A murder in Marienburg w-1

by David Bishop

  Otto stayed where he was atop the brickwork, using the height advantage it gave him and the length of his wooden staff to deal with the enemy from a safe distance. He smacked his staff soundly against the third man’s head several times, the skull cracking like a rotten egg. The priest put the second man out of his misery with a similar succession of forcible blows. Lastly, he drove the end of his staff down on the neck of the man without a nose, keeping the bloody face below the surface of the sewage until the unfortunate soul stopped struggling. Only then did Otto lower himself down on to the tunnel floor. He was moving to assist Kurt, until his attention was taken by a whimper of fear from nearby.

  Kurt had seen Belladonna crumple in the corner and responded by driving his sword into her attacker’s back. The blade buried itself to the hilt but still the man-mountain kept lashing out at Belladonna. Kurt twisted the sword inside the wound and that got the man’s attention. He swung round and swatted Kurt aside, as a fishmonger would swat flies from the day’s catch. The captain smashed into a brick wall and sank into sewage, gasping for breath. He watched in horror as the attacker turned back to Belladonna, ready to deliver the killing blow. “No!”

  Her eyes met his for a moment and she smiled, before pulling the crossbow up out of the murky water and firing a fresh bolt directly between her attacker’s eyes. The end of the metal shaft emerged from his head with a sickening splutch and he toppled over backwards, collapsing atop the bodies of his fallen colleagues. Belladonna got back on her feet and stumbled over to Kurt, helping him upright too. “What happened to Faulheit and Otto?” she asked.

  “Faulheit fled when the fighting started,” Kurt replied, “but I didn’t see what happened to Otto.”

  “I heard a noise,” the priest replied as he emerged from a tunnel, dragging a bedraggled creature behind him, “and found this cowering in the shadows. Says his name is Deschamp.”

  “Didier Deschamp?” Kurt hissed.

  “Depends who’s asking,” the small, sewage-soaked captive replied.

  Belladonna handed the crossbow to her captain. Kurt held up the stock to reveal the name burned into the wood. “The same man who left his crossbow here last night after killing one of my Black Caps?”

  “It was self-defence,” Didier suggested, trying to smile ingratiatingly at them.

  “I believe your exact words were ‘That’s where I slaughtered that blundering fool of a Black Cap’, if I heard you correctly a few minutes ago,” Otto observed.

  The captive winced. “I was… bragging. That’s it, I was bragging to these thugs.” He looked down at the pile of dead men slumped across the floor. “Honestly, I think they brought me down here to murder me.”

  “Shame we interrupted them,” Belladonna replied.

  “I can explain all of this,” Didier offered. “Honestly, I can.”

  Kurt reclaimed his sword from the nearest body and held it under Didier’s chinless face, so the blade dug into the killer’s jaundiced skin. “Start talking, Deschamp-and I suggest you make it good.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jan marched to the station with two surly youths from Stoessel in his clutches, one clamped under each arm. They had been selling what was claimed to be an aphrodisiac in tiny clay bottles, saying it could turn the most flaccid of men into raging beasts of the bedroom. The pair were turning a healthy profit from housewives hungry for more action, until the sergeant intervened. When the gathered women protested, he made both youths drink several bottles of their merchandise. Unsurprisingly, neither was transformed into passion-crazed beasts by the apparent overdose. “What’s in these?” Jan had asked loudly, making sure everybody watching the spectacle could hear.

  “Beetroot juice,” one of the sellers admitted in a whisper.

  “Louder, so they can all hear you,” the sergeant prompted, twisting the youth’s ear violently.

  “For the love of Shallya, it’s beetroot juice! We’re selling beetroot juice!”

  A groan of disappointment went round the women, who shook their heads and wandered away, clucking to themselves about the youth of today and what a disgrace the boys were to their families. Jan had crushed all the bottles underfoot before marching the two culprits back to Three Penny Bridge. “I think your parents will have something to say about your little endeavour,” he promised.

