Warhammer [Ignorant Armies] (10 page)

Karl studied it for a long time before he realized that it must be a map of part of the system of tunnels which the dwarfs had long ago cut through the rock on which the city stood. When he had riddled all he could, he put it in his pocket, then went into the back room where he slept and hid the book under his pillow. He would examine it further tonight, and tomorrow sell it for the best price he could and then thumb his nose at von Stumpf and live the way he wanted, not at some old fool's beck and call. He might even be able to sell the treasure map to some gullible adventurer - and there was no shortage of such people in the city - foolish enough to venture into the dangerous tunnels beneath the city.

Karl was thinking of all he could do with a pocketful of Gold Crowns as he let up the blinds. And then he jumped back in shock. The foreign wizard was peering through the dusty glass, his face only inches away from Karl's own. When he saw Karl he straightened up and pushed at the door, and although Karl hadn't unlocked it, the door opened at once.

"I am looking for a book," the wizard said.

"Well, we have all sorts of books." Karl's mouth was dry. The wizard was very tall, and despite the summer heat wore a sweeping black cloak, its red lining embroidered with all manner of weird signs of power. His face was long and white, framed by untidy black hair and a black beard. A pair of small round spectacles perched on the end of his long nose; they magnified the wizard's fierce blue eyes as he peered down at Karl.

"A very particular book. A book that may have been brought to you, or may be
about
to be brought to you. A large handwritten volume, with an unusual binding. I will pay very well for such a book."

"You would have to speak to my master," Karl managed to say. He was thinking furiously. If the wizard wanted the book, then it was even more valuable than it looked, and he would certainly get a better price at Neugierde's than from this itinerant hedge-wizard.

"Your master, eh?" The wizard drew himself up. He was so tall that his head almost brushed the cobwebby rafters of the ceiling. "Very well. You give no choice but that I come back. I hope your master will be more helpful. I will call again tomorrow. And remember this, young man."

The cloak flew up and Karl jumped back, but the wizard was too quick. His cold hand fastened around Karl's wrist, pulled. Then Karl was leaning half across the table, his face only inches away from the wizard's.

"Remember this," the wizard said, softly.

"I don't forget anything," Karl managed to say. He met the wizard's gaze, trying not to be intimidated. But there was an odd tingling between his eyes, as if he was about to cry, and after a moment he had to look away.

"Things may be more than they seem, or less." The wizard let go of Karl's wrist, drew his cloak around himself. "Good day to you, young man, and good luck."

Somehow, Karl managed to behave as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened when Otto von Stumpf came back in the evening, although the old man had drunk so much of the Wolf's Grip's vinegary ale that he probably wouldn't have noticed if Karl had grown another head. After a meagre supper of boiled barley flavoured with fatty scraps of mutton, von Stumpf had Karl help him up the winding stairs to the filthy garret where he slept. Then Karl curled up on the mattress in the stockroom behind the shop and gloated over the book and the map by the light of a tallow candle. But it had been a long day, and soon enough he fell asleep.

He woke with a start to moonlight falling through the room's only window, thinking someone had touched him on the hand. But it was only a beetle clambering over the hollow of his palm, its antennae waving furiously. Karl flicked the insect away, and then realized with alarm that the book was gone.

He managed to get the candle lit, and saw that the book was lying in the curtained doorway between the shop and the stockroom. Shadows seemed to scatter from it as he went over and bent to pick it up. Nervous, and fully awake, Karl went into the shop and listened at the crooked stairs that led up to von Stumpf's garret, and grinned when he heard the old man's rasping snore. Still befuddled by sleep, Karl was about to go back to bed when he happened to glance out of the window, and saw a black-cloaked figure moving past, towards the door. It was the wizard.

In an instant, Karl was through the back room, fumbling at the bolts of the door to the yard. He managed to get it open just as the lock of the shop's door sprang with a heart-stopping click. And then he was over the wall of the yard, almost falling on top of the figure that stood in the alley below.

For an instant, Karl thought that the wizard, who obviously had found out about the book, had somehow magicked himself from one side of the building to the other. But then the man pushed back his hood and said, "Come with me - be quick now."

