03 - Death's Legacy

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  “I gave the whole thing over to the Church,” said von Karien. “I didn’t want the estates, or the mansion, or the money. Just thinking about owning anything my cousin had left made my skin crawl. Let it do some good for once, make restitution for the evil that the family had done.” He gestured around them again. “This pest-hole is all that’s left of the family fortune, and I’d have burned it to the ground by now if I didn’t need a roof over my head.” He looked at Rudi appraisingly. “Disappointed?”

  “Not really.” Rudi thought about it, trying to be as honest as he could be. “I came here looking for answers, not money or a title, and from what I’ve seen of Chaos, I wouldn’t want either if they’d been touched by it.” He nodded at his bow and backpack, still lying beside the table. “Besides, I’m a woodsman. It’s all I know, apart from a few months of picking drunks out of the gutter in Marienburg. Whatever your friend has to say about my lineage, that’s all I want to get back to: a hut in the forest where I can be left alone to live my life in peace.”

  “Well said.” Von Karien was looking at him with a strange expression on his face. “Not many people would have felt the same, I can promise you that.” He stood, a little more slowly. “Is there an inn I can find you at tomorrow?” Rudi shook his head.

  “I haven’t found anywhere to stay yet,” he said. “Could you recommend somewhere around here?” Von Karien laughed.

  “Not to anyone I liked.” He turned, picking up a candle from the table. “It doesn’t matter. There are plenty of rooms I don’t use. Some of them have beds in, I think.”

  “Thank you,” Rudi said, still trying to assimilate the events of the evening. Von Karien was strange, it was true, but he seemed willing to at least entertain the possibility that Rudi was indeed his long-lost relative. Perhaps he was as pleased as Rudi had hoped he would be; to find some solace in what appeared to be a solitary and shunned existence. Despite himself, he yawned widely. “That’s very kind of you.”

  “We’ll talk more tomorrow,” von Karien said. He stood aside, and gestured to the doorway. “Help yourself to a candle.” Rudi did so, picking up his pack and weapons with the other hand. As he passed von Karien, a new thought occurred to him.

  “The missing boy,” he said, “Manfred’s son. What was his name?”

  “Rudolph,” von Karien said. He glanced across at von Eckstein’s letter, discarded among the remains of the meal they’d shared. “But I’m sure you can’t be surprised by that. It’s often shortened to Rudi, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Rudi awoke slowly the next morning, a little disorientated by the absence of the faint rocking motion that he’d become used to in his time aboard the Reikmaiden. A thin shaft of sunlight was forcing its way between the warped wooden shutters, leaking inwards to illuminate the room in muted tones of pale grey, and after a moment he remembered where he was: von Karien’s house. Last night’s conversation replayed itself in his mind as he struggled back to full wakefulness, and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

  It seemed he had the answers he’d been so desperate to find at last. Unfortunately, they only appeared to confirm his worst fears. If he truly was Rudolph von Karien, then his legacy was a dark one indeed: the son of two heretics, dabblers in the darkest of arts, he could hardly expect Gerhard to stop his obsessive pursuit of him now. Just the knowledge, which he could no longer deny, that his adopted father had been a member of a Chaos cult back in Kohlstadt had been enough to keep the witch hunter on his trail, at least until their mutual confrontation with Magnus and his disease-riddled minions in the most blighted corner of Marienburg. If Gerhard ever learned the truth about his origins, Rudi was sure that he would redouble his efforts to track him down.

  Pulling on his britches, he took stock of his situation. At least things weren’t quite as bleak as they might be. He’d found shelter, and possibly an ally in Osric von Karien. His father’s cousin was undeniably eccentric, but given his tragic history and the opprobrium that had overtaken the family name, that was hardly surprising. The authorities seemed to think that his probity was beyond doubt, at any rate, and that might be enough to shield him from the witch hunters too, if his strange relative could be persuaded to vouch for him.

  Yawning, he filled the washbowl from the pitcher that von Karien had provided the evening before, and banished his whirling thoughts and the last vestiges of sleep in the welcome shock of cold water.

