CHAPTER TEN

 

 

“Good evening, gentlemen. Good evening. Please, step right this way. I hope that Menshka has been treating you as befits your station?”

Vaught looked at the gaoler with all the warmth of an ice pick.

“Are you mocking us?” he asked, his tone indifferent.

The gaoler seemed almost shocked.

“No, of course not,” he said, and placed one meaty hand over his chest. “You are the gentlemen from Altdorf, yes? Yes, of course you are, and I’ll warrant that your prince regent will honour your bills.”

Vaught looked at Menshka and frowned.

“What the gaoler means,” Menshka explained, “is that, because you are the agents of a prince, he will give you the best quarters.”

The witch hunters looked around the dank cube of the vault they had been brought to. Apart from the rotting straw on the floor, it was little more than a stone box.

There was neither window nor fireplace, just an iron cage door and a foul smelling bucket.

“These are the best quarters?” Fargo asked.

The gaoler shrugged.

“If you had been anybody else, you would have been put in the yard, and believe me, sir, you don’t want to stay there, with such awful people, and with the weather getting worse everyday. No, here it is much better, and first thing tomorrow we’ll get you some furniture.”

Vaught opened his mouth to say something, but the gaoler waved him into silence.

“Don’t you worry, I have played host to your prince regent’s men before. I’ll put everything on the slate, and you can write to him. Tell him that you are in comfort and safety, and that the cost is modest.”

Menshka barked with laughter, and the gaoler turned on him.

“If you would like to remove your property,” he said, pointing to the manacles with which the witch hunters were bound, “you can be on your way.”

“What, and miss your welcome speech?”

“I don’t want to keep you from your work. There must be keyholes all over the city without anybody to peep through them.”

Menshka laughed humourlessly.

“Keyholes. Yes, very funny, but do you know what’s even funnier? Some of the stories we hear about you.”

The gaoler shrugged.

“Prisoners make up stories all the time. It’s something for them to do.”

Menshka nodded.

“Yes, but tell me, what is in your pit?”

The gaoler’s bonhomie deserted him, and his face creased with sudden anxiety.

“Not my pit,” he whined, “I just keep it locked. Whatever goes on down there is nothing to do with me.”

Menshka shrugged.

“I’ll be sure to put your explanation in my report.”

The gaoler licked his lips, and looked shiftily around the room.

“Look,” he said, “tell you what, I’ll see to having these manacles removed and sent back to you, and you know what? Somebody sent me some cases of vodka, a grateful client. Why don’t I send you one of those around too?”

“As you like,” Menshka said. “Then I’ll bid you all goodnight.”

The gaoler waved as the man left the room. Vaught didn’t deign to reply.

“What is that man, gaoler?” he asked as Menshka’s footsteps faded. “He dresses like a peasant, yet he acts like an official. A high official.”

The gaoler looked at the witch hunter as if trying to decide whether he was having his leg pulled.

“There are lots of people like that in Praag,” he said. “They are the Cheka. Never heard of them? Well, I suppose you might not have, being from so far away. They’re a sort of secret army, and a good job they do too.”

The gaoler looked nervously back over his shoulder before he continued.

“Don’t worry about them. Now, I have to go. Here is the key to your manacles, if you would care to pass them through the gate when you have unlocked them, I will send you some blankets down, and some soup. In the meantime, I will leave you these candles and wish you goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Vaught said. He turned to unlock the first of his men as the gaoler scuttled out of the cell.

“Do you think that the prince regent will pay for our upkeep?” Fargo asked, rubbing some life back into his wrists.

“I have no idea,” Vaught answered, “and I don’t expect to stay here long enough to find out. You saw the gatehouse on the way in? Good. Here is what we will do.”

 

Menshka was pleased to be back at his post. He lolled on his barrel, watching the traffic that dawn had brought to Praag’s great gate, and enjoyed the freshness of the air.

There wasn’t much movement yet, just a string of couriers, their saddlebags bulging with correspondence, and the lumbering shape of an approaching haywain.

