“The point is,” he said, leaning against the expanse of oak desk for emphasis,
“we don’t really want or need your sort troubling us here in Mielstadt.”
Stefan stood before the graf impassively, Bruno and Beatrice flanking him on
either side. Since their “rescue” by the graf’s militia, they hadn’t been badly
treated, but welcome was still being kept to a minimum. The chamber they were
standing in was shabby and austerely furnished but for a gilt-framed oil
painting on one wall. The picture showed a fashionably dressed man posed on
bended knee before an aristocratic, pale-skinned woman. It looked oddly out of
place amongst the ugly trappings of Mielstadt.
Stefan bowed, non-committally He assumed that the graf was applying his
remarks to all three of them. Sierck pulled back his chair and drew himself up
to his full height, which wasn’t that much. On tiptoe he would barely reach to
Stefan’s shoulder, though his girth went some way to lending weight to his aura
of self-importance. His face was fleshy but unlined, his hands likewise.
Someone, perhaps, who had overseen hardship but not, Stefan reckoned, one who had had to endure it.
Sierck made a slow circular tour around his visitors, appraising them with
obvious mistrust.
“So, I’m to believe you’re just humble travellers,” he said at last,
“travellers just ‘passing through’ on your way back west? You came to Mielstadt
looking for a friend?”
“Another traveller,” Stefan corrected him. “He may be ill, perhaps a danger to
himself, or to others. We need to find him, make sure no harm is done.”
Sierck snorted. “We’ve had more than our share of that sort. But I doubt
you’ll find your man here.”
“Nonetheless,” Stefan replied, “We thought it worth our while looking.”
Sierck circled again, fingering his chain of office. Stefan imagined the graf
doubted his story, but lacked the wit to imagine what the truth might be.
“Dab hands with a sword, for everyday travellers aren’t we?”
“The road’s a perilous place,” Bruno replied. “We need to be able to look
after ourselves.”
The graf paused, distracted by some thought or calculation. “I’m not a
simpleton,” he said at last. “Don’t think I’ve spent my entire life cooped up in
a Morr-forsaken hole like this. I’m a civilised man.” He gestured towards the
painting on the wall: “A distant cousin, you know. The playwright, Detlef Sierck.”
Stefan returned his look blankly. “Thought you might know the name,” the graf
continued, “because you seem so fond of play acting yourself.”
Stefan shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The graf’s face reddened with irritation. “Let’s stop the pretence,” he
barked, abandoning his own pretence of civility. “We both know why you’re here.
Why your sort always come here, sniffing about, consorting with troublemakers
like—like
her
,” he spat, indicating the girl.
“Which is?” Stefan asked, genuinely bemused now.
“Tal Dur!” Sierck snapped back at him. “Source of all wonders, and all things
to all men. Well, let me tell you something.” The graf pushed his face closer towards Stefan’s, his voice
rising. “Here’s a bit of free information, to save you your precious time. You
won’t find Tal Dur here,” he said. “Not here, nor anywhere round here.” He
pounded the desk once with his fist. “Get that into your heads—there is no Tal
Dur—no mystical pool or whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t exist!” he
shouted. The graf sank back into his chair, exhausted by his exertions. Stefan
shrugged, and exchanged a mystified look with Bruno.
Augustus Sierck looked the two strangers up and down. “You look regular
enough to me, I’ll give you that. But then—” he cast a glance in the direction
of Beatrice—“you never can tell. The fact is, we’re getting more than our
share of strangers in Mielstadt. Shadows and ghosts, sniffing around our town.
People don’t like it.
I
don’t like it.”
“As I said before,” Stefan said, quietly, “we came here looking for someone.
If he’s not here, then we’ll be on our way.”
Augustus Sierck stood up, and puffed out his chest self-importantly “See to
that,” he said. “Because if you’re still here at dusk then
I’ll
see to it
that you’re dealt with.”
Stefan bowed once more. “You are very kind.”
“And you—” Sierck stabbed an accusing finger towards Beatrice, “you’ll be
gone too, if you know what’s good for you. There’s no place for sorcery here,
not now, not ever.”
“But I’m not—” started the young woman, but Stefan cut her protests short.
