03 - Death's Legacy (30 page)

“That won’t happen,” Gerhard said flatly. “We’ll keep you
alive, you can be sure of that, and sooner or later you’ll tell us where the
witches are hiding.”

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you,” Rudi said, not even
trying to hide the sudden surge of joy he felt at the witch hunter’s words.
Hanna was still safe. With any luck, she and Greta had both left Altdorf days
ago, and were now far beyond the templars’ ability to find them. “I wouldn’t be
so sure you can keep me alive, either.”

“Never make a threat you’re not prepared to carry out,”
Gerhard said, understanding his meaning at once. A thread of contempt entered
his voice. “You’re not the kind to take your own life.”

“Are you sure?” Rudi locked his eyes on the witch hunter’s,
summoning up every iota of loathing and hatred that he could. “What have I got
left to lose? The joy of being buried alive down here, being threatened with
torture? I’d rather die now, and leave you to deal with the daemon. If you
really think you can.”

“In the precincts of the temple of Sigmar? The holiest site
in the Empire?” Gerhard laughed curtly. “Of course we could.”

“Then why haven’t you?” Rudi challenged him. “Just cut my
throat, let it out, and exorcise the damn thing.” He took a tottering step
towards the witch hunter, who was still standing barring the door. “But you
won’t, will you? You’re afraid you won’t be able to handle it once it takes
possession of my body.” He was standing nose to nose with the man in black,
practically spitting in his face with the vehemence of his words. “Come on, I’ll
make it easy for you.”

The knife in his boot had gone, confiscated after a brief
search, along with the one from his belt, but that didn’t matter. Gerhard kept a
dagger concealed up his sleeve, and with one convulsive motion he snatched at
the witch hunter’s shirt, ripping the fabric. The blade flew reflexively into
the witch hunter’s hand, and he took a step back into the corridor outside,
instinctively making room to use the weapon effectively. Rudi followed, pushing
his chest against the point of the blade.

“Go on,” he challenged. “Let it out. I dare you.” For a
moment he feared he might have overplayed his hand, but Gerhard hesitated, and
he knew he’d won his gamble. Turning abruptly, he shouldered past the man in
black, and took a step towards the door leading to the yard outside. Then he
turned, and glanced back. “I want a meal, a wash, and a bed, in that order. Then
we can talk.”

Rather to his surprise, his ultimatum had proven more
successful than he’d expected. The quarters provided for him were a slight
improvement on the dungeon he’d so briefly occupied, but despite their relative
comfort he was still a prisoner, and the sense of enclosure the four walls
created in him was stultifying. There was nothing to do, no one to speak to, and
his body cried out for exercise. Most of his days were filled with reading, or
practising the sword drills that Theo had shown him so long ago, with the aid of
a pewter candlestick to simulate the weight of a weapon.

His only visitor was Gerhard, occasionally accompanied by von
Karien. Monotonous as these conversations were, concerned solely with the
progress that the witch hunters were failing to make in finding a way to rid him
of the daemon, or trying to get him to reveal whatever he could remember that
might help to find Hanna and Greta, he almost looked forward to them. Despite
the veneer of politeness that both he and Gerhard tried hard to maintain, the
simmering hostility between them was never far from the surface.

“Have you eaten yet?” Gerhard asked after a while, having
failed yet again to trick Rudi into disclosing what he didn’t know. Rudi shook
his head.

“I’m not particularly hungry,” he said. Somehow the limitless
supply of gruel and dry brown bread had blunted his appetite.

“I’m heading down to the refectory,” said Gerhard. “If you’d
care to join me.” Rudi hesitated for a moment before replying. No doubt an
ulterior motive lurked behind the apparently casual invitation, Gerhard probably
hoping he might let his guard down away from the room and let something slip
that could be used against him. Then he shrugged.

“Might as well,” he agreed. “I could do with the exercise.”
Not that the few hundred yards they’d have to walk would stretch him at all, but
it was better than nothing. In the three weeks he’d been here he’d only left the
chapter house a handful of times, to pray in the temple, a concession that
Gerhard could hardly refuse, and once to go to the temple library, to select a
few books to while away the hours of his captivity. On every occasion, he’d been
accompanied by a group of armed guards, and after the first visit to the
archives he’d simply asked someone else to collect books on his behalf, finding
their lurking presence among the bookshelves while he tried to make his
selection intolerable. Rising, he reached for the thick woollen cloak that
Gerhard had provided for him. “I assume it’s still cold outside?”

