Tales of the Old World (115 page)

He unbuckled his belt and took off his boots. The touch of the water on his
feet was agony but he forced himself to stand, unsteady on the slippery rocks
beneath the shallow flow. He watched the dirt and blood billow and mingle with
the water, quickly lost in the enthusiastic stream. He imagined a purifying
experience.

He heard the girl approaching just in time to get the glove back onto his
hand.

Otto scuttled from behind Gregor’s gravestone and picked up his sack. He knew
what he had seen. He took the long way back to the village.

Gunter pinched the skin above his eyes, his hand clasping together at the
bridge of his sharp nose. He shook the ash from his clothes and, wiping his eyes
again, looked around the cottage. Breakfast. No Anja. No Dagmar. He took a knife
from the roof beam and began to eat the spiced tomatoes. He tried to remember
the conversation of the previous evening. Had he gone so far as to mention
Otto’s name? That was unworthy.

Gunter had long disliked the butcher and declined to eat his meat, preferring
to kill and smoke his own, but he had no evidence that the man was a murderer.
What had possessed him to tell a witch hunter? Dagmar had been talking about
mutations caused by exposure to Chaos he had had experience with and had
mentioned that such a man might become extremely fat but otherwise remain
normal. That did fit Otto’s description.

Gunter had to admit that the Tilean wine was mostly to blame for the
liberties he had taken. It was not fair to his guest, who seemed to be a decent
man, to burden him with wild suspicions.

Gunter lurched to his feet like a becalmed ship which suddenly finds the
wind, and went off in search of Dagmar.

* * *

Anja sat on a dry rock in the stream and listened intently to Dagmar’s story.
The man was charming, there was no doubt of that, and appeared to be well
recovered, almost impossibly so, from his illness of the previous day. There was
colour in his cheeks and his beard seemed to have grown overnight.

Dagmar was standing solemnly on the bank of the stream in mock concentration
as he related an apocryphal tale about an acolyte of the Temple of Verena in
Nuln. The story was convoluted but Dagmar told it faithfully and well, keeping
his face serious until the punch-line, which made them both laugh.

Dagmar bent double, exaggerating his laughter and slipped on the muddy bank.
He fell heavily on his right arm and his face screwed up in pain. Anja pounced
across onto the bank and helped him to sit. Her face was a flag of concern. A
great deal of blood stained the sling she had made and she could see bone
sticking through the skin below the elbow. He held her away with his good arm,
which was surprisingly strong, like a man shielding himself from the sun.

Eventually she calmed him down and they both sat together on the bank. When
she went to put her head on his good shoulder, he let her.

Gunter stood on the bridge and gouged the moss of the low stone rail with his
knuckles. He felt the water flow beneath his feet and felt the blood flow
through his body. He made himself breathe the air as he watched them. Gunter
remembered how he felt when he saw Anja dance with other men on Taal’s Day. He
stood there for some time.

When he finally managed to uproot himself from the bridge and make his way
down through the trees to the stream he walked noisily, so they might hear him
and untwine by the time he reached them. Gunter completely forgot his purpose in
seeking Dagmar.

Anja met him as he emerged from the trees, smoothing her dress and pulling
leaves from her hair. She matched his gaze and her eyes danced.

Dagmar stared into the stream and cradled his right arm like a babe. Gunter
could have sworn he was talking to it.

When Anja had gone, the two men looked at each other for a moment, the kind
of moment which might be the prelude to anything. As it was, Gunter suggested
that they go together to examine the tracks at the place where Gregor was
killed.

Otto knocked on the door again. He was sure someone was in there. This was
the one time he had ever been desperate enough to call on the help of the
militiaman. He was dismayed when the door was opened not by Gunter, but by his
harlot.

* * *

Dagmar stood behind Gunter as he crouched over the tracks, pointing at
various features which he had indicated with muddy sticks in the turf. They
stood like a blighted forest, marking the last steps taken by the man called
Gregor.

