The Enemy Within (17 page)

Dieter squeezed the coppersmith’s shoulder. “It will be all
right,” he said. “Mann and his people will take care of you. You’ll be safe with
them as you could never be in Altdorf. There, it was only a matter of time until
the witch hunters came for you. Here, you’re going to live.”

Lampertus took a deep breath. “You’re right,” he said. “You
got me out, I’m going to live, and I’m grateful. Thank you both.”

Adolph responded with a smile. “You’re welcome,” he said.

For his part, Dieter felt irrationally touched by the
mutant’s jubilation, and envious of it too. What a wonderful thing it must be to
escape! He certainly hadn’t. Even out here in the countryside, he was still
enmeshed in a web of danger, deception and puzzles without answers, of fear,
hope, ambivalence and unhealthy fascination. He drew what solace he could from
contemplating the sky as it ought to look, with no tangle of spires eclipsing it
and without smoke or smog besmirching it.

People spoke of raiders lurking just outside the city walls,
but, of course, the situation wasn’t quite that bad. The capital rose amid a
circle of farmland. It took all morning to cross the fields and reach the forest
beyond. Uncomfortable as it looked, Lampertus eventually managed to stretch out
atop the barrels and doze. The growth beneath his shirt switched back and forth
like a cat’s tail, more active when he was asleep.

Adolph forsook the highway for a secondary road, and when it
forked, took the narrower of the two branches. After every such choice, there
was less traffic than before.

Late afternoon found them jolting along a track scarcely
better than a game trail. Brush swished and rattled on the underside of the
wagon, and walls of mossy tree trunks pressed so close on either side that the
vehicle only barely had room to pass. Resentful of the hard going, the mules
baulked repeatedly, and Adolph, no expert teamster, snarled obscenities and
lashed them with the reins to goad them into motion once again.

“If the track gets any worse,” Dieter said, “we won’t be able
to continue.”

“I know what I’m doing!” Adolph snapped.

Dieter resisted the impulse to take a similar tone. “I wasn’t
suggesting that you don’t. After all, you’re the one who’s visited the raiders
before. I’m just saying, I hope we didn’t overload the wagon.”

Adolph grunted. Then, after a pause, he drew back on the
reins, halted the team, and said, “I admit, I thought someone would make contact
with us before now.”

“Could the raiders have moved their camp?” Lampertus asked.
The constant bumping and swaying had long since put an end to his napping. “Mama
Solveig told me they sneak around a lot to stay ahead of the soldiers.”

“The Master has ways of keeping track of them,” Adolph
replied, “and he told Mama this is the right area. Still, if something’s
happened within the last day or so…” He turned to Dieter. “Is there any chance
you can locate them with your magic?”

Dieter hesitated. “Perhaps.”

“Then give it a try. I’d rather sunset found us in Leopold’s
camp, not alone and bewildered on the trail. The god’s children aren’t the only
things living in these woods.”

“All right.” The branches arched and tangled so densely
overhead as to virtually hide the sky, but Dieter recalled a better view a turn
or two back down the track. The trick would be to take advantage of it without
providing further evidence that all his magic derived from the heavens. “But I
think I’ll focus better if I don’t have the two of you looking over my shoulder.
Do you mind if I walk a little way back down the trail?”

He actually expected Adolph, ever avid to observe and master
all the sorcery he could, to insist on accompanying him, but the scribe
surprised him. “Fine. Lampertus and I will guard the wagon, just don’t go too
far.”

“I won’t.” Dieter hopped down from the bench and hiked back
the way they’d come. Even with the undergrowth clogging the path and making
walking strenuous, it felt good to stretch his legs after hours of perching on a
hard, unsteady seat.

When he sighted the patch of open sky, the tender spot in his
forehead squirmed. No, he told it, I’m going to cast a spell, but not your kind—the kind I was born to cast. He took a deep breath, then declaimed the words
of power and swept his hand through the proper passes.

The wind whispered to him and ran its cool fingers across his
face. Grey and silver ripples streamed through streaks of wispy cloud to point
the way. It appeared Adolph had been heading in the right direction after all.
Dieter felt both relieved and disappointed, the latter because it would have
gratified the spiteful part of him to inform the scribe he’d blundered.

