Warhammer [Ignorant Armies] (7 page)

His horse danced, sending a stone skittering. Stefan swallowed bile.

"It's going to take longer crawling up this viaduct than to ride from Hunxe." He tried not to think of the man's neck, swelling, swelling. "We should have ridden on last night and not bothered staying at the inn."

"The gates would have been closed at that hour."

"They would have recognized you."

"Perhaps. But the Watch might be a little overzealous about its duties at this time of year."

Stefan looked at the sunlight gleaming on his father's soft-tanned boots and brown riding velvets, and wondered why a physician important enough to be summoned all the way to Grubentreich to minister to the son of Grand Duke Leopold would not be prepared to force the Watch to recognize him. Whatever the hour.

Privately, he suspected that it was because his father was getting too old to sit his horse comfortably for any length of time.

"Perhaps we should have taken a coach from the inn at Hunxe."

His father's shoulders hunched in anger but he spoke quietly, without looking up from his reins.

"You might be eighteen, Stefan, and old enough to have applied for your own physician's licence, but it seems you do not yet have sufficient manners to mind me to grant it."

Stefan knew an apology would only make things worse. As it was, his father would probably delay the licence for a week or so. He stayed quiet and concentrated on trying to ignore the ache of two days' riding.

Ahead, the faint background noise grew louder. Stefan thought he could hear shouting.

"Sounds as though there's a fight in front." He stood up in his stirrups but could not see what was happening.

The shouting got louder; a ripple of movement spread outward, reaching them in the form of a rustling of clothes as people shifted from foot to foot. Several scrambled up onto their carts to get a better look.

"Hoy!" Stefan called. "Can you see what's happening?"

"Someone's had his wagon turned right over on its side."

"Ask him if anyone's been hurt," his father said.

"Can't tell," the man shouted, "but the Watch are coming out." He paused. "They're coming this way."

"Tell them we're physicians."

Under the direction of two members of the Watch, the wagon had already been hauled upright by unwilling bystanders. A guardswoman led them through the crowd.

The air was sharp with the reek of wine which still poured from the shattered barrel. A man wearing the coarse clothes and leather gauntlets of a waggoner lay on his back in shadow. A woman knelt at his side, gently probing his shoulder.

Herr Hochen handed his bag to Stefan and looked around. He walked over to a flat-bedded cart.

"Lift him up here," he said to the guardswoman.

The woman kneeling at the man's side stood up, shadow line slicing across her body diagonally from collarbone to hip. One knee of her pale green trousers was stained with wine, like a bruise. A cotton scarf, the same colour as the wine stain, was tied around her upper left arm. She was wearing a light cloak against the autumn chill but it was slung back over her shoulders, out of the way, and pinned with a wooden brooch. She was young, seventeen perhaps, but fatigue or something else made her seem older. Her hair, light brown and just long enough to be tied back, was dull with travel dust.

"He should not be moved until his leg is splinted," she said.

"I need to get a good look at him, my dear."

"His shoulder may be broken too."

"He'll be taken good care of, don't worry. Are you his daughter?"

"No."

"I see." He turned to the guardswoman. "Lift him up please."

Stefan turned away from the injured man's pain as two guardsmen heaved him onto the cart. The woman stooped to pick up a leather satchel which she slung over her back. Stefan recognized it as the kind of thing travelling musicians carried and wondered how she knew about splinting bones. She saw Stefan watching her. He blushed, but walked over.

"You don't agree with my father's methods."

"No."

"Don't you know who my father is?"

"No."

"Herr Doktor Franz Hochen."

"So now I know his name, as well as the fact that he doesn't know his job."

"He's the most well-respected physician in Middenheim. In fact, my father is the representative of the Guild of Physicians and a member of the Komission for Health, Education and Welfare."

"Then if he is not ignorant, he has caused that waggoner suffering wilfully."

"That man was poor, you could tell by looking at him. If we treated him here, we'd get no fee. So that cart will take him to the Temple of Shallya where the initiates take charity cases. Later, if it turns out he has got funds, then my father would be pleased to treat him. As it is, my father is probably paying for the use of that cart out of his own pocket. He's too generous."

