CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

“Shame about the rain, your honour. It really damages a horse’s coat, especially one as hard ridden as yours. Gets into the nap of it, see, causes pie balding.” The ostler lifted his lamp and touched the horse that stood steaming in the middle of his stable. “Where did you say you’d come from again?”

“Altdorf,” muttered Grendel, wringing rain from his beard. “No! Not Altdorf, I meant Nuln. I’ve come from Nuln.”

“That’s what I thought you said. Nuln. That must be two hundred miles if it’s a dozen. Now if you’d come from Altdorf, I could have given you half price for him, winded and rain scourged as he is, but Nuln…”

The ostler shook his head regretfully and looked at Grendel. Even without the white flecks of exhaustion that speckled his horse, it was obvious that this gangling man was some sort of fugitive. Honest men didn’t gallop into the village in the middle of the night and beg for fresh mounts. Nor did they follow him to his stable, pathetically eager to buy a horse they’d only see by lamplight.

“No, I can’t really give you much for him at all. Tell you what, though, if you aren’t too sentimental I’ll buy him off you for the meat. Couple of copper crowns, perhaps.”

“Yes, whatever,” Grendel waved the sordid business of payment away, “but what about a fresh horse? Can you sell me one?”

Again the ostler shook his head.

“Wrong time of year, really. Everyone needs horses to bring the harvests in. Now, if you were to come back in autumn that would be different.”

“Autumn?” Grendel yelped. “But I want to leave tonight, right now. Look, what’s wrong with that horse over there? Or that one?”

The ostler shrugged.

“Already spoken for,” he said.

“But you are an ostler, you must sell horses.”

“I do, only too well,” the man smiled ruefully. “These are fine beasts, but all promised to others. The bay is for Farmer Schweinporker. Both greys are for the militia, and old Brinnie here is my own horse. I raised him from a foal, so I did.”

“All right, I’ll buy him.”

The ostler contrived to look scandalised.

“What? Buy Brinnie? No, I don’t think so. Begging your pardon, your lordship, but I’ve seen how you treat horses.”

“I’ll give you a gold crown.”

The ostler shook his head.

“You’re very generous, but I couldn’t, not Brinnie. When I was a lad, he got me away from a pack of orcs. Saved my life, so he did.”

“When you were a lad? It doesn’t look that old.”

“Very kind of you to say so, sire,” the ostler said, quickly moving away from his mistake, “and a gold coin is fair value, but, like I say, old Brinnie and me… well, we’re like friends.”

“Two gold coins.”

The ostler paused. Then he smiled regretfully.

“Not even for two.”

“All right, name your price.” Grendel made the offer and looked back out of the stable to the rain that sheeted down outside. It hadn’t stopped since he’d fled that morning, racing through the nightmare that he had accidentally created. Perhaps, he considered miserably, the weather was some sort of judgement.

Not that what had happened had been his fault. How could he have known? There was no warning that the spell he’d found in the book had been… well, had been necromantic.

There had been no requirement for horrible substances or human sacrifices, or whatever such filthy magic required, and the spell itself hadn’t even been difficult to cast. He had merely allowed his words and his thoughts to flow along the lines that had been written on the page. Then there had been that familiar lift, the moment of ecstasy in which he could feel the winds of magic filling him with the power of the gods.

And then…

He shuddered and refused to think about the agony of what had come next: the pain, the bleeding, and the visions. It wasn’t until he had seen the arch magister leaning over him that he had known the nightmare was past.

Thank all the gods for Grunwalder, he thought. If he hadn’t warned me in time, shown me what I’d actually done…

Grendel shivered, thoughts of the witch hunters’ pyres flickering through his head.

Lost in his own desperate world, he missed the ostler’s pitch. That was a shame, because it was a good one. It was full of personal tragedy, broken hearts and entreaties to Grendel’s better nature. At one point, the man even managed a tear.

“So, how much?” Grendel asked, interrupting a tale about the ostler’s sick daughter and the medicines she needed to come all the way from Araby.

“Fifteen gold crowns,” the man said, and held his breath.

“Fine. Get him saddled up, will you?”

For a moment, the ostler stood, too stunned to speak. Then he was moving, desperate to complete the deal before this lunatic changed his mind.

“If you’ll just count out the coin, sire,” he said as he lifted the soggy saddle from Grendel’s old horse and carried it over to the new. “I’ll have Brinnie ready in just two minutes. He’s well fed, as you can see. A real winner. I’ll be sad to see him go, but my daughter…”

“Yes, of course. Very sad,” Grendel muttered and turned away from the ostler. He fumbled inside his tunic and bent furtively over his purse. His fingers moved and he muttered something under his breath.

“What’s that, your lordship?” the ostler asked, looking back over his shoulder.

