Tales of the Old World (36 page)

The Dirty Dog sailed serenely away from the island into the setting sun, and
a new chapter in the legend that is Grunsonn’s Marauders drew to a close. Well,
almost…

On top of the small pyramid, grouped around the noble statue, Hook Black Pugh
and the remaining pirates nervously eyed the throng of angry lizard kind
gathered menacingly below them. To the pirates’ consternation, the leading
lizards were wearing what looked like Norse helmets. At least one of them was
frothing at the mouth and rolling its eyes in its scaly head. A disconcerting
bellowing and hooting reached the ears of the beleaguered pirates, as arrows
clattered about the pirates’ booted feet. “Getting dark.”

“They’re… berserks, ain’ts they?”

“Can’t be—can they?”

“Remember, their arrers is poisoned.”

“Looks like that one’s got some kind of magic.”

“We’re doomed and no mistake.”

“Aaargh! I’m sorry, me lads, looks like me luck’s run its course this time.”

“Hold on, what’s this ’ere statue?” Pugh’s deafening shout of pure
frustration and despair echoed across the clearing.

“I don’t believe it! It’s that accursed barbarian! I knew THEY had to be at
the bottom of this somewhere! Aaaaargh!”

“Two beers, Frau Kolner, and a kiss for Hexensnacht!” He swooped at her, arms
outstretched. She dodged around him, laughing, a tray of tankards held level
with a polished skill of avoiding amorous drunks.

“Sit down, Herr Johansen, and I’ll bring your ale presently.”

“And the kiss?”

“Hexensnacht’s tomorrow night. And no kisses till you finish finding those
poor missing women, and pay off your ale bill.” She swept away towards the bar.
Johansen watched her go, then ran his hand over his short-cropped dark hair,
smoothing it into place, and sat back down next to his companion, Dirk Grenner.

“She’s great, isn’t she?” he said.

“She’s a short, penny-pinching shrew with a half-wit for a brother and a
string of suitors as long as the Great North Road,” Grenner said. “I don’t
understand what you see in her.”

Johansen looked across the plain wood of the inn table with incomprehension
on his face. “She’s a blonde widow who owns a pub,” he said.

“So you say, too often,” Grenner said. “The landlady of the famous Black Goat
Inn. What makes you think she’d go for someone like you?”

“Me? A high-ranking officer in the prestigious Palisades, charged with
protecting the Emperor and his Elector Counts?” Johansen puffed out his chest.
“I’m a fine catch.”

“You’re an overworked, underpaid captain in a small division most people have
never heard of. You’ve got a humourless tyrant for a boss—”

“A sarcastic ex-Watch sergeant for a partner,” Johansen said and reached for
his tankard.

“—you don’t wear a smart uniform most days, and you spend your time watching
Kislevite insurrectionists or Bretonnian spies. Or, Sigmar help us, seconded to
the city Watch, who couldn’t find their arses if a horse bit them.”

“They’re not doing much better with our help,” Johansen said. “Four women
missing in two weeks. It’s not good.”

“And while we were fooling around, Schmidt gets himself killed.”

“His own fault. He knew they suspected he was watching them.”

“Bretonnians,” Grenner said with vehemence. “Sons of bitches. Killing him is
one thing, but stuffing his mouth with his—”

“Here’s to his memory,” Johnsen said. They raised their beer-mugs, drank, and
were still. Grenner broke the moment.

“Still, Hexensnacht tomorrow and Hexenstag the day after. Things should be
quiet. The city’s practically deserted.” He pulled his tankard closer and
inspected it, thinking.

A deep boom echoed from outside. The building shook, sending ripples across
the beer.

“What was that?” Grenner said.

“You tempting fate,” Johansen said. “Gunpowder. A lot of it. About half a
mile.”

“Not magic?”

Johansen shook his head. “No, the echoes were wrong. Come on.” He was on his
feet. Grenner stood up, staggered and leaned on the table. “Are you sure we’re
on duty?” he asked.

“We’re always on duty,” Johansen reminded him.

“I’m too drunk to be on duty,” Grenner protested.

“Dunk your head in the horse-trough,” Johansen said.

