It is the quest for knowledge that has come to threaten the
Empire and put our civilisation in such jeopardy like nothing else.
For what is the Empire really but a few precious pockets of
humanity that flicker like tiny candle-flames in the all-enveloping darkness of
the night? They are but sparks of civilisation that are as unstable and as
easily put out as candle-flames in a hurricane.
And worst of all, once something has been learned, it cannot
be unlearned. Would that it could.
So truly it can be said that a little knowledge can be a
dangerous thing, as can a little ability, for it can set you on a path from
which you may never turn back.
Waking up wrapped in the familiar, stale-smelling sheets of
his own bed again, with the Sommerzeit sun climbing quickly in the sky, the
events of the previous night were as fresh and clear in Dieter’s mind as if they
had only just taken place.
But whereas only a matter of hours earlier, when night had
still gripped the town and its environs, he had been determined to report what
he witnessed to the town authorities, and even the Templar Order of Sigmar, in
the cold light of day he felt less confident about pursuing that particular
course of action.
Whoever he told of what he had seen, the witch hunters would
come to hear of it eventually. And when Brother-Captain Krieger learnt of
Dieter’s confession, as it were, he would assume the worst. He would want to
know why Dieter had been in the town’s garden of Morr at night for a start. Even
if he told Krieger about the attack on the Four Seasons coach, and assuming that
the two highwaymen had not disposed of the evidence already, there had been no
survivors other than the black-hearted brigands themselves, to corroborate
Dieter’s story. And if Krieger then discovered that Dieter had been back to
Hangenholz, and that whilst he was there the apprentice’s father had died, such
facts would only serve to fuel the fire of the brother-captain’s suspicions.
Dieter had seen how unreasonable the witch hunter had been
and what he was capable of. It had only been thanks to Professor Theodrus’
intervention that Dieter had not been hauled away and tortured the first, and
last, time he had met the psychotic Krieger. He did not think that the guild
master’s favour would extend to saving the daemon apprentice’s neck a second
time.
He could try leaving an anonymous tip-off with the Temple of
Sigmar, but how many of those did they receive a day? And he couldn’t be certain
which house it was that he had seen the grave robbers enter in Apothekar Allee.
He would have to return there during the hours of daylight to confirm its
location. And the thought of doing that filled him with trepidation. What if he
had been seen that night? If he returned he might be spotted again and find
himself reported to the witch hunters. Perhaps the grave robbers would have
realised that they had been followed and would be on the lookout for him again.
However, the thought of returning to that strange house also
filled him with a stomach-turning thrill of excitement. It was the same feeling
he had unsettlingly enjoyed the night he had followed the corpse thieves through
the mist-shrouded streets.
If he were to return to the house with the dead-eyed windows,
he knew that his own insatiable curiosity would make him want to know more. And
Morr only knew what Dieter might find if he dug too deep.
So, to begin with, Dieter did nothing. He told no one.
He returned to the physicians’ guild where little was said of
the matters that had resulted in his absence from the guild for more than two
weeks. Leopold showed some concern, lending Dieter his own notes so that he
might catch up on at least some of what he had missed, but even his friend did
not seem to know what to say in the face of the intense young man’s taciturn
grief.
Dieter threw himself back into his studies with great gusto,
determined to fulfil the vow he had made on leaving Hangenholz. He would learn
all that he could about medicine, he would be the best. He had always preferred
his own company to sharing that of others, and now he even distanced himself
from those few people whom he had forged any bonds with before. He did little
more than pass the time of day with Leopold when he saw him at the guild, and he
no longer troubled the guild master himself.
The first day of summer and the feast day of Sigmar came and
went with Dieter being almost totally unaware of the crowded streets, elaborate
processions and banner-bedecked town houses, none coming close to the
ostentation adorning of the grand Temple of Sigmar itself.
But no matter how deeply he immersed himself in his studies,
Dieter could not get the memory of what he had seen out of his head. What a
strange game it was that fate played. He would certainly not have chosen to be
out during the hours of darkness, beyond the protection of the town walls.
