Tales of the Old World (39 page)

“Johansen!” Grenner yelled and he jerked his head up. A man was running out
of the shadows, carrying a torch. It was the man the Ulrican had slapped in the
crowd. A back-up. From the other direction Grenner’s throwing knife spun and
sunk into the new man’s chest, a second into his eye. He fell. The torch went
up, curving a bright path towards Johansen.

He jumped to catch it, and his foot slipped on the oil. It bounced through
his hands and hit the flagstones. The oil burst into flames. He stared for an
instant. “Run!” Grenner was bellowing. “Run!”

He ran, roaring warnings, grabbing people and pushing them ahead of him. As
he ran past the Empress and out into the crowd, he thought he might be safe.

Then the world picked him up and flung him across the square, filling his
senses with bright loud disaster. He ducked and rolled, bruised and breathless,
clambering back onto his feet, running through the panicked, screaming crowd to
get away. There was a second explosion. People were knocking each other down,
trampling over bodies, desperate to get away.

The statues were falling like trees in a gale, crashing into each other.
Stone limbs dropped, torsos cracked, heads fell and exploded. Leopold collapsed
into the Empress Magritta, her hollow bronze frame booming like a bell across
the stampede in the square. She crumpled down into the crowd, crushing—Johansen didn’t want to think how many people. He could see bodies impaled on
the spikes of her crown. He felt sick.

Above the mayhem, the mighty figure of Sigmar stood firm, warhammer raised
against the sky, the symbol of the Empire. Johansen, swept away by the crowd,
tried to keep his eyes on it. Could it have survived the blast? Would it stand?
Then he saw the first crack appear in its right leg. Pieces of stone fell. The
crack grew. The leg shattered. The stone warhammer moved against the sky, slowly
but unstoppably.

Johansen watched, not caring about the people streaming and screaming past
him, as the first emperor fell from his plinth like a god falling from the
heavens, smashing its hundred-foot length across the flagstones and crowds of
the Konigplatz, splintering into uncountable pieces. The head of the warhammer,
ten feet across and solid granite, bounced once, rolled and crashed into the
Black Goat Inn. Beams fell, tiles cascaded off the roof into the crowd below,
and part of the front wall collapsed.

Johansen felt a hand grip his forearm and turned to see Grenner. His
partner’s face was gaunt and covered in dust, his clothes torn, his face
bleeding where it had been cut by flying stones. They stared at each other and
at the devastation around them. Grenner raised an arm and pointed at the
wreckage of the inn.

“You know,” he shouted above the tumult and chaos, “that’s hurt your chances
of getting a snog tonight.”

Johansen almost hit him. Instead after a second he said, “Give me your
cloak.” Grenner passed it and Johansen tore it into strips. Together they knelt
and began bandaging the wounded.

* * *

“Get some sleep,” Hoffmann said.

It was four hours later. Altdorf was in shock. The Konigplatz lay in chaos,
corpses still strewn amidst the rubble of two thousand years of history,
everything covered with a layer of powdered stone, made ghostly by the flames of
a hundred torches, lighting the rescuers’ efforts to find more wounded. The
temples and hospices were full, and the cold stone slabs in the temples of Morr
too. Messengers had already ridden out from the city to carry the news across
the Empire, like a rock dropped in a frozen pond, the news fracturing and
rippling out across the land.

That, Johansen thought, was what the Ulricans had wanted, what they were
prepared to give their lives to achieve. In the north of the Empire, in Ostland
and beyond, the fall of Sigmar would be a rallying-cry. Come the spring, there
might even be civil war.

He sat in Hoffmann’s office, drinking hot spiced wine, Grenner beside him.
The three had spent the night lifting rocks, carrying bodies and comforting the
wounded and the grieving until they were utterly exhausted. Logically, he
thought, they should have been searching for the other Ulricans. But this was
more important.

“Sorry we didn’t stop them, sir,” he said for the fifth time. Across the
room, Hoffmann shook his head. The leather of his chair creaked with the
movement.

“Not your fault. You did everything you could. We didn’t have the manpower,
it was as simple as that.” He looked contemplative. “Get some sleep.”

“Shouldn’t we find the rest of them, sir?”

“They’re probably miles outside the city by now,” Hoffmann said, “heading
north. But don’t forget the two of you are on duty at seven bells.”

