Dead Winter Read online

  Walther was discovering that frustrating fact. Klein-heistkamp was the third professor he’d managed to lure to the Black Rose and he was the third to openly laugh at the rat-catcher’s story. He cast a despairing glance towards Zena, but all she did was shake her head and vanish into the kitchen. Hugo might have been more sympathetic if he wasn’t too busy trying to teach the three ratters how to sit up and beg.

  Bremer wore a big smile though, happily refilling the professor’s stein at every opportunity. Walther winced each time he saw the taverneer grab for Kleinheistkamp’s mug. For an old man, his lordship had a prodigious capacity, especially when Walther was paying. It seemed a noble title wasn’t enough to keep some people from guzzling another man’s beer.

  ‘What you describe is simply impossible!’ Klein-heistkamp declared, wiping foam from his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘This is an enlightened age! We know now that there are rules to spontaneous generation. A salamander is created by fire, flies generate from unburied corpses, but higher forms, things like cattle and swine, must be created in the proper manner. We know that maternal impression causes malformations in offspring, not the diet or habits of the mother as simple herb wives would have it. We know that a cockatrice is spawned from the egg of a rooster exposed to the rays of Morrslieb and that it is not, as our less educated forebears would have us believe, the result of a serpent having congress with a hen.’

  Walther could feel the veins pounding in his forehead. The professor had been prattling on like this for the better part of an hour, straying into subjects beyond either his ability or his desire to follow. ‘That is all well, my lord, but about the rat…’

  ‘Such a creature is impossible,’ Kleinheistkamp said, tapping the wooden counter by way of emphasis. Bremer decided to take it as an appeal for the stein to be refilled. ‘A rat as large as you describe would be crushed under its own weight! It wouldn’t be able to move, much less launch itself at a grown man and bite out his throat!’

  ‘I’ve hunted rats all my life,’ Walther growled back. He held his hand out so that the professor could see the scars. ‘I know what a rat bite looks like.’

  Kleinheistkamp smiled and shook his head. ‘I know you think you know what you saw,’ he explained, his voice adopting the condescending tolerance of a parent teaching a child. ‘But I’m afraid you just don’t have the understanding to make a judgement of that sort. Isn’t it more likely that the vigilantes were right? Somebody cut the fellow’s throat and your imagination did the rest. You are so accustomed to seeing the violent handiwork of vermin that you unconsciously made a similar creature responsible for the tanner’s murder.’ The old man took a long pull from the stein and rose from his chair. ‘I grant that the mob was impetuous blaming plague victims, but I guarantee that a human malefactor was responsible. Robbery, not monstrosity, was behind the tanner’s death.’

  Chuckling under his breath, Lord Kleinheistkamp tottered off. Walther felt his stomach turn as he watched the pompous old man leave. The professor had marked his last chance to get somebody at the Universität to listen to his story. Entertaining the scholars while they smugly dismissed what he had seen with his own eyes had cost the rat-catcher the better part of twelve schillings. He would be weeks recouping the loss.

  Bremer reached out to clear away Kleinheistkamp’s mug. The taverneer squinted at the stein as he lifted it. ‘His lordship left a bit,’ he said, turning towards Walther and offering the mug to him.

  ‘Drink it yourself,’ Walther hissed, clenching his fist in frustration. Bremer shrugged and downed the rest of the professor’s drink.

  ‘They’re fools,’ Walther snarled. ‘Blind idiots who won’t believe anything unless it’s written down in one of their precious books! They wouldn’t accept this monster as real unless it crawled up and bit them in–’

  ‘Then why keep bothering about them?’ Zena demanded. There was colour in her cheeks, a tremble of anger on her lip. She knew as well as Walther how much he had gambled on the scholars. The loss of money was one thing, but the loss of hope was something she knew the rat-catcher couldn’t afford. ‘The Universität aren’t the only ones who would want to buy such a beast.’

  Walther stood, glaring at Zena, all the pain of his dashed dreams rising to his tongue. ‘Who else would buy the thing? Ostmann? At a penny a pound?’