“Nothing,” Grendel said and, with a clink of coins, he turned back to the newly saddled horse.

“There you go, your lordship. All ready to go. Now, if I might just see the coin?”

“Here.” Grendel poured the coins into his outstretched hand as carelessly as if they had been pebbles. The metal glinted in the lamplight, filling the ostler’s eyes with a rich, warm glow.

They were real all right. He could scarcely believe it, but they were. He weighed one, bit another, and held a third up to the light.

By Ranald’s left ball, he was a rich man!

Grendel, meanwhile, had climbed awkwardly up onto his new mount and was edging her towards the door.

“I’ll miss that horse,” the ostler lied, slipping the coins into his purse. Grendel just grunted and dug his heels into the animal’s sides. It jolted into life, and trotted reluctantly out into the hissing rain.

The ostler watched them go, still scarcely believing his luck.

“Come again,” he called out after the retreating figure, but Grendel was already out of earshot, cloaked in darkness.

 

After the rain, the forest smelled so fresh that it might have grown the night before. The scents of pine sap and oak bark mingled into a heady perfume, and even the musk of the warm soil smelled sweet.

A light breeze whispered through the endless branches of the endless trees, its fingers chilly with winter’s approach. Occasional clouds of butterflies, each as big as a hand, burst from the canopy in silent explosions of colour.

The time had come for them to journey south, first to Tilea and then to Araby. Thousands of miles lay ahead of them; thousands of miles of floating on winds they could not control, helpless but hopeful.

Kerr knew how they felt. He had spent the days since leaving Altdorf perched on the top of his master’s carriage, an uneasy teamster. In one hand he held the reins of the horses and in the other a whip. He didn’t need to use either. The four horses were a well trained team, and he had realised at the very beginning of this journey that the best thing he could do would be to leave them well alone.

He’d made the same decision about Titus. However much the carriage rattled and bumped, his master still managed to spend the days sleeping like a baby.

Well, not exactly like a baby, Kerr thought. Babies don’t weigh twenty stone. Nor do they snore like an entire herd of pigs. In fact, over the. noise of the horses, the carriage and its occupant it was impossible to hear anything else.

Which was why, as the sun rolled from morning to afternoon, the riders who used the forest to pass their carriage unseen, remained unheard.

It was only when the path narrowed to squeeze through a cleft between two hills that Kerr had any inkling of what was about to happen. The fallen tree could have been a coincidence, of course, but to Kerr, who had never been out of site of Altdorf’s spires, everything in this forest looked suspicious.

As the horses drifted to an uncertain stop, he leapt from his seat, stretched, and thought about waking Titus. Then he thought better of it. Although usually as cheerful as any servant had a right to expect his master to be, the magician was like a bear with a sore head when he was woken; and like a pig with a blocked nose when he was asleep, Kerr thought with a grin.

He liked the fat man well enough. He was a pleasant enough old duffer when humoured, and although Kerr mocked him within the privacy of his thoughts it was usually with affection.

He was still smiling as he sauntered past the horses to examine the deadfall that blocked their path.

It was only when he reached the tree that he realised how much trouble they were in. The forest here was oak, gnarled and yellowing in the season’s chill, but the tree that lay across the path was a dark pine. Even to Kerr’s untrained eye it seemed as out of place as a raven amongst a flock of peacocks.

Kerr scowled with suspicion and ran his fingers over the rough bark. Then he noticed the axe marks that flashed at its base.

“Shit,” he said, stepping back and looking around warily.

Then the ambushers struck.

From all around, there came a sudden hiss, and the air splintered into a hail of arrows. Kerr had no time to run. Even if he had, there was nowhere to run to. A second before, the forest had been as empty as a drum. Now, there were so many archers that it seemed as crowded as an Altdorfian marketplace.

They were everywhere. Some were beyond the roadblock, and some behind the carriage. Others sat in the branches, balancing as effortlessly as birds even as they loosed their arrows. There were even half a dozen who came bursting up from the ground, monstrous beneath their camouflage of netting and leaf mould.

Kerr realised that he was dead. He was too shocked to feel any emotion at the realisation, but he was grateful that the last blink of his life wouldn’t be too painful.

Everything became sharper, somehow: brighter. The air around him became as clear as ice cold water. It flowed like water too, warping and weaving so that the lines of the arrows bent like reeds caught in an eddy.

The archers themselves also shimmered, their images distorting as if seen through a moving lens.

It was the last thing Kerr noticed before the arrows bit home.

He heard the thunk of them as they cut into soil and timber, and felt the whip of flights as they cut past him. There was a sudden sting as an arrowhead grazed his arm, another as one sliced open his earlobe.

When the volley had finished, he stood dazed amongst a forest of feathered shafts. His attackers stared at him, open mouthed. He stood amongst their arrows, as safe as a babe behind the bars of a cradle.

