CHAPTER FIVE

“How did you know that?” Rudi’s hand went to the sword at his belt before he was even aware of the movement, and he checked himself in the act of beginning to draw it. The healer looked harmless enough, but he was only too aware of how deceptive appearances could be. On the other hand, there was no point in overreacting. Gofrey didn’t seem at all put out by this sign of distrust, though, glancing away to check on the roasting rabbits as he smiled a welcome.

“Because somebody told me, of course.” He gestured towards the fire. “Sit down and warm yourself. It’s going to be a cold night. We might as well talk in comfort.”

Drawn as much by the scent of the food as by the man’s show of friendliness, Rudi moved closer to the blaze. The warmth was indeed welcome.

“Who told you?” Rudi sat, and accepted a haunch of the sizzling meat. It was only as he began to chew it that the full extent of his hunger struck home, and it was all he could do to restrain himself from bolting the food down like a starving dog. Gofrey watched him eat for a moment with an air of quiet amusement, and then started in on the coney’s other hind leg.

“News travels, even in the Wasteland,” he said around a mouthful of rabbit, leaning forward to sprinkle another pinch of herbs over the second one. As the first couple of mouthfuls eased his hunger, and he began to eat more slowly, Rudi began to appreciate the subtle flavour of his own portion. Clearly, Gofrey had a keen appreciation of herbs, which went far beyond the practicalities of his calling. “Not all of it by the most conventional of routes.”

“You came here to meet someone,” Rudi said. He glanced around the clearing, looking for evidence of other footprints, but night was falling in earnest, and the fire didn’t cast enough light to reveal them.

The healer nodded. “I did. There are places like this all over the Empire, and far beyond it too, probably; anywhere there are people living in fear of the ignorant. People like me, and your friend Hanna.”

“What do you know about Hanna?” Rudi asked, suspicion flaring again. He glanced round at the encircling trees, half expecting Gerhard and his mercenaries to ooze out of the shadows.

Gofrey held out his hand. “I know she can do this. Or something very like it.” A small flame, tinted a delicate blue like the skies of midsummer, burst into life in his upturned palm. Rudi watched it flicker for a moment, bemused, and then nodded slowly.

“You’re a hedge wizard.”

Gofrey echoed the gesture, and closed his hand, extinguishing the magical flame.

“I see you’ve learned enough not to call me a witch, at any rate.” He held out another portion of rabbit. “Thank you for that.”

“How do you know about Hanna?” Rudi asked, accepting the sizzling meat eagerly. “Or me, for that matter.” He shivered, not entirely from the cold. “Have you been watching us?” He wasn’t sure how that was possible, but some mages, he knew, were able to see through other eyes, or cloak themselves in other forms.

The hedge-wizard laughed. “Some of us stick together,” he said. “We meet from time to time and pass on whatever information we have to share, especially about anyone the witch hunters are taking an interest in. The news about you left Marienburg almost as soon as you did, but it travelled a lot faster than a riverboat.”

“Can you help her?” Rudi asked.

Gofrey nodded. “I can try, but it sounds as if all she needs is rest.”

Rudi shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. If you have friends, and they know about people like Hanna, they must be able to help keep her safe.”

The hedge wizard took another bite of rabbit before replying, clearly buying the time to order his thoughts.

“That’s probably not such a good idea,” he said at last. “Her best chance is to apply to one of the colleges in Altdorf. That’s the only way anyone with the gift will ever be truly safe, and the colleges don’t like us. They’re almost as bad as the witch hunters.”

“You mean you think she’ll betray you if they accept her,” Rudi said.

Gofrey smiled ruefully. “I hope not, but I’ll be moving on from here long before you get to Altdorf, just to be on the safe side. The rest of my friends in the Wheel wouldn’t thank me for placing them in the same situation.”

“Hanna wouldn’t do anything like that!” Rudi said hotly.

“We’ll all do whatever it takes to survive, my young friend.” Gofrey shrugged. “She might surprise you yet.”

Rudi tried not to think about the expression on Gerrit’s face as he lay twitching in the snow, or the bloody ruins of the Black Cap gunners thrashing about on the jetty.

The mage continued. “Besides, how much of a chance do you think she’ll have of getting a college to accept her if they find out she’s been consorting with witches? They’ll burn her on the spot.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Rudi said. There was much the man wasn’t telling him, of that he was sure, but he didn’t press the point. Instead, he stood, and approached the stand of trees. “I’d better get some more wood. Like you said, it’s going to be a cold night.”