  Zena glared back at the rat-catcher, her own anger rising. It wasn’t just Walther who was depending upon a windfall from the monster. Against her best judgement, she cared about him. His defeat was her defeat. And she wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

  ‘Why not sell it to Emil?’ she asked, pointing a finger at Bremer behind the bar. The bearded taverneer backed away, a frightened look on his face.

  ‘You two fight all you want, but leave me out of it,’ Bremer said.

  Zena wasn’t going to let her employer make such a gracious retreat. ‘You’re always saying you want something novel to drum up more business,’ Zena told him in an accusing tone. ‘What could be more perfect than this? A genuine monster for people to come in and gawp at!’

  Bremer rolled his eyes. ‘I was talking about dancing girls, not giant vermin. Who’d feel like eating staring at a huge rat mounted over the hearth?’

  ‘I thought the idea was to sell drinks,’ Walther countered, warming to Zena’s idea. ‘Just thinking about this giant makes me want a jack or two to steady my nerves.’

  The taverneer came forwards, resting his elbows on the counter, one hand scratching his beard. ‘There’s something to be said for that,’ he conceded. ‘A man would want a drink after looking at something like that.’ A hard glint came into his eyes and he stood back, turning his gaze from Walther to Zena and back again. ‘I’m not making any promises, understand. But if Walther can get this monster, I’ll have it stuffed and stood up right here on the bar. If it brings in any business, I’ll split the profit seventy-five twenty-five.’

  ‘Fifty fifty,’ Walther objected. ‘Remember, I’m the one actually going down there to get the thing.’

  Bremer spit into his palm. ‘Done!’ he exclaimed, offering his hand to the rat-catcher. Walther spit into his own hand and clasped the taverneer’s, sealing the deal in the old Wissenland way. Zena withdrew hastily to the kitchen, leaving the two partners to discuss the details of their agreement.

  ‘Herr Schill,’ Hugo’s quite voice broke into the discussion. The rat-catcher turned to see his apprentice sitting by the fire. He’d managed to get all three of the terriers to stand up on their hind legs and wave their forepaws at him like street beggars. Walther felt annoyed by the interruption, much more so because it seemed Hugo wanted to show off a trick an addle-witted child could have taught the most moronic mongrel.

  Hugo, however, had a different reason for interrupting his master. Gesturing at the begging terriers, he said something that sent cold fingers closing around Walther’s heart.

  ‘If we’re going after this giant,’ Hugo said, ‘won’t we need bigger dogs?’

  Middenheim

  Kaldezeit, 1111

  The mountain wind whipped snow against the walls of Middenheim. A layer of ice and frost caked the jagged cliffs, transforming the entire Ulricsberg into a frozen pillar, the lights of the city shining from the heights like a phantom aurora.

  The guards patrolling the benighted battlements huddled in their fur cloaks, cradling the skins of ale that were their best protection against the cold. The gibbous face of Morrslieb smirked down at them from the blackened sky, casting its sickly glow over the city. The moon’s cleaner, more wholesome brother Mannslieb was in retreat, slinking towards the horizon, abandoning the field to the eerie gleam of its ill-favoured companion.

  Dozens of sentries patrolled the walls of Middenheim, each tasked with a different section of the battlements. It was dreary, thankless work, especially in the dead of night with a snow flurry sweeping the mountain. Not one of the soldiers didn’t wish himself warm in bed, a bottle of Reikhoch in his hand and a buxom taver
n girl at his side.

  Such visions, however, did little to cheer the men tasked with guarding the sleeping city. They tried to console themselves by considering everything that could jeopardise their comrades who were enjoying the taverns and bawdy houses of Middenheim’s Westgate district. There were the cutpurses and pickpockets, always waiting for an opportunity to steal from a soldier too deep in his cups. There was the menace of drunken dwarfs, ever ready to take umbrage at the slightest remark and with the brawn to back up their short tempers. And there was the more recent menace, the whispers that a few of the district’s denizens had come down with the plague.

  For most of the soldiers patrolling the walls, rumours of the plague were disconcerting, but they placed no especial importance upon them. For the two soldiers whose patrol consisted of the stretch of wall between the west and south gates bordering the Sudgarten, such stories were much more. Other guards quieted their fears by telling themselves Graf Gunthar’s decree made it impossible for the plague to reach the top of the Ulricsberg. These men knew otherwise.

