Still smiling, he lifted his eyes from the babbling crowd, staring towards the Imperial Palace. Beneath the circling ravens, he could see the balcony which had earned the epithet of the Traitors’ View. From here, a denizen of the palace could stare straight down into the Widows’ Plaza and observe the executions. Emperor Boris was there, resplendent in his sable robes of state, the golden crown of Sigismund the Conqueror resting snugly about his head. Kreyssig chuckled inwardly. He was glad the Emperor had turned out to watch the execution. He’d arranged to provide his Imperial Majesty with quite a show.
The crowd fell silent as the gates of the Imperial Courthouse were raised. A phalanx of soldiers emerged, flanking a small wooden cart. Crouched inside the cart, his thin arms tied behind his back, his body shivering underneath the shabby linen robe he wore, was the man everyone had turned out to see. Grand Master von Schomberg, on his way to keep his appointment with fate.
Behind the cart marched the sinister Scharfrichter, the Imperial Executioner himself, Gottwald Drechsler. Dressed in black, his head hidden beneath a leather mask, he strode through the plaza like some primordial daemon. The Sword of Justice, a monstrous claymore nearly as tall as a man, was balanced across his broad shoulders, its pommel shaped into a leering skull of silver, its blade etched with curses and maledictions to damn the soul of those who felt its bite.
Kreyssig exulted in the hush that had come upon the crowd. He could fairly smell the fear rising from them. And in Boris Goldgather’s Altdorf, fear was power. Von Schomberg would make an object lesson to the others, an example of what they could expect if they dare defy the Emperor… or Adolf Kreyssig.
Drechsler mounted the steps to the scaffold, resembling some inhuman fiend rising from the Pit. As he reached the platform, he threw off the hangman’s cloak he wore, exposing a musculature of such proportions that it would have looked more at home on an ogre. Every inch of the Scharfrichter’s chest was swollen with muscle, his every motion sent a thrill of raw power rippling down his massive arms. Cheerless black eyes stared out from the holes in Drechsler’s hood, seeming to judge every face they happened to glance at, warning them that they too might feel the bite of the executioner’s sword.
Von Schomberg had to be helped from the cart, a task delegated to two prisoners from the dungeons. The Grand Master sagged limply in their grasp, his body wracked by a fit of coughing as they carried him onto the scaffold. No priest waited upon the condemned man. After the attempted rescue, Kreyssig had forbidden anyone contact with von Schomberg.
The doomed man was half-dragged, half-guided to the wooden block at the centre of the platform. He was made to kneel before the block, to rest his head against its notched and stained surface. A leather strap was fitted over his shoulders, securing him to the block and making it impossible for him to pull away.
The Scharfrichter hefted the immense Sword of Justice, holding it overhead and circling around the scaffold so that all in the crowd could see. Then, with a savage gesture, he plunged the blade into the earth at the base of the scaffold, hurling the huge sword as though it were a boar-hunter’s javelin. The spectacle brought gasps of astonishment from the crowd, both for the display of strength exhibited and for the breach of custom. Drechsler turned his cold eyes towards where Kreyssig and his officers waited.
For an instant, a tremor of uncertainty swept through the crowd. Was the Scharfrichter refusing to carry out the execution? Hope flickered into tremulous life in the minds of those who sympathised with the Reiksknecht and what they had tried to do.
Then that hope was smothered, crushed underfoot by the inventive cruelty of a despot. From among Kreyssig’s officers, a sergeant of the Kaiserjaeger emerged. In his hands the soldier carried a huge double-headed axe.
It was not enough to kill von Schomberg. Kreyssig intended to humiliate him, to disgrace him before the eyes of all Altdorf. Tradition was clear, the law was firm. Nobles were executed beneath the blade of a sword. Only peasants suffered the kiss of the axe. It was a distinction understood by highborn and commoner alike, an insult even the lowest serf could understand.
Taking up the axe, Drechsler circled the scaffold once more. When he finished his third circuit of the platform, he turned towards the prisoner and the wooden block. Lifting up the axe in both hands, he brought its gleaming edge flashing down. A collective gasp rose from the crowd.
Screams of horror filled the Widows’ Plaza. The axe had missed, at least in part. Its keen edge had gouged the side of von Schomberg’s neck, but had failed to decapitate him. The stricken captive thrashed about in his bindings, a ghastly gurgle issuing from his mangled throat. Blood spurted from his wound, spraying across the scaffold.
The Scharfrichter leaned back, resting his hands across the butt of the bloodied axe. For the better part of a minute he waited while his victim writhed in pain. Then he took up the axe once more, bringing it sweeping down in a murderous arc.
There would be no need for a third blow.
For a moment, silence gripped the Widows’ Plaza once more. Kreyssig grinned at the effect the deliberately botched execution had had on the crowd. They would remember this, and they would fear suffering a similarly infamous end.
Then a voice cried out, loud and clear. ‘Shame!’ the voice shouted, and the cry was taken up by others, growing into a roar of outrage. Kreyssig had overplayed his hand. The travesty he had made of von Schomberg’s execution had incensed, not cowed, the crowd. The Kaiserjaeger struggled to contain the furious mob. Bricks and stones clattered about the scaffold as the enraged people of Altdorf tried to avenge the hideous death of a martyr.
Under the barrage, Kreyssig withdrew into the protection afforded by the thick walls of the Courthouse, the Scharfrichter and the officers of his Kaiserjaeger following close behind him. Before he withdrew into the gatehouse, however, the commander looked back at the Imperial Palace. Horrified anger flared through his heart. There was no one standing on the Traitors’ View. Emperor Boris had retreated back into the palace, distancing himself from Kreyssig and his misfired attempt to terrorise the people of Altdorf into submission.
Adolf Kreyssig could see all he had worked for slipping through his fingers. He would get it back. Whoever he had to denounce, whoever he had to imprison or execute, he would get it all back.
Bylorhof
Ulriczeit, 1111
The sepulchral silence of the temple of Morr was broken only by the sputter of a peat-moss lamp. Black shadows stretched across the marble-walled mortuary, throwing the fluted columns into sinister relief. The ebon statue of a raven peered down from its perch above the gateway connecting the chamber to the sanctuary itself, its beak open in a soundless cry. Darkened alcoves gaped in the walls, urns of incense smouldering in niches built into their sides, fighting a losing battle against the reek of death rising from the corpses stacked within.
The mortuary was filled beyond capacity. Even with the full complement of priests the temple normally possessed there would have been no way to keep pace with the decimation wrought by the Black Plague. By himself, Frederick van Hal was overwhelmed. In his blacker moods, he could almost be thankful for the slow slide back into heathenism many of the Sylvanians had abandoned themselves to. If not for the bodies dumped into the marsh, the dead would be piled not only in the niches, but everywhere in the mortuary and out in the sanctuary itself. There was simply too much work for one man, however much he pushed himself.