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 the 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.
Erich crouched in the street, looking around to ensure he was unobserved. With the populace in a panic over the quickly spreading plague, there were few people on the streets, but the captain was cautious just the same. Only when he was certain he was alone did he lift up the stone lid and drop down into the murky darkness.
A simple rushlight lit his way once he was in the dank sewer. Erich crushed a perfumed cloth to his nose as he walked along the ledge bordering the stream of effluent coursing beneath the street. He took some comfort in the very loathsomeness of his surroundings. No one wanted to think about the sewers, dismissing the disgusting channels from their minds. Wilfully forgotten by most of the inhabitants of Altdorf, they made a perfect road for men who couldn’t afford to be seen.
Bloated rats scampered away from the flicker of the knight’s light, splashes rising from the culvert as the rodents decided to swim away from the intrusive glow. Erich felt his gorge rise in disgust at the skulking vermin. The rats of Altdorf had grown bigger and braver this winter, sneaking into houses stricken by the plague to gnaw at the bodies of the dead. The priests of Morr had gone so far as to hire rat-catchers to guard the mortuaries and ensure the departed were consecrated into the keeping of their god with all of their fingers and toes still attached.
Erich’s insides squirmed at the thought of those creeping brutes waiting in the darkness, biding their time like vultures before swarming over a man’s body and stripping it to the bone. Well had they earned the epithet of Khaine’s lapdog, for only the god of murder could have affection for such noxious scavengers. In all the world, there was nothing more repulsive than a rat.
The knight shuddered as he saw dozens of beady little eyes staring at him from the darkness ahead. The broken-down wall had become something of a landmark to him, a signpost letting him know he was near his hideout, but never would he grow accustomed to the horde of rats that nested among the shattered bricks and crumbling masonry.
As he approached the eyes withdrew, slinking back into their holes and burrows. By the time he was close enough to see the wall, the only trace of the rats was a long scaly tail vanishing into the gap between two stones. Erich shuddered just the same. He didn’t need to see the vermin to know they were there.