  His host hadn’t been exaggerating about the house having plenty of extra space, Rudi thought. The room he’d been given was evidently unused, at least in the normal course of events. Indeed, it was quite obvious even to a cursory glance that no one had set foot in it for months, if not years. A thick layer of dust covered everything, and he could clearly see his own footprints on the worn wooden floorboards.

  The bed had been comfortable enough, though. The mattress smelled faintly damp and musty, it was true, and the straw within it had coagulated into hard lumps in several places, but to someone used to sleeping outdoors that had hardly been a problem. Bundled up in his travelling blanket, his head pillowed on his rucksack as usual, Rudi had slept far more soundly than he’d expected to. Up on the second floor the ever-present clamour of the city streets was muted to some extent, which had probably helped as well.

  Buckling his sword belt on, Rudi made his way to the door. He hesitated at the threshold, glancing back at his bow and his pack, and then shrugged. They’d be safe enough, and he didn’t see any reason to take them with him.

  The corridor outside was shrouded in darkness, as it had been the night before when von Karien had shown him up to his room and bidden him goodnight, but enough light penetrated to reveal a little more of his surroundings. Several doors, all firmly closed, receded into the distance, the dust outside them undisturbed, except for the one immediately opposite his. Here the ubiquitous grey blanket was channelled with a thin, clear path, leading directly to it from the landing. Rudi didn’t need to call his tracking skills into play to infer that this was von Karien’s bedroom, chosen, he suspected, simply because it was the nearest one to the stairway. Unsure whether his host had risen yet he paused, just long enough to knock hesitantly on the thick wooden panel.

  There was no reply, and he was just about to move on when something caught his eye. A single hair, stretched across the latch, practically invisible in the all-pervading gloom. Had it not been for his tracker’s instincts, which had been trained to register such minute incongruities as a matter of course, he would never have noticed it.

  Shrugging, he turned away. Evidently, Osric von Karien wasn’t quite ready to give him the benefit of the doubt yet after all. Well, he could hardly blame the man for that.

  The landing was just as small as he remembered from the previous night, although the tenuous daylight seeping into it did reveal one more detail that he’d overlooked on his way to bed. What he’d taken for a deep patch of shadow the evening before turned out to be a narrow flight of stairs, disappearing upwards towards the roof space. To his complete lack of surprise, though, no one seemed to have used it in a very long time.

  “The servants’ quarters,” von Karien said, appearing from the floor below, and immediately noticing the direction of his gaze. “Currently unoccupied, of course.”

  “Why ‘of course’?” Rudi asked.

  Von Karien shrugged. “Would you want to work for a man with my reputation and family name? Even around here there are precious few that desperate.” He turned, and began to descend the stairs again. “I just came to see if you were awake. There’s breakfast downstairs if you can stomach it.” Suddenly aware that he was hungry, Rudi followed.

  “It does seem a little odd, though,” he said, as they passed through the first floor landing. A corridor led off the stairwell, just as it did upstairs, although here it evidently provided access to the house’s suite of living rooms. To Rudi’s complete lack of surprise the carpet of dust was almost undisturbed here too, although a few blurred footprints
showed that von Karien was evidently in the habit of visiting one of them from time to time. “The Graf von Karien doing his own cooking and laundry, just like anyone else.”

  “Osric,” von Karien said. “If you must call me something, call me that. I renounced the title when I gave up the estates, and I prefer not to use the family name if I can avoid it.” His voice mellowed a little. “Even if your claim is substantiated, you might do better to stick with ‘Walder’. I would in your position.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Rudi said, following him down the final flight of stairs and into the kitchen. A pot of porridge was bubbling on the stove, and he sat gratefully at the table while von Karien ladled most of the contents into a couple of crude earthenware bowls and dropped them on the wooden surface between them. It was thick and lumpy. The nobleman was evidently as accomplished a maker of porridge as he was of stew. He sat down opposite Rudi, and spooned up a glutinous mouthful.