Menshka watched it approach, and then turned to light his pipe. It had been a shame about those witch hunters. They had a reputation for efficiency, and it would have been nice to have seen them at work, the leader especially. He had looked like a man who knew how to deal with magic-using vermin.

He spat and studied the wagon as it drew nearer. It occurred to him that it was a little late in the year for farmers to be bringing hay into the city. A second later, he realised that the vehicle wasn’t a haywain after all, it was a grain cart.

Lowering his eyes, he concentrated on blowing a smoke ring. The perfect “O” floated up into the sky, and Menshka’s thoughts turned lazily over. Damned trusting merchant to send his goods along this road with no armed guard.

When he looked back at the grain cart, he noticed the driver for the first time. Now that it was so close, he could see that the man was massive, his armour barely able to cover his barrel chest. No wonder the merchant had decided against the added cost of outriders.

As the wagon lumbered into the shadow of the walls, the gate captain, alert in his new post, looked at Menshka. He shook his head slightly and looked away. The guards waved the wagon through the gates, and stopped an outrider who looked a little too fresh for somebody who had been riding all night, instead.

One of Menshka’s lieutenants, a wiry ferret of a man called Plenk, sidled over to take a light.

“Did you see the state of that dung cart?” he asked, borrowing Menshka’s pipe and using it to light his own. “No wonder the guards looked so relieved not to have to stop it!”

“Dung cart? You mean the grain wagon.”

Plenk frowned.

“No, the dung cart. It just went past now with that skinny little lad driving it.”

Menshka took his pipe back and stared at it thoughtfully.

“The last thing I saw go through those gates,” he said, speaking carefully, “was a grain wagon driven by a man who looked as big as an ogre.”

“I saw a dung cart driven by a boy.”

“Damn,” Menshka swore once, and sprang to his feet. Without waiting to be told, his men followed him as he raced towards the gate, pushing past the guards and looking frantically into the street beyond.

Of dung cart, grain wagon or haywain, there was no sign.

 

The smell of bacon filled the chambers they had hired. Titus and Kerr sat at the same table, the food that the innkeeper’s wife had just brought piled up in front of them. Although hardly silent, neither of them was speaking. Ever since the two had started eating together, mealtimes had become a race, with Kerr trying to eat his share before Titus cleared the table.

The joys of apprenticeship, he thought, cramming a roll of pork fat into his mouth and following it with a hard-boiled egg.

“Don’t eat so fast,” Titus told him, as he smeared marmalade onto a piece of ham, “you’ll give yourself indigestion.”

Kerr watched with awe as his master chewed through the entire slab of meat in three easy bites.

“I can see that there is much to learn before I become a wizard,” he said, watching his master swallow. It was like watching a boa constrictor wearing a napkin.

Titus belched before he replied.

“You have much to learn,” he agreed, “but never mind. You are adept enough. How’s the knitting coming along?”

Kerr reached into his satchel and held up a pair of socks. One was smaller than the other, despite the fact that it had two feet.

Titus laughed.

“Better not let the witch hunters see that,” he said.

Kerr grinned.

“Not even they would see bad knitting as proof of mutation. Then again, maybe they would. I remember when old man Schmidt’s son was born. He’d only had daughters before, so he went to the strigany and asked for a potion. You know, so that he’d finally be able to have a male heir. Anyway, it all went well until the babe was born.”

Titus grunted as he started work on a plate of scones.

“When it was born, it looked alright at first, had the right number of arms and legs, and fingers and toes. It cried like a champion too, but then the midwife noticed something terrible. Schmidt’s son,” Kerr paused for effect, “had been born without… You know, with a bit missing. There was talk of curses, and then there was talk of starting a pogrom against the strigany. In fact, there was so much talk that the witch hunters turned up, like they always do.”

“And they told your friend Schmidt,” Titus interrupted, “that he should be congratulated for having such a healthy daughter?”

“Oh, you’ve heard it before.”

Titus glared at his apprentice before getting back to the task in hand. Kerr shifted uncomfortably.

“Anyway, you should let me see one of your socks if I’m to start knitting them,” he said. “It won’t be long until I get the hang of it.”