Dawn crept slowly through the curtain of trees, shrouded in mist. Rudi started awake, grateful for the residual heat of the fire, the embers of which still glowed warmly in their blanket of ash. He stretched, yawning, feeling surprisingly refreshed. He’d expected to be awake for most of the night, but the warmth of the fire and the food in his belly had combined to make him drowsy surprisingly fast. Or perhaps the herbs that Gofrey had used on the rabbits were for more than enhancing the flavour.

Struck by that thought, and the sudden memory of how Hanna had drugged the mercenaries the night they’d helped Fritz to escape, he sat upright, reaching for his sword again. Then he relaxed. The hedge wizard was snoring loudly, wrapped up in his cloak against the cold. Rudi clambered to his feet, feeling faintly foolish, and went to find a convenient tree.

Returning, with the pressure in his bladder comfortably relieved, he found Gofrey awake and pottering around the clearing.

“Ah, there you are.” The healer hailed him. “I was beginning to think you’d fallen in the swamp.” He sat on a convenient tree branch, and started tying what looked like a lump of moss around his ankle. “I’m afraid we’ll have to put off breakfast until we get back to the landing.”

“I can wait,” Rudi assured him. Compared to the privations he and Hanna had endured on their journey to Marienburg, a late breakfast was barely worth considering. The mist was rising fast, and he would be able to set off and find his way back to the settlement without any danger fairly soon. As if to confirm the fact, a shaft of watery sunshine struck through the latticework of branches enclosing the glade, turning the frost-speckled grass into a rippling mirror. He nodded at the poultice. “What’s that for?”

“Sprained ankle,” Gofrey explained. “Blackmoss makes the flesh swell up, and the skin look bruised. We’ll need some excuse for staying out here all night.” He limped for a couple of paces, nodded in quiet satisfaction, and resumed his normal gait. “I’ll just need to hobble about a bit for a couple of days. Then the next boat to put in will bring an urgent letter from my cousin about a sick relative, I’ll wave everyone here goodbye, and find somewhere else quiet and in need of a healer.”

Rudi nodded. It was clear that despite his assurances, Gofrey was still determined to move on. Well, he couldn’t fault the man for being cautious. He’d obviously stayed ahead of the witch hunters for a long time, decades judging by his appearance. He tried to imagine what that must be like, never being able to settle anywhere or fully trust anyone, and smiled sourly. He didn’t have to imagine it. He might not have mystical powers, but he was in almost exactly the same position as the hedge wizard.

Not quite, though. He still had a goal beyond simple survival, in a world that seemed to become more bewildering and threatening the more he discovered about it. The mystery of his origins continued to torment him, the questions buzzing around his head like flies around a midden; questions he hoped to find answers to in Altdorf. All he had to do was evade his enemies, track down some surviving member of the von Karien family, and…

Well, after that he wasn’t sure. He supposed it would depend on the answers he got. Once Hanna was safe, he’d have to move on again, that much was certain, perhaps further upriver. There were vast tracts of woodland beyond Altdorf, he knew, and he had little doubt that he could live well in them. A lifelong forester, he should be able to elude any pursuers with little difficulty in such an environment. It would be a dubious haven at best, though. Bandits had fled to the forests for generations, and fouler things by far had always lurked in their deepest clearings: things grown more numerous and desperate than ever since the tide of war had turned in the Empire’s favour, leaving the flotsam of the Chaos invasion stranded in isolated pockets wherever they could find places to hide.

Or perhaps they were closer at hand. As the sunlight strengthened, he began to see tracks in the floor of the glade, as he’d hoped to the previous night: his and Gofrey’s, of course, but others too, entering and leaving from other directions. One set caught his eye at once, standing out from the rest because of their depth. Whoever made them was far larger and heavier than an ordinary man. There were other indentations too, just ahead of each step, which seemed to indicate that the feet were equipped with fearsome talons.

His mind racing, Rudi looked more closely at the prints. As he’d half expected, they were accompanied by a second pair, quite normal looking, left by a woman’s shoe.

“Why didn’t you tell me that Greta and Hans had been here?” he asked, as casually as he could. There could be no doubt in his mind. He’d followed the tracks left by the mutant, who had once been Hans Katzenjammer, into the woods outside Kohlstadt, and he’d seen them again in the offices of the lawyer in Marienburg, who had apparently been a part of Magnus’ Chaos cult. These prints couldn’t have been left by anyone, or anything, else. That meant that the woman who’d left her own alongside them must have been Greta Reifenstahl. Gofrey shrugged.

“Who?” His expression was open and ingenuous.

“The woman from Marienburg who told you about us. She’s Hanna’s mother.”

“Ah.” Gofrey nodded. “We don’t use names, or show faces either if we can avoid it. In case the witch hunters take one of us and put us to the question. We can’t give up what we don’t know.” The thought seemed to disturb him, as well it might. He shrugged. “Why didn’t you leave town with her?”

