02 - Taint of Evil (3 page)

Carl Durer dismounted and strode forward smartly, sword in hand. Sport be
damned, he was in no mood to fool with a madman like this. He’d cut the trinket
from the fellow’s wrist whilst the two of them were still fighting, and then be
off. The boy could take his chances. The figures on the ground broke apart and
Lief stood up, trying to escape. As he stepped away the stranger reached out and
caught hold of his arm, hauling him back. The youth turned and lashed out with
the axe, but the stranger appeared to meet the blow with nothing more than his
bare hand, knocking the weapon out of the boy’s grip.

Carl watched the two figures standing in the moonlight. Lief was now battling
for his life to break free of the stranger standing over him, one hand fastened
upon his arm, the other cupped around the boy’s shoulders. There was a popping
sound like splintering wood as the stranger broke the boy’s neck, and Lief
tumbled lifeless upon the ground.

Carl Durer launched himself at the anonymous figure, this maniac who had laid
waste all three of his men in a matter of moments. As he ran, he noticed the
stranger’s sword, a flash of silver in the moonlight, lying where it had fallen,
well out of arm’s reach. He knew this was probably his only chance. His clumsy
sword-stroke fell well wide of the mark, but the impetus of his run carried him,
charging into the other man and knocking him off balance. Carl struggled
maniacally to stay on his feet and keep hold of the sword. He was filled with a
sudden, giddy elation that, after all, his was to be the final victory.

The stranger started to get up again, moving with that same mechanical
precision. Carl Durer aimed a heavy, satisfyingly accurate kick into the man’s
chest, sending him back into the dust.

“No you don’t, you bastard. You’ve given me quite enough trouble for one
night already.” The cheap brandy had long worn off and he felt all too vividly
sober, but, for all that, he was beginning to warm to his task at last. The
muscular figure shrugged off the blow and climbed off the ground a second time.
Durer lashed out with his boot again. Once more the blow connected, knocking his
victim back. The earth shuddered beneath the stranger’s heavy frame.

Carl Durer stepped forward, casting a moon shadow across the outstretched
body of the other man. He levered the point of his blade against the other’s
chest, pressing it lightly against flesh and bone. The other man made no
response.

“Come on, then,” Carl spluttered, fighting for breath. “Let’s hear you sing.”

The other man’s features were masked in shadow. Carl could make nothing of
him beyond the profile of an angular, unshaven face. Yet, eerily, he sensed
there would be no fear registering on the stranger’s face. No fear, no
recognition of his now desperate plight. Not the slightest readiness to yield.

Very well, Carl decided, let’s help him find his voice. He pressed the sword
in harder against the other’s chest, turning the blade as he did so in a slow,
corkscrewing motion.

He watched the stranger’s arm lift, assumed he was ready to beg for mercy.
But he assumed wrong.

The other man locked his hand around the naked steel of Carl Durer’s blade.
The bandit cried out, more in surprise than anything else, and tried to pull the
blade back. But he could not twist it, could not move it at all. The stranger
was holding the razor steel gripped in his bare hand, holding it as fast as a
vice. Seized with a sudden panic, Carl pulled again on the sword, but the
stranger tugged first, and much, much harder. Suddenly Durer was on the ground,
spitting dry dust from his mouth, the sword gone from his hand.

He lay for what seemed like an eternity, face down in the dust, his mind
grappling to find answers to this impossible reversal of fortune. The only
response came in the shape of a leather boot, weather-beaten and crusted with
the filth of long journeying. The booted foot flipped Carl Durer over onto his
back as easily as though he were a baby.

He was now looking directly into the eyes of the man bearing down upon him:
the man now carrying his sword, the man who now held his life in the balance.
The dark eyes radiated a terrible strength and a harsh indifference quite unlike
Carl’s own cruel greed.

“Get up.” The voice, when at last the man spoke, was cold and distant, like
an echo from a far country. Carl Durer struggled to his knees. He was powerless
to resist the command, powerless to stop the tremors taking hold of his body. He
knew how it would go now. He was an old hand at this. Except that now it was he
who would do the begging-He looked up into the man’s face, meeting the other’s
dark unyielding eyes. Still the other man seemed to look straight through him,
as though his gaze was fixed upon another world. Blood oozed steadily from a
weeping gash across the man’s left hand, but he seemed immune or indifferent to
the pain. He’s insane, Durer guessed, but maybe I can talk him round.