“Save your breath,” he advised. “Let’s get out of here.”
Outside, the daylight was fast fading, the thin warmth of the afternoon sun
already giving way to a chill dusk. The three walked back towards the tavern,
where their horses were still tethered.
“Well,” Stefan finally said to Beatrice. “You certainly don’t seem to have
made many friends around here.”
“People are fearful,” she replied. “Fearful, and ignorant, many of them. Word
spreads of trouble in the east, and they start to turn against anyone who is—well, different.” She paused. “I do have a power of healing, that much is true.
But I’m no sorceress.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Stefan replied. “You don’t look much of a witch to me.”
Beatrice’s face softened. “For that matter,” she observed “you don’t look
much like regular travellers. But whoever you are, I owe you my life.”
“Perhaps you can be of help to us,” Bruno told her. “What Stefan said back
there is true. We are looking for someone. A man—perhaps a very dangerous man.
Maybe you’ve heard some word of him.”
The girl looked up at Bruno, then, to Bruno’s surprise, took his hand,
turning it within her own. Finally she squeezed it firmly, and smiled. “You have
good within you,” she said. “I can tell your cause is just. How would I
recognise this one that you’re seeking?”
Stefan held out his arm, and pulled back his sleeve. “He has a mark upon
him,” he said, pointing to an area just above his wrist. “A kind of tattoo, like
a rune etched into his skin. At first he hid it beneath a gold band. But the
mark is growing, starting to cover his whole arm. He may be trying to find
someone, or something, to rid him of the tattoo.”
Beatrice looked thoughtful. “Come to me,” she murmured, as if to herself.
“Come to me and wash away your sin.”
“What was that?” Bruno asked her.
“Nothing,” she said, hurriedly.
“Even without the tattoo, he’d be distinctive,” Bruno went on, with feeling.
“As tall as Stefan—taller perhaps. Tall, and heavily built. In combat he’s
every bit as formidable as he looks.”
“You wouldn’t mistake him,” Stefan affirmed. “Not someone you’d mess with
lightly.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Beatrice agreed. “But I think Sierck was right on one
thing. Mielstadt’s not so large that a stranger can go unnoticed for long. I’m
sorry, but I don’t think he’s been here.”
They had reached the horses, and the point where a decision had to be made.
“Do you want to take a look around the town?” Bruno asked. Stefan glanced
around. The crowds had gone, leaving Mielstadt deserted. He took in the
crumbling houses, their windows barred and shuttered; the surrounding streets populated only by a few
pigs and wild dogs.
“No,” he said. “I’m sure Beatrice is right. If he’d been here, we’d know. The
question is, what now?”
Bruno looked at Stefan and shrugged, then began to untie the rope tethering
his horse to the railing that fronted the tavern.
“We
travel on, I
suppose,” he said. “But as to where—” he stopped short, mid-sentence, and turned
to the girl. “What about you, Beatrice?” he asked. “What will you do?”
“Actually it’s Bea,” she said. “I shorten it to Bea. Sometimes I shorten it
to ‘B’, sometimes to nothing at all.” She laughed, not quite convincingly.
“Sometimes I disappear altogether. That comes in useful at times, round here.”
“Have you got family?” Stefan asked of her. “Somewhere where you’ll be safe?”
Bea’s response was part nod, part half-hearted shake of the head. The
movement betrayed her uncertainty. “I used to live with my aunt, a place on the
edge of the town. I only came to Mielstadt to live with her. After she died I
stayed on, living on my own.” She looked up, arranging her features into a
semblance of a grin. “I’ll be all right,” she insisted. “I’m used to the sort of
games they play around here.”
“That didn’t look like a game to me,” Stefan commented. He looked at Bruno,
the two men weighing the same, unspoken options between them.
“Can you get a horse?” he asked Bea.
The girl nodded. “Why?”
“You can’t stay here at the mercy of that mob.”
“What else can I do?” Bea asked, blankly.
“You can ride with us,” Bruno said. “At least until we find somewhere where
you can stay in safety.”
Bea thought about it for a moment. “Where are you headed?” she asked them.
“I don’t know,” Stefan replied, truthfully. “I wish I did.”
