01 - Honour of the Grave (31 page)

“Those of you who have not yet slain the foe shall soon have the chance to
join their blessed ranks. An even greater enemy—the cursed greenskin—gathers
to make brutal war, as he has done since his kind first walked this earth.

“Does he think us weak? Or is thinking beyond his nature? Such ponderings are
immaterial! We must simply face him on the field of honour, as we always have,
and give no quarter. And face him you soon will.

“Among you there may be some whose hearts girlishly quake at the thought of
battle. Do not be led astray by this shameful, sinful impulse! It is better to die in glory than to live in shame.
As you wait to charge like battering rams into the greenskins’ discordant ranks,
remember that a coward’s shame stains not only his own memory, but the hopes and
reputations of his family, for a dozen generations! Would you vilely spit upon
your mother’s breast? Would you dig up your father’s carcass and play idly with
his bones? No, you would not, and will not! You will stand against the foe, and
prove yourself Averland’s bulwark! You will—”

The banners edging Jurgen’s platform rippled. They flapped. Soon it became
obvious that this was more than just wind playing with the cloth; someone
prowled beneath von Kopf’s stage. Sniggers briefly coursed through the ranks and
the files, to be abruptly squelched when sergeants coughed in warning.

Jurgen stopped mid-sentence, seeing that he no longer possessed the sole
attention of his men. He paced quickly to the lip of his stage, as the bunting
redoubled its flapping.

Pushing it aside, as nimbly as a
dell’Arte
player through a
stage-curtain, came Toby Goatfield. He was followed by Elennath and Henty
Redpot. They had Lukas with them, he was cowering with stooping shoulders. As he
pulled Lukas from the bunting, Elennath swiftly removed a gag from the boy’s
mouth and stuffed it in his belt. Angelika doubted that many of the soldiers had
caught this; Jurgen would certainly have missed it from the platform.

The sergeant at the head of the column nearest to Toby reached for his baton
and came forward; Jurgen signalled for him to pause.

Toby directed a wide grin at his would-be assailant, and then at the
assembled soldiers as a whole. Finally he pivoted to acknowledge Jurgen.

Angelika squinted: distance made it hard to tell whether the dark marks on
Lukas’ face were bruises, or dirt. The boy carried himself listlessly. He hung
his head; his long, greasy locks fell over his face, obscuring it. Angelika
realised that she’d poked her head out past the parapets, and could easily be
seen if anyone happened to look up to the armoury roof. She uncoiled herself and
crouched back down.

“Please pardon our disgraceful interruption,” Elennath cried, his elven accent
ringing. “But my master thought this moment of gathering and celebration would
be most suited to a joyous occasion. By the largesse of my lord, Prince Davio
Maurizzi—”

A rustling of angry murmurs went up among the crowd. Elennath gave them time
to settle. “Prince Davio Maurizzi wishes to make amends for his terrible
misjudgments and misalliances, by providing to you—the great warrior Jurgen
von Kopf…” The elf trailed off, as if he’d momentarily lost the thread of his
rhetoric. “Here is your son, who we have discovered alive and well, a survivor
of an engagement against bandits, and of imprisonment by the forces of Chaos
itself!” He waited for the soldiers to gasp at the mention of Chaos, and they
obliged him. “O joyous event! By fate’s miraculous intervention, the border
princes have a chance to gain your forgiveness!”

Lukas swivelled his head, looking for a place to run. A smiling Toby clamped
a tight, stubby paw on his right arm; Henty did the same on his left. Angelika
saw Toby’s lips move, no doubt muttering some vivid threat into the boy’s ear.

“It is nonsensical,” Franziskus said to her. Realising that he was whispering
for no good reason, he tried to speak in a normal manner. “They know Jurgen wants
him dead, don’t they?”

Toby shoved Lukas up to the edge of the platform. The boy resisted for a
moment, going slack and flopping back. His bobbing head turned to take in the
audience of soldiers, and he changed tack, allowing the halfling to boost him
up. Lukas slapped his arms up on the platform and windmilled his legs, as the
two halfling mercenaries boosted him up.

Jurgen who was standing, fixedly, shook himself to step over and lend his son
a hand.

“I don’t understand,” Franziskus said.