"I see."

It was the exact tone his father had used earlier.

"We could prosecute you for practising healing without a licence," he said.

"You wouldn't." It was a statement. "Who authorizes these licences?"

"My father. He makes recommendations to the Komission from the applications received by the guild. Why? Do you want to apply?"

She studied him a moment.

"Perhaps."

And then she turned and forced her way into the crowd.

Stefan was left staring at the people she had pushed past. He felt foolish. He did not even know her name.

The night was mild and damp. Stefan walked along the Garten Weg slowly, enjoying the smell of grass and wet leaves. He stopped and listened to the unusual quiet. When he set up his practice, he would buy a house somewhere in clean, orderly Nortgarten, overlooking Morrspark where it was always peaceful. He smiled. Today, his father had handed him a parchment stamped in blue and fastened with the Komission's seal; he could set up his practice whenever he liked. He walked north and then east along Ostgarten, leaving the quiet behind.

Burgen Bahn heaved with people. It was nearly midnight but with only a week to Carnival, hawkers and pleasure-seekers lit lamps against the dark and did business while they could.

Stefan stooped through the doorway of the Red Moon. A fire blazed at one end and torches sputtered around a stage at the other; the room was full of noise. His cloak steamed in the heat.

"Stefan!"

He waved and made his way over to his friends' table. They poured him wine while he took off his cloak.

"Welcome, Herr Doktor Stefan," one of them said, handing him a leather cup.

Stefan grinned.

"Thank you, Josef."

He sipped and leaned back in his chair to get a good look at the stage, letting the heavy wine slide over his tongue. Tonight was his night, he wanted to savour every moment. To one side of the stage, a heavy-set man was tuning his rebec while another sat cross-legged, running through some repetitive tune on the pipes.

Stefan missed the point at which the rebec began to thread the room with the counter melody; it was just there, weaving the audience in tight. Two women began to dance. They moved easily, perfectly in time, ignoring the audience. To Stefan, it seemed that they danced for each other, swaying in and out of each other's reach but never touching. He watched, fascinated, as they stepped in close and silk skirts slid up the smooth muscle of their thighs at the same time. They held that position, close enough to feel the heat of each other's skin, for several heartbeats.

When the music finished, Stefan clapped as loudly as the rest. Several of his friends threw money onto the stage. Eva always hired the best entertainers in the city.

"And that was just the first act." He filled his goblet and took a long swallow, waving the wineboy over for more.

"Look," Josef nodded over to a tall woman in a cloak who had just arrived. "Eberhauer's here."

Janna Eberhauer, the deputy High Wizard, took her seat next to the owner of the Red Moon who smiled and stroked her arm, then stood, gesturing towards the stage.

"Looks like Eva's going to introduce the next one herself."

"...for our next performer. She's young but very, very talented. Katya Raine."

A young woman walked onto the stage carrying a pair of hand drums. Stefan leaned forward. It was the girl he had met by the east gate, the healer. Her loose trousers and sleeveless shirt were soft black. The scarf tied around her arm was black too. Her feet were bare. She sat down and settled the drums between her legs.

"Tonight, we sit well fed and snug, with the carnival moons overhead and wine lying warm in our bellies." There were a few cheers and shouts. "But tonight I will sing of a different place, a village where hungry people sit in their houses roofed with straw while autumn hardens to winter."

The audience was silent while Katya's hands moved over the drums, stroking and tapping, cupping the sounds, bringing them to life. They spoke of ground brittle with frost, of breath steaming in air bright as glass, of a deep and waiting cold. Power built under her fingers. Her eyes glittered with reflected torchlight and she swayed slightly, her head moving from side to side with the beat. Shadows caught and dissolved on the planes and ridges of her cheek and neck. Her fingers moved blindly, gently as moths. She sang...

