Noblesse Oblige

Robert Earl

The cautious scuffling was no louder than a whisper. Most men would not have heard it beneath the rumble of the ocean, or the creak of the ships at anchor, or the roar of the dockside taverns. But then, the watchman was not most men.

He had patrolled the darkness between Vistein’s warehouses for decades, and he was as alive to the rhythms of his shadowy domain as he was to the beat of his own heart. That’s how he knew when to investigate and when to remain deaf. Real criminals were one thing, but the mischief he was hearing within the windowless cube of Visgard’s grain store was quite another.

He floated over to the store’s entrance only to find it was as he remembered. The only way into the building was the narrow gap which age and usage had made between the rat-chewed timbers of the locked door and the missing cobbles of the floor beneath.

A contented smile split the watchman’s face as he stooped to examine the gap. It was too small for any but the skinniest of street children to have squeezed through. That made sense. Who else but street children would be desperate enough to risk a hanging by stealing a few handfuls of grain?

He froze as another muffled sound came from within the warehouse. It was followed by the steady hiss of sliding corn. The little thieves must have managed to get into the grain stores.

He’d make the filthy little vermin squirm before he handed them over.

He always did.

An eager grin split his features and he licked his lips as he opened the shutter on his lantern. In the flickering beam of its butter-yellow light, he selected a key and unlocked the door.

‘No point in trying to escape,’ he said, pleased with the authority that filled his voice. ‘You’re caught in the act.’

Silence.

The watchman stepped forward. Dozens of squat stone bins sat on either side of the store. The light from his lantern seemed unable to banish the oily blackness that lay between them.

‘I know you’re in that bin,’ the watchman said, his voice echoing back from the high vaults. ‘Come on out, now. Don’t make it worse for yourselves.’

When there was still no reply he marched over to the first of the stone bins and flung back the iron door that sealed it.

The stink that rolled out was strong enough to make him gag. As putrid as rotten fish, it had a thick, greasy tang that the watchman could taste as much as smell. He staggered back from the bin and lifted a sleeve to cover his mouth and nose.

Blinking back tears, he raised his lantern and looked into the bin. Where once there had been a healthy golden brown store of grain, now there was a black, congealed mass, a sickening porridge of rot and corruption.

Without removing his sleeve from his nose the watchman turned and selected another bin. This time he was prepared for the smell.

‘Sigmar’s blood,’ he cursed, and hurriedly slammed it closed again. He had never seen anything like this before. He wondered if it was the blight that some of the local farmers had been whining about. But how could the grain have rotted so quickly?

He never had time to give the matter another thought. As soon as he had blinked the last tears from his eyes, he realised that he didn’t have to find the thieves after all. Instead, they had found him.

There were at least a dozen of them. A dozen shapeless silhouettes, which merged indistinctly with the darkness. Some perched on top of the bins. Others lurked in the shadows between them.

Their eyes glittered, as cold as stars in the void.

The watchman felt his heart lurch, but as he squinted at the thieves his confidence returned. Despite the shadows in which they lurked, he could see that they wore the shapeless and ragged clothing of street urchins. Their hunched and twisted bodies looked wasted within their voluminous clothes, and their eyes were unnaturally bright.

‘Now then … ‘ the watchman began.

He didn’t finish. As he held up his lantern the flickering light revealed the nearest of the things.

Whatever it was, it was no child.

‘Oh, Sigmar,’ the watchman whimpered, his mouth suddenly dry. He took a step back and felt the stone of the bin behind him. ‘Oh, Sigmar.’

The creature stepped cautiously towards him. Beneath the dark rags of its cloak it moved with a perfect, nimble balance. But it wasn’t the thing’s wiry grace that made the watchman lose control of his bladder. It wasn’t even the scaly lash of its tail. It was the sharp-edged horror of the face which peeked out from beneath its hood.

It had the wrinkled snout and the twin chiselled teeth of a rat, although a rat grown obscenely large. Its eyes flamed yellow in the lamplight. They burned with a horrible, malign intelligence.

As the watchman started to sob, the thing peeled back its thin lips and hissed a question.

‘Alone?’ it squeaked, its features contorted with the effort of using Reikspiel.

The watchman moaned wordlessly and, with a quick twitch of its snout, the thing drew closer to him.

‘Alone?’ it repeated, and a confused tangle of sharp steel angles appeared in its paw. The weapon glistened with yellow slime, and for some reason the watchman thought about the rotten corn in the bins around him.

‘No,’ he said, seized by a sudden, terror-induced inspiration. ‘Not alone. There!’

He pointed to the back wall of the silo and, as every razor-toothed head turned to follow his finger the watchman hurled his lantern at their leader and bolted for the door.

Behind him there was a squeak of rage and a sudden blossom of flame as the lamp smashed on stone. The flare of light only lasted for a second, but it was enough to see the gap beneath the door.

As he sprinted towards it he felt half a dozen thuds on his back and legs. None of them brought more than a pinprick of pain, and in his panic the watchman barely even felt that. He even managed a couple more steps before the poison did its work.

It was a quick death. Almost instantaneous. His lungs collapsed at the same time that his muscles melted, and before he could even feel surprise his heart had stopped. The watchman fell to the ground.

After contemptuously examining their victim, his murderers returned to their work.

‘What!’ Gristwald barked with horror. His plump cheeks reddened and he rocked back as though he had been struck. Fortunately there was a flagon of ale on the table before him. He grabbed it and took a swig to soothe his nerves.

Florin waited until the man had composed himself before repeating his offer.

‘Six coppers.’ He smiled a big white smile, the happiest man in the inn. ‘Six coppers per bushel.’

The merchant looked as though he might be about to cry. But it wasn’t a handkerchief he pulled from within his waistcoat, it was a tin of snuff.

‘Care for some?’ he asked, offering the box to Florin, who shook his head. ‘It keeps the ague away. That’s how I keep so healthy.’