“Look at him,” Angelika said, as Jurgen stepped back from the spindly form of
his lost son, eyeing the men assembled before him. “You can see the calculation
he’s making, can’t you?”—

Franziskus watched as Jurgen faltered. “He’s asking himself if he can dash
the boy’s skull open in front of his men—and has decided that he can’t.”

“Exactly right. You’re becoming a skilled judge of character, after all.”

“Thanks to your former and remorseful foe,” Elennath called, addressing the
crowd, “the future leader of the Black Field Sabres is saved!”

Toby raised a gnarled and jubilant fist. “Three cheers for Jurgen von Kopf!”

The cheers sang out. Soldiers shook their fists as Toby had done, yelping out
a trio of hoorays. These contained more ardour than the cheers before.

“It is an omen of victory!” Elennath proclaimed. “Our lord, Prince Davio,
commends you all to your task, as you ready yourselves to face the greenskin
hordes!”

“Victory!” Toby echoed. The soldiers joined him in thrusting their fists
skyward, stamping feet or clattering sabre hilts against their breastplates. A
growing crowd of civilians, who had gathered on the street, added their own
voices to the cheering. Overcome by enthusiasm, a vendor of griddlecakes
expressed his pleasure by tossing his wares up into the air. The passersby were
only fleetingly perturbed by the shower of hot batter; they returned quickly to
their own giddy shouts and bellows. Among the civilians, a new chorus of
“Victory!” went up, and soon the soldiers themselves had taken it up.

Jurgen had moved to the centre of his platform, and posed in an attitude a
sculptor might choose for a memorial statue. He held his right hand behind his
back, Angelika noted. She recalled the gesture from their interrogation: the
hand would be coiled into a fist, tight with contained fury.

Lukas looked from side to side and covered his loins with his hands, as if he
were naked. He inched to the back of the platform, behind his father.

Gelfrat broke from the officer’s formation to steam toward the mercenaries.
Henty spotted him first, licked his lips, and braced to receive a charge. Jurgen
followed Gelfrat’s progress. He took an affected step up and raised his arms for
quiet. Gelfrat saw this and froze for an instant, then backtracked behind the
platform.

“Indeed!” Jurgen said. He repeated the word several times, until the crowd
quieted itself. “Prince Davio has capitulated himself to us—as we knew he
would!” He paused, to invite further cheers. As the crowd’s roar washed over him, he feigned a smile,
pulling the muscles of his stony face away from his teeth. “As these emissaries
say, it is indeed an omen of victory.” Jurgen faltered, furrowing his brow.

Angelika followed his line of vision: the three mercenaries were now on the
move, backing toward the courtyard gate, between the columns of fighting men.
They were making a slow, sly exit. Toby and Elennath bowed low as they
backtracked; the halfling seemed to sweep an imaginary hat out before him.

Jurgen snapped his gaze forcibly from them. “Yea, even our old enemies
proclaim the inevitability of our triumph!” he resumed.

Toby hooted his approval for Jurgen, rousing the soldiers around him to join
in.

“Brilliantly and brazenly played,” Franziskus said.

Angelika nodded. “If I could bring myself to admire anything about them, it
would be their gall.”

Jurgen called to Gelfrat. The big man heaved himself up on stage. Jurgen
spoke instructions into his ear; Gelfrat took frozen, goggle-eyed Lukas by the
forearm and tugged. Head down, Lukas meekly followed him as he jumped from the
back of the platform. A complement of fellow officers moved from their formation
with dignified speed, hemming the boy in. They led him into the manor.

Angelika gathered up the rope. “That’s our first question answered—we know
where he is. For the moment.” She crossed to the armoury’s far battlement and
looped the rope around one of its merlons, knotting it tight. “I don’t suppose
you have a plan less stupid than mine?”

“What’s yours?”

“We sneak into the manor, find him, and whisk him out without being caught.”

“That is a stupid plan. But I have no better.”

She told Franziskus to climb down first. He tugged on the rope to show that
he was down. She rubbed her hands, grabbed the rope, and began her descent. At
the halfway mark, she saw a man standing behind Franziskus, a friendly arm
draped around his chest. From their respective postures, she could tell he had a
knife to Franziskus’ back. It was Benno. He beckoned her to continue down. She took an instant to consider her
choices, then did as his gesture demanded. She touched down on the dirt floor of
the alleyway, in front of Franziskus.

“I should have been looking,” Franziskus said to her.

“Don’t reproach yourself,” said Benno, wearing a cat’s smile. “I had myself
cleverly hidden.”