  “Besides, I could hardly drag a valet around with me in the Chaos Wastes, could I? I had to fend for myself then, and I don’t see any reason to break the habit now. Too hot for you?”

  “No, it’s fine.” Rudi took a cautious mouthful, and decided that it was no worse than he’d expected. He continued eating, grateful that at least it was warm and filling. “So what do we do now? Go and look for this friend of yours?”

  Von Karien nodded.

  “I can leave word at his house that I need to talk to him, and if we’re lucky, he might be at the temple today already.”

  “The temple?” Rudi asked, trying to ignore a formless sense of apprehension at the words.

  “All the records we’ll need to consult are there,” said von Karien. “They were removed from the estate when I handed everything over to the Church, and deposited in the archives.”

  “Of course,” Rudi said, through a sticky mass of porridge. He cleared his throat. “So what did they do with the place, anyway?” He had only the vaguest idea of what the ancestral estate had been like in any case, imagining something like von Eckstein’s home, although perhaps a little more rural. “Turn it into a temple?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” von Karien said. He spooned up another mouthful of porridge. “The house and grounds are a few miles outside the city, near the hamlet of Hammerhof. It used to be called Karien, of course, but none of the peasants liked living in a place tainted with the name of a heretic, and petitioned the Church for a more pious-sounding alternative when they took over as lords of the manor. You can hardly blame them for that.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Rudi agreed. Von Karien dropped his spoon back into his bowl, and pushed it away.

  “Anyhow, the house became a seminary.” Clearly noticing the expression of puzzlement on Rudi’s face, he elaborated a little. “Somewhere, initiates learn to become priests. Close enough to the city for the temple to keep an eye on them, far enough away for them to concentrate on their devotions without getting distracted.”

  “I see.” Rudi nodded, giving up on the rest of the porridge, which was beginning to set hard inside his stomach by the feel of it. He stood, suffused with a sudden rush of nervous energy. “Do you think the temple will be open yet?”

  “It’s always open,” von Karien said, with a trace of amusement. He stood, in a rather more leisurely manner. “I suppose if you’ve had enough to eat we might as well go.”

  As they stepped out into the narrow street, Rudi was struck once again by the incessant noise and stench of the city. Inside the house he’d been insulated from the worst of it, but as von Karien slammed and locked the heavy door behind them, sound and odour alike rolled over him like a wave. The smell, at least, seemed a little more tolerable, even heady. As he inhaled it, he felt slightly giddy, as if he’d drunk a little too much alcohol, the sickly sweet stench of putrescence almost intoxicating. After a moment he rallied, putting the moment of dizziness down to the excitement of finally learning the truth about his identity. The noise was another matter entirely, a never-ending cacophony of raised voices echoing in the narrow gaps between buildings. Noticing his expression, von Karien smiled sardonically.

  “You get used to it,” he said.

  “If you say so,” Rudi replied, following the nobleman into the maelstrom of hurrying bodies. At first he was worried about losing his host in the ever-present throng, but von Karien’s black cloak and hat stood out clearly among the crowd, and he was able to keep up with him easily. After a while he noticed that the swarm of people, although as thick as ever, seemed a little more permeable. Not only was he able to remain close to his companion, he was being jostled noticeably less often than he had been the previous day.

  Once he realised this, the reason became immediately apparent. Everyone who noticed their approach did their best to get out of the way, looking at them as they did so with barely disguised hostility, if they bothered to try hiding their feelings at all. Some passers-by averted their gaze, as if even to look at them would bring down disaster, while others stared, almost mesmerised, like rabbits in front of a fox.

  “There are some advantages to being a pariah,” von Karien said, reading Rudi’s expression. “I get where I’m going without hindrance, and no one’s tried to pick my pocket in months.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Rudi dodged around one of the ubiquitous halfling pie-sellers, alert to the dangers of an apparently random collision after his encounter with Peasemold and Ned in the Koenigsplatz the previous day, but this one appeared to be intent on nothing more nefarious than vending his wares to an unsuspecting populace. “Is this really the best way to the temple?” They’d only been walking for a handful of minutes, and already he was completely disorientated.