Titus waited until he had finished the last of the scones before replying.

“You aren’t learning knitting so that you can mend my socks,” he said. “At least, you are, but that’s not the main reason.”

“What is the main reason, then?”

Titus pushed himself back from the table.

“What do you think?”

Kerr looked down at the wool and needles. Then he flexed his fingers.

“I see,” he said, holding up his hands and miming the action of knitting. “You have to learn other movements to cast spells. As well as snapping your fingers, I mean. Is it something different for each one?”

“Just so,” Titus nodded, “but for the moment, your education will have to wait. The sooner we find the traitor, Grendel, the sooner we can get back to Altdorf. You might help by asking around. I don’t think that he has much sense, and he must be feeling pretty desperate by now. Listen out for any stories of false gold.”

“Will do,” Kerr said, “but how do you know he’s desperate? If he’s a cultist then he’ll have friends everywhere. Maybe they have taken him in.”

Titus shook his head.

“Grendel is a fool, not a cultist. Sometimes things go wrong and people panic. Whatever the witch hunters say, the whole world isn’t one big bundle of plots. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll take a nap. I need to get my strength back up.”

Kerr didn’t ask what for. Instead, he checked that he’d slipped enough bacon off the table for the day, accused himself, and went out to explore Praag.

 

“Hot as toast and soft as butter. Smooth enough to melt a moneylender’s heart. Get it while it’s hot!”

Kerr strolled past the baker’s stall, a contented smile playing across his face.

“Sausage, hams and fresh meat puddings,” another merchant bellowed, “only three days old!”

Kerr glanced towards the tray of meat just as the butcher turned away to serve a customer. His fingers twitched, and he instinctively glanced around to see if there were any watchmen nearby.

Then he scolded himself and walked on.

It felt good to be back in a city: the feeling of cobbles beneath his feet, the warm jostle of hurrying strangers, the smell of cookhouses and sewers—it reminded Kerr of how much he had missed civilization.

He wandered along through the market, passing everything from bolts of silk to baskets full of piglets. Although he had no intention of reverting to his old profession, still he studied the place with a practiced eye. Everything faded into the background apart from escape routes, distractions, and merchants tired or the worse for drink.

It reminded him of the good old days.

He was almost past the last of the stalls when he felt the hand on his purse.

“Dried oranges!” a man bellowed in his ear. “Sweet as the Sultan’s daughters and all the way from Araby!”

Kerr pretended to study the man’s wares as he felt the thief’s inexpert fumbling. He turned suddenly, as if interested in something that lay down the alleyway ahead. He didn’t need to glance back to know that the pickpocket was following him. He had played this game often enough in the past to know that he would be.

The cries of the merchants faded as he stepped into the alleyway. Stone walls rose on either side of him, and the passageway twisted around a blind corner just a little way ahead.

Kerr slowed his pace, and wondered if the pickpocket would be fool enough to practise his art in such an unpromising place.

He was.

Kerr had hardly reached the corner when he heard the almost inaudible patter of stealthy feet, and felt the weight of his purse being lifted. He waited until he felt the first tug of the knife against the leather straps, and then spun around, his own dagger pressing against the thief’s throat in a single, fluid motion.

The thief looked up at him, his face a mask of horror. He looked about ten years old, although Kerr knew that he could have been any age. Rattenkinder grew up fast, if at all.

“Good afternoon,” he told the boy, angling the blade of his dagger so that it rested neatly across his windpipe. “Drop that blade or I’ll cut you.”

Without a second’s hesitation, the boy dropped the blade. The first tear rolled down his cheek.

“No need for that,” Kerr said, grabbing a handful of the lad’s shirt before sheathing his dagger. “I just want a chat.”

“A chat?” The boy rolled the word around his mouth as if he had never heard it before. “What about?”

“About how you’ve managed to survive with such elephant feet and cow’s fingers. I felt you trying to take my purse back in the market. What were you trying to do, pull it free with your hands?”

The boy shrugged, suddenly as embarrassed as he was afraid.

“My knife isn’t very sharp,” he muttered, looking down to where it lay.