“It’s stopped snowing, if that’s what you mean,” Gerhard
said, rising too.

Catching a glimpse of himself in the glazed window, rendered
reflective by the darkness outside, Rudi was struck by how different he seemed.
Gone were the battered clothes in which he’d fled across the Wasteland and up
the Reik. He was dressed like a templar, all in black, his new cape fastened
with a small silver hammer. He could almost have passed for one of his own
guards, had it not been for the ugly weal of wax in the centre of his forehead,
which continued to induce its faint, throbbing headache without respite.

When Gerhard had first given him the hooded cloak, he’d
hesitated for a moment before putting it on, seized by an unaccountable
nervousness at the sight of the hammer on the clasp. Then he’d donned it
impatiently, aware that the unease was the daemon’s, not his, and that he had
nothing to fear from the holy symbol. Indeed, if anything, it seemed to
strengthen his resistance to the daemonic parasite nestled against his soul.

Now he knew the reason for the panic attacks that had
afflicted him whenever he’d tried to set foot on consecrated ground. He had
ventured into the temple itself several times since his stay began, initially,
simply to prove to himself that he could do it. The first time had taken a
tremendous effort of will, he had to concede. He’d stood outside the great
doors, sweating and shaking for what had felt like several minutes before he’d
been able to force his trembling legs into motion, and he’d left after only the
most cursory inspection of the wonders inside, but he’d felt a surge of triumph
in the victory over the thing within him, and subsequent visits had been a great
deal easier.

He’d become particularly fond of the tiny shrine to the dwarf
gods, in one of the side chapels, although he couldn’t have said why; perhaps
because no one else ever seemed to go in there, and he was able to savour the
solitude he’d grown to love in the woods around his home near Kohlstadt. Even
his ever-present bodyguards would hang back outside, leaving him to his own
company for a while, no doubt feeling that nothing much could happen to him in
there.

“A little snow won’t hurt you,” Rudi said, trying to keep the
conversation light.

They left the chambers that Rudi had been given, and the pair
of templar initiates who had been waiting outside the door fell into step behind
them. After a pace or two, Gerhard turned, and dismissed them with a gesture.

“He should be safe enough with me,” he said, and the two
young men disappeared back into the shadows from whence they’d come. They, or
others like them, had been within arm’s length of Rudi every time he left his
room since he’d arrived, and their absence felt like a small liberation. Gerhard
smiled thinly at Rudi. “Perhaps that will sharpen your appetite,” he said.

“Perhaps it will.” Rudi pulled the hood of his cloak up over
his face, concealing the wax stigma that marked him out as a heretic. He still
didn’t trust the witch hunter’s intentions.

Despite Gerhard’s assurances to the contrary, it seemed that
the snow was beginning to fall again, a few desultory flakes drifting in the
flickering light from the torches outside many of the buildings. A few spots
along their route were illuminated by the clearer, steady light of lamps at the
top of iron columns, like those that Rudi had been told were set to light the
streets around the temple, the Imperial palace, and a few of the wealthier areas
of the city. Passers-by were few, driven into the light and warmth by the onset
of winter, although the snow that had already settled was trampled to slush by
the evidence of their passing.

“I’m sure it’s only a matter of time,” Rudi said, certain
that they wouldn’t be overheard in the maze of narrow passageways between the
buildings. “I won’t die of old age for years yet, and you’re bound to find an
answer before then.”

“I wish I shared your confidence,” Gerhard said, as they
stood aside to make way for a small procession of dignitaries following an icon
of Sigmar into one of the innumerable subsidiary chapels scattered across the
site, clustering around the temple like skiffs around a carrack. This one, Rudi
vaguely remembered, had been endowed by the cordwainers’ guild centuries before
as a mark of gratitude for Sigmar’s protection against the siege of the vampire
counts. As the last of the celebrants vanished inside, sweeping the accumulating
patina of snow from his shoulders, the witch hunter’s voice rose again to a
conversational level. “We have to proceed as if time is of the essence.” He led
the way up a narrow stone staircase, which seemed to lead directly to the
refectory through the Scribes’ Cloister. “Suppose you slipped on a patch of ice
this evening, and broke your neck? Accidents happen.”