“You’re bloody joking,” Grenner blurted out.

“I’ll overlook that insolence, Grenner, given the circumstances. Hexenstag
dawn: the Emperor will be at the cathedral service for the blessing of the new
year. We attend him. Plain clothes, not uniform. And shave, for Sigmar’s sake.”

“Won’t it be cancelled?” Grenner asked. “Under the circumstances?”

Hoffmann shook his head. “The Emperor’s determined to show his people that
Sigmar’s Empire and its faith are still strong—and to mourn the dead as well.
He’s adamant. He’s instructed all the Electors in Altdorf to be there too.”

“Oh Sigmar,” Johansen said quietly.

“What, Johansen?” Hoffmann asked.

“Don’t you see?” His mind was exhausted; perhaps that was how he could
understand the Ulrican fanatics, the way they thought, the depths of their
madness and the extremes they’d go to. He remembered the eyes of the red-haired
mason, a man who knew he was going to die and didn’t care. “It’s not over. The
cathedral with the Emperor and the Electors, all the nobility of Altdorf… that’s
the next target. They’re not settling for sending a signal, they want to start
the war. Today.”

Hoffmann stared at him. “Sigmar’s balls, man, didn’t they use all their
gunpowder this evening?”

“No.” His neck ached. “The crater in the Konigplatz wasn’t deep enough. I
reckon they’ve got four or five hundred pounds left.”

Hoffmann stared across the dark room. “An hour’s sleep,” he said. “No more.
Then we search the cathedral from top to bottom.”

Something clanged, and Grenner was instantly awake. It knelled again and he
realised what he was hearing: the great bell of the cathedral, ringing to summon
the faithful to worship. Light streamed through the windows. He threw off his
blanket and shook Johansen on the next bed. “We’ve overslept! We’ve bloody
overslept!”

Johansen was alert in a second. “What happened to Hoffmann? He was going to
wake us.”

“No idea.”

Johansen began throwing on his torn and filthy clothes. “You know he’s an
Ulrican?”

“Who?”

“Hoffmann.”

“What are you saying?” Grenner stared at him. “Nothing. Just an observation.”

“I hope you’re right.” They rushed downstairs and out into the street. Nobody
turned to look at them: there were too many ragged, haggard people in the city
that morning. Thin grey dust coated everything. Two horses stood at a
hitching-post outside a building opposite. Grenner caught Johansen’s eye. A
moment later they were on horseback, galloping towards the great cathedral of
Sigmar.

“How would they have got barrels of gunpowder into the cathedral?” Grenner
shouted above the clatter of hoofs on cobbles.

Johansen gestured with one hand. “Bribery. Concealment. The powder may not be
in barrels anymore. Where the hell’s Hoffmann?”

“How should I know?”

Ahead, they could see a crowd around the cathedral’s high doors. Many people
had come to worship alongside the Empire’s greatest citizens today, to mourn
loved ones, or ask for divine retribution on their killers. Grenner could see
armoured guards by the doors, swords drawn.

“Stop,” he shouted. Johansen reined in his horse.

“Why?” he said.

“We need to think about this.”

“Every second counts.”

“They’re not going to let us into the cathedral looking like this.” He
paused. “How much gunpowder did you say the Ulricans had left? Enough to bring
down the building?”

“Enough to make a hole in it, maybe.”

“They want more than that.” Grenner grimaced, thinking. “Maybe they’re going
to crash a Bretonnian wineseller’s cart stuffed with gunpowder through the doors
and blow themselves up.”

“Not funny.”

“I wasn’t joking.” Grenner wiped his brow and stared up at the huge building,
its buttresses rearing up into the sky around the peaked slates of the pitched
roof. Between their stone arms, hanging over the high crenellated wall around
the top of the building, a scarlet flag was blowing in the wind.

“What would five hundred pounds of gunpowder do to the roof?” he asked.

Johansen furrowed his brow. “You could collapse the whole thing.” He
raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think they’re up there?”

Grenner pointed at the flag that had caught his eye. “Recognise that?”

“No.”

“You should pay more attention to fashion. That’s Hoffmann’s cloak.”

Johansen was silent for a second. Then: “How do we get up there?”