He could not help wondering if he had stumbled upon the
dealings of the infamous Corpse Taker. The ghoulish creature was supposedly
responsible for numerous disappearances, possibly even deaths, and should be
brought to justice. And if it was not the Corpse Taker, then there was another
practitioner of the macabre and heretical hiding within Bögenhafen. Something
needed to be done about the situation.
The longer it went on the worse it became, until Dieter had
to tell someone else about what he had seen. He would go out of his mind if he
did not. Worse than that, it was distracting him from his studies. He made the
resolution there and then, as he was making a pretence of poring over Kerflach’s
Agues and Maladies of the Reikland.
So it was that he found himself standing outside Professor
Theodrus’ study, his knuckled fist raised ready to knock. But then something
made him stay his hand.
Was this really what he wanted to do, a voice inside him
asked? How kindly would Theodrus take to Dieter’s interruption, especially
regarding their current “understanding”? And then there was the niggling
reminder that the professor had already seemed to know a great deal about the
Corpse Taker’s activities, a lot more than anybody else Dieter had encountered
since he had come to Bögenhafen. More, it seemed, than even the witch hunters
and he had been so assured in his protestations that Dieter was
not
the
one the templars were hunting.
But he dared not tell Leopold either, not after how things
had been left so inimically between them.
It was not until the twenty-eighth day of Sigmarzeit that
Dieter went to Erich for advice. Even then, events did not turn out as he had
planned.
Erich was at home for what as far as Dieter was concerned was
the first time in three days. He was sitting at the table in their garret space
with a familiar half-empty bottle of Reikland Hock uncorked in front of him,
swilling the dregs around in his glass. His mangy ginger cat was sitting smugly
on his lap having its ears fondled.
Emboldened by the glass of wine Erich had poured him, Dieter
started to talk. And once he’d started, the words just poured out, and he found
himself telling his friend everything… everything apart from how his pursuit
of the grave robbers had given him a rush of excitement.
When he had finished Erich simply sat there, motionless in
his chair, mouth agape and a stunned expression on his face. “Well, you’re a
dark horse aren’t you, Herr Heydrich,” Erich said at last. “The black sheep of
the family, eh? Well I don’t mind telling you, country boy, I didn’t think you
had it in you. You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”
In the course of a few minutes, Dieter had changed Erich’s
opinion of him utterly.
“But what do you think I should do?” Dieter asked, his
shoulders sagging. He was suddenly aware of how relieved he felt having
unburdened himself.
Erich stood up, a strange expression on his face, as if he
wasn’t really there in the attic room anymore. He began to pace across the
garret. “Do?”
His eyes were distant as if trained on something inside his
own mind rather than in the cold reality of the chill attic room. It might be
Sigmarzeit and the weather steadily warming outside, but the topmost apartment
of Frau Keeler’s lodging house was still as draughty as a stable and cold as an
icehouse.
“Do?” Erich repeated.
“Yes,” Dieter said mournfully, hoping that Erich was going to
solve his problem for him. “Should I report what I saw to the authorities? To
the witch hunters?”
“Are you insane?” Erich suddenly turned on Dieter. “Have you
forgotten what that bastard Krieger almost did to you the last time? You give
him this to fuel his fire and he’ll string you up from the nearest lamppost!”
Dieter looked at the floor, downcast. Of course his roommate
was right. Krieger would treat anything that Dieter tried to tell him as
evidence that Dieter was guilty of, if not actually being the Corpse Taker
himself, then at least being his accomplice.
“S-so what now? I go on like this, knowing what I know but
not being able to put things right? I-I was not able to prevent my father’s
death, but if I could help expose the Corpse Taker I might be able to preserve
the lives of others.”
Erich looked at Dieter from beneath beetling brows. “How can
you be so certain that whoever it is that lives at the house in Apothekar Allee
is the Corpse Taker?”