“Then I suppose I’m lucky to have so many of your colleagues
looking out for my welfare,” Rudi said sarcastically. He shrugged, brushing the
melting snowflakes from his shoulders as they gained the shelter of the
cloister. The patch of ground inside the main quadrangle was bare of anything,
even footprints, save for the white-shrouded shape of a sundial, denuded of
purpose by the fall of night.

“It’s not a random accident I’m worried about,” Gerhard said.
This was new, he’d never admitted to being apprehensive about anything before.
Perhaps that was why he’d wanted to talk away from the chapter house,
eliminating even the possibility of being overheard. “We have reason to suspect
that our enemies are drawing their plans against us. I’m far less concerned
about the possibility of an accident than I am about a deliberate attempt on
your life, or something even worse.”

“You mean Hanna, I suppose,” Rudi said.

Gerhard nodded. “Her mother, too. No doubt she’s been using
this time to instruct the girl in still darker sorceries. She clearly has some
long-term aim in view, involving you, or the taint of raw Chaos you carry. What
that might be, however…”

Rudi felt his jaw tightening, and kept his voice level with
an effort.

“You know what I think. I think they’re both long gone,
somewhere they’ll be safe from murderous fanatics like you, and as soon as we
get this abomination out of my head, I’ll be gone too.” He looked at Gerhard
challengingly. “Unless you intend to kill me as soon as you safely can, just to
be on the safe side.”

“It has crossed my mind,” Gerhard admitted, his voice still
conversational, “but that’s a problem for another day.” He glanced across at
Rudi, his expression neutral. “After all, there’s no guarantee that you’ll
survive whatever we have to do to destroy the daemon.”

“I see,” Rudi said, masking his anger as best he could. “And
if I do?”

Gerhard shrugged. “That rather depends on how cooperative you
are at the moment.” The refectory was growing nearer, and Rudi found that the
combination of cooking smells and the keenness of the air had sharpened his
appetite.

“I am co-operating,” Rudi said, pushing the heavy wooden door
open. Warm, steamy air and the babble of conversation rolled out to meet them.
“I’ve told you all I know.”

“You’ve told me all you think you know,” Gerhard said,
following him inside and doffing his hat. Rudi pulled the hood of his cloak a
little lower over his forehead, hiding the brand of heresy as best he could.
“You, of all people, must understand what’s at stake if we fail. Perhaps in a
more relaxed environment you might be able to recall some new little details
that can help us.”

So that was it. Gerhard was hoping he’d let his guard down
after a breath of fresh air and a decent meal. Rudi nodded, as if considering it
carefully.

“There are a couple of seats over there,” he said at last,
indicating a gap in the long bench flanking one of the tables that stretched the
length of the hall. Gerhard nodded.

“That should do,” he said evenly.

Discussing their real business during the meal would have
been impossible, surrounded as they were by other ears. Since they had virtually
nothing else in common, they fell back on discussing the books that Rudi had
been reading.

Not unnaturally, the majority of the volumes the temple
library contained had turned out to be theological material of a degree of
abstruseness that was far beyond his understanding, but he’d discovered a shelf
full of travellers’ tales during his brief foray into the labyrinth of
bookshelves, and had spent his days since then learning all that he could of the
ways and peoples of the Empire, and the lands beyond its borders. For some
reason books on Lustria held a particular fascination for him, and he wondered
if that was because of the items he’d seen in the package that Shenk had brought
up the Reik for von Eckstein.

“Possibly,” Gerhard conceded, polishing off the last of his
veal. “It’s a fascinating place, they tell me.”

“It seems to fascinate the Amethyst College,” Rudi said. He’d
already mentioned his encounter with Magister Hollobach in a previous
conversation. Von Eckstein’s letter of introduction was proof that he’d met the
nobleman, and Gerhard had seemed as interested as von Karien in how they’d
become acquainted and the nature of the package that Rudi had defended aboard
the riverboat. Rudi had, however, glossed over Fritz’s presence in Altdorf.
Gerhard had ordered him burned once before, and would be certain to try and
arrest the young bodyguard if he was reminded of his existence.