Tales of the Old World (107 page)

On occasion the animals belonging to the people of Viehdorf gave birth to
unnaturally twisted offspring. When this happened, mother and child were culled,
their carcasses destroyed, and the matter not spoken of again, for to do so was
to attract the attentions of the witch hunters. Such men were not known for
their tolerance, understanding or restraint.

If any did stray this way the people of Viehdorf knew what had to be done.

As Grolst considered this new stranger, he gazed across the barroom and took
in the other people sheltering from the unseasonable night within the inn. There
were the usual regulars; local foresters and other villagers, including the
blacksmith, all eyeing the stranger warily, making him feel about as welcome as
the plague. There was also another stranger in their midst that night, an
armoured roadwarden.

The atmosphere in the tavern was sullen and hostile, talk was restrained to a
conspiratorial murmur; there were two strangers in the bar and they were
definitely not welcome here. Strangers meant trouble. The people of Viehdorf
liked to keep themselves to themselves. That was what proved best and had kept
them unmolested by the world beyond the forested boundaries of their village,
them and their forefathers before them.

The blacksmith was watching the red-robed stranger but he was also giving the
roadwarden on the other side of the bar furtive glances. It was on this man that
Grolst’s gaze came to rest. The roadwarden was dressed in a tough leather jerkin
and hard-wearing trews, and wore an armoured hauberk as well. A lobster-tailed
helmet sat on the table in front of him.

He had arrived earlier that same evening and Grolst was just as wary of him
as he was of the straggly-haired stranger. The roadwarden had paid for one
flagon of ale and had made it last for all the time since. He was enjoying a
respite from the harsh, unrelenting conditions outside, no doubt. The leather of
his jerkin and his trews dried out in the smoky warmth of the inn’s interior,
the air bitter with the smell of hops, pipe-weed and wood smoke. No one dared
actually challenge the man but the daggers in the stares the patrons were giving
him made their true desires perfectly plain.

The Slaughtered Calf hardly ever had any visitors, so to have two turn up on
one night unsettled Grolst deeply, making the sullen innkeeper feel even less
charitable than usual. The inn had rooms for rent, certainly, but Grolst was
hard pressed to remember when they had last been used by a passing traveller
rather than by the unfaithful, carrying on their lustful affairs away from the
eyes of their jealous spouses. It was too close to the sacrifice for his liking,
just when the people of Viehdorf didn’t want the prying eyes of the Emperor Karl
Franz’s authorities, witch hunters or any other stranger looking into their
business.

There was one last drinker, sitting alone, who was known to Grolst. The man
hardly seemed aware of anything about his surroundings; he just stared
mournfully into the bottom of his tankard, shoulders slumped, his face a sagging
scowl of sadness. Of course, he had good reason to look so unhappy. The
responsibility for the sacrifice had come to rest at his door this time.

The roadwarden raised his tankard and drained the last of the hopsy,
locally-brewed ale and, taking up his hammer once again, strode purposefully
back to the bar. The soldier fixed the innkeeper with his piercing, steely gaze,
making Grolst feel even more uncomfortable. The innkeeper felt his flesh crawl
under the unrelenting stare and, in order to break the tension, felt obliged to
speak: “You moving on then?”

“I may be,” the roadwarden said, his voice betraying a cultured accent but
also a hint of suspicion in its tone.

Grolst immediately regretted his question but also found himself wondering
what had made a man of a highborn upbringing become a wandering warrior,
patrolling the Emperor’s highways and protecting those who would travel on them
with lawful intentions, especially at such a time of turmoil.

The roadwarden’s manner made Grolst feel uncomfortable enough to provoke a
response. “Is there good hunting to be had on the Emperor’s roads?”

“Good enough,” the roadwarden replied. “Your village seems to have got away
remarkably unscathed, considering there are tribes of man-beasts amassing within
the forests and that there is a war coming to the Empire, the likes of which
have not been seen since the time of Magnus the Pious.”

“A war, you say? I wouldn’t know about that. War doesn’t trouble us here. So
what brings you to our peaceful village?”