‘Then I don’t mind if I do,’ said Lorenzo, reaching over to take a pinch. The merchant resisted the urge to snatch the box away. If Florin was well dressed, well shaved and as clean as any man had a right to be, Lorenzo was more what Gristwald had always imagined Bretonnians to be.

The merchant watched as the old man dropped the snuff into his already smouldering pipe, and then drew deeply to ignite it.

‘An aid to my health,’ he coughed happily, ‘is exactly what I need in this horrible place. What with the food and the weather, I don’t know how anybody can survive at all in your Empire. The women must make up for it, eh?’

He winked obscenely at the merchant, who hurriedly turned back to Florin. Apart from that ridiculous ponytail the younger man, at least, seemed civilised.

For a Bretonnian, anyway.

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘your friend is right. This is the Empire. Now, I’m not saying that you couldn’t get six coppers a bushel in Tilea, or Araby. Maybe you would. But up here it’s a copper a bushel, and that’s for the top quality stuff. I mean, you brought your cargo by sea. Who knows what sea vapours may have gotten into it?’

‘It’s corn,’ Florin reminded him, ‘not perfume. Good, clean corn.’

Lorenzo interrupted them by coughing up a lump of phlegm. He spat it out and nodded approvingly.

‘Good stuff this,’ he said, inspecting the smouldering bowl of his pipe. ‘Can you eat it?’

‘Not really,’ Gristwald said, resisting the temptation to see what would happen if the Bretonnian did.

‘Shame,’ Lorenzo said. ‘What with your crops rotting back into the ground this year, this stuff would have been quite valuable if you could have eaten it.’

Gristwald shrugged and arranged his pinched features into a smile which was as carefree as Florin’s.

‘Luckily, we have enough in the stores. One of the Provost Marshal’s edicts. I don’t care what everybody says,’ he glanced nervously around and leaned forward conspiratorially, ‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t be running the city. People complain because he’s a merchant, but who needs some mad old aristocrat, starting wars and raising taxes? It’s us merchants who know how things work.’

‘We certainly do,’ Florin nodded sagely. ‘Things like supply and demand.’

‘Which is why it’s interesting that you mention the grain stores,’ Lorenzo added.

‘Why?’ Gristwald asked at length.

‘We know about them,’ Florin told him, and tapped the side of his nose.

For a moment the shock was enough to rob Gristwald of his art, and panic showed on his plump features. By the time he had regained control of his face it was too late. Florin knew that the rumour which had brought them all the way from Bordeleaux had been true. As winter approached, Vistein had neither harvest nor stores. Hunger already stalked the streets, and starvation was already closing in.

It was the perfect sellers’ market.

‘It’s up to you,’ Florin decided with a smooth insouciance. ‘We can sit here and talk about the hows and the whys and the wheres of Vistein’s grain stores.’

‘Especially of the wheres,’ Lorenzo interjected.

‘Or we can shake hands, give you a whole ship full of corn, and leave you to make what profit you can on it. No offence, but the weather here doesn’t agree with me.’

‘Nor does the food,’ Lorenzo added with a heartfelt sincerity. Everything that was said about the Empire’s cooking was true. Last night somebody had even tried to sell him a pie with meat in it. It was all wrong.

‘Do we have a deal?’ Florin offered his hand.

‘Six coppers?’ Gristwald asked.

‘Six coppers.’

The merchant thought about how much the grain would be worth when everybody knew that Vistein’s silos were as barren as its fields, then spat on his hand and gripped Florin’s.

‘Done,’ he said, and the deal was closed.

It took less than an hour to finish their transaction. The three men arrived at the harbour within fifteen minutes of shaking hands and, abandoning his facade of bonhomie, the merchant rounded up half a dozen carters. While Lorenzo counted, examined and caressed the coins they had received in payment, Florin watched the merchant’s men empty the Katerina’s hold.

It was a small vessel, one of Bordeleaux’s typical little fat-bottomed herring boats, but her belly had been full, and the carters were soon streaming with sweat beneath the sacks of corn they were unloading.

‘A fine vessel,’ Gristwald told Florin, his beady eyes never leaving the precious cargo that his men were stacking onto their carts. ‘Beautiful lines. Have you had her long?’

‘Not long,’ Florin said. He too was intently watching the merchant’s men.

‘Now that you’re in Vistein, you should go to the Pit,’ Gristwald said, trying to keep the conversation going.

‘The Pit?’ Florin asked. He knew why the merchant was trying to distract him. He had known it the moment they had shaken hands. Although exorbitant, the price he had demanded for his cargo had been far too low.

‘Yes, the

You! Watch what you’re doing, you damned fool! You’ll tear the sack!

Yes, the Pit. The best fighting pit south of Kislev, they say.’

‘I’ll visit it,’ Florin nodded.

‘Aha! I knew you were a sportsman,’ Gristwald smiled approvingly, then rubbed his hands greedily together as the last of the corn was loaded onto the carts. ‘Now you must excuse me. I want to get this under cover in case it rains. And if you can get some more, then maybe we can do business again?’

‘I’ll let you know,’ Florin said.

Florin pursed his lips as he watched Gristwald bully his porters into something approaching a run. Within minutes they had disappeared through the gate that cut through the high stone walls which surrounded Vistein’s harbour.

‘That settles it,’ Florin said, going over to lean against the Katerina’s rail next to Lorenzo. ‘We’ll have to get back home, fill her up again, and make another run before winter closes in. Did you see how eager he was to pay six per bushel? Next time we’ll get a dozen per bushel. A score!’

‘As you say,’ Lorenzo shrugged.

‘And don’t you worry,’ Florin clasped his old friend by one bony shoulder. ‘We’ll definitely be able to do it before the storms close in.’

Lorenzo grunted. He was watching a squabble of seagulls fighting over what looked like a fish head on the quayside. The birds didn’t see the pack of children until it was too late. There was a sudden rush, and the slowest of the gulls were caught in grubby hands. There was a brief confusion of squawks and snapping bones and then the urchins were gone, racing off before anybody could steal their bounty. Lorenzo, reminded of the carefree days of his own youth, smiled.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Florin told him, ‘but what you’re forgetting is that the quickening winds will lend us speed. It’s the very fact that the storms are approaching that means we’ll be able to make it before the season ends.’

