Beyond Redemption (17 page)

Wichtig's smugness faded as he felt for his money purse.

Stehlen ignored him, pressing the knife until a thin line of blood appeared on the priest's neck. “Tell me where the kid is.”

The priest's brief look of defiance crumbled before Stehlen's feral leer. Nothing in her eyes betrayed reluctance to murder.

“Morgen's chambers are in the basement. South wing.”

“Don't—” started Wichtig as Stehlen slid the knife into the priest's throat. “. . . kill him.” He shot her an annoyed look as she shoved the body away to bleed out on the floor. “He's lying.”

“I told you he was in the basement.”

“Obviously he lied.”

“No, it's obvious
you're
lying. You can't stand being wrong.”

“If you knew anything about people other than how to cut their throats . . .” Wichtig turned to Bedeckt. “You saw it, right?”

Bedeckt coughed, a bubbling sound deep in his chest. “I was watching for more priests.”

Stehlen snorted derisively.

“Look,” growled Wichtig, gesturing at Stehlen. “You know how to steal things and cut throats, and Bedeckt is a master of coming up with stupid long-winded plans no one can follow. I know people.”

“You know how to
use
people,” sneered Stehlen.

“You have to understand them to use them.”

Bedeckt waved them to silence. “Let's move before someone finds us here with this corpse. Stehlen, drag it into the shadows. We go up.”

Wichtig reached out to pat Stehlen's back condescendingly but stopped when she glared at him. Instead he blew her a kiss and said, “See, Bedeckt knows to trust my opinion. You could learn something here.”

Bedeckt, wheezing, set off toward the stairs at the far end of the hall. His lungs felt like they'd been filled with cold snot. “No one knows more about lying than you do,” he growled over his shoulder, and heard Stehlen's answering chuckle. Unfortunately, the one person Wichtig lied to best was Wichtig. Such was always the problem with Gefahrgeist. If enough people believed their shite, they began to believe it too. Continually putting Wichtig down might limit his power, but it might also stop the smallest successes from swelling his already huge ego.

When they caught up with him, Bedeckt turned to Stehlen. “Why didn't you ask the priest how many guards the kid has?”

“Will we turn around and go home if there are a lot of guards?” she asked sweetly. “No.”

This late in the evening the halls were largely devoid of priestly activity and the three wandered lost for the best part of an hour. The few people they ran into looked well fed, unsuspecting, soft, and unquestioning. Still, Stehlen killed two more priests before they found someone who knew where the boy was. Luckily her damp burgundy robes did a fine job of hiding bloodstains.

They followed a steep set of curving stairs upward. If they hadn't gotten turned around somewhere, the child's room should be at the top. Bedeckt coughed and spat a thick wad of dark phlegm at the offending stairs. Everything looked too new for such an ancient building. Usually the steps of such a castle would be worn shallow from centuries of shuffling feet, but the corner of each was crisp and sharp.

Was this the future, religion uniting, directing, and manipulating humanity's faith, turning individuals into fragments of the larger hive? Where one religion led, others would follow. Bedeckt saw no way a man-made god could be any better than one coming to be in the old way. Whatever the old way was. At least the old gods seemed largely uninterested in messing directly with man or his works. Sure, they embroiled men in the occasional holy war, but most of the world's great tragedies could be laid squarely at humanity's feet.

A god subject to the whims and will of a populace in thrall to a self-serving Gefahrgeist—like there was any other kind of Gefahrgeist—would not be so distant. A thought lingered in the back of his mind: it wouldn't be a bad thing if the Geborene didn't get their god-to-be back after Bedeckt had collected the ransom money. Bedeckt lost his train of thought as his chest tightened and once again he had to focus solely on breathing.
If the child isn't at the top of these stairs, I'm returning to the inn and staying in bed for a week
.

Stehlen in the lead, the three crested a long flight of stairs leading to the top of one of the church's shorter towers.

Bedeckt wheezed and coughed up more dark and salty phlegm. “Pigsticking stairs,” he gasped. When he glanced up he saw Stehlen and Wichtig marching purposefully away. He looked to the end of the long stone hall. Two women stood at guard in matching chain hauberks with longswords hung at their right hip. Both women were lefties, which Bedeckt found a little odd. The two guards watched, heads cocked slightly to the left, as Stehlen and Wichtig approached. Bedeckt opened his mouth to hiss a warning and was racked by another fit of coughing.