“That’s no excuse,” Kerr scolded him. “Look, if I let you go will you let me show you how to sharpen it?”

The boy goggled.

“Well?”

“Yes, all right.”

Kerr released him and stooped to pick up the penknife. As he did so, the child tensed as if for flight, but curiosity held him.

“Watch,” Kerr told him, finding a cobble and drawing the small blade across it. “Like this, see? Lots of little strokes, and always in the same direction. Now you try.”

Glancing nervously from his captor to the blade, the boy took the proffered knife and stooped to copy Kerr’s example.

“That’s it,” he encouraged. “It takes ages, but eventually you’ll be able to shave with it, let alone do a professional job.”

“Don’t shave yet,” said the boy, dragging the knife across the cobble. Now and again, a spark flashed into life, and after a while, he tested the blade against the hem of his ragged coat.

“See?” Kerr asked. “It cuts like butter.”

“Thanks,” said the boy, cautiously folding the knife closed and returning it to his pocket. “I’m sorry I…”

Kerr waved him into silence.

“Never mind that. As it happens, I’m glad to have met you. I bet you know other children, don’t you? Other people who live on the streets?”

The boy nodded uncertainly.

“A few,” he admitted, “although I don’t know their names, or where they live, or anything like that.”

Kerr laughed, the sound echoing down the narrow walls of the alleyway.

“Don’t worry,” he said, slapping the lad on the shoulder. “I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in what they might have seen. What do you notice about the way I talk? My accent?”

The boy frowned.

“It sounds funny.”

“Exactly. Well I’m looking for somebody else who talks funny like me, somebody old. He’s skinny, and he probably has a big beard. He’s tall, too. I want to find him, and if you help me find him…” Kerr paused and held up his hand. The copper coin he was holding shuffled back and forth between his fingers.

The boy watched, mesmerised, until Kerr tossed it to him.

“If you or your friends find him, I’ll give you six more like that.”

“Twelve.”

Kerr frowned.

“You’re a hard man. All right, I’ll pay twelve, but only after I’ve checked that it’s the man I want.”

The boy tried to keep the excitement off his face.

“All right then,” he said. “Twelve each.”

“No.”

The boy was unabashed.

“Just twelve then,” he said, and tried to frown.

“Good.” Kerr paused as somebody else entered the alleyway. The man paused, unbuttoned his breeches, and urinated against the wall. Kerr ignored him. “Do you know the Slayer’s Axe? All right, you can find me there. Ask for Kerr, Menheer Kerr.”

“Right you are, your lordship.” The boy lifted his ragged cap and watched Kerr slip away. Then he turned and followed the drunk, who had staggered back out into the marketplace.

The newly sharpened knife felt warm in his pocket.

 

The sun was already dipping below the city walls when Kerr entered the Grahizhna. Although he’d never set foot in the place before, it was as familiar as the face of an old friend. There was a quarter like it in every city. In Altdorf it sprawled around the docks, a wilderness of lawless enterprises where vice was celebrated and excess was king.

Or at least, Kerr thought as he drifted past a gang of thugs, the purveyors of excess were the kings.

He slipped past a dozen courtesans, their cheap fur coats opened to reveal the warmth beneath, and slowed his pace to listen to the fluting of some musical instrument. The air was already alive with screams and laughter, and the occasional smash of breaking ceramics.

Kerr followed his nose through a dozen desperate joys. He was looking for a cook shop, although not any one would do. He passed one that was full of men so richly dressed that they might have been aristocrats. Another he dismissed on the grounds that it had seemed devoid of flies.

Finally, he found what he was looking for. The scrubbed wooden tables were unadorned, the floor was nothing but matted reeds, and the ragged customers were eating from thick clay bowls.

“Pork or beef?” a woman asked as he sat down. She had arms thicker than Kerr’s own, and her face had the hard edged look of a born mercenary.

“What’s best?” Kerr smiled, but his attempt to be charming fell on stony ground.

“Neither,” she said, and crossed her meaty arms.

“I’ll have bread and soup.”

The woman scowled belligerently.

