“Orcs,” Angelika explained, to no one in particular.
“Where?” the beaky one asked. His comrades tensed, hands drifted to weapons.
“Tell my friend here your name,” Angelika commanded. “Engage in a few
pleasantries.”
Beaky met Franziskus’ eyes. “I am Renald. Renald Wechsler.”
Franziskus nodded a greeting at him.
“Well, Renald Wechsler,” Angelika finally said, “you can see that the smoke
blows from the south. So the orcs are in the south, I’d venture to say.”
“How far south?”
“No way of telling.”
“How do you know they are orcs?”
“This happens when they mass for war. They set fire to the forests as they
wait in the hills.”
“What do they mean to accomplish?”
“It’s hard to say if they have any aim at all. It may just be that they’re
stupid, lazy despoilers, and they burn down their own staging places through
idiotic carelessness. Some might say, on the other hand, that they do it
purposefully, to stoke themselves before a fight. Or maybe it’s a sacrifice to
their gods of destruction.” She shrugged. “All I can tell you is, it’s orcs, and
probably a great deal of them. Getting ready.”
Renald’s complexion turned to ash; he rode up next to the unit’s
banner-bearers, and spoke to Benno and Gelfrat. Soon after, the column speeded
its pace.
Angelika saw that their guardians were all either looking up at the smoke, or
behind them, searching the hills for orcs. With Renald still on his way back,
there were spaces in what had been a tight formation. She scissored her legs
into her horse’s side, ready to bolt through the distracted men.
The horse reared a little, and whinnied in annoyance. It stayed put. Again
she kicked at it. It waggled its muzzle into the air. Her guardians took notice
of her efforts and ringed her tightly.
She sat silently cursing: every time she had dealings with a horse, it gave
her renewed reason to hate all of its kind.
The column picked up speed, barely stopping to rest its horses as it
continued on to Grenzstadt.
* * *
Black towers and gabled manses jutted up past Grenzstadt’s high stone walls
like halberds on a rack of arms. The large town squatted at the mouth of the
Blackfire Pass, interposing itself between the green pastures of the Empire and
anyone who would enter it from the southern wildlands. Sun and weather had given
its granite walls a tan coloration; clinging lichens added touches of green.
Well-engineered and exactingly mortared, the walls rose to a uniform height.
Angelika, still shackled on her truculent horse, reckoned that they had to be
twenty feet high, at least. They bore no resemblance to the makeshift
fortifications that had done so little to protect the Castello del Dimenticato.
Atop the walls were walkways, and these were railed in oak and sheltered by
shingled roofs. Averlandish soldiers, sporting the yellow and black, patrolled
them, vigilantly toting crossbows.
A multitude of banners flew from the town’s tallest pinnacles: the yellow and
black of Averland, Sigmar’s hammer, the insignia of the Black Field Sabres, and,
here and there, Count Marius’ solar ensign. Among these other flags were
scattered, too, the meanings of which Angelika could not decode. They might be
anything from the symbols of private militias to mercantile crests. Known or
unknown, they all snapped in a high wind. The sky had grown dark, presaging a
violent storm. The temperature had been dropping rapidly for about half an hour,
and Angelika shuddered. At some point, probably back in the pit, she’d lost her
cloak. Franziskus shivered, too. Benno’s men hemmed them in more tightly as they
approached the town; there would be no confusion, no escapes. Whirling gusts
gathered up tiny pebbles and handfuls of sand, throwing the mixture in the
riders’ faces.
The town lay on flat land, and from Angelika’s vantage point, it was hard to
judge just how big it was. It had to be seven or eight times the size of the
Castello, at the very least.
Paired towers flanked the south gate, topped with shingled, pyramidal roofs;
soldiers stood watch beneath them, and peered through spyglasses. At the bottom
of the walls, a miserable assortment of refugees, undoubtedly from the Castello,
huddled, shivering against the wind. When they saw the column approach, a few
ran out, shouting unintelligible pleas. They held out clawed hands in
supplication. A grimy-haired woman held up a wailing baby, crying mercy in Shallya’s name.