  ‘Halt and be recognised!’ one of the soldiers challenged as a shape lurched out of the darkness. His halberd trembled in his hand.

  ‘A friend,’ an oily voice coughed. From the gloom, a heavy-set man emerged into the moonlight, his body bundled in a thick bearskin cloak, his head concealed beneath the folds of a fur-lined hood.

  The challenging soldier relaxed when he recognised his clandestine benefactor, Oskar Neumann. He withdrew his menacing halberd, leaning the weapon against the ground. Anxiously he grasped Neumann’s gloved hand. The clink of silver rewarded the brief contact.

  The other sentry came forwards, likewise accepting a small leather purse from Neumann. A sour expression crossed the guard’s face as he juggled the purse in his hand. ‘It feels a little light,’ he complained.

  ‘It is the same as it has always been, Herr Schutze,’ Neumann’s greasy voice bubbled.

  A malicious curl came to Schutze’s lip. ‘Yeah, but the risks aren’t exactly what they were before.’ Again he juggled the purse in his hand. ‘About double what they were when we agreed to this.’

  Neumann shook his hooded head. ‘You want more money?’

  Schutze stared into the dark shadow where the man’s face was hidden. ‘The captain has been asking questions. People say there’s plague down in the slums. People are wondering how it could get there.’

  ‘I thought you were doing this out of a sense of compassion,’ Neumann sighed. ‘I thought you were doing this to help those poor souls down in Warrenburg. I thought the money was just a secondary concern.’

  Schutze laughed. ‘You thought wrong, Oskar. It’s all about the money. Don’t tell me you aren’t making a nice bit of silver off these people you’re smuggling up here. If you don’t want to lose out, just start asking more from your “poor souls” down there.’

  Neumann shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘I ask nothing from those I help except their discretion. My motives are purely altruistic. By helping these people, I am doing only what my faith demands.’ A tinge of sorrow crept into his croaky voice. ‘If, however, you are only interested in money, then you shall have it.’

  Schutze smiled as another pouch of silver appeared in Neumann’s left hand. As he reached out to take the money, however, he didn’t notice the man’s other hand. Before he could understand what was happening, a slender dagger punched into his side, sinking between the joins of his armour just under his armpit and stabbing deep into his heart. The soldier gasped once, then crumpled to the ground.

  ‘You aren’t going to give me trouble, Herr Brasche?’ Neumann asked, the bloodied dagger still in his hand. ‘I should hope that our arrangement can continue, despite this unpleasantness. Greedy men are a liability. They are… indiscreet.’

  Brasche forced his eyes away from his comrade’s lifeless body. There was no mistaking the threat in Neumann’s oily voice. Even if he wanted to, he knew it would do no good to oppose the smuggler. With Schutze gone, he was alone now, while Neumann had an entire gang lurking somewhere nearby in the darkness.

  ‘What will we do?’ Brasche asked.

  Neumann bent his burly body downwards, lifting Schutze’s body off the ground as though the armoured soldier weighed no more than a child. ‘When we are finished here, we will pitch Herr Schutze over the side. By morning, the snow will have buried him. You will report to your officers that he abandoned his post during the night.’ The smuggler chuckled, taking the pouch of silver he had used to lure the soldier to his death and tucking it into the dead man’s boot. ‘Even if they find him, they will think he slipped and fell.’

  Brasche shuddered at the callous way Neumann draped the body against the crenellations. Footsteps and the clatter of equipment drew his attention away from the macabre scene. Neumann’s gang, seven men wrapped in a mismatch of furs and wool, came slinking along the wall. Four of them carried thick loops of rope over their shoulders, the other three struggled under the bulk of an enormous basket.

  The soldier watched in fascination as the gang slapped together the pieces of a wooden windlass and fastened the coils of rope to it. The other ends they connected to the basket. In short order, they had the apparatus ready. The basket was lowered over the side of the wall, beginning its descent to the ground far below.