Gunter was trying to understand how Gregor could have been ambushed by the
mutant in such an open area as, apparently, he was always a careful man.

Gunter did not suggest that Gregor might have been very drunk on that night.
Perhaps the bottle he had found did not fit the fiction of the man’s death which
Gunter was trying to write in muddy characters on the killing ground.

Dagmar suggested that perhaps Gregor had been the attacker and the mutant had
merely tried to defend himself. Gunter was vehemently opposed to the suggestion.

Dagmar explained to Gunter his own version of the tracks. He moved some of
Gunter’s markers with his good arm, showing exactly where the mutant had been
surprised, where Gregor had picked up a stick, and where the broken halves of
the stick now lay, stained with the mutant’s blood. He finished by showing where
the mutant had finally fought back and where the body had fallen.

Gunter concluded that Gregor must have been drunk to be so foolhardy.

I am trying to tell you. I am amongst you. I am Chaos.
Destroy me.

Anja sat on Gunter’s bed and stared into the fire. She had heard what the
butcher had had to say, heard his testimony about the scaled hand of the witch
hunter. She had asked him what business he had had in the graveyard but Otto had
pressed his case. The man, apparently, had red-green scales on his right hand
below the wrist—a sure mark of Chaos. The fat butcher had pointed out how
badly the man’s clothes fitted him, how he was clearly not a natural rider of
that perfect stallion.

Anja had listened to all of this and she saw that it might be true. She
promised Otto she would fetch Gunter, and told him to retire to his cottage and
wait for them. Then she sat in the dark and tried to recall the taste of the
man’s breath, as it had been on the bank of the stream.

She tried to remember the taste of decay, of corruption, but she could
remember nothing but the sound of the stream and the look in his eyes.

Gunter came slowly back to the house as the burning galleon of the sun sank
behind the Grey Mountains. He thought about what Dagmar had said, how he had
shown him a different way of looking at the signs in the mud. How he had forced
him to see the truth which had all the time been set before his eyes.

More than ever, Gunter felt he was in a great library, like the one he had
seen in Middenheim, where all the knowledge of the world was kept and yet he
could not read a word of it. He walked past the waiting pyre and smelt the oil.
A small group of Kurtbad residents stood about it, like birds of prey who
anticipate a kill. Gunter felt it too and began to trot back to his cottage.

Anja was waiting at the open door for him, a sight which grasped his heart.
She brought him inside and after looking to see that he was alone, she closed
the door. She told him:
I have found the killer.

Dagmar stood on the slope above the village in the struggling light. He
looked at the cottages and their hearth-fires which sent up vines of smoke from
holes in the thatch. He imagined the meals being prepared. There would perhaps
be children, certainly animals, underfoot. There would be both happiness and
unhappiness in those cottages. He hated them, every one.
I am hatred.

Except her. He thought of her by the stream. Reflected sunlight splashing her
face, cooling her eyes. He thought of the way their faces had touched.

How can you not smell it on my breath?

He shattered the picture with the mallet of his hatred.

How dare she?

Do not touch me.

Doesn’t she know what she’s done to me?

He pulled off his right glove and shook his arm free of the sling. As he
flexed it he felt blood course through it and the cuts at his wrist opened again
and bled freely.

There is poison in my blood.

How dare she?

I am a killer.

I am Chaos.

I will show her.

He drew the witch hunter’s sword from the witch hunter’s belt and strode down
the hill,
I have changed my mind. I will not die. I will live as I am
and I am as I will.

Gunter surveyed the assembled crowd. Fifteen or so men and boys had gathered
in the gloom. Each carried a weapon of some kind, many carried torches which
they lit from the coals of Gunter’s fire. Anja sat on the bed and said nothing.

Gunter gave his last instructions and the group moved out. Gunter led them.
He was the only man with military training and although they felt they knew
their quarry, who could tell what strength the curse of Chaos could lend to a
man? They were not scared—there were too many of them for that—but there was
a thrill which ran through them as they moved closer. They spoke of revenge and
justice, though not one was thinking of Gregor.