Then, in the midst of their confusion, Titus emerged from the carriage.

As he hopped down from the running board, the carriage squeaked and bounced up on its springs. The wizard hit the ground running, moving quickly, more quickly than Kerr had ever suspected was possible.

Even as the bandits notched a fresh volley of arrows, he had hurled himself into the first knot of them, arms outstretched in embrace.

But quick as the fat man was the arrows were quicker. Bowstrings hummed as busily as a hive of bees, and a volley homed in on his meaty shoulders.

It passed effortlessly through them and into the men beyond.

Their stricken screams pierced the darkness of the shadowed forest, only to be eclipsed by the boom of Titus’ laughter. He turned from their fallen bodies, some writhing and some still, and rushed towards the next group of ambushers.

Kerr barely recognised him. The transformation that had taken place was terrifying, although he couldn’t say exactly what that transformation had been. Titus’ form remained the same. His chubby features and rolling gut were as familiar as ever.

Now, though, his body seemed lit from within, his bulk a furnace of terrible energy. It was as if some daemon had slipped into the wizard’s skin and was wearing it as his own.

The swordsmen who had waited buried beneath the leaves were his next victims. They stabbed at him, their blades slashing through his form as if it was no more than shadow. More arrows came, a panicky flight that cut down two of the bandits even before Titus had reached them.

Eight men were already down before he even touched the first of his opponents. It was more caress than blow. The magician merely turned the man’s head so that the two were looking eye to eye.

The bandit’s mouth fell open, although it wasn’t to scream. He didn’t look particularly frightened. In fact, he didn’t look particularly anything. Every hint of emotion drained out of his face, and he swayed as his sword dropped from nerveless fingers.

It was too much for the surviving ambushers. Before Titus could turn that hellish gaze on them, they were fleeing, falling from trees like overripe apples and racing away into the trackless wastes of the forest.

Kerr watched them go, and fought back the urge to follow them. Suddenly his master didn’t seem like such a pleasant old duffer anymore. Far from it.

Kerr waited until the sound of the bandits’ retreat had faded. When it was clear that Titus had no intention of following them, he forced himself to walk over to him. Uneasy or not, fear would do him no good here.

To his relief, whatever terrible energy had possessed the magician was gone. He looked exhausted. His usually florid cheeks were pale, and shadows, as dark as those that sickled Mannslieb, lay beneath his eyes.

“They’ve all run off,” Kerr said, although only because he wanted to say something.

“That they have,” Titus nodded, and rubbed his face with two podgy hands. Kerr looked at the bandit whom the wizard had touched. The man remained standing. He was drooling, his chin glistening as he stared blankly into space.

“His hair…” Kerr began, and then stopped. He didn’t want to know. He really didn’t want to know.

Somehow he found himself asking the question anyway.

“Was his hair white before you looked at him?”

Titus shook his head.

“No. I’m going to rest. Clear the way and get going as soon as you can. I want to find a village before nightfall.”

“And what about him?” Kerr gestured towards the man. Blank faced and slack jawed, he looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Titus shrugged as if the question was of no consequence.

“Leave him. Sigmar will see to him, if he deserves it.”

Kerr swallowed.

“What about that one?” Another of the highwaymen lay writhing around the agony of the arrow that had found his stomach. “Will Sigmar see to him too?”

“No,” the wizard said, already returning to the pillows of the carriage, “the wolves will.”

Kerr shivered. Then, taking a last frightened glance at the victims, he hurried over to start rolling the tree clear of the road. The shadows were lengthening, and he had discovered a sudden reluctance to be alone with his master in the dark.

 

“What do you think happened to him, captain?”

Vaught turned from the living meat of the petrified man and back to his comrades. There were a dozen, their bald pates covered in identical black felt hats and their armour swaddled in riding cloaks. The horses they rode were thickset beasts, and although mud splattered, they were not winded.

Captain Vaught was too capable a campaigner to force a gallop before he needed to, especially in the midst of this tangled forest.

“I don’t know what happened to him,” Vaught shrugged, “although I’ll warrant that it’s some sort of foul sorcery.”

Although unwilling to lose any more time, the witch hunter passed his reins to a comrade and swung down out of the saddle. They had found this frozen man standing beside the road, his eyes as dead as a scarecrow’s, despite the pulse that beat within his wrist.

Vaught snapped his fingers in front of his face. Then he twisted his ear. He might as well have been trying to wake up stone.

“Do you think that it was the necromancer?” Peik asked eagerly. Vaught smiled. He had done well in his choice of apprentice. The lad had the instinctive enthusiasm of a terrier for a rat.

“It could well have been the necromancer. We are sure he was travelling this road, and there has been some sort of battle here. See the arrows that lay about? And that furrow over there? It looks like a body was dragged away. Maybe some footpads found our quarry before we did.”