“All the same, best that you come with us, for now at least,” Bruno said.
“Maybe you can return home again, when things are safer here.”
Bea stood in silence, looking around at the town.
“No,” she said at last. “If I decide to leave now, then it will be for good.
I’ll never come back to Mielstadt.” She expelled a breath, then turned back
towards Stefan and Bruno. Her smile was tinged only with the faintest sadness.
“I think my heart has already made that decision,” she said. “Give me an hour,
and I’ll be ready to ride with you.”
They rode for three days beyond Mielstadt, three long days of wearying
travel. Three days crossing the same, endless barren vista, a green and brown
patchwork of vast, empty plains populated with nothing but the occasional stream
or clump of trees. Any direction was much the same as any other, no better, no
worse. But they chose to steer south, searching for the path of the mighty river
that would lead them, at length, back to the heart of the Empire, then home to
Altdorf. Stefan still held to the belief that Zucharov would have come this way.
That, in the end, he would turn towards the only place he knew as home.
But in those three days upon the road they had encountered no one, nor passed
through anything that could be called habitation. The world had suddenly
emptied. Stefan had never encountered desolation on such a scale.
That morning they had risen shortly after dawn, riding early to cover as many
miles as they could in the light. But the days were shortening with winter’s
stealthy advance, and, after barely seven hours in the saddle, the sun was
already drawing down below the cusp of the distant hills.
Bea had proved to be an easy travelling companion, happy to do her share and
suffering the hardships of the road without complaint. But most of the
conversation between Bea and her new companions had been small talk, guarded,
incidental. In truth she was still a stranger to them, and they to her. Stefan
was happy for the moment to respect the distance between them. There would be
time enough yet to get to know one another.
Bea glanced around at the darkening skies, and drew her cape in tighter.
“Getting cold, and dark,” she remarked. “When will we stop for the night?”
“An hour more, maybe two,” Stefan replied. “We’ll wring a few more miles from
the day if we can, get as far south as possible.”
Bea nodded, seemingly satisfied, and rode on in thoughtful silence for a
while. Stefan had the feeling there was something else on her mind, but it was a
few minutes more before she said, “So, Sierck was wrong, then. You weren’t
looking for Tal Dur?”
“Tal Dur?” Stefan had heard the name for the first time in Mielstadt. Now it
took him a few moments to recollect it. “No,” he said at last. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s what most who come here are looking for,” Bea told him. “They’ve heard
the stories. Stories of a place with magical powers.”
“A lot of nonsense, according to our friend the graf,” Stefan reminded her.
“Tal Dur doesn’t exist.”
“But he’s wrong,” Bea countered. “It does exist. I know it does.”
“Stefan, look at this!” Stefan was shaken out of his thoughts by Bruno’s
shout. He turned to see his comrade a little way ahead of them, his outstretched
arm pointed towards the horizon.
“Dead ahead,” Bruno called out. “Smoke rising from the trees.”
Through the fading light Stefan saw three or four separate wisps of
grey-white smoke rising above a canopy of trees that marked the boundary of a
distant forest. He stared.
momentarily captivated by the lazy beauty of the coils snaking skywards.
“What do you think?” Bruno asked. “A camp fire?”
Stefan peered into the now fast gathering gloom. Buried deep in the forest,
the source of the fire wasn’t going to give up its secrets easily. But the
pillars of smoke seemed to spread across a wide area. It couldn’t be a camp
fire.
“It’s more than one fire,” he told Bruno. “And there’s been no attempt to
conceal them.”
That might be a good thing'
“It might.”
“Well, anyway,” Bea said. “It’s the first sign of life we’ve seen in four
days. That has to be good at least.”
“It’s a sign of something,” Stefan replied. “I wouldn’t assume any more than
that.” He kicked in his spurs and started forward. “Let’s take a closer look.
Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”
It took another hour in the falling light before they reached the edge of the
forest. All that time knots of thick smoke continued to rise skywards, white
against the darkening backdrop. As they entered the forest and rode beneath the
canopy of the trees, all trace of the fires disappeared. Bruno brought his horse
around in a circle, scanning the forest floor.
“There’s a clear path over here, a well-trodden one,” he announced. “It must
lead somewhere.”