The Enemy Within (2 page)

“Fortunately,” Dieter continued, again in a tone of bitter
irony, “this time the baron did take action. He sent for witch hunters.”

“What did they do?”

He snorted. “What didn’t they do? They said the fief must be
cleansed at any cost. So they burned the fields and orchards. Slaughtered the
livestock and any man, woman or child they suspected of changing under the
influence of the contamination. They killed poor Wolfgang just because of his
skin rash, even though some of us tried to tell them he’d suffered from it long
before the beastmen ever came.”

“Everyone says witch hunters can be cruel.”

“Then everyone is right. They finished the goat-men’s work and
destroyed the village. We all had to leave, because, with the crops burned and
the animals killed, we would have starved if we stayed.”

He sneered. “But one good thing did happen. I got to see our
proud lord beg. He depended on our crops and rents for his own living, so he
begged the witch hunters not to be so severe, and then he pleaded with us to
stay. We laughed in his cowardly face.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jarla said. “But you’re starting a new life
now, and I hope it will be a good one.”

The host banged something down on the bar. Dieter glanced
around to see the man staring in his and Jarla’s direction.

Though he couldn’t be sure, he thought the barmaid coloured
beneath her mask of paint. “We’ve been talking for a while,” she said. “I need
to go back to work. I mean, unless…”

“You’re very pretty,” Dieter said, “but not tonight. Maybe
after I find work, and have my wages in my pocket.”

She patted his hand and stood up.

Unwilling to deplete his meagre funds too quickly, Dieter
nursed his ale until the crowd started to thin out, then took his leave.

He had no idea whether he’d accomplished anything at all,
and, weary, his nerves frayed, felt a crazy urge to shout the fact to whoever
might be listening in the dark.

Look at me! I’m terrible at this! You need to find somebody
else!

But he didn’t, because it would do no good. Instead, he
looked upwards and whispered another spell.

Certain stars brightened and others dimmed. Some changed
colour. The transformation was subtler than when they’d flared and faded in
succession to guide his steps, and this time it was spread across the length and
breadth of the sky. Still, after peering for a time, he picked out the message
written there for those with eyes to see.

According to the divination, he had made progress towards his
goal. And towards danger and ruin as well.

Under the circumstances, it was as favourable an augury as he
could have expected. Feeling encouraged in a bleak sort of way, he trudged
onwards to find a place to sleep.

Dieter picked up his tankard, and his hand throbbed. The
discomfort must have shown in his face, because Jarla asked, “Are you all
right?”

“Fine,” he said, though that was overstating it a little. As
she’d predicted, he’d found employment, but it was a strenuous, low-paying job
assisting a rat catcher. He had to wade through reeking sewers and crawl into
other cramped, filthy spaces. He’d imagined himself fit—he still possessed the
same lean frame he’d had as a youth, and, at home, had taken a walk every day—but even so, his new duties had bruised his knees, scraped his palms and planted
aches in his lower back. And this afternoon, when he was picking up the
carcasses of poisoned rodents, he’d discovered one was still alive when it bit
him. His new employer had laughed until he choked.

But at least he could afford bread, and his allotted quarter
of a vermin-infested bed in a doss house. Most importantly, he could afford to
keep returning here to drink and talk with Jarla.

For, unlikely as it seemed, she did appear to be the key. All
his divinations suggested as much in their ominous and uncertain way, and in
addition, she was a little too willing to spend time with him, considering that
he had yet to pay her to lift her skirts. His sorrowful, rancorous tale had
snagged her interest, and now he had the feeling she was trying to determine
just how deep his bitterness ran.

Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to be in any hurry about it,
and he was running out of patience, unwilling to go on living this wretched
existence until some passing member of the watch happened to recognise him and
take him into custody. It was time to push.

“You don’t seem fine,” Jarla said. “You’ve begun to make your
way—”

He snorted. “Is that what you call it?”

“—in Altdorf, but you’re still unhappy.”

“You don’t get over losing your family and home all at once.
Maybe you never do.”