They staggered to the door. Outside, flames lit the night sky above the wide
empty space of the Konigplatz. Altdorf, capital of the Empire, lay still and
cold under a blanket of thin snow and stars, the streets lightened by the eerie
light of the two moons, one crescent and the other a day from full. Tomorrow
would be Hexensnacht, witches’ night, the last night of the year.

The Seven Stars Inn was ruined and ablaze. The fire raged against the cold,
its leaping heat forcing back the crowd of gawping citizens. Stirrup-pumps
forced futile jets of water into the inferno and nearby buildings were being
emptied in case the flames spread.

Grenner gazed at the blaze. Almost nothing was left except the ground floor.
Nobody could have escaped this cataclysm, but he couldn’t work out why someone
would blow up a prosperous merchant-inn at one of the few times of the year when
it was almost empty.

He saw Johansen moving through the crowd, circling the building. The man had
studied pyrotechnics when he was in the army; he’d be able to tell where the
charge had been set and how large it was. Grenner’s speciality was less
technical and more dangerous. He was a student of human nature.

“So, Grenner, what’s the situation?” The voice jolted him from his thoughts,
made abrupt by its strong northern accent. Grenner didn’t have to turn to know
General Hoffmann, the leader of the Palisades and the only man whose orders he
respected, had arrived.

“Probably nine dead, sir,” he said. “No survivors found so far, nor
witnesses. No reports of threats or recent trouble.”

“A hundred and fifty pounds of gunpowder in the cellar,” Johansen added as he
joined them. “Blast went straight up, killing everyone inside. Very effective.
Good evening sir, you’re up late.”

“Hard to sleep with so many disturbances,” Hoffmann said, his eyes dark
against the flames.

“Don’t give us that,” said Grenner. “Something’s up or you wouldn’t be here.
Why this inn, and why tonight?”

Hoffmann held his stare for a moment. “You’re on the ball for a man who’s
been drinking all evening, Grenner. Yes, this is no routine tavern-bombing.
Grand Prince Valmir von Raukov, Elector Count of Ostland, is known to share a
room with a female associate here late at night. We’ve warned him it’s a
security risk, but…”

“Was he inside?” Johansen wanted to know.

“He was but he left earlier, luckily for us. Someone just tried to kill a
senior officer of the Empire, and in a very public way. I need to know who and
why, and I need them stopped. Your job.”

Johansen looked mock-aghast, Grenner dismayed. “Can’t you put someone else on
it?” he said.

“There isn’t anybody else. It’s almost Hexenstag. Everyone’s out of the city
or on leave, except the Meer twins who are working incognito and Schmidt, who I
don’t need to remind you is dead. Get to work.”

“We’ll start first thing,” Grenner said.

Hoffmann’s face was in shadow, the raging fire behind him. “Someone’s trying
to kill an Elector, you don’t wait till morning. Start now, and don’t stop till
their bodies are in jail or cold.”

Johansen groaned. “When do we sleep?”

“Perhaps the explosion deafened your ears.” The general’s voice was ice. “You
don’t stop until they’re jailed or dead.”

Chains of people passed buckets of water to watchmen who flung them at the
burning inn. The inferno consumed the water and blazed on, turning the sky above
the city red.

The Konigplatz is the wide market-square separating the University of Altdorf
from the merchant district. By day it is crowded with traders, peddlers,
goodwives looking for a bargain, street-thieves looking for unguarded purses,
pilgrims, soldiers and messengers, gawkers staring at the huge statues of past
emperors that dominate the square with the hundred foot-tall figure of Sigmar,
the founder and patron of the Empire, towering over them.

By night the square is quieter, the market-barrows left stacked and bare at
the side of the cobbles. On cold nights between the midwinter feasts of
Mondstille and Hexenstag, when the river Reik flows through the city slow and
sluggish like thick blood in the veins of old tramps huddled in warehouse doors,
Altdorf’s streets are deserted apart from a few drunken revellers, a few Watch
patrols, those who prefer not to go home or who have no homes, stray dogs, and
rats scurrying in the garbage. Those with more clandestine business suck to less
well-let areas.

“Gunpowder in the cellar,” Grenner said as they headed across the square
towards the Black Goat. “How did it get there?”

“Probably a barrel,” said Johansen. “Who’d notice an extra barrel in a
beer-cellar?”

“The cellarman would. And they’d have to get it down there. First thing, we
check out the Seven Star’s regular brewers, wine-sellers, anyone who might
supply them with casks. Find witnesses. Find out who’s got a grievance against
the prince.”