Then, for just an instant, the streaming bands of dull and
bright took on a crimson tinge, and though the resemblance was tenuous at best,
Dieter instantly thought of blood flowing from an open wound. He stared, trying
to read the significance of the additional and unexpected portent, but the
manifestation ended before he could interpret it.

It indicated danger, that much seemed clear. He hesitated,
wondering if a second casting would provide additional insight. But if the peril
was imminent, it might be better to rejoin his companions as quickly as
possible. He turned and ran back up the trail.

The wagon was still where he’d left it, with the mules
standing stolidly in their traces. But at first he could see no sign of Adolph
or Lampertus. He had to run closer before he spotted the motionless form all but
buried in the brush.

It was Lampertus, unblinking eyes staring at the sky, mouth
twisted. His deformity, a thick, warty tentacle terminating in a round, fanged
mouth like that of a lamprey, had burst through his clothing but now lay flaccid
and inert. Though disgusted by the unnatural growth, Dieter forced himself to
kneel down to determine if the fugitive was still breathing.

He wasn’t. Something had killed him, although the cause of
death wasn’t immediately apparent.

Dieter rose and turned, peering, seeing only rank upon rank
of trees, wondering who or what was watching him. Wondering what had become of
Adolph.

Adolph strode through the forest, trying to hurry but move
quietly as well. He didn’t want Dieter to track him by the noise.

He still felt rattled from the close call he’d just
experienced, and wished he’d had the prudence to open a wider distance between
Lampertus and himself before hurling his shadow knives. But he’d expected the
other man to go down instantly. Most people did.

Lampertus, however, hadn’t. Perhaps his transformation had
made him inhumanly tough. He’d pivoted and rushed his attacker, and the eel-like
growth on his chest had punched through his clothing to strike at Adolph like a
snake. Adolph hadn’t expected such an assault, and it was pure luck that the
tentacle hadn’t snagged him with that nasty ring of fangs.

He was lucky, too, that the deformity only had time for one
bite. Then, at last, Lampertus’ legs buckled, and he swayed and toppled over
backwards.

It was actually too bad about Lampertus. Adolph had had
nothing against him. He’d even fell vaguely moved by the coppersmith’s
gratitude. But a man had to do what was necessary to look after himself. It was
simply the way of the world.

He resolved to put Lampertus out of his mind and concentrate
on the next phase of his scheme. Everything was going even better than
anticipated, for he hadn’t expected that Dieter would be obliging enough to
wander off on his own and so facilitate matters, and in fact, the rest should be
easy enough. The raiders knew and trusted him. Still, a ready tongue and an
earnest manner would serve him well.

Suddenly a green and brown mass surged up in front of him
like mud and liquefied grass and dead leaves flowing in defiance of gravity. It
rapidly took on a degree of definition, sprouting limbs and a hairless bump of a
head, but remained a sexless and unfinished-looking thing. It stuck a
three-fingered hand inside its own semi-solid torso, extracted a javelin, and
hefted it to throw.

“No!” Adolph said. “I belong to the Red Crown! I’ve seen you
before. Don’t you recognise me?”

The sentry hesitated. “Red Crown?” it asked in a mushy voice.

“Yes.” He prayed the bandit understood. Sometimes the god’s
mark diminished a person’s intelligence, and the guard appeared a case in point.

“Sweetmeats?” asked the sentry, peering past him. “Treats?”

“I brought supplies,” Adolph said, “but something’s wrong. I
need to speak with the others immediately.”

The sentry simply stood, seemingly struggling to comprehend,
until he wanted to scream at it. At last it said, “Come,” floundered around, and
led him onwards, its boneless gait somehow awkward and flowing at the same time.
With each step, it looked on the verge of collapsing and melting back into
shapelessness again.

The raiders had pitched their tents, built their lean-tos,
and dug their fire pits and latrines in what passed for a clearing in the dense
and ancient wood. Many of the band were simply lazing about, and, curious, came
scurrying when the sentry conducted Adolph into view. In moments he found
himself surrounded by faces with beaks, scales, doglike muzzles, or set upside
down so the mouth split the top, the nose was inverted, and the eyes blinked and
shifted at the bottom. Voices, many barely intelligible, croaked, growled, and
hissed greetings and questions. As Adolph had learned from past experience, not
all such creatures stank, but enough of them did that when they clustered around
him, the eye-watering funk was like the reek of a dirty kennel mixed with the
foetor of a plague pit.