Lorenzo turned, spat over the railing to the water below, and grinned with all three of his teeth.

‘What shall we do first? Inn or brothel?’

Florin frowned suspiciously.

‘Why aren’t you arguing?’

‘Why should I argue?’

‘Because it’s dangerous. Well, not compared to the profit we can make, but

’ Florin trailed off. ‘You think that Katerina will talk me out of it, don’t you?’

‘Not at all,’ Lorenzo lied happily. ‘Anyway, let’s go. I’m hungry, even for the nightsoil they call food in this Ladyless place.’

‘She won’t, you know,’ Florin told him as he led off.

‘What?’

‘Katerina,’ Florin said more sharply. ‘She won’t talk me out of it.’

‘Remember what we were going to call the ship when we bought it?’ Lorenzo, who was halfway down the gangplank, turned to ask.

‘The Esmerelda. But

’

‘And remember what we bought her for in the first place?’ Lorenzo looked around the harbour to find an inn.

‘Yes, yes, yes. It was to find that temple in Araby. Although

’

‘And what are we doing instead?’ Lorenzo pressed on remorselessly. ‘And where are we doing it?’

The two men looked at each other. Then, at the same time, they both started to laugh.

‘Ah, to the hells with it,’ Florin cried, slapping Lorenzo on his shoulder, ‘so I haven’t got the hang of marriage yet. Forget the inn. Let’s go find this fighting pit Gristwald was talking about.’

If Vistein had possessed a heart it would have been the fighting pit. The pit itself was a natural oubliette, a steep-sided hole which geology had carved into rock upon which the town was built. Its sheer sides had been polished to an unforgiving smoothness and, as centuries of victims had discovered, once you were in it, you were trapped.

Above the stone, three tiers of balconies rose up towards the timbers of the roof. The carpentry was dwarfish, and the ancient oak beams were as solid as stone. They had to be. Each tier crowded slightly closer in than the one below, allowing the audience a clear view down into the bloodshed and violence below.

Florin and Lorenzo, heavy with copper, had taken a box on the bottom tier. It was well appointed. The chairs were padded, the railing was polished, and the table was packed with all the culinary delights of the Empire. Best of all, the box was so close to the fighting pit that they could smell the odour of the rotting blood that stained the sand below.

‘Personally,’ Lorenzo said as he rummaged around through the food on the table, ‘I could never see the point of these places.’ He selected a string of fat sausages. He sniffed them, grimaced, and put them absentmindedly into his satchel.

‘How can you say that?’ Florin asked. He had been drinking the black, yeasty beer that had been provided. He had needed to drink a lot to make up for the filthy taste of the stuff. ‘Fighting pits are the epitome of civilisation.’

Lorenzo snorted, and critically examined a shapeless brown thing. He might have called it a pudding if it hadn’t been filled with cooked offal.

‘These northerners know as much about civilisation as a drunken ogre,’ he decided. ‘I mean, look at this food. Not a single frog’s leg in sight. Not even any snails!’

Florin shrugged magnanimously.

‘It’s the Empire. Of course they aren’t as civilised as us. Anyway, we’re not here for the food. We’re here for the sport.’

Lorenzo barked with humourless laughter.

‘Sport. Waste of time, more like. If you want to see things being killed, you can go and watch a rat-catcher for free.’

‘It’s not the killing,’ Florin said. ‘It’s the display of heroism. Of courage.’

Lorenzo rolled his eyes as Florin used his teeth to uncork another bottle and pointed excitedly into the ring.

‘Look. Things are starting to liven up.’

As the audience crowded eagerly around the railings, a ladder was lowered into the pit and a plump man, dignified despite the oversized powdered wig he was wearing, clambered down onto the sand. He strode to the middle of the pit, beaming up at the crowd as they shouted obscene welcomes.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he cried. There was a chorus of catcalls, the voices sharp with the anticipation of bloodshed. The pit master lifted his hands to call for quiet. ‘Ladies and gentlemen and his Lordship the Provost Marshal.’

This time there was nothing good-natured about the mob’s derision. Their collective voice was deafening. It echoed around the claustrophobic drum of the building, the hatred in it obvious.

‘Popular fellow, this Provost Marshal,’ Lorenzo said.

‘He certainly has a reputation,’ Florin smirked, and followed the direction of the crowd’s obscene gestures. For the first time he noticed the figure who sat in a gilded box to his left.

It was difficult to see much of him amongst the shadows and torchlight, but Florin wasn’t looking at him anyway. He was looking at the girl beside him. He was looking at the way that her hair shone like liquid gold, and the way that she moved, as slow and easy as pouring honey, and the way that the torchlight caressed her skin, so white and so smooth.

There weren’t many blondes like that in Bretonnia, he thought.

There weren’t many blondes like that anywhere.

‘Sportsmen,’ the pit master continued, looking nervously towards the Provost Marshal as the jeering died down. ‘We are gathered here tonight in the beating heart of our fair city to witness once more the greatest of virtues. Courage. Cunning. Daring. The virtues that make our Empire great, and our city greater.’

The cries of derision gradually melted away as the pit master hurried on.

‘The first match we have tonight,’ he bellowed, ‘involves one of the foulest beings to walk this earth. A creature that is green-skinned and sharp-toothed. A thing which lives for violence, and whose character is blighted by cruelty and blood lust. Yes,’ the man boomed, ‘the true sportsmen amongst you know that I am talking of the foul, the hideous, the orc.’

The boos echoed so long and so loud that Florin could feel the timber reverberating beneath him. The pit master was gesturing towards one of the iron-barred caves that had been cut into the side of the pit. Something moved in the darkness within.