“A lot of work,” Johansen said, “for just two of us.”

Grenner groaned. “I know. And I’ve got a fitting at my tailor.”

“Oh yes?”

“Couple of shirts and a new short-cloak. Dark blue, Tilean style.”

“Very nice. Big evening?”

Grenner gave him a scathing look. “Hexensnacht. In case you’d forgotten.”

“Oh yes. Let’s hope we’re done by then.” Johansen, distracted, glanced across
the empty square. “Wait, what’s that?” He pointed into the maze of shadows among
the bases of the emperors’ statues.

It was a pile of displaced paving-stones, the bare earth beside them rude and
frosted. Grenner and Johansen regarded them.

“Odd,” Johansen said. “I didn’t see that earlier.”

“Maybe you weren’t looking. Maybe it wasn’t here. We can check on it in the
morning.”

Johansen looked up as if realising where he was for the first time. “Why are
we back here?”

“Because we need to do some planning. And the best place for that is over a
mug of mulled wine, with the chance Frau Kolner’s still around to bring it to
you.”

Johansen grinned. “Let’s get planning.”

It was a long night. For an hour they talked and thought and speculated over
hot wine brought by Frau Kolner’s idiot brother who was less interesting to look
at than the landlady, but who understood instructions and did not sleep. Then
they left the inn again, into the biting cold of the night to bang on the doors
of informants, rousing them to answer questions in exchange for a few silver
coins, a promise of future favours, leniency for relatives or associates in
jail, or a stare that said nothing but threatened much. Grenner did the talking.
Johansen stifled yawns, fingered his sword and blocked the escape routes.

As six bells sounded across the city, the sky still dark, they found
themselves in the merchant district a few streets away from the Konigplatz,
hammering on a door that didn’t respond. Johansen looked at Grenner.

“Probably spending Hexenstag in the country,” he said.

“Wish I was.” Grenner gave the door a kick and stepped away. “Enough for now.
Breakfast at the Goat?”

“You’re on.” They began to walk back to the square, Grenner slapping his
hands to ward off the frost.

“And what has this wasted night taught us?” he said, only partly to his
partner. “That the prince has a lot of enemies. The Bretonnians and Kislevites
hate him because of his trade-treaties with Norsca, his neighbours in the north
hate him because his army drove a greenskin force into their lands last year,
the Chaos-worshippers hate him because the witch-hunters run freely in his
province, and even his own people hate him because he left the church of Ulric
and became a Sigmarite. All of which we already knew. None of them have agents
working in the city, as far as we know, and he’s not annoyed anyone for at least
two months. We have nothing.”

“Perhaps he wasn’t the target after all,” Johansen said.

Grenner looked at him with eyes smarting from the cold. “If he wasn’t then it
stops being our problem.”

“He left the inn. Perhaps he was in on the scheme.” Johansen paused, peering
ahead. “Hang on. They’ve started early.”

In the Konigplatz market-traders were setting out their stalls, but
Johansen’s attention was on the crew of workmen among the emperors’ statues at
the centre of the square. He tapped Grenner on the shoulder, but Grenner was
looking elsewhere.

“You go. Shout if you need help,” he said and walked away. Johansen shrugged,
rubbed tiredness from his eyes and walked across to the crew of masons and
apprentices, working with shovels and picks, digging a trench among the forest
of plinths. One stopped and watched him approach, arms folded, his thin red hair
a dash of colour against his sombre clothes and the dullness of the morning.

“Cold day for working,” Johansen said, raising a hand in greeting. “You the
foreman?”

The man nodded, lips tight and eyes guarded.

“You’re starting early,” Johansen said.

“Aye.” The mason’s northern accent was thick as porridge. “Work’s got to be
done by t’night.”

Johansen nodded, looking at the work crew. “Are all your men members of the
stonemasons’ guild?” he asked. “They don’t like it when—”

“Affiliate members. From Wolfenburg,” the foreman said. “It’s rush work. Base
subsidence. No local masons to do it.”

“You’ve got a guild certificate?”

“Not here.” The foreman turned his head, his eyes suspicious. “Who’s asking?
Are you from the masons? Checking on us?”

“Just a concerned citizen,” Johansen said, and walked across the square to
where Grenner was.