“You can either have pork,” she explained, “or beef. Now which is it to be? I’m too busy to bandy words with the likes of you.”

Kerr resisted the temptation to look around at the three other customers. Instead, he ordered pork.

The woman stomped away and returned a moment later with a bowl of grey sludge and a hunk of bread.

“Ah, you found some soup after all.” Kerr smiled and looked at the mess.

The woman glared at him with an expression of sheer disgust.

“It’s pork,” she said, and banged the bread down on the table.

“So it is,” Kerr soothed. “I hope you’ll excuse my stupidity. I’m from the south, the Empire.”

Was the woman’s glare becoming slightly less murderous? Kerr couldn’t tell.

“We don’t have such a beautiful language as you do in Praag. It makes us easily confused.”

“Obviously.” The woman sneered and turned to go.

Kerr watched her return to the safety of the serving counter, and ate the stewed mess. Whether it was pork or not he had no idea, but he mopped the last of it up with his bread and patted his stomach.

When the serving wench returned, he chanced another smile.

“How much do I owe you?”

“A copper,” she said, taking his bowl and holding out a meaty hand. For a moment, Kerr considered offering to read the future in the grimy creases of her palm. With somebody else he might have tried it on, but not with this old battle axe. Whatever else she might be, she wasn’t a sucker.

“Here’s a copper.” Kerr pressed a coin into her palm, “And here’s another one.”

Her jaw fell open and her eyes widened. For the first time since he had seen her, there was something on her face other than irritation. The copper might have been a diamond, or some fabulous beast.

Her hand snapped shut at the same time as her mouth.

“What’s that for?”

“It’s a tip, and there’ll be plenty more if you can help me. I’m looking for another man from the south, a big bony one, probably with a beard.”

The woman’s face worked unhappily.

“If any of your customers see him, or hear about him, come and tell me at the Slayer’s Axe. I’ll pay you well.”

“How well?” she demanded.

“Well enough for you to start selling pork from a pig,” he winked, and slipped away before she could confess what she had just served him.

Illusions, he decided as he merged back into the crowd, were sometimes as valuable as coin.

 

As Kerr continued to spin a network of informants from the ragged underclass of Praag, so Titus was exercising his own art. He sat alone in his bolted room, straight backed and still. Despite the bustling of the inn’s other customers, and despite the cries from the street below, he had slipped into a trance with the practiced ease of an otter slipping into a river.

Even as his pulse slowed to an impossible stillness, Titus’ form left the comfort of his flesh and lifted up towards the ceiling. There was a brush of grey as his ethereal form drifted past the slates of the roof, and then he was free, hovering over one of the most ancient cities on the planet.

It was an incredible sight. Even to the unschooled eye, Praag was impressive. The grey stone of its construction rose high above the streets, and the intricacies of the buildings meant that the masonry had often evolved into grotesque shapes.

However, this was nothing compared to the seething tides of magical energy that flowed around the structures. Every shade of the spectrum was here, from verdant green to sickly blackness, and above this seething mass floated a galaxy of distinct sparks, the tiny shapes flickering like fireflies on a summer’s night.

Titus allowed himself to float towards the nearest of them. It was a little more than a pinprick of red light. As he drew nearer to it, he could hear the words that pulsed from it.

“That swine, Radovitch, is always stealing my customers. I wish he would just…”

Titus smiled in spite of himself. Listening to the thoughts of a city’s teeming masses always filled him with pleasure, no matter how petty they were.

Another bauble drifted past, another thought born from the world below.

“…beautiful, so beautiful. I wonder if I should try to hold her hand. Or maybe I should write a poem…”

Titus let the words drift past, and gazed at the other thoughts that floated up from the city. They lit the sky like embers from a roaring bonfire, and for a while Titus could only gaze upon them, enraptured.

Eventually, he managed to tear himself away and turned his attention to another marvel. He hadn’t noticed it at first. Compared to the rainbow hues of the city below, the dark energy that sheered up from the city walls seemed little more than background.