‘And standing against the foul beast is one of our own. A hero of the regiments and of the wars in the North. A man whose courage is a match for any such creature. I give you Heinz van Lundtdorf!’

The boos turned to rapturous applause as van Lundtdorf was lowered from above into the arena. His polished breastplate was alive with reflected torchlight, and his crimson cape flared elegantly as he descended, waving to his fans as he was lowered past them.

‘What a show off,’ Florin said.

Lorenzo grunted. He watched the ensuing slaughter without any of Florin’s animated feeling. Even before the orc had shambled out of the cage, he had known it was doomed. If the local champion ever lost to anything, it would never be to anything at the top of the bill. The sharps who ran the gambling in these places knew better than to allow that.

Five minutes of theatrics later, and the green corpse of the broken creature was hauled away while the gladiator milked the applause. Florin cursed.

‘Anybody could have killed that damn thing,’ he said, taking the pie Lorenzo handed him and hurling it into the pit. ‘It’s ridiculous. It may be the Empire, but at least some of the people here deserve a bit of style. A bit of honour.’

His expression softened as he turned to look at the woman who sat in the Provost Marshal’s gilded box. She appeared to be feeding him strawberries, but when she caught Florin’s eye she winked, a flash of dark eyelashes over impossibly blue eyes.

‘Shallya save us,’ Lorenzo muttered, but his oath was lost beneath the boom of the pit master’s voice.

The gladiator van Lundtdorf ascended back up so as to sit out the next fight. It was between a pack of warhounds and a gaggle of goblins that had been armed with spears. This time Florin, who had a love of the big dogs, cheered with the crowd when the dogs won.

But then the pit master introduced the next fight and all of a sudden this wasn’t sport any more.

‘Who knows what vile pit of sorcerous depravity these things were spawned in?’ he asked the crowd, who murmured with superstitious dread. ‘Only the Ruinous Powers could have created such a hideous agglomeration of beast and man. And not just any beast either – the vilest and most foul. Sportsmen, I give you the duel between our own brave van Lundtdorf and the loathsome beastmen!’

So saying the pit master scuttled out of the pit, and van Lundtdorf descended once more. Another iron gate was opened, and his opponents loped out.

‘Freia’s virtue!’ Florin swore, all thought of sport gone.

‘It is them, isn’t it?’ Lorenzo asked, peering into the pit. ‘Skaven. By the Lady, they’re skaven. These people must be mad to toy with the things.’

‘Watch,’ Florin said. ‘See who’s toying with who.’

The gladiator, confident in his armour, took his eyes off the ragged-looking creatures who had stumbled into the pit and turned to salute the Provost Marshal’s box.

It was a mistake. To anybody who didn’t know the danger, the skaven had looked almost pitiable as they’d entered the ring. But they abandoned their feigned weakness as easily as a burglars casting off a disguise, and now they attacked, quickly closing in on the human.

Van Lundtdorf didn’t realise the danger until they were almost upon him. The first of the skaven, the fastest, was inside his guard before he even had the chance to raise his sword. He punched it instead, a good blow which smashed its snout and sent it tumbling back.

The crowd roared its approval. Their cheers turned to cries of horror as the second of the things leapt nimbly up. Its almost human hands gripped van Lundtdorf’s shoulder while the yellow chisels of its teeth bit down towards his neck.

Van Lundtdorf turned so that the creature’s fangs chinked on his shoulder guard, then swivelled back and hurled it to the sand. He drew his sword and, as the crowd bellowed its approval, he aimed a blow that would have cut the skaven in two had it landed.

But it never did.

As he swung the blade up, the flesh of his armpit was exposed between the heavy steel of his breastplate and the curved metal of his shoulder guard. Both of the other skaven shot towards the unguarded flesh, their wiry bodies arrowing forward with a whiplash of energy.

The first one landed on the warrior’s shoulders. Its tail curled around his neck and it grabbed his sword arm to hold it upraised. The second skaven, finding purchase on the man’s belt, threw back its head and then bit down with a vicious, unerring accuracy into the exposed flesh.

Van Lundtdorf roared with agony, and his assailants allowed themselves to be shaken off. By now pandemonium had broken out amongst the spectators, their cries a confusion of encouragement and horror.

‘They killed him,’ Lorenzo said, his voice lost in the uproar.

Now the three skaven were circling, patient and waiting. Van Lundtdorf was watching the blood that was jetting out from the severed artery beneath his arm. He dropped his sword and tried to press the wound closed with his mail fist, a hopeless effort. As the mob bellowed their encouragement he fell to his knees, an expression of incomprehension on his face as he watched his lifeblood spurting onto the sand.

When his face had been drained white he fell forward, and a heartbeat later the skaven were swarming all over him. One of them claimed the dagger from his belt and, with a graceful economy of movement, carved out his throat. Meanwhile the other two had snapped van Lundtdorf’s sword in two. One of them was wrapping shreds of clothing around the spare shard to form a handle on its improvised weapon.

Florin and Lorenzo watched in horrified fascination as the three skaven first stripped the gladiator of his clothes, then peeled off the rags that swathed their own hideous forms.

‘Stop them!’ Lorenzo bellowed as they started to fashion a rope out of the cloth. ‘They’re trying to escape.’

But even if anybody could have heard him, nobody would have listened. Nothing had ever escaped from the pit. Everybody knew that.

Now the skaven were testing the first of their knots.

‘They’re going to escape.’ Lorenzo turned to Florin, and was horrified to find that he was smiling.

‘No, my old friend,’ Florin said.

That was when Lorenzo noticed the expression that had crept across his old comrade’s face. He knew that expression from old, and he dreaded it.

It was that spark of happy fire that sometimes blossomed behind Florin’s eyes. That sudden aura of wild energy which burned away every ounce of his common sense. That suicidal joy of a man freed by his belief that nothing’s worth a damn.

Lorenzo had seen the mood come over him before. It never ended well.

‘No, those vermin aren’t going to escape,’ Florin assured him with a reckless certainty. ‘Got your cutlass?’