“I’m sorry, I should have introduced myself,” the rugged soldier said
offering a smile, though his gaze remained as steely and unforgiving as before.
“I am Ludwig Hoffenbach. Dark times are upon the Empire and all men are called
to play their part, to hold back the storm of Chaos that is threatening to break
across the land. You have heard, I take it, that the once-great sentinel city of
Wolfenburg fell to a Northman horde last year?

“I myself have been called to act as part of an Imperial commission, and I
was supposed to meet with my compatriot here. Has a templar of the Sigmarite
church visited Viehdorf?”

“A witch hunter, you mean?” the innkeeper said, feeling his scalp tighten.

“By the name of Schweitz.”

Grolst swallowed hard. The blood in his veins felt as if it had turned to ice
water. He cast an anxious glance over the roadwarden’s armoured shoulder and saw
further furtive glances pass around the bar. It was only then that Grolst really
realised that the low murmur of conversation inside the Slaughtered Calf had
ceased, the foresters, villagers and blacksmith all straining their ears to
eavesdrop on what was passing between the innkeeper and the roadwarden. The only
one who seemed to be paying no attention at all was the mournful man still
staring into the bottom of his pint.

“A witch hunter?” the innkeeper said, trying to keep his tone jovial and the
unease out.

Out of the corner of his eye Grolst saw that the crimson-clad stranger was
watching the exchange at the bar as intently as the inn’s regulars—if anything
more so—and fidgeting uncomfortably, apparently at the mention of the witch
hunter. Grolst knew how he felt.

“No, there hasn’t been anyone like that here.”

The roadwarden lent forward slightly and Grolst couldn’t help but notice that
his gauntleted hand was resting on the haft of the warhammer slung from his
belt.

“Are you sure?” There was the same hard smile on Hoffenbach’s lips, the same
steel in his eyes.

“Definitely,” Grolst said, managing to force a laugh at the same time. “I
would remember a templar of the Church of Sigmar visiting my poor hovel of an
inn. No, no one like that’s been in here.”

“Very well,” Hoffenbach said, adjusting his hauberk and making sure that the
innkeeper saw not only the insignia of his Imperial commission but also the haft
of his warhammer once again. “Thank you for your… help.” He turned towards the
inn door. “It is time I was gone.”

With that, the roadwarden spun on his iron-shod heel and made to leave the
snug of the bar for the wilds of the night outside the walls of the enduring
coaching inn. Before he did so, Hoffenbach returned the shifty look the
red-robed stranger was giving him.

Then he was gone into the cold, the wind, the dark and the rain.

Grolst went back to occupying himself smearing a tankard with his damp rag,
trying to ignore the bewilderment of anxieties and possibilities muddling his
mind. They would have to act soon. Grolst would have like to have believed that
Viehdorf had seen the last of the roadwarden but he sincerely doubted it.

The grating of a chair on the floor roused Grolst from his thoughts. The
innkeeper looked up reluctantly and saw the red-robe taking his turn to approach
the bar. Now what? the innkeeper thought resentfully.

“Do you have any rooms?” the wild-haired stranger said. The darker water
stains around the hem of his robes were fading as the thick material began to
dry out.

As soon as the man had uttered the words, a seed of an idea took root within
the innkeeper’s mind. He had not thought the red-robe would stay. He had
imagined the stranger would have been on his way, like the roadwarden, once he
had finished his drink, even if it was after nightfall.

Grolst felt a smile forming on his ugly lips. As soon as he was aware of it,
he re-composed the annoyed grimace that made him look like he was irritated by
the fact that anyone would dare to waste his time by actually wanting to be
served in his inn.

“If you can pay for it, I have,” he said snidely.

“I have money.” The stranger’s hand disappeared inside his robe and emerged
again holding a bulging leather purse.

Grolst’s eyes lit up involuntarily at the sight of it. “That should just
about do it,” he muttered grudgingly, although the twinkling in the black pits
of his pupils betrayed how he truly felt. Not that the stranger appeared to
notice: he was too busy glancing, fretfully almost, at the stony faces around
the bar.

“I want to retire now,” the stranger said, once the innkeeper had taken
payment.

“Would you care for another drink before I show you to your room?” Grolst
proffered, displaying uncharacteristic generosity.