  ‘It is a noble calling,’ Neumann said, coming up beside Brasche. ‘Too rich for noble blood.’ The hooded head turned, staring up at the sky. ‘There are several hours yet. We should be able to retrieve a dozen before it becomes too light to work any more.’

  Brasche shifted uneasily, remembering all too well how the smuggler had murdered Schutze without a moment’s hesitation. Still, he had to ask the question that was plaguing him. Just like Schutze, he had assumed Neumann was doing this because he was being paid to do it.

  ‘You make me grieve for mankind,’ Neumann answered. ‘Have we sunk so low that we cannot understand a motivation higher than our own base needs? I told your comrade the truth, Herr Brasche. I take nothing from the people I help. The knowledge that I have lifted them up from the squalor and misery and set them free in the warmth and safety of the city is all the reward I need.’

  The hooded head turned towards Brasche, fixing him with an unseen stare. ‘We are doing the god’s work, you and I. One day, all Middenheim will understand the importance of our work.’

  Chapter VII

  Altdorf

  Ulriczeit, 1111

  Erich pressed back against the stone wall of the herbalist’s shop and watched as three men in ragged clothes ran down the street. Despite their scraggly looks, there was some trace of military precision in the way they moved. Erich decided they must be survivors from Breadburg, Dienstleute who had escaped the massacre.

  At least for a time. While the knight watched, he saw three militiamen wearing the armbands of the Schuetzenverein come around the corner with bared swords, clearly in pursuit. As the two fugitives came past the herbalist, a pair of men in the black cloaks and tunics of the Kaiserjaeger drifted out from the mouth of an alleyway. One of them drew a sword from his belt, the other crouched in the street and took aim with a crossbow.

  One of the rebels screamed and crashed into the snow, the iron spike of the crossbow bolt protruding from his chest. The second rebel hesitated, lingering for just an instant over his fallen friend. In that moment of indecision, the three Schueters came upon him, one from each side. The dienstmann’s only weapon was a hatchet, but the soldier employed it viciously, slashing open the arm of one militiaman and gashing the shoulder of a second before the Kaiserjaeger swordsman came upon him from behind and ran him through. The stricken rebel wilted into the snow, collapsing across the body of his slain comrade.

  Erich carefully crept back into the gloom of a side-street. It wasn’t the sight of violence that made him retreat. In the weeks since the Bread Massacre, Altdorf had played host to countless such scenes. Many of Engel’s men had escaped the destruction of their camp, going to ground in t
he city. Plague had erupted in the poorer quarters, clearing out entire blocks of hovels. Ample space for desperate men to hide.

  The Kaiserjaeger and the militia were untiring in their efforts to root out the rebels and street fights were the usual routine when they found their quarry. Poorly equipped and almost always outnumbered, the rebels still refused to surrender.

  Serving with the Dienstleute of the Reiksknecht had vanquished any illusions Erich had that courage and valour were qualities exclusive to the noble classes. Still, he was impressed with the stubborn determination shown by Engel’s peasants. In the face of certain death, they refused to give up their honour. A man couldn’t ask for better from a comrade-in-arms.

  He frowned as that thought came to him. What he had witnessed boded ill for his own comrade-in-arms. He had thought to secure woundwort and other curative roots from the herbalist to tend Aldinger’s wounds. But the sudden appearance of the lurking Kaiserjaeger had shown him the folly of such an idea. The Kaiserjaeger knew some Reiksknecht had escaped their trap, and they knew some of the knights would be wounded. It was only natural that they would be watching any place that might offer succour to an injured man. Erich realised he was indebted to the luckless rebels. If not for them, he would have walked right into the Kaiserjaeger ambush.

  Stealing down the narrow street, his eyes watching every shadow for enemies, Erich quickly put distance between himself and the herbalist. After a lifetime of drill and battle, playing the part of hunted animal was a unique experience for the knight. One that he vowed he would make Kreyssig pay for.

  A barren patch of street devoid of snow marked another entrance to Altdorf’s maze of sewers and subterranean culverts. The heat within the vaulted tunnels was enough to melt the snow that settled upon the hatch-like stone covers. Indeed, very often it was the only way to spot them, so cunningly had the dwarfs blended them into the cobblestones.