Lorenzo opened his mouth to reply but, before he could, Florin was standing on the balcony’s rail, as poised as an acrobat. He remained perfectly balanced while he turned and bowed towards the Provost Marshal’s box. When he was sure he had caught his lady’s eye he drew his sword, kissed the blade in salute, then leapt down into the fighting pit.

Lorenzo followed his comrade over the side. He hit the sand, buckled his knees and rolled, the momentum of his fall carrying him halfway across the pit.

When he sprang to his feet he saw that Florin was shouting something to him. The words were lost beneath the stamping feet of the delighted mob. It didn’t matter. Lorenzo didn’t need to hear Florin’s warning anyway. In the crystal clarity of his own adrenaline rush, he had already realised that he could only see two of the vermin. He turned, throwing himself to one side as his cutlass arced through the air in a defensive slash.

The skaven, who had been about to pounce, leapt back. Lorenzo bared his teeth in a snarl to match the ratman’s own, and closed in on the thing. He knew that behind him Florin was outnumbered, but he didn’t have time to worry about that now. Now all he had time for was killing.

His foe almost seemed to float as it bounced on the balls of its feet. It was armed with the lower part of the dead gladiator’s shattered sword. The clumsy weapon looked as light and as lethal as a rapier in its paw.

Lorenzo heard the crowd screaming at something that was happening behind him. He swore and decided to take a risk.

Lunging heavily forward with his blade, he kicked the back of his right heel with the toe of his left boot. He staggered back, and fell so heavily that he lost his sword.

Even though he had planned the feint, the skaven moved with such speed that it almost took him. Its claws were scrabbling for Lorenzo’s throat even as it drew back its blade. As it was, the creature’s murderous momentum helped Lorenzo to bury his knife into the thick muscle around its throat.

The skaven squealed, the reek of its breath hot on his face, and he stabbed again. And again. Blood blinded him. Staggering to his feet, he wiped it off of his face and turned to see Florin smiling.

He had dispatched his own opponents. The sodden tangles of their bodies lay behind him. He flashed Lorenzo a wink as he strode across the pit to punch him on the shoulder.

‘That showed them how Bretonnians fight, didn’t it?’ Florin said, his face murderously cheerful beneath the blood that spattered it. ‘They’ll be talking about it in this Empire of theirs for a generation. Ah, look here they come now,’ Florin gestured towards the ladders that heavily armoured guards were lowering into the pit. ‘Let me just pay my respects before we go.’

So saying he strode over to stand before the Provost Marshal’s box, waited for the cheers of the crowd to abate, and then bowed long and low and deep.

‘I dedicate this fight,’ he bellowed, enjoying the resonance the acoustics of the place lent his voice, ‘to beauty.’

The woman in the Provost Marshal’s box smiled, her doe eyes rising to meet his. She licked her full lips with a small pink tongue and curled a stray lock of golden hair around her finger.

Florin was trying to think of something else to say when a heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder.

‘If you’d like to come this way, mein herr.’

Florin turned, and found himself looking into a guard with a face like a clenched fist. Florin smiled at him. The guard did not smile back. Perhaps, thought Florin as he wiped his blade on his cloak, because he didn’t know how to.

‘Lead on,’ he said, and with a last look towards the blonde, he followed the guard towards the ladder that led out of the pit. He was so lost in the remembrance of the look she had given him that he didn’t realise how the audience’s mood had changed until they started throwing things.

‘Why are they booing?’ he asked Lorenzo as he turned to help his friend up and over the parapet.

‘Because,’ Lorenzo said, ‘we’re under arrest, you damn fool.’

The two of them were locked into a storeroom while the guards had rushed off to clear the balconies. They had sat in silence and listened to the sounds above them. A small war seemed to have broken out.

Slowly, the distant sounds of combat were replaced by the noise of hundreds of boots clattering out of the building. Almost another hour passed before the sergeant of the guard finally returned. He had a bruised cheek and a new look of resentment.

‘If you needed a hand,’ Florin told him, ‘you should have asked.’

The sergeant, whose men were peering angrily over his shoulder, just pointed to a chair.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

Florin sat.

‘Right,’ the sergeant said. ‘Somebody wants to speak to you. We’ll be outside the door, so don’t get any clever ideas.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Florin told him.

‘He’s right,’ Lorenzo said, ‘he wouldn’t.’

The sergeant grunted with disgust, then turned and shooed his men back down the hallway. A moment later the door opened again, and when their visitor stepped into the room Florin was instantly on his feet.

It was her.

‘Madame,’ he said, and executed a deep bow. ‘I am Florin D’Artaud, a merchant of Bordeleaux’.

‘And I am Lady Adora Gerber Klumpenstein,’ the lady from the Provost Marshal’s box said, and offered him her hand to kiss.

‘What a beautiful name,’ Florin said as he brushed his lips across the warmth of her hand.

‘Thank you,’ Adora said, and caressed his cheek in a gesture that might have been an accident. ‘And tell me, Mein Herr d’Artaud, who is your companion?’

Florin was too distracted by the softness of her skin on his cheek to answer.

‘I’m Lorenzo,’ Lorenzo said. ‘A friend of his wife’s.’

Florin smiled as he lifted his lips from her hand and stood up straight.

‘You must forgive Le Comte his little jokes, madame,’ He said, and cast a warning look at Lorenzo. ‘He is always lighthearted after facing danger.’

Lorenzo snorted, then grew silent beneath the woman’s suddenly predatory gaze. She was examining him with a cold appraisal.

‘Le Comte,’ she said at length. ‘Enchante.’

Lorenzo grunted and scratched with the insouciance of the true aristocrat.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ Adora said. ‘I hope that I have come to the right people. I am in such trouble and there has been nobody to turn to. But

no, it hardly seems fair to ask it of you.’

Her perfectly composed features crumpled into a sorrowful expression, and the sapphire blue of her eyes glistened with tears.