But when they saw the black and yellow uniforms, the displaced shrank back,
averting their wretched faces. Above, a trio of callow bravos in brocade
doublets gathered, laughing; they rained the contents of a chamber pot down on
the refugees and leapt about in delight and mutual congratulation.
At the procession’s head, a soldier bugled out a few discordant notes on a
battered brass horn, and another held aloft the Black Sabre banner. The gate’s
massive oaken doors immediately began a deliberate, drowsy swing inwards. By the
time the formation had reached the entrance, it was able to pass through without
slowing. A pair of fleet-footed evacuees made a dash for the gate and slipped
in, disappearing into the city.
The gate opened onto a square, paved with stone that matched the walls. The
stones had been quarried skillfully, and were clearly well maintained; none were
uneven or missing, and the horses clopped easily over them. Vendors had arranged
their carts and colourful canvas stalls along the inner walls, but now, in
anticipation of the coming storm, they were scurrying to stow their wares. A
stone statue stood on a bronze plinth in the middle of the square, depicting one
of Count Leitdorf’s recent ancestors. He held a sword and shield out before him.
A bronze nameplate on the plinth identified the stony warrior as Parzival
Leitdorf. Weathering had already softened the statue’s features, and pigeons had
been at it, making it look as if it were crying chalk-white tears.
Though she’d skirted Grenzstadt’s walls a few times, Angelika had never
ventured inside them. The town looked grander than she’d thought it would. She’d
expected gloom and decay; her image of the place had been all teetering
structures and peeling paint. Instead, she beheld carefully tended buildings
that stood with impeccable posture. It made sense, now that she saw it; she knew
that the town’s coffers bulged with coin. Everyone knew that Grenzstadt was the
bulwark between the Empire and the borderlands, and that it served as
way-station for all troops mustering for southward campaigns. It supplied
quartermasters with bread and sausage.
The people here repaired breastplates, sharpened swords, and filled gun
barrels with shot and powder. Here, soldiers who were waiting to fight and die
spent their meagre pay on rum, dice games, and the momentary company of painted
women.
Angelika knew that the town had money because most of the things she found on
dead soldiers made their way here, to be resold. Her prime customer, Max, kept a
shop somewhere in the town. Many of the people who bought from him were soldiers
themselves. Sometimes she wondered, when plucking a gold chain or jewelled ring
from a slain gunner or halberdier, whether she hadn’t already liberated the
exact same piece from a previous dead man.
She savoured this reassuring cynicism, then moved on to consider the greater
importance of the town. It would be very inconvenient indeed if the orcs took
Grenzstadt, seeing as it stood as the Empire’s final line of defence against the
green-skinned marauders. Angelika knew her history: more than once, the orcs had
made their howling way all the way up the pass, butchering their way through one
Imperial regiment after another, only to fall before the town’s stout walls, and
the cannons bristling from its ramparts. Without Grenzstadt, the whole of the
Blackfire would become orcish territory, and the battle lines would move far to
the north. She might find herself plying her trade near the scorched ruins of
Averheim, or even Nuln itself. On second thoughts, this was not unlike the
situation now. It would just be a matter of plying her trade in another location—so long as she wasn’t in the town when it fell. She tested her manacles, only
to find them as secure as ever.
The procession of Sabres continued out of the square into a wide lane, past a
succession of barracks and garrisons, sprawling and low-slung. Lanterns marked
out the edges of their shuttered windows. Narrower lanes, lined by tall, gabled
structures, intersected the wider road they travelled on. Some of the buildings
would be shops, with cramped living quarters on the floors above them. Others
would be the manses of wealthy burghers and minor nobles. The townsfolk had
deserted the streets, and for good reason: cold, hard drops of rain had begun to
pelt down, like a scouting party for the deluge to come.
A shout rang out from the head of the column, as it turned into a cobbled
courtyard, through an open, iron gate in a waist-height slate wall. A towering
manse of black oak and stucco loomed up from its centre; a pair of stone
barracks stood on either side of it. At the back of these buildings, Angelika
noted, was a stable complex and a collection of sheds, all made from planks that
still bore the colour of fresh pine.
A duo of servants with stooping shoulders, in black velvet livery, scuttled
quickly to clang the gates shut as the last of the horsemen passed through.