  “More or less,” said von Karien. “We need to see if Luther’s at home first?”

  “Of course,” Rudi said. The part of the city they’d entered seemed a little more salubrious than the quarter where von Karien lived, but the locals seemed just as eager to stay out of their way. He began to see a few more non-humans among them, halflings for the most part, but dwarfs and elves too. He even caught sight of the deceptively bloated-seeming bulk of an ogre mercenary, wading through the crowds like a sailor breasting the waves, a light snack of what looked like half a pig in his hand. “Are we somewhere near the docks?”

  “Good guess,” von Karien confirmed. “Other side of the Talabec, though. This is where most of the burghers who do business there live: shipping agents, cargo brokers, second-rate lawyers, that kind of thing. Pretty much everyone around here is either going up, or going down. Not many stay in the neighbourhood for long.”

  “What about your friend?” Rudi asked.

  “He’s an exception,” von Karien said shortly, leading the way onto a bridge, which was only distinguishable from the street leading up to it by a short length of balustrade between two of the buildings lining its edges. From the width and height of the piers, Rudi thought it must span the Reik itself, a guess confirmed by a passing glance over the low wall as he passed it. Shimmering water stretched away into the distance, crowded with boats of all kinds, and for a moment he felt a twinge of nostalgia for Marienburg.

  Momentarily distracted by the sight, he failed to realise that von Karien had stopped outside the door of one of the houses on the southern span. By the time he’d noticed, and retraced his steps to rejoin him, the nobleman was already engrossed in conversation with a servant standing just inside the threshold.

  “Very well.” Von Karien sounded resigned, and not particularly surprised. “Perhaps you could ask him to join us at the temple archives as soon as he returns?”

  “Of course, sir.” The servant nodded deferentially, although Rudi couldn’t quite shake the feeling that such formal politeness was something of a charade. The man was stocky and muscular, with a faint tracery of scars across his face, and held himself like a fighter. His clothing was sober enough, though, and he had a small silver comet of Sigmar on a chain around his neck, similar to the one adorning the clasp of von Karien’s
cloak.

  Rudi had come across plenty like him during his career as a watchman, and suspected that his true job was closer to bodyguard than domestic servant. It made sense, he supposed, a scholar was likely to have valuable books and artefacts in his home, and knowing that someone like this was taking care of the premises in his absence would no doubt ease his mind a great deal. Becoming aware of Rudi’s scrutiny, the man closed the door with a final disdainful glance in his direction.

  “We’re in luck,” von Karien said, turning away and beginning to march southwards again. “I wasn’t sure he was back in Altdorf yet.” Rudi lengthened his stride to catch up.

  “Where’s he been?” he asked, more to make conversation than because he cared particularly.

  “Sigmar alone knows,” von Karien said dryly, echoing Rudi’s words of the previous evening. “He comes and goes, whenever he hears about something somewhere that takes his interest. I suppose that’s why he likes living near the docks.”

  Rudi was forming a clearer picture of the man they were going to see. An itinerant scholar, willing to pursue his researches wherever they led; no wonder he needed a bodyguard.

  Their first sight of the temple of Sigmar was so sudden, and so awe-inspiring, that Rudi stopped dead in his tracks, and simply stared. Only after two passing stonemasons, an obstreperous dwarf, and an apologetic young man in the robes of an initiate had bumped into him did he manage to start his legs moving again. It was only by sticking close to von Karien, whose aura of social exclusion seemed undiminished even this far from his home, was he able to avoid further collisions. Despite its vast size, the narrow streets and looming buildings had hidden the temple from view until they were almost on top of it.

  The main building seemed to soar upwards ahead of them as if about to take flight, its stonework spotted with bird droppings, but still managing to look as if it was somehow ethereal, great buttresses taking the enormous weight of its bulk with unobtrusive elegance. Noticing his young companion’s awe-struck expression, von Karien smiled with more warmth than Rudi had seen him display at any time since their initial meeting.