In other words, the bandits provided a glimpse of the glory
that would reign everywhere once Chaos obliterated the conventional human world,
and on previous visits, Adolph had always tried to rejoice in the promise they
embodied—and to quash the weak, unregenerate part of himself that persisted in
finding them hideous and dreaded the day when he too would change and join their
company.

Today, however, both adoration and repulsion were beside the
point. He needed to enlist the marauders’ help as expeditiously as possible. “Is
Leopold here?” he asked.

“I am,” a shrill voice answered from overhead.

Adolph looked up just in time to see a grey-black bundle
hanging upside down from a tree limb unfurl the furry wings wrapped around its
body. Then the claws on its toes released their hold and it dropped, not to take
flight as a true bat might, but to bound from one branch to another like a
squirrel. Some of the boughs snapped beneath the considerable weight, but still
provided momentary support sufficient to prevent a bone-shattering plummet all
the way to the ground.

Leopold Mann landed with a thud. Despite his stunted legs and
forward cant—leaning his weight on his knuckles, he generally used his
arm-wings like crutches when he walked—he was so huge that his eyeless head
with its enormous pointed ears showed above the heads of his followers even
before they parted to make way for him. He swung himself forwards, the golden,
wire-wrapped hilt of his greatsword gleaming above his shoulder and folds of
alar membrane dragging on the ground like an overlong cloak.

“You look upset,” Leopold said, although how Adolph could
“look” any way to a being without eyes, he couldn’t imagine.

“I had trouble,” he answered. “I was bringing you supplies
and a recruit. A new member of the coven rode along with me. Mama Solveig
thought it was time for him to meet you.”

“Go on,” Leopold said, still in the soprano voice that was so
incongruous squealing from his barrel chest.

“He’s a magician, too,” Adolph said, “and he used a spell to
murder Lampertus, the recruit. Then he tried to do the same to me. It all caught
me by surprise, and I only just managed to escape.”

“Why would he do that?” Leopold asked.

“I don’t know.” Adolph hesitated, making a show of pondering.
He didn’t want to seem too facile producing an explanation. “Unless… suppose
he’s a spy, who infiltrated the Red Crown in the hope we’d lead him to you. As,
to my regret, I did. But as we approached, his nerve failed at the prospect of
actually meeting you. Perhaps he imagined that, what with all the amazing gifts
the Changer of the Ways has given you, one of you would see through his
disguise. At any rate, he decided that he’d discovered the general vicinity of
your camp, and that was good enough. He’d kill his companions, flee, and lead
the army back here to wipe you out.”

Leopold snorted. “We’d be far away by the time the soldiers
came.”

“But only if you knew they were coming. If Dieter—the spy—had succeeded in killing me, too, you wouldn’t realise anything was amiss.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Leopold’s mouth was no longer shaped
much like that of an ordinary human, but it managed something approximating a
fang-baring leer. “Anyway, I don’t feel like moving camp just yet.” He turned to
his followers. “Find the spy and kill him.”

And that’s that, Adolph thought.

Much as he would have liked to learn every secret Dieter
might conceivably have taught, it had become clear to him that if he was ever to
regain his privileged position within the coven, his woman, and, if he was to be
honest with himself, his pride, the wyrd had to go. Yet he’d hesitated to
attempt the deed with his own hands, partly because he’d acquired a healthy
respect for Dieter’s powers and partly because he worried that Mama, Jarla and
the others would suspect him if the hedge wizard turned up dead inside the city.

Fortunately, it was inconceivable that Dieter’s sorcery,
formidable though it was, would suffice to fend off a small army of brigands,
and afterwards, if anyone asked questions, the outlaws would support Adolph in
his claim that his companion had been a spy. Having slaughtered Dieter, they
could only assume the act was warranted. It was human nature to justify oneself,
and Adolph was confident that even the most extreme transformations hadn’t cured
his dupes of the habit.