  “I doubt it,” one of the youths replied. “My mama swears that beetroot juice as an aphrodisiac.”

  “Be that as it may, I doubt any apothecary would approve of your methods. Besides, selling goods under false pretences is a serious crime in a merchant city,” Jan said. But his determination to punish them faded when he saw what was happening on the bridge. Raufbold and Bescheiden were arguing with Scheusal in front of the station, while Narbig watched from the entrance. Holismus sat on the cobbles, gripping a bottle in trembling hands. Gerta stood next to him, a sack bulging with provisions by her feet and a stack of cooking pots beside it. “What in Manann’s name is going on here?” the sergeant demanded.

  “We’re leaving!” Bescheiden shouted at him. “We’re not staying in that building for another minute. Everybody said it was cursed and they were right!”

  “Lower your voice,” Jan warned, as he got closer.

  “Why should I? We don’t have to stay here and wait to be slaughtered like Verletzung and Mutig!”

  By now the sergeant was within spitting distance of the weasel-faced watchman. Jan let go of his two captives and they fled. Narbig moved to stop them, but Jan shook his head. “Don’t bother,” the sergeant snapped, before turning his attention to the other Black Caps. “Is this how all of you feel? Is little Willy here speaking for everyone here, or just himself?”

  “I wish people would stop calling me little Willy,” Bescheiden muttered.

  “You’ve had your say,” Jan snarled. “Open that festering hole of a mouth once more and I’ll shove my fist so far down your throat it’ll tickle your intestines -got it?” Bescheiden nodded, but did nothing to hide his unhappiness with the situation. The sergeant looked round the other men’s faces. “Well, is this how you feel? Are you so scared of your own shadows that you’re going to run away, like timid little children?”

  Raufbold stepped forward, as always unafraid to offer his opinion. “We didn’t come here to get our throats slit or our limbs lopped off because of some vendetta between Schnell and Abram Cobbius.”

  “That’s Captain Schnell to you. And who said Cobbius was responsible for Verletzung’s murder?”

  “Stands to reason, doesn’t it?” Raufbold maintained. “He butchered Mutig, even carved his initials on the body. Verletzung’s corpse gets delivered to the front door of our station, with a note promising to see the rest of us dead. Well, I know where I’m not wanted and that’s Suiddock. This district got along fine without the Black Caps before we arrived and it’ll do fine without us once we’ve gone.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Jan vowed. “What kind of men are you, running away the moment somebody threatens you? Since when do the Black Caps give in to intimidation and idle threats?”

  “You call what happened to Hans-Michael and Helmut idle threats?” Raufbold sneered.

  “No, I call it what it is-murder. And I’m staying here until I see those responsible brought to justice. That’s the difference between you and me, Gorgeous Jorg-I don’t need to swallow a fistful of crimson shade to find my courage. Yes, that’s right, the captain and I know all about your sordid little secret. He wanted to give you a fresh start-didn’t take you long to make a nonsense of that, did it?”

  Raufbold sniffed. “I haven’t touched the stuff since-”

  “Liar!” Jan snarled. He grabbed Raufbold by the jaw and squeezed, forcing the Black Cap’s mouth open. Inside the gums were stained a virulent crimson, the mark of anyone who used the drug. “How long is it since you had a dose? A day? A few hours?” The sergeant pushed Raufbold away. “You disgust me!”

  “What about my brother?” Holismus slurred from the cobbles
. “He was cursed by this place. He got infected by Chaos here and now I’m here, he’s come back to haunt me.”

