‘Now we tell the Graf, your grace?’ Franz asked, anxiety in his voice, one hand rubbing his head.
‘Now we go up there and see who it is,’ Mandred said, still trying to play for time. He turned a commanding gaze upon each of the knights. ‘If we send for help and they don’t come in time, at least we will know what these smugglers look like.’
‘There were seven of them when I was brought up the cliff,’ Othmar reminded the prince. ‘And you’ll have to take into account the sentries they’ve bribed.’
‘We’re just going to have a look,’ Mandred promised. ‘They don’t even have to know we’re there.’ He felt guilty lying to these men, but he didn’t have time to make them see his point of view. Mandred’s motives were pure, but he knew from past experience that some men were too cynical to believe in simple humanity.
Franz led the way to the ladders, Mandred’s one concession to his bodyguard’s incessant demands for caution. The prince followed close behind, with Othmar climbing up the second ladder. The Reiklander had described in some detail the arduous climb, made all the more difficult by the irregular spacing of the rungs. Even so, Mandred found himself panting by the time they reached the top of the wall.
No light shone upon this section of the battlements. The bribed sentries had doused their lantern, leaving the smugglers to work by the light of the moons. This, it seemed, was more than sufficient. Mandred could see where a crude windlass had been constructed, thick ropes uncoiling from it to drop down over the side of the wall. Somewhere below in the darkness would be the basket Othmar had described, perhaps even now bringing another clutch of refugees over the cliffs.
Three men dressed in a motley assortment of furs attended the windlass, grunting with effort as they gradually brought the ropes winding back around the timber spool. Two soldiers in the livery of Wallwardens watched the operation, worry etched upon their faces. Another pair of men in cloaks paced back and forth, their every move betraying an attitude of wary vigilance.
There were two other men present. Like the sentries, they seemed intent upon watching the smugglers working the windlass. One was a broad-shouldered, stoutly built man, his head covered by a bearskin hood. There was an unmistakable air of authority about him; even without Othmar’s description, Mandred would have marked the man as the chief of these smugglers.
The chief’s companion was a little fellow, wiry and nervous, his scrawny body covered from head to toe in a ragged robe of dyed wool. He capered about the chief, seemingly unable to keep still, his head twitching from side to side beneath the folds of his hood. Mandred took an instant dislike to the little man, finding his every gesture somehow disturbing and repulsive.
‘We should get your father now,’ Othmar whispered.
Mandred glanced aside at the knight. Now was the time to act. He would have only one chance to show his companions how wrong they were. He only hoped they would give him the opportunity to make them understand. ‘Follow my lead,’ the boy told the two knights. Before either of them could react, Mandred strode boldly towards the smugglers, his hands open at his sides.
‘Peace,’ he called out as the two smugglers detailed as lookouts spotted him and came running forwards. Mandred noticed that each of the men had a sword in his hand. ‘I am not here to interfere.’
The prince’s appearance drew the attention of the chief smuggler. The broad-shouldered man turned away from his observation of the windlass. His face lost in the shadows of his hood, the fur-cloaked man marched forwards. The bribed soldiers and the little man in the wool robe followed behind him.
‘That is a good way to get your gizzard slit,’ Neumann’s oily voice intoned. ‘You shouldn’t scare people in the dark.’
‘People who are doing things the Graf doesn’t like, don’t do them in the light of day,’ Mandred countered, fixing his face in a companionable smile. A perplexed look came upon the face of one of the soldiers when he heard the prince speak, the look of a man who has recognised something but can’t quite place it. Mandred knew he had to convince the smugglers of his sincerity before the soldier remembered where he had heard his voice before.
‘I have heard about your operation,’ Mandred continued. ‘I wanted to see if I could help.’
Neumann chuckled as he heard the offer. There was an unpleasant cruelty in that laugh. The smuggler raised a gloved hand, gesturing behind Mandred, pointing a finger straight at Othmar. ‘That man led you here,’ Neumann grumbled. ‘I cannot abide indiscreet people.’
‘I asked him to bring me here,’ Mandred said, hoping to divert Neumann’s attention. ‘If not for him, you might be talking to the Graf’s men instead of me.’
The statement was a mistake. It seemed to jog the memory of the perplexed Wallwarden. ‘Prince Mandred!’ he exclaimed.
The two smugglers who had been closing on Mandred backed away in alarm, but Neumann only laughed. It was a low, evil mockery. ‘The prince,’ he hissed. ‘And he wants to help us.’
The soldier who had identified Mandred rushed to Neumann’s side, clutching at the smuggler’s arm. ‘That is the prince!’ he repeated. ‘You wouldn’t harm his grace!’
Neuman swung around, a dagger springing into his hand. ‘Watch me,’ he snarled, stabbing the blade into the soldier’s body with such force that it tore through the mail links and buried itself in his ribs. The dying soldier’s fingers tightened in the folds of Neumann’s cloak, dragging it from the smuggler’s body as he slumped against the battlements.
Mandred’s eyes went wide with horror as the smuggler’s face stood exposed. Neumann’s head was an oozing mass of sores and scabs, wormy strands of black hair scattered in patches across his scalp. A mouth, fat and puckered like that of a fish, drooled from the man’s right temple, its greasy slobber draining into the atrophied stump of an ear. The face itself was leprous and swollen with rot, jaundiced eyes staring piggishly from folds of dead skin. A pair of rotten teeth, like the fangs of a snake, gleamed from a lipless mouth.
‘With you as hostage,’ Neumann growled, wiping the soldier’s blood from his dagger, ‘the Graf won’t lift a finger against us.’ The mutant’s eyes glowed from his decayed face as evil thoughts swirled inside his skull. ‘If he does, then the Prince of Middenheim will make a fine sacrifice to Grandfather Nurgle!’
Mandred’s gorge rose as he heard the forbidden name of the Plague God uttered, feeling the sound burn inside his nose. The horrible truth dawned upon him. These men weren’t mere smugglers, they were servants of the Ruinous Powers! The realisation was like a physical blow, all of his ideals and noble intentions withering before the baleful eye of the Plague God.
Had his father been right? Could only evil come from helping the refugees? Was compassion the weakness these diseased cultists had been waiting to exploit?
‘Defend yourself, your grace!’
In his shock, Mandred wasn’t even aware that one of the cultists was rushing him. Left on his own, he would have been too late to stop the man’s descending sword. The blade seemed to chop down at him in slow motion, his eyes able to pick out every nick and notch in the corroded steel.
Then Franz was there, his sword crunching into the cultist’s shoulder, dragging away both the enemy’s sword and the arm that held it. The smuggler wheeled away, whimpering as thick gouts of blood spurted from his maimed body. Out of the corner of his eyes, Mandred could see Othmar fighting the other lookout, his training and skill quickly putting the cultist on the defensive. Even the surviving Wallwarden was taking a hand, flinging himself at Neumann and backing the chief cultist towards the edge of the wall.