‘Madame, we are at your service,’ Florin said, leading her to sit on a packing crate. ‘The problem is that we are slightly inconvenienced at the moment. It would appear that we inadvertently broke some law by saving you from those creatures.’

‘Oh, if only you had saved us!’ she cried, and buried her face in her hands. When she looked up her golden tresses fell forward to frame her face perfectly. ‘But I don’t think anybody can.’

‘Why don’t you tell us the whole story,’ Florin said, sitting down beside her and slipping an arm around her shoulders. So she leaned into him, and told him.

‘It’s because of my fiance, really,’ she admitted. ‘He’s a philanthropist who cares about this city. That’s why he bought the Lord Provostship from the Elector Count in the first place. The problem is that he’s so kind that he can’t see how anybody could have committed a crime as vile as the Baron Vistein’s’.

‘Tell me more,’ Florin said, enjoying the softness of her curves moulded against the muscle of his body.

‘It was one of my servants who told me. He had found out that the vicious old man had been plotting against us all. He has been working with the creatures you so valiantly slew in the pit tonight. It is those beastmen who are responsible for poisoning the crops.’

Adora shuddered, and moved a little closer to Florin, making sure that no part of the gesture was wasted.

‘We’d always know that the Baron was jealous of my fiance’s appointment to Provost Marshal. You know, what with him being only a merchant and so on,’ Adora looked up, and Florin found himself shaking his head at the injustice of the world as she continued. ‘But to have stooped to such depths to destabilise him

Why, it’s inhuman.’

‘Awful.’ Florin’s expression matched the sadness of her own, and even Lorenzo looked sympathetic.

‘Anyway, you were so very brave tonight,’ Adora cooed, now leaning close enough for him to feel the beat of her heart beneath her bodice. ‘That’s why I decided to risk it all and ask for your help. My fiance refuses to believe it, but I know that it’s true. The fact is, the Baron Vistein has been using these creatures to bring down our whole city, and he must be stopped.’

‘But you’ve only just met,’ Lorenzo said.

Adora, her eyes locked on Florin’s, ignored him.

‘Will you do it, monsieur? Will you execute the Baron and free us all?’

Florin, who had been only half-listening, sat up so suddenly that she fell back with a bump.

‘Murder a nobleman?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Oh, I wish it weren’t so,’ Adora brushed her hair back in a gesture of despair. ‘But what else can we do? The wicked man has been using those monsters to destroy our crops and our grain stores. He wants our people to starve so that they’ll follow him in a revolt against the Provost Marshal, and then he can claim his old title back.’

Florin pursed his lips.

‘It sounds incredible,’ he said.

‘It is incredible that a man could stoop so low,’ Adora’s eyes smouldered as she placed her hand on Florin’s stomach, and all of a sudden her words seemed not so much a condemnation as a promise.

‘Our aristocrats aren’t like your Le Comte here.’ She looked at him warmly. Then, seeing that the expression was wasted, she turned back to Florin. ‘They are ruthless and dishonourable men. That is why we need a hero. Somebody who isn’t afraid. Somebody who will execute this vile traitor before it is too late.’

‘Murder an Empire nobleman,’ Lorenzo repeated, if only for the novelty of hearing such madness on his own lips.

‘Yes,’ Adora turned her gaze back to him. ‘It was the only way I could persuade my fiance to save you from execution.’

‘Execution?’ the two Bretonnians yelped, and Adora deigned to look surprised at their exclamation.

‘Of course. For your wonderful, courageous act in the Pit. It’s the custom in Vistein to execute all who violate the Pit’s sanctity. That’s what made your courage so splendid.’

‘Even so, an Empire nobleman

’ Florin pursed his lips.

‘And the only way,’ Adora added, her eyes as innocent as a child’s but her timing as perfect as any merchant’s, ‘that I could get my fiance to agree to return your ship.’

Florin and Lorenzo’s eyes met in silent, unspoken agreement.

‘Where does this Baron live?’ Florin asked.

‘Oh, you will do it. You’re so, so brave,’ Adora said and moved so that her body was pressed against Florin’s once more. ‘I knew you would. It sounds silly, but I had a dream that your Lady would send me her Knight Errant.’

‘We are hardly Knights Errant,’ Florin said with an unusual modesty. ‘Our honour and courage don’t depend upon vows.’

‘I know,’ Adora said with a lascivious smile, and her hand slipped lower.

Florin swallowed. Lorenzo just shrugged.

‘What choice do we have?’ Lorenzo asked.

‘What indeed,’ Florin agreed. ‘Lady Adora, we are at your service.’

‘Good. You can start now,’ she said, springing to her feet, ‘before it’s too late. I have a servant, one of the few I trust, who will take you to the Baron’s lair. He lives in the old watchtower on the north spur. Tells everybody he’s a hermit. Do you need horses? How about weapons? Tell me what you need, and you shall have it.’

‘How about our ship?’ Lorenzo asked, but Adora seemed not to hear.

It was after midnight by the time Florin and Lorenzo had followed their guide out of the city gates. Despite the late hour, the Lady Adora had provided them with everything they needed. What’s more, she had provided it with a consummate skill that left Florin speechless.

Where he would have needed a hefty bribe to unlock a gate, she opened it with the softest whisper. What he and Lorenzo could have only achieved by knocking a man down, she did by lightly brushing her fingers across his shoulder. And once, when the Provost Marshal’s stable master refused to give horses to criminals, she had broken his will by displaying the most pitiable expression of disappointment Florin had ever seen.

Now she stood on the city wall, waving her assassins a silent goodbye as they rode out into the moonlit night. Much to Florin’s delight, Lorenzo waved back.

‘Well, well,’ Florin whispered, eyebrow raised at his friends show of affection. ‘I had no idea you were so gallant, Le Comte.’

Lorenzo smiled so wide that all three of his teeth glistened in the darkness.

‘I admire a professional, that’s all.’