“Listen,” he began, cursing himself for his faltering voice, “let’s call it
quits, eh? No hard feelings. We’d be a good team, you and me. We could clean up
round these parts, easy.”

He knelt, hand held out, waiting for a response. When it came there was no
anger, no thirst for vengeance colouring the other man’s voice. Carl heard only
the flat tones of the executioner, words tinged with the faintest disgust.

“You are nothing,” the stranger said. “You are weak.”

As the stranger drew his sword arm back, Carl Durer was granted one final
sight of the amulet fastened upon his arm, the prize that he had promised to
himself above all else. The polished gold sparkled in the air, as though filled
with unnatural energy. For a moment Carl was filled with a sick longing, a
half-glimpsed knowledge of the power the amulet could grant him, a power which
would never now be his.

He saw a second, last, glimmering as the sword passed through the air. Carl
followed its shimmering arc, his body held fast by a horrified wonder. He
watched the movement whilst he could, then screwed his eyes shut. He knew he had
been granted his final sight of this world.

The bounty hunter had watched the destruction of Durer’s gang with growing
incredulity, a disbelieving spectator at a grotesque carnival of death. He had
been edging closer to the scene of the battle, keeping well hidden beneath the
cover of the trees. By the time Carl Durer spat out his last, blood-flecked
breath, Lothar Koenig and the killer were no more than twenty feet apart.

Looking on from the safety of the trees, Lothar had first thanked Sigmar for
what was surely divine intervention. The stranger had proved to be far more than
a distraction; without Lothar lifting a finger he was doing his work for him,
whittling away the odds separating the bounty hunter from his prize. But it was
clear that Durer was not going to survive, Lothar Koenig wouldn’t be taking the
bandit back to Talabheim alive. He felt a rush of something like grief stab
through him as he realised Carl Durer’s value would be halved by virtue of his
imminent death.

A voice inside Lothar urged him to intervene, step into claim what remained
of the bandit leader, alive or dead. The traveller could have no quarrel with
that. He had only been protecting himself from a murderous assault. Would he not be happy to see Durer led away, a prisoner, to face his retribution? But he
held back whilst the slaughter reached its bloody conclusion, sensing that he
was witnessing something abnormal, a display of berserk beauty from a cold,
mesmerising force. He held back, yet he knew that he could not delay
indefinitely. If he could not have Durer alive, then he must have him dead. His
body, delivered intact for a bounty of eighty crowns. That was the deal, and he
knew his grieving yet fastidious patron would brook no other arrangement.

Wait, Lothar told himself. Wait until the other man has climbed back into the
saddle. Give him time to be on his way. He has no business with you. But now he
was moving forward through the trees, moving from shadow into the stark light
cast by the watching moons. Moving towards confrontation with the all-conquering
warrior. Later he would say to himself that it was determination that drove him
on. Who was to say that the madman would not butcher Durer’s dead body, every
frenzied blow from his sword devaluing what was righty his—Lothar Koenig’s—property. He had not come so far to be denied his rightful bounty.

But, even as the other man turned, almost casually, at the sound of his
footsteps upon the stony path, Lothar knew that it was greed that had brought
him to this moment of recklessness. Greed, and the knowledge of what certain
people—the right people—might pay to possess a creature such as this, a
killing machine the match of any mercenary Lothar had ever seen.

A thousand possibilities were tumbling through Lothar Koenig’s mind as the
two men came face to face. To the value of Carl Durer’s corpse he now added a
sum at least double that for the bounty he might earn, if he could but take the
warrior captive. Could he take the man alive? Of course he could. He was Lothar
Koenig. Not just a bounty hunter. He was
the
bounty hunter. The best. He
would find a way. He always did.

Then Lothar looked into the eyes of the other man, and, in that moment, all
of his imaginings crumbled away. It was he, not the other man, who was mad. Mad to ever think he would have a chance
of pulling this off.