“We lost touch,” Rudi said shortly. Gofrey nodded. “What about her… companion?”

“Big fellow, didn’t say much. He kept to the shadows, bundled up in a cloak.” Gofrey shot him a challenging glance. “Yes, he probably was a mutant. They’re just people too, most of them, living ordinary lives, until suddenly they start changing through no fault of their own. If he’s found someone to help him, good luck. Witch or mutant, it doesn’t matter to me. We’re all brands for the bonfire if we don’t stick together.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Rudi said. “He’s saved my life a couple of times, although Sigmar knows he’s got no reason to. I’m just as dead as the rest of you if the authorities catch up with us.”

“Well then.” Gofrey shrugged. “Shall we go?” He turned, and started towards the path leading back to Nocht’s Landing. Finding nothing else to say, Rudi followed.

As they came in sight of the palisade, one of the villagers hailed them, waving frantically, and within moments of passing through the gates they were surrounded by a chattering mob, firing excited questions at them in a babble of overlapping voices, hardly pausing to draw breath or wait for an answer. Gofrey leaned against Rudi for greater effect, his assumed limp growing more exaggerated by the moment, and waved a tolerant hand at his friends and neighbours.

Struck by how glad they all were to see the friend they’d given up for dead, Rudi felt a pang of regret that his and Hanna’s presence would soon force the man to depart. Perhaps this was a foreshadowing of his own future, he thought, forced to wander from one temporary refuge to another for the rest of his life. If Gofrey felt any regrets at being forced to leave, he gave no indication of it, just smiling happily in response to the chorus of greetings as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“It was my own fault,” he said cheerily. “I saw some feverleaf growing a bit off the path, and hopped across to get it. Then I saw some spleenwort a bit further out. Before I knew it I was out of sight of the track, and twisted my ankle trying to jump back. If this lad hadn’t come along, I’d have been swamp bait for sure.”

“Shallya must have sent him, right enough,” Ranulph agreed, slapping Rudi on the back and passing him a hunk of bread dripping with honey. “They say she looks after the feeble-minded.” Gofrey bellowed with laughter.

“Then she’ll have her work cut out around here.” He took a deep draught of the mug of mulled ale that someone had handed to him. “Ah, that’s better. It was a bit chilly out there in the dark.”

“Did you see any monsters?” a child asked, tugging at Rudi’s trouser leg. Swallowing a mouthful of bread, he shook his head.

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” he assured the girl, with a wink at the assembled adults. “They all ran off when they saw there were two of us.” The simple pleasures of conversation and goodwill were almost intoxicating. The morning was fine, growing brighter and clearer by the minute, and the food in his stomach seemed astonishingly reviving.

“So where’s my patient?” Gofrey asked, pulling clear of the little knot of excited villagers. “First things first.”

“On the boat.” Ranulph pointed to the wharf, where the Reikmaiden still lay. At the sight of her, Rudi let go a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. Shenk would undoubtedly assume he was dead by now, and would have had no reason to delay his departure. As they walked slowly towards the gangplank, Rudi still supporting Gofrey for the sake of appearances, the captain himself appeared on deck.

“If you’re going to leave it to the last minute to come aboard every time, you might not make it as far as Altdorf,” he said mildly. Rudi nodded.

“I brought the healer. How’s Hanna?”

“Not much different,” Shenk said. “She’s stirring a bit, but she’s still asleep.”

“I’d better take a look at her,” Gofrey said, “since this young man seemed so keen to find me.” Rudi supported him up the gangplank, glancing around at the rest of the crew. Pieter waved a greeting, but Busch and Yullis could barely conceal their disappointment at his return. Ansbach wasn’t even bothering to try, glaring at him as if his failure to drown in the swamp was a personal insult. Berta and Shenk’s expressions remained neutral.

“She’s been quiet all night,” the boatwoman volunteered. “Then she started making these noises just after dawn.”

“What kind of noises?” Gofrey asked. Berta shrugged.

“Just noises,” she said. “You know, like people do when they’re asleep. I only noticed because she’s been so still before.”

“That’s a good sign,” the healer said, obviously reading Rudi’s apprehension on his face. “It means she’s coming out of it.” He beckoned to Yullis. “Can you get me some boiling water?”

“I suppose so.” The cook disappeared into the superstructure in the centre of the deck, and after a moment Rudi heard clattering noises coming from the galley.

“She’s down here,” Rudi said, indicating the companionway that led to the hold. Gofrey nodded.

“Then if you wouldn’t mind?” He held out a hand and let Rudi help him down the narrow flight of stairs, wincing a little every time he took his weight on the supposedly injured ankle. To Rudi’s unspoken relief, everyone else remained on deck, dispersing to prepare the Reikmaiden for departure.