Their cuffs and collars, which would be laced and frilly in most households,
were made from coarse animal fur, perhaps a bear’s.
The Sabres at the front and rear broke formation and dismounted, but those
around Angelika and Franziskus remained in place. Benno and Gelfrat approached;
the first held himself at a remove while his bigger sibling strode up beside
Renald’s horse. With an attitude of bored impatience, Gelfrat wiggled the
fingers of his gloved right hand at the men. In response to this, the soldier
closest to Angelika seized her by the collar of her tunic and yanked her
sideways, off the horse. Arms out and feet spread wide, Gelfrat caught her
without apparent effort and set her roughly on her feet. Renald, who had
unsaddled himself, knelt before her to shackle her ankles once more. Franziskus
received the same treatment—shoved, caught, and chained—and then the two of
them were prodded toward the manse with the butts of spears. One of the soldiers
took particular relish in jabbing Angelika between the shoulder blades, even
when she moved as quickly as her shackles would allow. She memorised his doughy
features, for future reference.
They shuffled across the cobblestones around the manse, until they reached a
servants’ entrance on the other side, where a trio of unpainted wooden steps led
up to an unornamented steel door. Benno tugged sharply on a bell-pull. After a
minute or so, the door opened. Impelled onward by sharp prods to their backs,
Angelika and Franziskus stumbled inside and, hindered by the shackles, had to
fight their way up a set of shallow, well-worn wooden stairs. From there, they
were nudged into a great hall, with vaulted ceilings braced in rare black elfwood, that were at least twenty feet high. The walls
of the rectangular chamber were done in the timelessly fashionable
beam-and-stucco style, and were decorated with oversized, ornamental silver
serving trays. The cavernous hall extended for a hundred feet or more, and Angelika
counted more than two score of these expensive plates. She sometimes found
smaller display plates on the corpses she looted, and had learned a thing or two
about them: even a cursory glance told her that many of these pieces were relics
of the ancient civilisations, and would command high prices. All told, the
collection would be worth many thousands of crowns.
A polished oaken table, perhaps eighty feet long, stood right at the centre
of the chamber, confidently asserting its owner’s affluence. Two dozen chairs,
their backs intricately carved with scenes of aristocratic hunters spearing
boars from horseback, sat to attention along each of the table’s sides.
Furnishings were beyond Angelika’s expertise, but it did not take a sage to know
that these were also pieces of great value.
She looked at Benno and Gelfrat, and saw that they beheld the high ceilings
and silver plates and intimidating dining set with a slack-jawed awe that
dwarfed even hers. This was not the kind of place, it was plain to see, where
they were normally made welcome. The only jaded eye in the room belonged to
Franziskus; he sniffed, taking in the display of wealth with a look of mild
distaste.
With delicate care, Benno took one of the chairs and moved it out for
Angelika to sit on. After a moment’s hesitation, she obeyed. He then did the
same for Franziskus, who slid his chair up to the table just as a tall,
confident figure appeared on a landing, at the head of a staircase on the room’s
far side.
He held his shoulders regally aloft, and swept down the steps, a plain black
half-cape flowing behind him. He stood six-foot-three, with a wide chest, narrow
hips, and long, sinewy legs. He wore a black shirt beneath a black, collared
coat, chased with silver braid and buttons. His trousers were black, his boots
were black, and his buckles silver. With his deep, wide jaw and pockmarked skin,
his face reminded Angelika of a ship’s prow, pitted by generations of barnacles.
Slitted eyes hid behind suspicious ridges of bone. Deep creases ran up his
cheeks from just above his jaw. His hands were large—the size of paddles; he
took a prolonged moment to ostentatiously crack his blocky knuckles. Spine
erect, movements graceful, he stepped down the precise centre of the staircase.
No announcement was required: this was Jurgen von Kopf.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs, examining Angelika and Franziskus. His
large hands floated to his belt, where, without breaking stride or taking his
eyes from his prisoners, he located a pair of black gloves and rolled them on.
Boot heels clicked on the clay tile floor as he theatrically traversed the
length of his great hall, to seat himself across from Angelika.