She sighed. “I hope for your sake that isn’t true.”

“You know, it isn’t just the sadness of the thing. It’s the
unfairness and stupidity.”

“What do you mean?”

He lowered his voice. “What’s the difference whether a sheep
has four legs or five, so long as the wool will make a proper thread? Where’s
the sense in destroying grain just because the colour’s a little off? Why not
grind some and try it? The loaf might taste just the same. For all anyone knows,
it might taste better.”

She glanced surreptitiously about the taproom, trying to make
sure no one was eavesdropping. “Corruption will spread and destroy everything if
allowed to fester. That’s what everyone says.”

“‘Everyone’ meaning the lords and priests. Did you ever stop
to think that it serves their interests to keep us terrified of mutants and
daemons and such? It prevents us from noticing how our masters abuse us.”

“Some would say that’s simply the way of the world.”

“Then maybe the world needs to change. Is it really too much
to ask that we have barons who fight for the folk under their protection, and
witch finders who don’t punish the innocent along with the guilty? By the
hammer, that infant with the extra face was horrible to look at, but what harm
had it ever done to anyone? It didn’t ask to be born deformed.”

“I confess,” Jarla said, “I’ve had such thoughts. I suppose
many people have. Everyone who’s lost a child or friend or brother to the pyre.”

Dieter leaned forwards so he could speak even more softly.
His back gave him a twinge. “You hear about people who do more than think. They
work to pull the bastards down.”

She hesitated. “Yet people say it’s impossible to oppose the
Empire without serving Chaos, wittingly or not, for the one is our bulwark
against the other.”

“But what is Chaos, anyway? Do we even know? Folk used to say
it’s magic, but the Emperor employs his own wizards, so what’s the difference?
Maybe Chaos is just the priests’ word for anything different. Anything that
threatens to knock the rich and powerful off their thrones. Maybe, if we had our
heads on straight, we humble folk would all be cultists.”

She studied him. “That’s… not something most people would
dare to say.”

He decided it was time to back off. “I shouldn’t have said
it, either. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We’re friends. You can tell me anything.”

“Well, I appreciate that.”

“But it is just talk, isn’t it? Your way of letting the hurt
and anger out. You wouldn’t really join such a sect.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

She rose, circled the table, put her hand on his shoulder and
leaned down to whisper in his ear. “Then finish your ale—take your time about
it—and meet me in the alley.”

Tense and excited in equal measure, he waited as long as he
could bear, then made his own departure. Lightning flickered in the northern
sky, thunder grumbled, and the occasional drop of rain plopped on his head.
Jarla was waiting where she’d said she’d be.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“I’m going to take you where you say you want to go.”

He did his best to feign astonishment. “Truly? That’s… I
mean…”

“Hush!” she said. “No more talking until we get there. We’ve
already said too much where others might overhear.”

He sucked in a breath and gave her a nod. “All right. Lead
on.”

They kept to the alleys and enclosed passageways so narrow
and dark that, left to his own devices, he might not have even noticed their
existence. They turned often. From time to time, he caught a glimpse of the
river, and once, of the burned, ruined structures surrounding the Bright
College. Yet even so, in a matter of minutes, he was lost.

He supposed it didn’t matter. In a pinch, he could call on
the stars to guide him. But usually, he had a keen sense of direction, and now
he felt muddled.

That wouldn’t do. He needed to be as sharp as ever in his
life. He breathed deeply, hoping the cool night air would clear his head.

It didn’t. Instead, his legs seemed to fall asleep as if he’d
been sitting motionless instead of walking. He stumbled once and then again.

Something’s wrong with me, he realised.

He tried to think what to do about it, but found himself too
dazed and addled. He croaked Jarla’s name and crumpled into the mud.

The knocking, not thunderous but sounding in a succession of
rapid, insistent staccato bursts, jarred Adolph Braun from his slumber. It would
have been remarkable if it hadn’t. His employer, a master of the Scribe and
Bookkeepers’ Society, slept upstairs, but a journeyman had to make do with a
pallet in the shop on the ground floor of the house, just a few paces from the
front door.