Grenner grinned. “Follow my lead.” He dug his heels into his horse and
galloped down the street, heading for the crowd around the cathedral doors,
Johansen hard on his heels. Heads turned as people heard their approaching
hoofbeats, there were shouts, and a path opened. Grenner rode down it, heading
for the doorway, holding his reins tight to keep the horse straight.

The guards tried to block them with their swords but they weren’t fast enough
and their blades weren’t long enough: Grenner thanked the gods that they hadn’t
been pikemen. He flashed past them and into the cathedral’s antechamber, glanced
back to check Johansen was still behind him, then crouched low as the horse
plunged through the smaller arch into the vaulted expanse of the long nave.

People in the pews either side leaped to their feet as the two horses
galloped down the cathedral’s central aisle. There were shouts of surprise and
anger. Grenner ignored them. He knew a stairway in the south-east transept; it
led up past the gallery where the Elector Counts sat to watch the service, then
spiralled upwards to the roof. That was their way up.

He galloped past the choir. Almost there. People behind them were chasing on
foot, but he was well ahead of them. The horse cantered into the shadows of the
transept, Grenner leaped from its saddle, drew his sword and ran to the stairs,
taking them three at a time. Johansen was right behind him.

A wall of armed men blocked their way.

Oh Sigmar, he thought. The Electors’ guards. There was no way through. He
twisted round, to see more soldiers behind him. No way out either. Trapped.

There was a strange hush in the cathedral at this invasion of a holy place.
Off to one side Grenner could see the open gallery where the Electors were
seated. He recognised faces among them. He’d saved some of their lives, but they
wouldn’t know him.

No, he thought, one would. Grand Prince Valmir von Raukov, Elector Count of
Ostland.

“Prince Valmir,” he shouted. “The men who killed Anastasia are on the roof.”

The Elector’s head jerked up and he stared at the Palisades officers as if
woken from a dream. He looked surprised and alarmed. Startled, Grenner thought,
to hear his mistress’ name echo across the cathedral. It was a risk. If the
prince was a typical cold-blooded noble he could ignore them and the guards
would cut them down. But if, as Grenner had guessed, he had really loved the
girl…

The prince stood. “Let them pass,” he said.

The guards moved aside. Grenner pushed between them and headed up. Behind
him, Johansen paused to take a loaded crossbow from one of the soldiers. “I’ll
borrow that,” he said, and followed his partner.

The door at the top of the stairs was closed. Grenner shoulder-charged it and
it flew open with a crash. Outside, in the narrow trough between the low wall of
battlements and the steep pitch of the roof, three men looked up. One grabbed
for a lit lantern, one for a bow, and one did not move because he was bound hand
and foot, gagged and leant against the wall with his cloak flapping in the cold
wind. Hoffmann.

Grenner dived to one side. Behind him, Johansen raised his borrowed weapon
and shot the other bowman in the head. He fell.

The second man, dark and heavily built, ducked behind Hoffmann, wrapping an
arm round his neck, using him as a shield. “You cannot win,” he shouted. “This
is Ulric’s year! The false god Sigmar has been destroyed and his temple and
priests shall perish too! It is ordained!” His voice had a northern accent and
the hectoring tone of a true believer.

“Morning, sir,” Johansen said, looking at the network of oil-soaked cords
running over the roof, doubtless leading to caches of gunpowder. Grenner had
been right: they were planning to bring the roof down on the worshippers below.

“Don’t move, or the nobleman dies!” the Ulrican shouted, pulling Hoffmann
with him. The fuses were joined into a single twist of cord, Johansen saw. So
they were all linked. Any fuse lit would ignite the others. Thirty feet away the
Ulrican was moving towards the cords, lantern in one hand, Hoffmann in the
other.

Johansen slowly raised his hands. “Don’t kill the nobleman,” he said.

“It’d look bad on our records if you did,” said Grenner from behind him.
“Sorry about this, sir.” A throwing-knife flashed from his hand and embedded
itself in Hoffmann’s thigh. The general’s leg gave way and he collapsed.
Johansen was already drawing his small crossbow from its shoulder-holster and
firing, running forwards.

The Ulrican took the bolt in the temple and fell, throwing the lantern at the
cords. It struck the stonework of the gutter at an angle and rolled, the oil
inside blazing up.