Dieter looked at him. “I don’t. B-but what I am certain of is
that I watched as two thieves dug up a corpse and then followed them as they
brought it into the town, under cover of mist and darkness, to that self-same
house.”
“And what was it you told me that old duffer Theodrus said
about there being unlicensed doktors—at least not ones licensed by the guild—practising secretly in Bögenhafen? Doktors with dangerously progressive ideas,
Shallya forbid?”
“Yes,” Dieter admitted warily.
He recalled quite clearly what he had told Erich after his
encounter with Anselm Fleischer at the Temple of Shallya, but he also recalled
what had happened to Anselm Fleischer himself after allegedly apprenticing
himself to a physician with progressive ideas.
“Couldn’t it simply be that the house belongs to one such
doktor?”
“But you seem to be forgetting that I saw a human cadaver
being delivered to the place.”
“Just think: how hard must it be for a scholar to get hold of
a real human body to examine? And what if the study of that corpse was the only
way to advance medical science? You certainly couldn’t get hold of a body by any
conventional means that I’m aware of.”
“Anatomy is the preserve of barber-surgeons,” Dieter said,
uncertainly.
“Listen to yourself,” Erich sneered. “You sound like
Theodrus. I bet you wouldn’t be so down on barber-surgeons if you had St
Salvus’ rot and the only cure was to have your arm lopped off. You’d want a man
who knew his way around a body on the other end of the rusty scalpel then, I can
tell you.”
Dieter inadvertently winced at the thought.
“You want to heal people, don’t you?” Erich suddenly
challenged Dieter.
Dieter glowered at him. “Of course I do. You know that.”
“And you would do what you could to improve methods and cures
so that you could save more people?”
“Yes.”
“What if the only way you could achieve that was to
experiment on human corpses by dissecting them? Do you mean to tell me that you
would give up your pursuit to cure the sick for fear of cutting up a few dead
bodies?”
Dieter said nothing but fixed Erich with his intensely dark
eyes, his mouth tight-lipped.
“Perhaps the occupant of the house in Apothekar Allee is just
such a doktor,” Erich said, his voice dripping with reason. “Imagine what his
work with the dead might mean for the living. Imagine what treatments might be
discovered, what procedures developed. Imagine a cure for the red pox or manic
moon fever. And you would deny all this because of the preconceived
superstitions of a staid and out-dated association such as the guild of
physicians?”
What if Erich were right, Dieter considered? If his
suppositions were correct, then perhaps others would not have to go through what
he had endured as a child after his mother died.
“So what are you suggesting?”
“Why don’t we find out for ourselves, before involving the
bigoted brotherhood of Sigmar? Why don’t we go back to Apothekar Allee?”
It had been Erich’s idea to break into the house, as though
they were a couple of common burglars, just as it had been his idea to go back
to the house and have a look around. It had been a combination of three flagons
of ale consumed at the Cutpurse’s Hands and an insatiable, almost obsessive,
curiosity that had persuaded Dieter to join him. Erich’s natural charisma had
also played a part. Dieter realised that he was surrounded by people he idolised
and wanted to be more like. Theodrus was one, Leopold was one, and so was Erich.
The two apprentices waited until the salubrious tavern was on
the verge of closing before leaving. Dieter chose their route through the
night-muffled town, making it more circuitous than need be, keeping clear of the
artisans’ quarter to make sure that in case they were seen, no one would suspect
where they were heading.
The day had been overcast for much of the time, despite the
months having matured to Sommerzeit now, but with the night the cloud cover was
clearing. Mannslieb looked upon their endeavours with an impartial eye as they
progressed through the town.
Having taken a wrong turning once or twice, after almost half
an hour, the two found themselves at the end of a narrow alleyway that ran
between tall, neglected and possibly even empty tenements. A sign fastened to
the crumbling bricks of one of the buildings stated that they had at last found
their way to Apothekar Allee.
“Come on, what are we waiting for?” Erich whispered, but even
he had lost some of the enthusiasm that he had displayed earlier.