills us. It’s one or the other.”

  Pavel and Hals continued to hesitate. Even Giano was looking glum.

  Franka was frowning, thinking it over. “But what if the poison is a lie? A ruse to keep us tame. What if he never poisoned us at all, only said he did?”