At first sight, Hanna looked exactly as she had when Rudi had gone ashore the previous evening, but as he stepped closer to the hammock he saw her stir fitfully as if dreaming. Her breathing seemed a little deeper too, and her face rather less pallid than he remembered. He mentioned as much to Gofrey.

“Good.” The healer nodded, his attention still fixed on the sleeping girl. “She’s definitely starting to recover. Anything else you can tell me?” Certain that they wouldn’t be overheard, since the echoes of the footsteps on the deck above their heads let him know exactly where each of the crew was, Rudi nodded.

“She cast a spell, a big one. Then she just collapsed.”

“I see.” Gofrey bent over Hanna’s recumbent form, examining her face minutely. Reminded of Gerhard’s scrutiny, Rudi fought down the urge to drag him away. “That would be after the witch hunter’s mark was removed?”

“Yes,” Rudi confirmed. The healer nodded.

“Remarkable. You’d never know it had been there.”

“It was as if all the power it had been blocking suddenly burst out of her,” Rudi went on. Gofrey looked up at him, an expression of puzzlement on his face.

“That’s what I don’t understand,” he said. “How could she possibly have survived for so long with that abomination in place?”

Rudi shrugged, unwilling to answer. The skaven’s stone wasn’t exactly a secret, but it was clearly a powerful charm of some kind, and Hanna had evidently bonded with it in some way. Perhaps Gofrey would want to take it if he found out about it, or if he touched it, it might harm Hanna by breaking the link. Magic was a strange and capricious thing, he knew, and far beyond his comprehension.

“She’s tougher than she looks,” he said truthfully, evading the issue. If Hanna thought that telling Gofrey about the stone was a good idea, she could do it herself when she woke.

“Evidently.” The healer pressed a hand to the girl’s forehead, exactly where Gerhard’s talisman had been, murmuring something under his breath. Alarmed, Rudi started forwards, but before he could intervene, Hanna sighed deeply, and her eyes flickered open.

“Who are you?” she asked, sounding puzzled rather than afraid. Rudi remembered she could recognise another magic user by sight. She sat up, awareness returning to her features, compensating for the rocking of the hammock with small, precise movements, and smiled at Rudi. “We made it then.”

“This is Gofrey,” Rudi explained. No point telling her where they were, she’d obviously recognised the hold of the Reikmaiden instantly. “He’s a healer, like you.”

“Not quite,” Gofrey said. He nodded formally. “My powers are far more limited than yours appear to be.” He turned to Rudi, and pulled some dried leaves from his bag. “Could you take these to Yullis, and ask him to infuse them for me? He must have boiled the water by now.”

Torn between the desire to help and reluctance to leave Hanna again, Rudi hesitated. The girl nodded.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. As he climbed up the companionway into the open air, the two mages began a hushed and urgent conversation behind him, none of which he could hear.

Rudi hurried through the errand as quickly as he could, but Yullis insisted on taking the time to infuse the leaves properly before they left his galley, and several minutes had passed before he was able to return to the hold. When he did, he was just in time to meet Gofrey emerging from the hatch.

“See that she drinks that,” the healer said. Turning away from Rudi, he waved at Shenk. “Just going ashore,” he called. “I’m sure I’ve delayed you quite long enough!”

“We’ll make up the time,” Shenk assured him. With a final round of waving and shouted farewells, Gofrey hobbled down the gangplank, and Pieter and Ansbach began to unship the hawsers holding the riverboat in place. Having nothing better to do on deck, and anxious about Hanna, Rudi negotiated the narrow steps as best he could with a steaming mug in one hand and handed the drink to her.

“Thank you.” Hanna was out of the hammock, and sitting on one of the barrels stowed all through the hold. She sipped the fragrant brew carefully, and regarded Rudi through the steam with narrowed eyes.

“Did he tell you he’d seen Greta?” Rudi asked.

“Yes,” Hanna said, nodding, as if it wasn’t really of any importance. Rudi felt a faint stirring of irritation.

“Did he say anything else?”

“We discussed my symptoms,” Hanna said, in a curiously flat tone that warned Rudi not to pursue the matter.

“I see.” Vaguely disconcerted, Rudi shrugged. “Would you like some fresh air? We’re just getting under way.”

“I’ll join you on deck when I’ve finished this,” Hanna said. Taking the hint, Rudi climbed out of the hold again, leaving her to her thoughts.

The air outside was crisp, and the sun strong on the open water, but his spirits refused to lift. By the time he found himself able to relax again, the riverside settlement and its enigmatic healer were both long out of sight.