No matter how much Stehlen swaggered, she felt like a thief in stolen priest's robes, blaspheming in the eyes of everything holy and sacrosanct. Some memories of childhood she could never leave behind. She swore under her breath, preparing to face down the guards. Both Bedeckt and Wichtig had harassed her for her inability to get past any hindrance without leaving a few bodies behind.
I'll show them subtlety.

“Step aside,” she commanded imperiously. “We are here to see the—”

“You are forbidden in this hall. Leave now.”

Stehlen frowned at the two guards. They looked almost identical in their matching armor. What she could see of their faces looked similar as well. Identical eyes peered from beneath iron helms.

“Do you know who I am?” Stehlen demanded of the guard who had spoken.

“Gods, you're terrible at this,” muttered Wichtig. Stehlen heard Bedeckt's retching cough back at the top of the stairs.

Two longswords snapped from sheaths with impressive speed and precision. The two women moved as one.

Stehlen backed away a step, bumping into Wichtig. “Very pretty,” she said. “You must have practiced for a long time.”

The two guards answered with identical grins.

Through Bedeckt's coughing Stehlen heard one strangled word forced through raw vocal cords. “Mehrere.”

One guard stepped forward as the other retreated, and Stehlen, stepping sideways to make room for Wichtig, snapped a thrown knife into her throat.

Not grinning now, are you, bitch?

Six identically armed and armored women stood in the hall before the first hit the floor. They appeared out of nowhere, rushing forward, swords drawn.

Shite.

“Is this an illusion?” Wichtig asked.

Then his swords were drawn and he desperately parried attacks from multiple opponents. They were good. They were
very
good.

But they weren't great.

Wichtig was great. He danced around attacks, making these deadly Swordswomen seem clumsy in comparison. He killed one with a quick cut to an exposed throat, sending his adversary staggering into her companions, struggling to stem the gushing flow of blood. Wichtig turned to Stehlen to brag and saw she'd already killed three.

Wichtig snarled a fast “arse-sticking hells” before returning his attention to the Swordswomen. There must have been a dozen of them now. If illusions, they were very good ones.

They must be teleporting in
. Probably for the best; it gave him a chance to catch up with Stehlen.
Odd, they all fight left-handed
.

Wichtig's dance of death became less flourished and decidedly
more intense and efficient. Why did people bother with such heavy armor as the hauberk? His every cut found exposed flesh. Here a throat, there a wrist. Slaying four more in rapid succession—or at least removing them from the fight—he spared a quick glance at Stehlen. Enough bodies lay piled at her feet that he couldn't count them quickly and her opponents had to climb their friends—which they seemed all to willing to do—to reach her. She didn't wait for them. Stehlen pressed the attack at every opportunity, intent on driving the priestly guards back toward the closed door. Wichtig thought briefly about helping her assailants by wounding Stehlen with a blind-side attack. He didn't wish her harm, he just wanted to slow her down so he could catch up.

Not fair, she had a head start!

Unfortunately, enough opponents were crowding the hall that he wasn't sure he could kill them all without a healthy Stehlen at his side.

Four Swordswomen launched a perfectly timed attack, forcing Wichtig back several steps. He saw Stehlen disappear into the mob, swallowed by a throng of left-handed Swordswomen in matching chain hauberk who all fought with an identical style. Their synchronization of bladed expression made them easy to defeat, but creepy.

Wichtig was forced back another step. “Bedeckt!” he bellowed over his left shoulder while killing another woman with a quick thrust to her throat. “Stop coughing and come help!”

If Stehlen was dead, they'd be splitting the ransom money only two ways. With Stehlen and her pathetic worship of Bedeckt out of the way, a one-way split became a real possibility. The way Bedeckt sounded, Wichtig wouldn't even need to stab him in the back.
The old bastard might croak all on his own.

Even over the cacophony of combat, Wichtig heard Bedeckt's
wheezing charge. The old goat sticker sounded like he had one foot in the Afterdeath, but he certainly had spirit.

Scores of identical women in chain hauberk surrounded Stehlen. At first she'd felt her opponents' elation as they crowded in around her. But now they understood; she liked it this way. She couldn't move without touching someone and she couldn't touch someone without leaving grievous wounds. They'd invited her in only to discover, too late, that she was death. They hampered each other far more than they did her. They seemed unwilling to wound each other, whereas she happily hurt anything and everything. She'd seen Wichtig's calculating look. Perhaps the half-wit really was the Greatest Swordsman in the World, but he couldn't hope to match her in this. Unlike Wichtig, she was a killer, pure and true. She killed unclouded by ego or desire. Where Wichtig killed with a thought to where the next death would take him, she killed in the moment for the moment.