[Warhammer] - The Enemy Within Read online

  “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.

  CHAPTER TWO

  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.”

  Adolph glowered at her. “Why?”
<
br />   “What if he isn’t a spy? I could be wrong.”

  “True. You generally are. But from what you told me, this seems to be the exception.”

  “I don’t want him to die if he doesn’t deserve it.”

  “We have to do what we have to do to protect ourselves and serve the Changer,” Adolph said. “It doesn’t matter who deserves what.” He scowled. “Did you spread your legs for him? Did you like it? Is that why you’re baulking all of a sudden?”

  His spasm of jealousy evoked the usual mixed emotions in her. On the one hand, he’d known from the day they met what she did to earn her living and serve the god, so what was the sense of getting angry about it? But on the other, when the resentment flared, it showed he really did care about her after all.

  “No,” she said. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just… if he’s a spy, who’s he spying for? Who has he talked to, and what did he say? Shouldn’t we find out?”

  “Well… maybe.”

  “So we need to question him.”

  “That would mean waiting for him to wake up, and we’re in danger every moment we linger here. On top of that, suppose we try digging answers out of him, and he lets out a yell?”

  “It wouldn’t matter how much noise he made if he was in Mama’s cellar.”

  “It’s too far away. How are we supposed to get him there?”

  “You’re strong. You could carry him. I’ll help. He’s a drunk friend, and we’re taking him home.”

  “No. Too risky.”

  Unwilling to surrender but uncertain what to say next, Jarla hesitated, and at that moment, Dieter groaned. Adolph wrenched himself back around and poised his knife against the thin man’s throat.

  Dieter woke coughing and retching, and the convulsions jammed his neck against something hard and unyielding. After a moment, the object pulled away, affording him the space to twist his head and expel the burning foulness from his throat. Through tears blurred his vision, he saw that he lay on a patch of earth that, despite the weeds overtaking it, still displayed forlorn, fading signs of orderly rows and cultivation. Once, it had been somebody’s garden, bounded and protected by a fence. Light rain pattered on the ground.

  Fingers grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back around. A square face scowled down at him. The hard object pressed against his throat once more, and this time he felt that it was sharp—a blade, which had already nicked him when he coughed. He began to feel the sting of the little cuts, too. He was lucky the spasms hadn’t killed him.

  That seemed to be the only bit of good fortune that had come his way. He strained to remember what was happening, but the pounding in his skull, the vile taste in his mouth and the nausea still churning his guts made it difficult.

  “I wanted to kill you in your sleep,” said the man with the knife, “but Jarla wanted to question you. You’re awake now, so I guess we can spare a moment to try it her way. But struggle, or raise your voice above a whisper, and that’s the end of you, understand?”

  “Yes.” The mention of Jarla’s name helped bring his thoughts into focus. He recalled their final conversation in the tavern, and the circuitous creep through the alleyways that followed. He’d thought he’d fooled her, but now could only assume he’d somehow roused her suspicions, whereupon she’d rendered him helpless with a drug or spell, then run to fetch one of her fellow conspirators.

  “Who are you?” asked the man crouching over him.

  Dieter was frightened enough to tell him, except that the truth was damning. “I already explained to Jarla who I am. I don’t understand. Is this some kind of test?”

  The knife pressed his raw, smarting neck a little harder. “You don’t have time to play games.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Get over here,” the big man said. “Hurt him. Break his fingers or something.”

  “Me?” Jarla asked. When Dieter shifted his eyes, he could see her standing off to the left, hugging herself as if she were cold.

  “No, the Grand Theogonist!” her companion snapped. “Of course, you. I can’t do it. I have to hold onto him and be ready to stick the knife in if he struggles or squeals.”

  Jarla’s features clenched with a mixture of reluctance and resolve. She trudged forwards, knelt down, and took hold of Dieter’s wrist.

  As every wizard knew, the energies required to fuel his sorceries fluctuated from place to place and time to time, and that was the problem. The man in the dark hooded cloak needed to act quickly, and it was just his bad luck that his immediate surroundings had little power to offer. The ambient forces wouldn’t support the manifestation he intended.

  That left him with a choice. He could go somewhere more accommodating, or he could try to raise the raw energy he needed. As time was of the essence, he’d opted for the latter.

  Accordingly, he strode along the twisting little side street seeking a fellow pedestrian. Damn it, people claimed Altdorf never slept, even late at night. So where was everybody?