Lothar Koenig’s hand moved towards the hilt of his sword, then dropped away.
Almost by instinct he raised both arms in a gesture of conciliation and
contrition.

“I’m sorry,” he said, aware of how stupid his words now sounded. “I mean you
no harm. That man—” he pointed towards the bloodied carcass that was all that
remained of Carl Durer. “I need the body, that’s all. Just the body.”

The traveller glanced briefly in the direction of Durer’s body, then turned
towards Lothar Koenig. His face was unshaven, weathered by what looked like many
weeks upon the road, but his eyes burned bright with a hungry fire. Lothar saw
in that face neither good nor evil, only power. Unassailable power. The stranger
gazed at him without favour or pity, and his features formed into something that
might have been a smile. There was a moment of stillness as the stranger paused,
as though listening to a distant sound, a voice that spoke to him alone. Then he
raised his sword, and polished the blade slowly against the fabric of his tunic.
Lothar saw the burnished gold of the amulet, but it was what lay beneath that
held him transfixed. In the shadows the man’s arm had appeared almost black
covered with a vivid bruise. But now he saw that it was no bruise. Almost the
entire length of the man’s lower arm was covered in some kind of tattoo, a
tableau of runes and images etched upon the killer’s skin.

As the killer raised his sword, the images began to move, suddenly animated
with a life of their own. Figures came together in combat the dark hues of the
tattoo suddenly flushing blood red. With a sudden shock of recognition, Lothar
realised he was watching a re-enactment of the battle with the bandits, and the
death of Carl Durer.

Lothar Koenig took a step back and looked around for any aid or refuge
amongst his surroundings. Finding none, he sought a last, desperate comfort from
his thoughts. We all have to die, he reminded himself again. We all have to die
sometime.

But, in the final moment of truth, he found that the words held no comfort at
all.

For some reason, Stefan Kumansky found he was not, after all, very hungry.
They had been on the road for weeks, travelling through the northern marches of
Ostermark, the barren wilderness that straddled the borders of the Empire and
Kislev. Much of that time, living off what little could be taken from the land,
he had sustained himself with dreams of feasts to come once they returned to
what passed for civilisation round these lonely parts. Now, seated at their
table in the tiny inn, he and Bruno finally had hot food in front of them, and
Stefan found he wanted none of it. It might have been the wretched food itself—though there had been times on the trail when he’d have eaten just about
anything. More likely it was the nagging ache of disappointment in his gut that
had dulled his appetite.

Stefan took another spoonful of the thin, oily gruel and spat a knot of
gristly meat back onto the table. Save for a few other drinkers—a group of
labourers making a poor job of pretending not to stare at the two swordsmen—the inn was deserted. From the ramshackle look of the place, it hardly ever saw
any custom. With food like this, it was hardly surprising. Stefan slid the bowl towards his companion.

“Here,” he said to Bruno. “You have it if you want.”

Bruno Haussmann gave his comrade the briefest of glances and then took the
offered bowl, his own being already empty. “If you insist,” he said, and set
about spooning the contents hungrily into his mouth.

Stefan looked kindly upon his friend as he ate. Their ages were practically
identical—both men had known twenty-four summers—but in other ways they were
quite different: Bruno being the shorter and fairer of the two, and—despite
the lean weeks on the road—still noticeably the stockier. And likely to stay
that way, Stefan reflected. Bruno, always true, always dependable. Solid by look
and solid by nature. And himself? Listless, forever searching. A traveller on a
journey with no certain end.

Stefan leaned forward, resting his head upon his cupped hands, his expression
exactly mirroring his poor humour.

“Cheer up,” Bruno said at last. “We’ll find him, Stefan, sooner or later.”

Stefan took a measured sip of his beer. It was stale and slightly sour, but he
drank nonetheless, to wash away the film of grease coating his mouth. He sat,
pondering his friend’s words. It was a familiar routine by now, each taking turn
to encourage the other whenever their spirits fell low. He didn’t know whether
Bruno was right, but he took some comfort from his optimism.