Florin glanced towards their guide. They had hardly said a word to the man since he had been introduced as one of Lady Adora’s ‘dear friends’. He was a drawn, grey-haired man with deep, soulful eyes. He seemed to be constantly pining for something and, judging by the way he had looked at her ladyship, Florin had a shrewd idea for what.

Florin lifted his hand and tilted his palm backwards. Slowly he and Lorenzo fell back behind the man, who had in any case been lost in thought ever since Adora had kissed his cheek.

Florin leaned carefully over and whispered into Lorenzo’s ear.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Do you believe all that?’

Lorenzo pursed his lips. ‘No. No, it could be true, but I doubt it. You saw how she operates. Everything about her is a lie. Some men turn into complete idiots when a woman like that gets hold of them.’

‘I was just playing along,’ Florin retorted. ‘Anyway, look who’s talking.’

Their guide, perhaps roused from his reverie by some jealous instinct, glanced back towards them. Florin and Lorenzo were sitting straight in their saddles, looking in opposite directions. Satisfied, the guide turned back to the contemplation of another, happier world in which he and Adora were wed.

‘So if he’s not in league with the skaven, then why have him killed?’ Lorenzo continued.

‘Politics,’ Florin said. ‘You saw how unpopular her fiance is now. Imagine what will happen when the good people of Vistein find out that the grain stores are gone as well as the crop.’

‘You’re probably right.’ Lorenzo said. ‘Although there must be a lot of the ratmen about if they’re actually getting trapped.’

The two men lapsed into silence as, the hoots of the owls giving way to the cries of seagulls, their guide led them up the narrowing track towards one of the cliffs.

‘Let’s risk it,’ Florin decided. ‘We tell the Baron he’s to be assassinated, let him run, and then get back to Bordeleaux. I’m sick of this place anyway.’

Lorenzo said nothing. He didn’t need to.

They could see the Baron’s refuge from almost a mile away. It jutted up from the wild gorse that carpeted the cliff tops, a sheer stab of stone that clawed up towards the stars. Its black shadow pointed like an accusing finger at the ocean beyond, where the waves, luminescent in the light of the risen moon, boomed and whispered.

‘Is that the traitor’s lair?’ Florin asked, his voice a low murmur. Their guide nodded.

‘It looks sturdy enough,’ Lorenzo grumbled. ‘And I suppose he’ll be guarded by his confederates?’

‘His confederates?’ The guide just looked puzzled. ‘No. No, he lives alone. The better to plot his treachery, her ladyship said.’

‘She is as wise as she is beautiful,’ Florin said, and the guide nodded mournfully, ‘which is why she chose us to handle this matter. This is where we will dismount. Lorenzo, you take the axe. You, hold our horses’ reins and be ready to go. When we come out, we may be in a hurry.’

‘But her ladyship asked me to accompany you.’ Despite his grey hair, the guide whined like a little boy. ‘She trusts me.’

‘That’s why I trust you too,’ Florin said, his voice full of bright encouragement. ‘I wouldn’t be leaving you in charge of the horses if I didn’t.’

‘He wouldn’t, either,’ Lorenzo assured the guide. ‘We know what we’re doing when it comes to stuff like this. Ready boss?’

‘Ready,’ Florin said and, before the guide could object, the two of them had vanished into the undergrowth.

It took them almost an hour to cross the distance to the dark watchtower. They moved with a slow, steady caution, neither speaking nor rising above the undergrowth. When they were close enough to count the stones in the moonlight, the two friends lay down side by side, and listened and watched.

There was nothing but the sound of the sea and the smell of gorse and the frozen glitter of the stars above.

Florin and Lorenzo rose to their feet and, as silently as any other nocturnal predators, they closed in on the watchtower door.

It was a well-made door with a sturdy iron lock, but it was wooden. Lorenzo hefted the axe and again the two men stopped, senses straining.

‘All right,’ Florin breathed. ‘We go in. We grab the man. We convince him to run.’

‘And if her ladyship was right?’

Florin paused, and considered the question again.

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘we’re stuffed.’

Lorenzo rolled his eyes, lifted the axe, and hit the iron lock with the flat surface behind the blade.

It was a perfect strike, and the door flew open. As it crashed against its hinges, Florin scraped a shower of sparks onto the wick of the lantern and in the sudden light he rushed into the building.

There was nothing in the dank room that they found themselves in, but for a few barrels and a flight of stone steps that led upwards. Florin leapt towards them, sprinting upwards. The chamber above was just as deserted, and he accelerated as he raced up the final flight of stairs. It was still dark up there, and he dared to hope that he still had the element of surprise.

He didn’t.

The second after he leapt into the watchtower’s upper chamber something hit him on the back of the head. He yelled a warning to Lorenzo as he stumbled forward. In the dancing light of his lantern, he made out the blurred shape of his assailant, and the even more blurred shape of the club he was wielding.

This time the blow caught Florin against his upturned arm, and he felt the crack of wood against bone. Still dazed from the first blow, he collapsed back and hit the wall.

His assailant had turned back to deal with Lorenzo, who was clambering up the stairs. The man aimed a kick that would have flattened him had it connected. But Lorenzo, who had been dodging kicks since he’d been a toddler, grabbed the man’s foot, and pulled him off balance.

The man fell backwards and Lorenzo, maintaining his grip, used the falling weight to pull himself up out of the stairwell. With a roar the man slashed at Lorenzo’s legs with a brutal directness that would have made any sword master proud. Lorenzo leapt over the blow, then stamped on his groin in a move that would have made any sword master wince. Then he kicked the man beneath the chin.

His teeth clicked, his head bounced off the floor, and he lay still.

‘I think that’s him,’ Florin said, and then passed out.

Whether it was the hideous smell of Lorenzo’s pipe or the sound of voices that brought him around, Florin couldn’t tell. Either way, neither sound nor smell did much for his splitting headache. He sat up and touched the damp bump on the back of his head. Then he groaned.

The Baron and Lorenzo turned from the table they were sat at and regarded him critically.

‘Youngsters,’ Lorenzo said, and jabbed at Florin contemptuously. ‘No stamina.’