  “We’ve all got our own daemons to face,” Jan replied, “our own dirty little secrets, our own guilty burdens. None of us are perfect, far from it. But that doesn’t mean we give in to our fears, nor should we simply surrender this station to the likes of Abram Cobbius and Adalbert Henschmann. I don’t doubt you saw your brother, Lothar. What happened to Joost was a tragedy-but that doesn’t mean it’ll happen to you too. We have to make a stand against Chaos, against the likes of Cobbius and Casanova. Their kind have ruled this district and too much of this city for too damned long!” “I worked on the docks,” Didier said, all too aware of the loaded crossbow pointed at his chest. The two Black Caps and the creepy priest of Morr had him pinned in a corner of the sewer junction, demanding answers. When somebody’s pointing a crossbow at your heart, you tell them whatever they want to hear, Didier reasoned. In this case, it also happened to be the truth, but that was more coincidence than choice on his part. “But you can’t work on the docks unless you join the guild, so I joined. Don’t know what I did to deserve it, but Cobbius decided I might make a useful foot soldier for his activities. He always needs fresh recruits and if you’ve got half a brain, that’s a bonus.”

  “Cobbius? You mean Lea-Jan Cobbius?” the other Black Cap demanded.

  Didier shook his head. “Not him, his cousin. Lea-Jan Cobbius always keeps his hands clean. But Abram, he couldn’t care less who knows what he does. I saw him drown a halfling fishmonger not long ago, just to take over his business without paying for it.” Didier noticed his captors exchanging a look that gave him hope. They must already know about what happened to the halfling, but now he was providing them with confirmation from an eyewitness. His value was rising, and faster than the tide of sewage round their ankles. “Afterwards Abram couldn’t stop bragging about what he’d done and how he’d done it, as if drowning a defenceless halfling made him the big man in Suiddock.”

  The priest was frowning, apparently deep in thought. “Why would a thug like Cobbius want to take control of a fishmonger’s shop?”

  Didier smirked. “It’s a front for his drug smuggling business, isn’t it? Abram’s got a fleet of fishing boats that go out to sea and meet up with smugglers coming back from other countries. They pack the drugs inside the fish and sell them from the market-right next door to your station.”

  “That’s why the new manager put his prices up so high,” the woman said, realisation in her voice. “Cobbius isn’t selling the fish, he’s selling the drugs. The fish is merely the packaging to hide his product.”

  “That’s right. Abram’s not the brightest, but he’s got plenty of animal cunning.”

  “Torturing and murdering one of my watchmen, that wasn’t so cunning. Carving his initials into the dying man’s chest-that was an animal marking its territory,” the captain spat.

  Didier shrugged and smiled. “Like I said, he’s not the brightest member of the Cobbius family.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  The prisoner looked down at his feet so the three captors couldn’t see his expression. “No, I don’t. And neither did Lea-Jan. Once he heard what his cousin had been doing, he had him taken off the street. Abram’s been propping up the members’ bar at the guild headquarters ever since, where Lea-Jan’s men can keep an eye on him. They know you won’t dare take him from the building. But Abram is getting bored. Eventually he’ll find a way to sneak out, go in search of some entertainment. That’s your chance to get him.”

  “What else?” the captain demanded.

  “What do you mean?” Didier asked, stalling for time until he could discover what his captors wanted to know from him.

  “Why murder Verletzung?”

  “He was following me. I thought he was something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Didier shook his head. “I’m not saying any more about that, not while I’m down here. You get me topside and I might say, but I’m not talking about them while I’m in these tunnels.” He folded his arms, making himself look as resolute as possible to convince them. The watch captain glared at him, eyes filled with naked hatred, before motioning for the priest to keep watch over Didier. The two Black Caps retired to the other side of the sewer junction, whispering to each other in voices so low Didier could not hear their words. Eventually the pair returned, having obviously come to some sort of agreement.

  “What will it take to get you to talk?” the captain asked.

  “I told you-get me topside and we’ll see.”

  “Not about whatever’s got you so frightened-I mean talk about Abram Cobbius.”

  Didier shrugged. “What’s on offer?”

  “We don’t have you publicly executed for murdering Verletzung.”

  “That’s outrageous!” the captive protested. “You can’t prove I murdered anyone!”

  “We all heard you confess,” the woman replied.

  “Besides, I have the dead man’s body,” the priest hissed. “You know what they say about followers of Morr, don’t you? We can make the murdered talk again. Imagine yourself standing on Three Penny Bridge, watched by every citizen in Suiddock, as your victim rises from the dead to name you as his killer. The people would tear you apart. I doubt the watch could save you from such a mob.”