Adolph felt more irritated than alarmed as he threw off his
blankets, rose, and groped his way around the writing desks and stools that were
all but invisible in the dark. It was true, he led a dangerous double life, but
he was cunning about it, and wasn’t worried that retribution had come calling,
not at his master’s staid and respectable house. His chief concern was to
silence the pounding before it woke the old man, and the old man’s ire.

He fumbled with the bolt and cracked open the door. A flare
of lightning illuminated Jarla standing on the other side.

His irritation evoked a tension in his arm and the back of
his hand, as if it were urging him to lay it across her face. “Damn you,” he
whispered. “You know I can’t entertain a whore here.”

“Please,” she said, her voice as soft as his, “I need you.
There was a stranger. He started coming to the tavern, and saying the kind of
things we listen for. So I befriended him to see if he was really the sort of
man we need.”

He grunted his comprehension. One good thing about her job—about both her jobs—was that they brought her into contact with men who felt
inclined to confide in her, and occasionally she found one with the proper mix
of boldness and virulent dissatisfaction to join a cabal such as theirs. “Go
on.”

“Well, at first I had a good feeling about him, but tonight
everything started moving too fast, and he was the one pushing it along.
Supposedly, beastmen attacked his village, but all of a sudden, he suggested
that perhaps Chaos isn’t as awful as most people think, and then raised the
subject of treason and forbidden cults. He even said right out, right there in
the taproom, that he wished he could join one. Who would be so reckless?”

“A spy,” Adolph said, feeling sick to his stomach, “trying to
draw you out.”

“That’s what I suspected, and once I did, I realised there
were other funny things about him. He talked more like a city man, maybe even an
educated man, than a peasant from some little hamlet, and if he really was a
farmer, his hands should have been callused. They weren’t. They were blistered
from—”

“Shut up!” Adolph snarled, and she flinched. “I don’t care
about his hands. How much does he know? Where is he now?” A terrible thought
struck him. “By all the voices whispering in shadow, if you let him follow you
here—”

“I didn’t! I leaned over him and slipped sleeping powder in
his ale. Then I told him I’d take him to a cult and led him around back streets
and alleys until he passed out.”

Adolph felt some of the tautness go out of his limbs. “I
guess, once in a while, you aren’t completely worthless.”

It was kindly meant, and it annoyed him when she flinched
again. If she didn’t appreciate it when he tried to be nice, then what was the
point?

Not that this was any time to ponder the perversity of women.
“What happened next? Did you kill him?”

“No. I didn’t know if I should.”

He sneered. “Meaning, you’re too squeamish.”

“Meaning, I need you to come and help me decide what’s best
to do!”

“All right.” Confronted with a crisis, she’d performed better
than anyone would have expected. But now she was buckling under the pressure,
and it was plainly up to him to bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion.
“Just let me put on my shoes and get my knife.”

Jarla wasn’t especially strong, but she’d managed to drag
Dieter behind a section of fence and into someone’s tiny, neglected,
weed-infested garden, where passers-by were less likely to notice him.

Despite her newfound suspicions, she found it a relief to
find him lying unharmed in the drizzle. He looked like just another of Altdorf’s
homeless paupers sleeping outdoors, but that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t steal
his clothes, or hurt him simply for the amusement it afforded, or that the rats
wouldn’t decide to nibble his flesh.

Adolph crouched to inspect their prisoner more closely, and
it struck her that the two men looked as if they ought to switch roles. With his
burly physique and coarse, choleric features, Adolph should have been a drudge,
while a man with a thin frame and intelligent face like Dieter’s should spend
his days writing documents and adding up sums in a ledger.

Adolph grunted. “Let’s get this done and get away.” He pulled
the curved, single-edged knife from the sheath on his belt.

But Jarla hadn’t fetched her lover simply to kill Dieter
while he lay insensible and helpless. She could have done that herself, whatever
he thought, or at least she hoped she could. “Wait.”