... of a young woman kneeling on the floor of an old cow byre, feeding a fire with chips of goat dung. She was excited, impatient. Finally, satisfied with the height of the flames, she opened a small leather pouch and slid a stone onto her palm. It was dull and red. Using tongs, she held the stone over the flames. Now she would see if she was right: if it was heartsblood stone, it would glow in the heat and then, cooled in wine, it would be a treasure beyond price. The wine could be used in many healing tinctures, drop by precious drop. Or so she had been told by her great-grandmother.

With a flat crack, the stone exploded; she coughed in the smoke. Her left arm was stinging and when her eyes stopped running, she saw that it was smeared with blood. A sliver of stone must have caught her. She examined the charred dust on the end of the tongs: whatever the stone had been, it was not heartsblood.

That night, she woke in pain. Her arm was hot and swollen. Careful not to wake her sister who shared her pallet, she slid from under the sleeping furs and went outside into the moonlight. Around the puncture hole, her arm was puffy and tender. There was still something in there. It would have to come out.

The next day, the arm was sore where she had cut into the flesh but it no longer felt unnaturally heavy and hot. The woman wondered what the stone could have been. That night, she woke up again. She unwound the bandage; the arm was healing well but she felt strange, lightheaded. Outside, she did not feel the cold, it seemed that voices and hot breath whispered over her skin. Her body sang with excitement. She ran, laughing and mad, through the freezing night. It was dawn before she returned to her family's cottage, exhausted and bewildered, with blood on her hands and lips. Frightened as she was, she had the wit to wash herself before she lay down to get what rest she could.

The young woman tried everything, all her healing arts, to fight the madness growing inside her. But her efforts were useless; the stone which had shattered into slivers had been warpstone, and one speck of warpstone dust could wrench away sanity and mutate a body into something not human. Day after day, she fought the urges swelling up inside her. At night, when the dark influence pulled at her mind, she lost all memory of what she did. When she did sleep, her dreams were full of killing and tearing. Under the scarf tied about her left arm, her skin healed in a scale pattern, like a snake.

And then the morning came when she woke from her madness to find her whole arm covered in green scales and her nails hooked into claws. Inside the cottage, her entire family lay with their throats ripped out, stiffening in their own blood. She felt no doubt: she had done this thing. She was no longer human.

By noon, she had laid a huge fire in the centre of the cottage. She fastened the shutters from the outside, then she went inside and locked the heavy door. Using a twig, she pushed the key under the door out of reach. Now there was no way out. She lit the fire and burned herself to death.

Katya sat silently on the stage, her drums beside her. The glitter was gone from her eyes. Janna Eberhauer, the deputy High Wizard, watched her intently. The whole room was still. She had made them look into the face of a fear they lived with day by day, the horror that was warpstone - its power to pervert healthy daughters and well-loved sons into mutated forms who, shunned by law-abiding people, lost their sanity and turned to the worship of unspeakable gods. In silence, Katya picked up her drums and left the stage.

The audience stirred, then began to applaud. Coins showered the stage. Wineboys scraped the money into a pile for her to collect later. Stefan drained his cup, filled it and drank again.

"Hoy!" He called a wineboy over. "Parchment and quill, quickly."

When he had finished he folded it, scrawled Katya's name on the front and gave it to the waiting boy along with a shilling.

The boy smirked but threaded his way past the crowded tables and through a curtain at the back. A few moments later, Katya stood by his table, holding the note.

"Did you write this?" She tossed it onto the table. "I can't read."

"It says...uh, it asks would you like to join me for some wine?"

She sat down.

"I enjoyed your performance."

"Thank you."

"Yes. Though I've never heard of heartsblood stone."

"Before she died, my grandmother's mind wandered. She talked about strange red stones and how good fairies would reward hard work with pots of gold all in the same breath. When you're young you believe anything. Especially if you want to believe it."

"I could almost believe that you sang from knowledge."

"Only almost?" she asked.

Stefan's friend Josef looked at the scarf tied around Katya's left arm.

"Clever. Nice bit of deception, that. But maybe it's not deception," he said boldly, "maybe you really are a mutant." He was drunk.