Gunter gripped his sword and strained his eyes in the dark. He thanked Sigmar
that Anja was safe, having come so close to danger. Images of the library
returned to him but Gunter no longer needed to read.

Anja heard him coming. He was walking loudly and didn’t seem to know anything
about the mob. She stood behind the door and cancelled her breath while he tried
the handle.

Dagmar staggered into the room and she saw that his left hand held a sword.
His right hand hung at his side, the fingers moving, almost as if he was not
aware of it. It looked as if the first two and second two fingers were in the
process of fusing and they did not move independently. Perhaps that was why he
no longer wore the glove.

“Dagmar?”

He turned on her like a cornered boar and she saw his face contorted by pain
and rage. She brought the iron firestick down on his left hand and the sword
bounced off the flagstones.

He moaned,
No,
growled in pain and sank to the floor. He looked at
her. Tears of black blood streamed from his eyes.

Gunter gave the signal and the mob moved forward. They had trapped the
murderer in the house and all that remained was to apprehend him. As far as they
knew, he was alone. Hardly surprising. By all accounts, Chaos carried a stench
that was enough to make a soldier cry.

Gunter steadied himself and kicked the door with his mercenary’s boot. It
gave way easily and he almost fell into the room. The sole inhabitant of the
cottage leapt up in shock, banging his head on one of the butcher’s tools which
hung from the central beam. The mob piled in behind Gunter, pressing him
forward.

Otto cowered away from them, but some spark of unworthy courage flared and he
grabbed a cleaver. He wore no shirt and Gunter stared in disgust at the rolls of
fat which hung over his linen breeches. The skin was pasty and white and the
whole cottage smelt of dead flesh. Gunter disarmed the man with a chopping
stroke to his right wrist. The mob grabbed him and silenced his protests.

Anja met them at the pyre. She held fresh torches in her hands. She watched
without flinching as the unconscious Otto was lashed to the stake. It had been
easy enough to convince Gunter. He had seen Otto many times with the blood of
pigs on his hands. Such a man could kill. There was little distance between the
butcher of Kurtbad and the Butcher of Kurtbad.

Otto was a hateful man and Anja told herself that the village would be better
off without him.

Gunter was calling for the matter to be settled and judgement to be passed.
The eyes of the crowd, hungry and violent, turned to where she stood, supporting
Dagmar with her shoulder. His right arm was back in its sling and the hand was
tightly bound with linen bandage.

She nudged him forward. Dagmar stepped into the torchlight. He smelled the
oil. He looked at the circle of people, death in their faces. He turned to look
at the fat butcher tied to the stake like a grub about to be roasted. He thought
of the dead, drunk man, buried by the butcher in the graveyard. He thought of
the witch hunter, stiffening beneath a pile of forest leaves. He thought of the
militiaman, who surely knew and wondered why he stood there amongst the
ignorant, blood-driven rabble.

He thought mostly of Anja, of what she had said to him, of how she had looked
at him, of what she must have seen when she did, and of how she had again
brought him back to himself. He tried to imagine what might happen after this
night was over. Someone was forcing a torch into his left hand.

He spread his damaged fingers apart and held the wood as if in a claw,
between thumb and forefinger. He hesitated. He asked the crowd:
Why should
this man die?

The crowd told him:
He is Chaos. Destroy him.

Dagmar’s right arm twitched and stretched against the fabric of the sling.
Anja touched him gently with her fingers, a reassuring squeeze. The sling tore
and scales backhanded her away.

Dagmar leapt onto the pile of oil-slicked logs. He looked at the men and
women with their torches and their murderous fear.

We are so much the same, and so different.

The butcher tried to lift his head. Dagmar thrust the torch into the logs and
a forest of flames sprang up. Otto screamed and Dagmar howled. He embraced the
fat man and locked his claw hands around the back of the stake.