  He rounded a bend and spied a yawning youth emerging from a doorway. Perhaps the boy had apprenticed to a trade that required him to report for work well before dawn.

  “You,” the magician said, and the boy turned in his direction. The warlock whispered a word of power and fixed his quarry with his gaze. Fortunately, this particular cantrip required only an iota of mystical force to power it, and the lad froze like a rabbit before a serpent. Only for a heartbeat, but that was all the time the sorcerer required to dash across the intervening distance, whip the dagger out from under his mantle and drive it into the youth’s torso.

  Even late at night, on a deserted little street with a paucity of lamps, it was dangerous to commit murder right out in the open, but the warlock had no time to worry about that. He kept on stabbing. The boy grunted every time the blade rammed home, and fumbled at his attacker as if he hoped to shove him away. But he no longer had the strength.

  Finally the youth collapsed and lay motionless. Working as quickly as he dared, given that a slip could ruin the magic and imperil him in the process, the sorcerer carved sigils on his victim’s brow and cheeks. Then he dipped his forefinger in blood and daubed additional symbols on a wall.

  The act of desecration cracked the barrier between worlds, and power flowed through. The mage could feel it rising like floodwater full of drowned corpses and filth. He shuddered in mingled ecstasy and revulsion.

  Since he needed a clear head for the conjuring yet to come, neither emotion was useful. Drawing a deep breath, he did his best to quell them, then declaimed words of power and flourished the gory knife in mystic passes.

  The glyphs he’d written sizzled and steamed, eating their way deeper into the boy’s face and even into the brick wall. Faint but ominous sounds, suggestive of a reptilian hissing, whispered from the empty air.

  Then, abruptly, the creature appeared, its brightness driving back the dark and making the warlock squint. He watched for any indication that it meant to attack, for such defiance was always a possibility, no matter how able the summoner.

  Happily, the entity wasn’t inclined to resist. Rather, writhing this way and that, its body throwing off heat, it simply awaited his commands.

  Dieter clenched his fist, and Jarla pried at it, trying to get hold of one of his fingers to bend and snap. He had the feeling she was reluctant, and wasn’t yet exerting her full strength. But if he continued to resist, she would. It was only a matter of time.

  Curse it all, he was a wizard, in theory, the possessor of extraordinary powers. Surely his magic could extricate him from this nightmare? But how, when the ruffian with the knife would no doubt slash his throat as soon as he tried to recite a spell?

  “I told you to hurt him,” the male cultist growled.

  “I’m trying,” Jarla replied.

  “Idiot! How difficult is it? If you can’t grab a finger, gouge an eye.”

  “Please,” Dieter said, “you’re making a mistake. I’m not your enemy. I—” Something luminous and yellow stre
aked through the darkness above their heads, and he faltered in fear and astonishment.

  The long, sinuous creature appeared to be a flying serpent either shrouded in flame or composed of that element entirely. Plainly, it was some minor spirit of Chaos, although Dieter didn’t understand why it had come. Jarla and her fellow cultist hadn’t alluded to summoning it, nor did they need its help to control or kill their captive.

  But whatever the reason, its arrival extinguished whatever feeble hope he had left, and he wondered if he should deliberately provoke the man with the knife into cutting his throat. It might well be a less excruciating death than the one the fiery serpent would give him.

  Then, however, Jarla somehow sensed the creature wheeling above their heads. Perhaps she caught the all-but-inaudible hiss of its corona of flame. She glanced up, then screamed and lurched off balance.

  Her outcry startled the other cultist, and his head snapped around. He looked where she was looking, and then, as the snake turned for another pass—to all appearances, studying the mortals on the ground—his eyes opened wide, and his face turned white. As though steadying himself, he swallowed, sucked in a ragged breath, then jumped to his feet. He apparently didn’t care about immobilising Dieter anymore. He wanted to be ready to dodge, run or fight if the serpent dived at him.

  So, obviously, he and Jarla were just as afraid of the entity as Dieter was, even if that didn’t make any sense either. The pair worshipped Chaos, and the unearthly reptile was a manifestation of that universe of blight and madness. Judging from its form, it might even serve their particular deity.

  “What does it want?” Jarla whimpered, rising.

  “Shut up!” Adolph said. “Don’t talk, don’t move, and maybe it will go away.”

  It didn’t. Instead, as lightning danced in the clouds behind it, it opened its jaws and dived at Jarla.