‘Your insistence made a personal audience — how did you put it, commander — advisable.’ The Grand Theogonist made the last word drip off his tongue like venom. ‘I am in seclusion at present. Not to be disturbed. I am communing with Great Sigmar, meditating upon his holy creed and begging his aid in the crisis which besets our Empire. It will take divine aid to stamp out this plague which afflicts us in body and soul.’
A wry smile spread across Kreyssig’s face. The only body and soul Thorgrad was trying to save from the Black Plague was his own. ‘Forgive my disturbance of your meditation,’ he said. ‘However I came here not to impose, but to perform a service.’
Immediately Thorgrad’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘To what does the Temple of Sigmar owe this sudden display of piety, commander?’
‘Evidence has come to me that there is a conspiracy against his Imperial Majesty. The name attached to this ring of traitors is that of Arch-Lector Hartwich.’
The Grand Theogonist half rose from his chair, his body trembling with anger. ‘You dare come in here and accuse one of Sigmar’s most devout and pious servants of such…’
‘I have my evidence,’ Kreyssig snarled back. ‘And I can get more, as much as I need. The threat of Drechsler’s axe can be most persuasive.’
Thorgrad’s anger intensified. ‘The Temple of Sigmar is not answerable to secular authority, and especially not the authority of an ambitious peasant who would aggrandise himself through blasphemy!’
Kreyssig shrugged his shoulders. ‘I feared that would be your attitude. Laws can be changed, but why should we scandalise the entire Sigmarite faith because of one treacherous priest?’ A cunning tone crept into the dienstmann’s voice. ‘Or is it only one treacherous priest?’
‘Now you have the affrontery to accuse me!’ the Grand Theogonist roared.
Kreyssig’s eyes gleamed like slivers of steel. ‘Not you, your holiness, but your predecessor. You see, I’ve heard some ugly rumours about Grand Theogonist Uthorsson. Some ugly ones about what happened to him as well.’
Thorgrad’s face went pale. The priest’s body collapsed back into his chair. He gestured to the attendant monks, motioning for them to leave the calefactory. Kreyssig watched them leave, triumph stamped across his smirking features.
‘How much do you know?’ Thorgrad demanded.
‘The Verenan inquisitors down in Nuln were quite… inquisitive,’ Kreyssig said. ‘For some time they had been investigating the excesses of your predecessor. They mentioned Uthorsson as having a connection to something called Slaanesh and intimated that the outrages against propriety unfolding after dark in the Nuln cathedral were not so much an expression of degenerate proclivities but a sort of obscene religious ritual.’ The commander’s smile became almost reptilian. ‘It was rather fortunate that a fire destroyed the cathedral and your predecessor before the Verenans decided to take matters into their own hands.’
The Grand Theogonist lost all appearance of power and authority, his shoulders slumping, his body wilting against the cushions of his chair. ‘What is it you want to keep this information secret?’
‘Only a small consideration,’ Kreyssig said. ‘Hartwich is an enemy of his Imperial Majesty, but as a priest he becomes a special case. As you observe, I have no strict authority over him. You, however, do. I am not saying that you have to denounce him publicly as a traitor. You can do whatever you like, just as long as he is disposed of. Quickly and permanently.’
Kreyssig looked over the raging fires, his lip curling in a sneer. ‘Say he died of the plague, if you like. There’s a lot of that going around right now.’
The Grand Theogonist nodded, conceding to Kreyssig’s demands. He was enough of a realist to know this was only the beginning, that the commander would exploit the secret shame of the temple as often as it suited his purposes. Blackmail was a crime without an end.
‘What will you do about the other conspirators?’ Thorgrad asked.
Kreyssig stepped away from the fires. ‘They will be rounded up and disposed of. My spies are quite thorough. Even now, we have taken a man into custody.’ He hesitated a moment, weighing whether he should disclose the name of his catch. Contempt for the old, frightened man perched between the flames decided him. Even if the priest grew the spine to warn the conspirators — allowing he knew who they were — their very effort to escape would reveal them to him.
‘My Kaiserjaeger found a plague doktor down in the docks who had an interesting story to tell. It seems he was treating a certain peasant, a man who has been hiding from me for some time now. It took a little persuasion, but the physician eventually led us to the hole this peasant had hidden himself in.
‘I have Wilhelm Engel,’ Kreyssig stated, watching to see if Thorgrad displayed any special reaction. He was disappointed to find none.
‘I have Wilhelm Engel,’ he repeated. ‘And through him, I will track down all of these traitors and put their heads on the Tower of Altdorf’s roof.’
Chapter XII
Altdorf
Vorhexen, 1111
‘I can make the pain go away. I can make all the hurt and suffering stop. You can be whole again. Clean again. Why won’t you let me help you?’
The words crackled through the black corridors of Mundsen Keep, reverberating from the frozen slime caking the filthy walls. Somewhere in the darkness a maniac began to giggle, his chains clanking against the bricks of his cell.
Wilhelm Engel clenched his eyes closed, trying to hold back the tears. Kreyssig’s torturers had been at work on him, splitting open his diseased flesh with hot tongs, scalding his skin with boiling oil, piercing his fingers with copper nails. Somehow, through it all, he had kept silent.
Or at least given the Kaiserjaeger nothing better than inarticulate screams.
Now, however, the fiendish Kreyssig had unveiled a new torture. The torment of hope. The promise of life to a man already resigned to death.
Engel was strapped to a table, his mangled body held in place by long belts of leather. He could just raise his neck enough to see the hideous ruin the Kaiserjaeger had made of him, the raw glistening meat where his leg should be, the red wreck of his chest. He could also see the man who promised to undo everything that had been done to him. More than that — the man who promised to do the impossible. To save him from the plague.
It was easy to be brave when you were prepared to die. How much harder to die when you were offered a miraculous chance to escape death, to cheat Morr even as he reached out his bony hand to take you.
Karl-Maria Fleischauer, a scarecrow of a man, his face displaying hard angles beneath its thick growth of beard, his eyes glistening with an ophidian lustre. He wore an extravagant robe of silk, its foreign contours lent a further exotic flavour by the mystical symbols embroidered over its surface. Grinning moons and whirling stars, writhing dragons and fiery phoenixes, coiled serpents and roaring lions. Fleischauer, the pet warlock of Emperor Boris, a man both infamous among and feared by the peasants of Altdorf and common folk everywhere. The black arts were a thing to be shunned, their practitioners reviled and destroyed. Such sorcerers were debased, subhuman things, preying upon the innocent to call forth elementals and daemons, sacrificing the helpless to seal their unholy pacts with the Ruinous Powers.
Yet Fleischauer promised his magic could do something so wondrous that it was beyond even the priestesses of Shallya. He promised his spells could drive the plague from Engel’s body.
‘Perhaps you doubt my magic,’ Fleischauer said, a tinge of hurt seeping into his grotesque voice. He ruffled his arms, throwing back the voluminous sleeves of his robe. ‘I shall demonstrate. Then you will believe. You will know that you can trust my spells and my word.’