  “My men would probably help the mob,” the captain smiled.

  “That’s not fair,” Didier whined, feeling himself close to tears of desperation.

  “Was it fair when you murdered my recruit?”

  “I told you, I didn’t know he was a Black Cap. I thought he was one of those…” The captive broke down, fear getting the better of his emotions. “Please, you’ve got to get me out of here. I can’t take it down in these sewers any longer. Please!”

  “Perhaps we should leave him down here for a day or two,” the woman suggested to her captain. “Lash him to these corpses, see how he likes spending time with his dead comrades.”

  “By Manann, anything but that! I’ll say whatever you want!”

  “You’ll bear witness against Abram Cobbius?”

  “Yes, anything! Anything! I’ll even give you his boss, if you want!” Didier begged, his last shred of self-respect torn away by terror. “I’ll give you Adalbert Henschmann himself-just get me out of here!”

  “Abram Cobbius is one of Henschmann’s lieutenants?” the captain asked.

  “Yes, of course he is. He’s-” The captive stopped, realising too late his mistake.

  The captain smiled broadly. “Thank you, Deschamp. You’ve just made my day.”

  Didier felt his legs gave way and he slid down the wall into the sewage, letting it swirl around him. “You make me repeat that in public and I’m a dead man,” he whispered.

  “You say that as if it should mean something to us,” the female Black Cap replied. “It doesn’t.”

  Didier trembled, his hands falling into the foul brown liquid. “You don’t understand. Henschmann won’t have me killed. He’ll have me tortured by the guards on Rijker’s. When my spirit is utterly crushed, he might bother to have me murdered. But I’ll spend every moment until that happens, knowing it’s coming dreading every day, every hour, every minute. I can’t cope with that,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. His fingers brushed across something sharp and metallic in the sewage-a blade! Someone must have dropped a dagger here earlier, and now he had it. Didier closed his fingers around the hilt, a last vestige of hope returning to him. The captive stood up again, holding the weapon he’d found against his own neck. “Now I don’t have to!”

  The priest raised an eyebrow at him. “You intend to kill yourself?”

  “What do you think?” Didier screamed, willing himself to plunge the dagger into his own throat.

  “I recommend you slice up and down, rather than going from side to side. You’ll find the windpipe surprisingly resistant to that dull blade. But puncture one hole in the blue vein
that runs vertically down beside it and you’ll bleed to death within moments. Your decision, of course.”

  “What kind of ghoul are you, telling a man how best to kill myself?” Didier sobbed, his hand shaking as it tried to keep the dagger steady.

  “I live with death, I walk in its shadow,” the priest replied. “I’ve seen men die with courage on their faces and others soil themselves as the darkness claimed them. I’m merely giving you the benefit of my experience. But I doubt you have the courage to kill yourself, Deschamp.”

  “You’re playing a dangerous game,” the captain hissed out the side of his mouth.

  “I’m not afraid to die!” Didier howled.

  “Perhaps not, but you’re too weak to commit suicide,” the priest observed. “Surrender the knife.”

  The captive pulled back the blade, as if about to plunge it into his neck, but his will deserted him. The weapon tumbled from his grasp and plopped back into the sewage. Didier wept for his lost courage, utterly ashamed. He watched as his captors relaxed, the female Black Cap lowering the crossbow slightly.

  “What now?” she asked her captain.

  “Take Deschamp back to the station. Don’t put him in the cells on the ground floor, shackle him to the desk in my office and lock the door so nobody can get at him. You can tell Sergeant Woxholt what Deschamp told us, but nobody else. For all we know Henschmann has an informant planted among the Black Caps. If he does, they’ll report Deschamp’s capture and then our problems really start. Once you’ve got the prisoner secured, tell the sergeant to have a Black Cap keeping watch over the guild headquarters until I return, but not to make a move on Cobbius until I get back.”