Karl was about to ask who the stranger was and why he should follow him when an eerie blue light flared on the other side of the wall. Without a further thought he took to his heels, clutching the book to his chest.

The stranger ran as though his feet were skimming an inch above the cobbles, his cloak streaming behind him. After dodging through the alleys, they came out on the bustling Burgen Bahn, where bands of students roved noisily among crowds of ordinary citizens. By this time Karl was panting hard, but the stranger hardly seemed to be breathing at all. His eyes glittered as he looked about alertly, one hand on the hilt of a long sword; he was a young smooth-skinned handsome man wearing baggy corduroy trews and an embroidered leather vest under the cloak - curious, old-fashioned clothes. Seemingly satisfied that they weren't being pursued, he turned and looked down at Karl, who shrank a little under that glittering unforgiving gaze.

"You have what we came to take back," the swordsman said. He had an odd, harshly buzzing accent, probably from some country district or other. That would explain the old-fashioned cut of his clothes, too.

"If you mean the book, I came by it fairly. I'm a bookseller, and I bought it," Karl said, more defiantly than he felt. After all, he was telling the truth. More or less the truth.

"We pay," the swordsman said, "even though it was stolen from us." He effortlessly plucked the book from Karl's grasp, then dropped a heavy drawstring purse to the ground. Karl pulled the purse open as the swordsman paged through the book, and gasped when he saw that it was crammed full of Gold Crowns. Then his gasp turned to a frightened squeak as the swordsman grabbed the front of his shirt and lifted him clear off the ground. "The map," the swordsman said, his face inches from Karl's own. His breath was sharply acid, and his eyes glittered crazily in the light of a nearby street-lamp. "We want the map."

"Put me down and I'll tell you where it is," Karl managed to gasp, and then his heels struck the pavement hard as the swordsman let go. Karl tugged at his dishevelled shirt, hotly aware of the group of students who had turned to snigger at this contretemps.

"Where," the swordsman said.

"Back at the shop," Karl lied, knowing it was in his pocket. He had seen an opportunity to make even more money, enough to set him up for life, maybe. A purse full of Gold Crowns could be spent in a night, if you were foolish enough. But if the map led to buried treasure, and there were legends of all sorts of dwarfish hoards hidden in the catacombs and corridors of the city beneath the city, then anything was possible. And although Karl was clever, he was also inexperienced enough to harbour the belief that no matter what,
he
wasn't anywhere near to dying.

So he added quickly, "But we don't have to go back there, and face that wizard. He was the one who stole the book from you, wasn't he?"

"His apprentice," the swordsman admitted. "We nearly caught him, but he jumped over the edge of the Cliff of Sighs, and when we got down amongst the trees and found his body, the book was gone."

"But now you have the book, and fortunately for you, I am at your service. I found the map, and looked at it long enough to memorize it." This was the truth; Karl had an exceptional memory for things that might be useful to him. He said, with more confidence than he felt, "I can take you past the traps, lead you to the treasure, once we are close enough."

"Treasure," the swordsman said. "You wish to share this treasure."

"Let's call it a finder's fee."

The swordsman closed his eyes and began to mutter to himself - or more precisely, buzz and chatter in his odd dialect. Obviously he was thinking hard, and obviously thinking hard did not come easily. At last he said, "We are agreed, then. You help, for a fee."

"On your word that you will give me ten per cent of what we find, and not harm me in any way," Karl said, as steadily as he could.

"We give our word," the swordsman said, with an alacrity that made Karl wish he had asked for fifteen, or even twenty per cent. He added, "Now you will lead us to the nearest entrance to the sewers, where we will begin our journey."

Karl smiled. "It's easy to see you're a stranger to the city. The main sewer entrances are guarded by the City Watch. Even a swordsman like yourself will not be able to outfight the Watch. Er, what is your name, anyhow?"

"You may call us Argo."

"Well, I'm Karl. But don't worry, I know another way, although you may have to pay a kind of admission fee. There's a tavern down in the Ostwald district, the Drowned Rat, which has a way into the sewers in its cellar. You just have to pay the landlord, that's all."

"You have all the money, now."