Yet, as Titus drifted over to study the slabs of energy, he realised that they were more than background. It was difficult to see where the dead stone ended and the living magic of the walls began, but it was also impossible to see where it ended. The blinding sheets of grey rose up towards the heavens, and for a moment Titus felt an absurd twinge of claustrophobia.

Scolding himself, he drifted close enough to the magical walls to touch the energy. He pressed one ghostly fingertip into the darkness.

The pain was intense and immediate. He snatched his hand away, and saw that the ether of his fingertip was glowing as orange as molten iron. Titus took a moment to compose himself, but when the pain failed to recede, he turned and followed the pull of his fleshly body.

A moment later, he was blinking in the pale sunlight of his chamber, sweat slicking his brows. He leant forward, waiting for the pain in his fingertip to stop. When it didn’t, he held it up and looked at it.

To his horror, it looked like a well cooked sausage. The skin had blistered at the tip, and the flesh up to the first knuckle was white with burn damage.

“Well, well, well,” Titus said to himself, fascination warring with pain. He had never seen anything like this before, and his mind was already turning on ways to copy the spell.

A sudden shadow fell across the room, and Titus looked up with an unaccustomed nervousness. When he saw that it was only the sun setting behind the walls, he smeared his burnt finger with some lotion, sat back down, and tried again.

 

“Something wrong with it?” the proprietor asked, his fists resting on his meaty hips. Kerr had been studying the cook-shop, the seventh he had been in today. Tables and chairs filled the cramped room, and a constant stream of ragged customers came in and out of the door.

Kerr looked from the owner to his bowl of gruel. He shook his head. “No, nothing wrong with it,” he said, “just making it last.”

“Well don’t make it last too long. There are others waiting for the bowl.”

Kerr forced himself to spoon the last of the slop down his throat, and handed the bowl back to the cook. He turned it over, spat into it, and wiped it with a rag, ready for the next customer.

Kerr paid, recited his offer of coin for information about Grendel, and then made his way out. His fellow diners, vagabonds to a man, carried their bundled possessions with them. A couple had even stretched out to sleep on the dirty floor.

Kerr thought about that as he strolled through the gathering dusk. It was good of the cook to let them doss down there. He had never seen such generosity in his own city.

Yes, Praag was certainly an unusual place. Even as the shadows lengthened, the city seemed to be slowing down. In Altdorf’s docklands, the coming of darkness was like fuel thrown onto the fire. Here, everybody was heading off home.

Kerr watched as all around him people scurried along the emptying streets. It suddenly occurred to him that he was the only one not in a hurry. Perhaps it was because nobody was lighting any torches or lanterns along the road. Instead, the merchants were busy closing their doors and boarding their windows. Funny customs foreigners have, he thought. Well, no matter. He had always felt at home in the dark.

A tingle of unease shivered down his spine, and he licked his lips. A couple of figures brushed past him, and he dropped a hand to check that his satchel was intact. Then he squinted after them as they hurried down the broad, unlit thoroughfare. When they had gone, he found himself completely alone.

He looked up at the sky, and saw that the blue was already fading to black. As he watched, the first star appeared and, as if in response, the city’s bells started ringing. They clanged from every direction, a terrible cacophony of tuneless metal that bounced and echoed off the granite walls.

When the final peal had died away the world seemed deafeningly quiet. Kerr shivered and turned back towards his inn. Darkness wrapped itself around him. That was alright, though. He was used to darkness.

What he wasn’t used to was to find such stillness in the midst of a city, or to see such emptiness on the streets. He was reminded of the tales he had heard of cities in the southern deserts, sun bleached ruins that were as silent as gravestones.

“Foreigners are crazy,” Kerr told himself, but neither the thought nor the lonely sound of his voice was particularly comforting, so he shut up and hurried on home.

He was just leaving the Grazhino when he heard the first voice. It whispered from out of the darkness ahead of him, a sibilant hiss that sounded barely human. Kerr jumped, and then cursed himself for a fool. So, somebody was in the streets after all, so what?

He loosened his dagger and pressed on.

The voice grew louder as he approached, and when he drew level with the speaker, he squinted out of the corner of his eye. There was nothing there except for the blank face of a granite wall.