“Then perhaps he is dead already.” Peik sounded disappointed.

“Perhaps, but unlikely. Why would his assailants have left one of their comrades behind if they had won?”

Peik looked at the frozen man. For the first time, he noticed the way that he swayed gently back and forth, a white haired metronome keeping time with some invisible melody.

“Maybe he was one of the necromancer’s followers.”

Vaught frowned.

“Doubtful. It is unlikely that footpads would have been able to work such magic, and I doubt whether two sorcerers would have passed this way. Magic users are like cockroaches, they prefer to skulk around cities rather than the wilderness.”

Peik seemed satisfied.

“I’m sure you’re right, captain,” he said. “I wonder what we should do with this one?”

Vaught shook his head.

“We have no time to tend to him. Perhaps when we slay the necromancer the enchantment will break.”

Peik looked at the swaying figure. Then he slapped him on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he told the man, whose drooling face remained as slack as ever, “we’ll set you free.”

The witch hunters murmured approvingly, and when Vaught and his apprentice had swung themselves back into the saddle, the captain had come to a decision. He’d spared the horses enough. It was time to gallop.

 

It was nearing dusk when Kerr first heard the thunder of approaching hooves. They came just as the dying sun was casting a last few golden bars through the darkness of the forest, and it was the lateness of the hour that made him so glad to hear approaching riders.

He had spent the afternoon wondering whether or not to suggest that they stop and make camp tonight. On the one hand, the horses were tired, the road grew ever worse, and even the brightest moon left the track beneath the forest canopy as black as pitch.

But on the other hand… Well, on the other hand, he didn’t want to spend the night alone with Titus. That was the truth of the matter.

Ever since the battle against the highwaymen, he had been trying to convince himself that what the magician had done wasn’t so bad. If you killed a man, you killed him. It didn’t really matter how it was done.

However, it wasn’t the men that the magician had killed that preyed upon Kerr’s mind. It was the man he hadn’t killed. All it had taken had been a look, and the poor bastard’s soul had snapped, evaporated like a drop of water cast into a furnace.

Kerr found himself wondering how many other men Titus had left as empty shells, condemned to stand in their own drooling hell until something hungry found them.

He had told himself that his master had had no choice. He also told himself that he had seen regret in his eyes afterwards. Eventually, after he had told himself that enough times, he began to believe it.

Even so, the sound of riders rolled a great weight off his shoulders. It would be good to have company, if only for a while.

“Ho there!” he called out as the cavalcade appeared behind him. They were solidly built men on solidly built horses, and the last flashes of sunlight glittered on the armour they wore beneath their riding cloaks.

Kerr waved both his arms in greeting as they drew nearer.

“Well met, menheers,” he called out, a grin splitting his face. He’d just noticed that the riders wore the tall hats of witch hunters. In the past, he would have instinctively hidden from them, but now… Well, now things were different.

Despite his greeting, none of them made any reply as they approached, nor even when they drew level.

“Where do you come from?” Kerr called to their leader. He sat tall in the saddle, his features as stern as a hawk’s. Without even bothering to glance at Kerr, he rode by.

“Where are you going?” Kerr tried again, gesturing to the younger man who rode behind him. Again there was no reply, or any response.

The last of the riders galloped past, their horses ignoring the friendly whinnies of those harnessed to the carriage.

“Do you want some wine?” Kerr asked the last of them as he disappeared into the forest ahead.

“They can’t see us.”

Kerr looked down to see that Titus was leaning out of the carriage window. His face was a pale moon against the shadows, his eyes two dark hollows.

“Why can’t they see us?” Kerr asked. “The sun hasn’t even set yet. What… Oh. I see.”

Braha nodded, and opened the door of the carriage. The vehicle shifted as he stepped out and stretched, his bulk wobbling as he rolled his head.

“Yes, it is a minor conjuration. It makes people see past us, or around us. After what happened today, I thought it a wise precaution.”

Kerr looked at the horses, the harness, and the solid wood.

“You won’t see anything odd from there,” Titus told him. “As long as you’re sitting on the carriage you’re part of the spell.”

Kerr vaulted down from his seat. His master, obviously back to his old self, laughed uproariously.

“Don’t worry,” he boomed. “You won’t turn into a frog.”

Kerr laughed too, although without his master’s enthusiasm. Then he turned back to collect his cloak, and saw that the carriage was gone.

Alone in the blossoming darkness of the night, standing between the wizard and his works, Kerr came to a decision: there was no point in being afraid, not now.

After all, what could he do but hope for the best?

With that thought, he took a deep breath and turned to start collecting firewood. He stumbled through the gathering darkness, rooting around through the detritus that covered the forest floor, whilst behind him Titus gazed up at the first stars and thought about the gods alone knew what.