‘Silence!’ roared Helborg, standing up and smashing his gavel on the lectern before him. His voice rang around the chamber, quelling the restive quarrels before they became unstoppable. Looking down, he realised he had snapped the small hammer with the force of his strike.
A broken hammer. Oddly appropriate.
‘This is a council of war, my lords,’ said Helborg, his darkening visage sweeping the rows of occupied chairs before him. Not for the first time, he wondered just how Karl Franz had kept such a disparate and dysfunctional body politic operational for so long. ‘With every passing day, the enemy comes closer. Marienburg has already fallen. We have no word from Talabheim or Middenheim. The river-passages are closed to us, and our attempts to contact Nuln and Couronne have yielded nothing. If we are to survive this, we will have to start worrying less about trees and temples and more about blades and blackpowder.’
For the first time, Helborg let a little of the parade-ground earthiness into his speech, and his voice assumed the rasping quality it took on when ordering his knights into the charge. Some of the assembled worthies, like von Kleistervoll and Sleivor, appreciated that. Others, the electors among them, murmured unhappily among themselves.
‘Now,’ said Helborg, deliberately inflecting his words with as much calm, clear authority as he could, ‘let us take stock of what we have determined here. The remaining grain supplies will be removed to the main barracks, as will the surviving quantities of ale and unspoiled water. We will carry out the levy in the poor quarters, drafting any man who can stand into the reserve battalions under General von Hildenshaft. There will be no exemptions from the watch rotations. When the enemy gets here, I wish to see every able hand clutching a sword.’
Then he fixed his eyes on each of the delegates in turn, daring them to question the scant resolutions that had been painstakingly agreed. ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked.
Only one man had the gall to stand. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Helborg recognised Martak.
‘I come to speak of the Rot,’ said the Supreme Patriarch, speaking haltingly in his strangely accented Reikspiel. ‘It does not matter how strong we make the walls – the plague spreads from within. We must purge the undercity.’
Martak’s voice fell flat in the huge echoing spaces of the chamber. As soon as he mentioned the Rot, irritated muttering started up again.
‘There is no such thing,’ said von Liebwitz confidently. ‘If the peasants only bathed more and ceased their rutting, all this sickness would cease.’
‘It is carried by the air,’ opined de Champney, to much nodding from his fellow magisters. ‘It cannot be eradicated while the foul winds blow.’
‘It comes from the river,’ said Fleischer. ‘And we will not dam that.’
Helborg felt a vice of weariness settle like a yoke on his shoulders. Was there nothing they could agree on? ‘And just what do you suggest, my lord Patriarch?’ he asked. ‘As you can clearly see, every ready hand already has a task to perform.’
‘I need teams of armed soldiers,’ said Martak. ‘A hundred strong each, all to be led by a magister of my colleges. The Rot rises from the sewers. Only by purging them all can we reach the source.’
‘Purge them all?’ blurted Elector Gausser. ‘You are mad, Supreme Patriarch.’
‘It cannot be done,’ added one of the master engineers, a bearded man with a bronze-rimmed monocle and gold braids on his epaulettes. ‘The undercity runs for dozens of miles.’
Martak remained calm in the face of the scorn. Throughout the uproar, his steady gaze never left Helborg. ‘Something is working against us down there,’ he insisted. ‘Something that grows stronger. It must be rooted out.’
Helborg struggled to control his irritation. Martak had not bothered to pull out the straggles in his filthy beard. Helborg could smell the man from twenty paces away, and his robes, such as they were, were streaked with dirt. ‘I do not doubt you,’ Helborg said, trying not to let his jaw clench. ‘But there is no question of those numbers. They are needed on the walls.’
‘Just one company, then,’ said Martak, stubbornly. ‘I will lead it myself.’
‘Out of the question.’
Martak bristled. ‘You’re... banning me?’
The insolence was intolerable. For a moment, fatigue made Helborg think he was addressing some dishevelled soldier out on the fields of war, and he nearly drew his blade. ‘This is not a priority,’ he growled.
‘Have you been down to the poor quarter?’
‘Of course not. Do not deflect this to some–’
‘They are dying down there. Dying like dogs.’
‘I cannot be concerned about that now.’
‘Your whole city is dying, Reiksmarshal.’
‘Silence. You have had your–’
‘The city is dying before your eyes and you cannot see it.’
‘I said, silence!’
‘If the Emperor were here–’
‘Enough!’ Helborg’s raw shout echoed from the high vaults, shocking even the hardened warriors into startled looks. ‘Who are you? What pit of filth were you drawn up from, to be thrust into my face like some mockery of your ancient office?’
The words poured like water from Helborg’s mouth. The anger made him feel alive, after so many hours, so many days, biting his tongue and abasing himself before men he would have slain on the battlefield without a second thought. Once he started, he could not stop – it was cathartic, to vent his spleen again, to pour out all his pent-up fury and frustration at a single source.
‘You come here dressed like some peddler from the backwoods of Stirland’s foulest shit-hole and dare to address the Reiksmarshal of the Empire? You dare? I walked these streets for decades while you rolled in the muck of the Reikswood and sniffed the spoor-trails of beasts. This is my city! It is my city! If you wish to challenge that, then Sigmar damn you and you may leave it!’
The echoes lingered for a while after the spittle-laced tirade had ceased. No one spoke. A few mouths hung open.
Martak himself remained icily calm. His brown eyes never left Helborg’s, who stood, trembling with rage, his chin jutting defiantly.
Then, very slowly, Martak drew in a long breath. ‘So we understand one another,’ he said, his gruff, uncultured voice heavy with contempt.
He shuffled from his place, and clumped heavily down to the chamber floor. As he left, his shoulders held stiffly, his clogs clanked noisily against the marble. It took a long time for him to leave, and the clanks rang out uncomfortably until at last he had been ushered into the corridors outside.
Gradually, Helborg recovered his composure. Almost immediately, the loss of control shocked him. Part of him wanted to rush after Martak, to apologise, to explain that he had not slept for days and that the burden of wresting an entire city from its indolence and dragging it into a war that every instinct told him could not be won was more than any man could bear.
But he could not, not with the eyes of the entire council on him. He was still the Reiksmarshal, and a display of weakness now, any weakness, would see the electors onto him like wolves on a lamb.
There were always disagreements. They could be overcome later. For now, what mattered was control – keeping Altdorf together just long enough to give it a chance.
Moving stiffly, he sat down again. The silence in the chamber was total.