The muttering continued nonetheless, and Kerr hurried past the whispering voice. When it was behind him, he felt a rush of relief. It was almost as if the speaker had been invisible.

He forced himself to smile at the ridiculous idea. He was still grimacing when he heard the scream.

It came from directly above him, an accelerating howl of terror that sent him rolling to one side. He sprang back to his feet, the steel of his dagger a spark in the darkness, and glanced fearfully around. There was nobody there.

“Hello?” he whispered, his voice sounding horribly loud.

No answer.

After a moment, Kerr dragged a sleeve across the dampness of his brow and continued on his way. He could hear other voices. They echoed all around him, but although they were everywhere, Kerr couldn’t hear a single word amongst them. They seemed to be no more than animal whimperings of misery, or terrible screams of pain. Sometimes there was laughter, although it had a broken, hysterical edge to it.

Wide eyed in the darkness, Kerr felt the first twist of panic within his chest. Realising that he was grinding his teeth together, he stopped, took a deep breath, and wiped his palms on his breeches.

“Just voices,” he told himself, and was surprised at how confident he sounded. He forced himself to stand still for a count of three before carrying on along the street.

From the cobbles beneath his feet, there came groans of agony, as if the stones could feel themselves being trodden upon. Kerr ignored them. The walls moaned with a miserable insistence, but he paid them no heed, and when he heard the weeping, he hardened his heart and marched straight on.

So what if he could hear ghosts? He had never bothered them. Why should they bother him?

Then again, whispered a treacherous thought, why shouldn’t they bother you?

Panic curdled his stomach, and his breath started to come in short, sharp gasps. Ahead of him, the empty street first shrieked with laughter, and then began to sob, and all the while, he couldn’t see so much as a single shadow.

It wasn’t a scream, however, that finally broke his self control, it was a whisper, a single word. It was his name.

“Kerr,” a voice said, and his nerve snapped as neatly as a frozen bowstring.

He screamed, his own cry tame amongst all the others, and bolted down the street. Something tripped him in the darkness and he bounced off bloodied knees, and blundered onwards. All around him the voices grew mocking, made cruel, perhaps, by their own suffering.

He reached the end of the street, and bumped into a wall.

“Come with us.” The voice was as soft as asphyxiation, and as insistent as a strangler’s fingers.

Kerr spun around, eyes rolling, and slashed the air with his dagger. The only response was a tickle of laughter. With a ragged sob, he turned and fumbled along the wall. He had taken care to note the quirks of architecture on the path he had taken, but now there wasn’t a single visible landmark. He had never expected to find himself in such an unlit night.

Something turned beneath his feet and he fell again. This time, he landed on his satchel, and something sharp dug into his thigh. He closed his trembling fingers around it, and his thoughts were so panic-stricken that it took him a moment to realise that it was the stone that Titus had given him.

“Stay with us,” the voice whispered again, the rattle of it growing even closer. “Stay with us in the cold and in the dark, dance in the nightmares of men and the dreams of…”

Kerr, his hand still closed around the stone, lashed out in panic.

This time, his blow connected with more than cold air. It thunked home with a knuckle jarring impact. There was a shriek of pain, a rush of air, and the night exploded into a flash of blue light.

A thousand after-images swirled in Kerr’s eyes, and his fist throbbed with the impact. He rubbed his knuckles as he tried to work out what had just happened. Holding a stone while giving somebody a beating was an old trick, but as far as he knew not even the most brutal of Altdorf’s thugs had ever managed to slug a ghost.

Before he could follow this line of thought, he noticed that the voices were getting louder: nearer, more angry.

Kerr struggled back to his feet. He pressed his back to the wall and tried to decide which way to go. The shrieks of rage approached from every side, and he could almost imagine that his name was being called.

He was edging along the wall, his eyes rolling in the darkness, when the claws dug into his shoulders. Suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter where he ran to, just as long as it was away from here.

Kerr bolted down the street, his blood fizzing with adrenaline as he sprinted as blindly as a rat in a maze.