The stranger’s eyes shot Grolst a suspicious glance, his mouth tight-lipped.
Briefly, the innkeeper met the man’s gaze. For a moment, he fancied he could see
fires burning deep within them and the ferocity of the flames made him blink and
look away.

“All right then, why not?”

Grolst uncorked the luska bottle again, one whiff of the fiery spirit making
his eyes start to water. As he poured a measure of the alcohol into the
stranger’s glass, he was aware that all eyes in the bar were on him and the
unwelcome visitor. Even the mournful man was looking up at him, his red-rimmed
eyes no longer gazing at the bottom of his drink. Through one grimy, lead-paned
window Grolst could see the white-yellow bloated orb of a gibbous moon, rising
between the grey-cast clouds behind the trees at the top of the hill, and he
found his mind wandering to consider what would come to pass later that night.

The sacrifice had to be made soon, and it would be. The people of Viehdorf
might not like strangers intruding into the isolation of their village, but they
did have their uses; Viehdorf had its own method of protection against the
predations of beastmen and their ilk.

“Here,” he said as he poured the stranger a double measure into a fresh
glass. “You look like you need warming up on a night like this. This one’s on
the house.”

Gerhart Brennend looked around the Slaughtered Calf’s guest room. He was
unimpressed. It was much as he had expected. It was cramped and sparsely
decorated. There was one bed, made of rough-hewn timbers, and a chair with a
broken leg. The walls were barely plastered and, in places, the bare boards of
the internal walls were visible. There was one crack-paned window, which rattled
loosely in the wind and rain battering the isolated inn, that looked down onto
the stable yard. The tiles of the stable roof were slick with greasy rainwater
that ran into leaf-clogged gutters and poured over into the yard in a relentless
cascade onto the rain-darkened cobbles.

As Gerhart sat down on the thin straw mattress of the bed a wave of tiredness
swept over him. He felt restless despite the weariness that was threatening to
overcome him. For a wizard of the noblest Bright Order to have come to this, he
thought to himself miserably. Once he had been the holder of the keys of
Azimuth, an honoured position in his order, and now he was brought low like
this. In fact, he had never been more destitute. His once magnificent robe was
scorched and worn shabby, but at least it wasn’t wet anymore. There was nothing
a fire mage hated more than rain, other than drowning, perhaps.

Even though he suddenly felt bone-numbingly weary, Gerhart still felt ill at
ease. It had been the roadwarden’s enquiries that had done it, and the talk of
witch hunters. He had met enough of their bigoted, paranoid kind before.

Trying to dismiss such concerns from his mind, he lay back on the bed, his
eyelids suddenly heavy. It was as if all his exertions of the last year had
finally caught up with him. But, as he closed his eyes, the scowling faces of
those whom he had met before, who hunted the practitioners of the dark arts and
servants of the fell powers, came unbidden into his mind. First, there was the
Castigator of Schreibe, his red face contorted by zealous rage. Next came the
cruelly calm features of the tonsure-headed priest of Stilwold, Brother
Bernhardt—Gerhart involuntarily recalled the marks of the cleric’s
self-induced mortification that he had suffered in the name of Holy Sigmar.
Religious extremism and intolerance could never really be considered positive
character traits.

Gerhart was feeling very drowsy now. Then, of course, there was Gottfried
Verdammen, the flesh of his face bubbled, red-raw and blistered from the
avenging fires…

A sudden noise in the yard below his window roused Gerhart from the drowsy
threshold of sleep. A stable door was banging in the persistent wind that
whipped through the courtyard behind the inn. Shaking the slumber from him, he
rose from the bed and peered out of the corner of the cracked window into the
dark and the rain.

Through half-closed eyes he saw a cloaked figure duck into a stable, the door
banging shut on its latch behind him. The wizard blinked his eyes clear, but the
figure was gone. Had he really seen anyone?

Another wave of fatigue washed over him and he had to sit down on the bed
again, as his legs practically gave way beneath him. What had he just seen? Of
course, it could be nothing more than an ostler tending the animals stabled
there. Gerhart’s heightened sense of mistrust would not let him believe
something so innocent or simple. What clandestine activity was taking place out
in that stable on a night like this?