“Let me go,” said Franziskus. “We must rescue poor Lukas from your father’s
custody.”

In an almost playful gesture, Benno shoved him forward, out of the range of
his knife. He sheathed his weapon. “Franziskus,” he said, “I couldn’t agree
more.”

Benno entered the small back room and threw a sheet of folded paper down on
an uncomfortably low table, where Angelika and Franziskus were sitting. Angelika
picked it up; it was a broadside, offering a bounty for their capture. The drawn
likenesses were much the same as the posters they’d seen before, but this sheet
was printed on a press, and the reward for their hides had doubled.

“Your father wastes no time,” she said to Benno. She tossed the broadside
into Franziskus’ lap. He unfolded it and stared at his image in mournful
revulsion.

“As you’ve probably gathered, he’s never one to let a slight slip by.” Benno
sat and tucked into the meal spread before them: there were apples,
coarse-skinned pears, round loaves of sour bread with sage; wedges of pale
cheese; fat, peppery sausages, curled in the Kislevian manner, and a pot
overflowing with sauerkraut. A clay jug of sharp cider sat in a ring of
condensation next to a pitcher of lukewarm, yeasty ale.

The three of them sat among high, teetering wooden shelves laden with bolts
of cloth. All the colours of the Empire’s uniforms were represented, but bolts
of yellow and black were the most common by far.

Benno had taken Angelika and Franziskus directly to this hiding place, a few
lanes away. It was the back room of a fabric shop, owned by a friend of his. The
friend had not been introduced by name: he was well into his sixth decade,
enjoyed the blessing of an imperious mane of flowing white hair, and bore
himself with full military rectitude. He had no left arm, so it required no genius of deduction to mark
him as a veteran of the wars. It was he who’d supplied their food, while Benno
had been out gathering his intelligence.

The cloth merchant had also taken their clothes from them. Benno had remarked
that they could be smelled a mile away, which would be a drawback when they went
to get Lukas free. They now sat wrapped in robes of coarse muslin. The robes
were laced securely at the front, sparing Franziskus a crisis of modesty. Their
drying garments hung on a cord suspended over their heads.

“It’s as you suggested,” Benno now said, cutting free a thick disc of sausage
and popping it into his mouth. “They’ve stored him in the same cell we put you.”

“And, naturally,” Angelika said, “they’ll be doubly watchful now.”

“Could be. But my father knows better than anyone what a spineless dishrag
Lukas is, and I can say for certain he’s not expecting you to break the boy out.
I stole a few moments with him, and he reckons you’ve long since fled to the
borderlands. He’ll wait till the war’s over to send bounty hunters after you in
earnest.”

“He’s also not expecting you to suffer a sudden spasm of brotherly love,”
said Angelika.

“Love?” Benno laughed. “I promise you, I’m motivated by my own narrow
interests.”

Though she did not trust him, Angelika felt a pang of new affection for the
Averlander. She liked a man who spoke without hypocrisy. There would be no
falling into his arms, or any other such nonsense, given all that had passed
between them. That didn’t mean she couldn’t briefly enjoy the way the lines of
his face crinkled, or take pleasure in his wolfish way of devouring food.

“I don’t understand,” Franziskus said to Benno, as he carefully chose an
apple.

“What happens to me if my father falls into Davio’s trap?” Benno asked,
rhetorically. “There’s no advantage in being his son if he gets himself
disgraced. Which—” he paused for a vigorous round of chewing, “is exactly what
will happen to him if he disposes of Lukas, as I’m sure he intends to do.”

“Why go to all the risk of helping us free him?” Angelika asked. “Why not
just warn him to leave the boy alone, and be done with it?”

“Warn him?” Benno laughed again. The one-armed shopkeeper was hovering at the
doorway, and chortling knowingly. “Jurgen von Kopf doesn’t listen to my
warnings. Not where the family honour is concerned. Remember, I’m just one
member of his vast society of bastards.”

“But the soldiers on that parade ground seemed to think the sun shines out of
your father’s backside,” Angelika said. “What makes you so sure they won’t
forgive a little murder in the family?”

“My father’s a clever man with tactics and troop deployments, but when it
comes to the feelings of the unwashed, he’s thicker than a fencepost. I, in
contrast, am a common man. Or was, before I learned of my parentage and pressed
for a commission.