‘We have many diggerfangs,’ Blight boasted, savouring the effect his display had on Puskab. ‘They will solve problem of Nurglitch. Burrow through walls of his sanctum. Eat him alive.
‘Then Puskab Foulfur will be Arch-Plaguelord.’
Chapter VIII
Altdorf
Ulriczeit, 1111
The Courts of Justice, the Imperial Courthouse of Altdorf, was a gigantic stone fortress, crouched almost in the very shadow of the Emperor’s Palace and facing towards the Great Cathedral of Sigmar. Its grey walls were built from massive blocks of ashlar, great bartizans looming out into the wide square that Altdorfers had grimly named the Widows’ Plaza. Soldiers in the gold-chased liveries of the Palace Guard patrolled the walls of the Courthouse. Dozens of halberdiers flanked the gatehouse, their weapons kept at the ready, their faces alert and resolute. From the heights of the Tower of Altdorf, the great round bastion rising above the Courthouse, a score of archers were held in reserve, men chosen for their unerring skill with the bow.
Such were the visible guardians of the fortress. Erich knew there would be others once they were actually inside. Traps and tricks devised by Emperor Sigismund’s dwarf engineers, as well as whatever new surprises Emperor Boris and his minions had added since. Everything had been done to ensure there was no chance of escape for those languishing in the dungeons below the fortress. Erich only hoped nobody had put as much thought into people wanting to break into the Courthouse.
The young captain shifted uneasily in the black robe he wore over his armour. As a concession to speed and mobility, the knights had adopted simple suits of brigandine instead of their scale mail. Erich couldn’t shake a feeling of vulnerability with only a cuirass of boiled leather with a few plates of steel woven between its layers. Even more uncomfortable, however, were the robes that formed their disguise. Wearing the raiment of a priest of Morr wasn’t the sort of thing that cheered a man’s spirits. There was just a chance that the god of death might take offence and decide to summon the perpetrators to his realm to discuss the transgression.
Erich shifted his gaze away from the forbidding Courthouse to inspect the disguises of his comrades. Even with the black robes, he thought they looked too big to pass for Morrite priests. ‘This isn’t going to work,’ Erich grumbled.
‘Have faith in Sigmar, my son,’ admonished the man at the head of the procession, the only one who actually looked the part of a priest. That was only natural, since the man was a priest. Erich didn’t know who he was; he’d kept his face hidden in the folds of his hood and Prince Sigdan had only introduced him as ‘an ally from the clergy’. By the man’s frequent invocations of Sigmar, however, Erich guessed he didn’t belong to the temple of Morr.
The priest set his hand against Erich’s arm, tugging at the coarse cloth of his robe. ‘People see only the habit. They hold Morr and his servants in too much dread to look too closely at the man beneath the hood.’ He nodded his head emphatically. ‘That is the key we will use to set your Grand Master free.’
Erich took the priest’s suggestion and silently asked Sigmar to pour conviction into his heart. While he was at it, he snapped his fingers to invoke the luck of Ranald. On an enterprise like this, the good favour of the god of tricksters couldn’t hurt.
Five knights and a priest. It was a ridiculously small force to try to storm the Imperial Courthouse. The Bread Marchers had tried it with two hundred men and been slaughtered. The very audacity of trying it with this few men gave the captain pause. Yet it was the very impossibility of their mission that gave them their best chance of success.
Emperor Boris, in a fit of rage, had ordered Reiksmarshal Boeckenfoerde to muster the Imperial Army and move against Talabheim. The city-state had offended His Imperial Majesty by breaking off all contact with Altdorf — a precaution against the plague and risk of contamination. Incensed at the audacity of Talabheim’s grand duke, Boris had ignored his generals and his advisors, dispatching the army to forcibly reopen the Talabheim markets, despite the logistical hazards of a winter march. The Emperor’s detractors said it was the loss of tax revenue rather than Talabecland food shipments that worried the greedy Goldgather.
To muster an army big enough to lay siege to Talabheim had required employing peasant conscripts and drawing down the Altdorf garrison. In that fact lay the reason Erich hoped that once inside the Courthouse they might be able to free Baron von Schomberg. As formidable as the troops on the walls appeared, Boris’s ransacking of the garrison meant there would be far fewer guards on the inside.
The six men in the sombre robes walked towards the gatehouse. The guards posted around the portcullis drew away as the Morrite clergy came near, conversation dying away as they shifted uneasily towards the reassuring solidity of the wall behind them. A nervous-looking soldier wearing the armband of a sergeant stepped forwards to accost the approaching priests.
‘You have business within the Courthouse, father?’ the sergeant asked.
The disguised Sigmarite clergyman bowed his head and addressed the soldier in a hollow voice that was midway between a snarl and a whisper. ‘I fear we have business throughout Altdorf, brother. The Black Plague has visited many and set many souls wandering. We are kept quite busy bringing the restless spirits peace and consigning them to the grace of Morr.’
Already anxious, the sergeant’s face went a few shades paler at mention of the Black Plague and the suggestion of ghosts of victims haunting the Courthouse unless they were laid to rest. It was a combination that killed any other questions the soldier might have had. He gestured to the troops in the gatehouse above, and the portcullis began to rise. Nervously, the sergeant waved the priests forwards. The Sigmarite crossed his palms over his breast, making the sign of Morr’s raven. The knights following behind him copied the gesture as they passed the sergeant.
‘They will be keeping the Grand Master in the tower,’ Erich whispered to the priest.
‘Indeed,’ the Sigmarite said. ‘The dungeons will still be crowded with Bread Marchers. Even the plague can’t kill them fast enough to suit Commander Kreyssig.’
Erich could feel his heart pounding against his bones as the invaders entered the inner bailey and stole through the winding passages of the Courts of Justice. Everywhere plaster statues of Verena in her aspect as goddess of justice glowered down at them, her right hand raised and holding a cornucopia for the innocent, her left lowered and holding a grinning skull — death for the guilty. It was a forbidding image, one that became ever more oppressive the more often the knights encountered it. Erich’s skin crawled, an icy trickle seeping along his spine. It was as if the goddess herself glared at him from the stern visage of her statues, promising that this trespass would not go unpunished. Verena, wife of Morr; because justice often demanded death.
It took a supreme effort of will for Erich to extricate himself from the toils of the superstitious dread that held him in its grip. Fortunately they had encountered no human opposition. The guards within the Courthouse seemed just as eager to ignore the grim procession of Morrite priests as those at the gate. Not until they reached the barred entrance to the Tower of Altdorf did they encounter serious opposition. The sentry behind the gate was more attentive than his fellows, with a frustratingly keen level of discipline.
Erich quickly assumed control of the conversation when he saw that morbid platitudes weren’t going to get the door open for them. Pushing the Sigmarite aside, Erich lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.