"Do I? Oh, I see. Well, I suppose it is a kind of investment. Come on then, Argo. The place I'm thinking of is on the other side of the city."

Karl wasn't as confident as he had sounded. He knew about the Drowned Rat and its secret passages into the sewer network only by rumour, and he had made up the story about the entrance fee on the spot. As he and the swordsman made their way deeper into the narrow streets of Ostwald, what little confidence Karl had soon evaporated.

There were no streetlights in Ostwald, and the mean, crowded streets were illuminated only by what light fell through heavily curtained windows, or the red flames of torches a few people carried. Karl kept as close to the swordsman as he could - not an easy task, because the man strode along at a rapid pace, the darkness and the ill-favoured crowds slowing him down not at all.

There were probably no more drunks here than along the Burgen Bahn, but while on that prosperous street drunkenness was merely the end result of too much high spirits, here it was due to a kind of savage desperation. Men far gone in their cups staggered along shouting curses at the world in general, and from more than one alley came the noises of fighting. Beggars with every kind of disfigurement and disease bawled out for alms, ignored by the poorly-dressed labourers and better-dressed thieves alike, their cries scarcely louder than the shrill cries of the whores who shouted down at potential clients from upper-storey windows of the close-packed timber-framed buildings.

Karl looked for the sign of the Drowned Rat with increasing desperation. For all his pretended knowledge of the city, he had rarely been in Ostwald, and didn't like it. He wanted nothing more than to find the tavern and get into the sewers beneath these dangerous streets, forgetting for the moment how much more dangerous the sewers could be. But when at last he did spy the sign, the last of his confidence seemed to ooze from the soles of his boots.

It was a tall, narrow ramshackle building, set a little apart from its neighbours, its filthy windows glowing sullenly, its door in deep shadow. Even as Karl and Argo approached it, a man staggered out, clutching the top of his head. Blood streamed down his face, suddenly bright as he staggered through the light of a nearby lamp set in the window of a whorehouse. He turned and bawled out, "Cutthroats! Lousy thieves! Sons of diseased mutant whores!" Then he groaned and clutched his head again and staggered on.

Argo, hardly seeming to notice the man, strode through the shadows and ducked beneath the tilted lintel of the tavern. Karl had to hurry to catch him up, slipping through the door just as a couple of heavyset thugs pushed it closed.

The main room of the tavern was almost as dark as the street outside, and hazed with yellow-grey smoke which gathered in thick reefs just beneath the sagging ceiling. Wolfish looking men sat at half a dozen rough tables scattered along the walls, and all were staring at the swordsman in unnerving and hostile silence.

Argo crossed to the counter, his boots rattling the loose floorboards, and said softly to the large, bearded man behind it, "We wish to enter the sewer system. We will pay whatever is necessary."

One of the ruffians behind Karl chuckled and dropped a huge, scarred hand on Karl's shoulder. "Your friend is a bold enough fellow, laddie. I always do like 'em bold."

The landlord spat into a glass and smeared the spit around with a grey rag. "We don't like strangers coming in here, friend. On your way now. I can't help you."

"We'll just have a word with 'em," the man holding Karl said. "Straighten 'em out, like."

"Whatever you want, lads," the landlord said indifferently, turning away as the second ruffian, his head brushing the ceiling, stalked towards Argo, a weighted cosh dangling from one paw. Karl started to shout a warning, but a foul-smelling hand clamped over his mouth and nose. Argo turned, his cloak flaring, as the cosh swept towards his head... and then suddenly he was to one side of the man, his sword flashing through the smoke. Something hit the floor with a thump, blood pattering after: it was the ruffian's hand, still holding the cosh. The wounded ruffian shrieked, and then Argo's sword flashed again, and the ruffian fell to the floor, his throat spraying blood.

The thug holding Karl started to back towards the door, ignoring the apprentice's struggles. There was a tingling pressure between Karl's eyes, at the bridge of his nose. For some reason he remembered the wizard's humiliating stare, and when the ruffian let go of Karl's mouth to pull at the latch, Karl managed to shout out the spell of bafflement he'd seen in the book. It was the only thing he could think of, but to his amazement it worked.