‘Too soft all around.’ The Baron, who had a heel mark on his chin and bruises around his eyes, shook his head. ‘That’s why it’s come to this. To think, the Provost Marshal of Vistein getting a woman to hire assassins. And foreign assassins at that!’

‘That’s the youth of today, all right,’ Lorenzo sighed as the Baron filled his goblet from the bottle that was between them. ‘No honour, either.’

Florin glared at them.

‘I take it you’ve explained the situation?’ he asked, and climbed up onto a chair.

‘He has.’ The Baron offered him a goblet, and Florin got a good look at him for the first time. Although he held himself with the rigid poise of a nobleman, the Baron’s skin was as weathered as any veteran’s. His white moustaches were waxed into great sabres, and a frosting of silver covered his head, which was neatly shaved in the regimental fashion.

Despite his age, the Baron didn’t seem to mind the beating he had taken any more than he minded the duelling scars that marked his cheeks. Florin felt the bump on the back of his own head again, and winced. The Baron and Lorenzo rolled their eyes, as though a split skull was nothing more than a stubbed toe. Florin drank his wine.

‘So,’ he said. ‘No skaven.’

‘Ha!’ the Baron laughed contemptuously. ‘Skaven. A fairy-tale for children. There are rat-like beastmen, I’ll grant you. Saw a few of ’em in the north. Not skaven, though. The very idea.’

He gave Florin a look of amused contempt, then looked at Lorenzo, who shrugged.

‘He’s not usually so dense,’ Lorenzo confided to his new friend. ‘Must have been that knock on the head.’

Florin scowled.

‘Well, it couldn’t be helped,’ the Baron said, and his eyes softened with nostalgia. ‘It’s been a while since I tasted battle. There’s nothing quite like it. The thrill. The blood.’

‘I can see why the Provost Marshal is afraid you’ll reclaim your title.’

‘The man’s a fool. I didn’t want the title when I came back from the regiments. Why would I have wanted it now? Presiding over a bunch of stinking merchants and squabbling fish wives.’ The Baron snorted at the very idea. ‘No thank you. I was quite happy here, alone with my memories.’

‘But you are going to your brother’s estates in Reikland?’ Lorenzo asked. ‘As we decided?’

‘Oh yes,’ The Baron nodded. ‘I’m going. I’ve been too long on my own here. Too long without any excitement. When all’s said and done, a man has his duty.’

His eyes strayed over to the suit of armour that stood on a rack against the wall. A faded battle flag was furled beside it. It was tattered, and some of it was obscured by a dark stain, but the ash pole it was mounted on still looked strong, and there was no rust on the steel tip.

‘I don’t mind telling you that I only came here after my Agnes died. Somehow I didn’t feel like talking to people after that. Didn’t even want servants around. You know how it is. But meeting you two has done me the world of good. Made me realise what I’ve been missing. You, young ’un. How’s your head?’

‘Never better,’ Florin said, and the Baron laughed uproariously and slapped him on the shoulder.

‘That’s the spirit. Well, can’t sit around all night. You’ve got an “assassination” to report, and I’ve got plans to make.’

‘Do you need a horse?’ Lorenzo asked.

‘No, that’s all right,’ the Baron said. ‘I’ve got everything I need. Old Dietmar’s got a place on the other side of the inlet. I always got on well with old Ingeborn’s son, too. Helped him train his farmhands when he had a problem with orcs a couple of summers back. And Aukshanks. He’s got a few dozen lads to help him with his business. And with the excise men too, the old rogue!’

‘Good,’ Florin said, resisting the urge to touch the back of his head as he stood up. ‘Then we can leave you. But please be gone by morning. If I know Adora, she’ll want to check.’

‘That blood’s handy,’ Lorenzo said, gesturing towards the stain Florin had left on the floor. ‘We’ll say we brained you and then threw your body into the sea.’

‘Yes, of course,’ the Baron said vaguely. ‘How many men at arms would you say the Provost Marshal has? Roughly?’

‘More than enough,’ Florin told him. ‘At least a score.’

The Baron smiled. ‘Typical merchant. My uncle always kept at least a hundred under arms.’

Florin and Lorenzo exchanged a glance. ‘But you are going to leave, aren’t you, your lordship?’

‘Of course,’ the Baron said. ‘I’ll leave as soon as you and your guide have gone to report my death.’

Lorenzo frowned. Florin shrugged.

‘Then let’s go. And good luck!’

The horses, agitated by their guide’s anxiety, whinnied and danced as Florin and Lorenzo appeared out of the undergrowth.

‘Hold them still,’ Florin snapped, and swung himself up onto the saddle.

‘Did you do it?’ the guide asked, his voice an anxious whine. ‘Did you kill him? Where’s the body?’

‘Threw it over the cliff.’ Florin kept his voice soft and low, and stroked his mount’s neck reassuringly. ‘Best not to leave any evidence.’

‘So calm down for Sigmar’s sake,’ Lorenzo said.

‘I’ll thank you not to speak to me that way,’ the guide bridled, and turned to Florin. ‘I must insist that you tell your comrade to address me with more respect. Especially when we meet the Lady Adora.’

Lorenzo cackled happily.

‘Don’t worry about the Lady Adora,’ he said, and gave the guide an obscene wink. ‘She doesn’t strike me as the sort of girl who would mind a bit of rough and tumble.’

‘Stop aggravating him,’ Florin snapped. ‘And you. Lead off. I want to get clear as soon as possible.’

‘Yes, why not?’ said the guide with a smug tone. ‘Let’s hurry back.’

With a last, poisonous glance at Lorenzo he spurred his horse into the night, and his two charges followed him.

The Lady Adora was waiting for them in the cold light of the rising sun. Her carriage was parked just outside Vistein’s walls, its paintwork the single bright thing amidst a dismal landscape of rotten corn.

When the three horsemen stopped in front of her she threw back the hood of her thick green cloak. She smiled a smile that was as warm as a Bretonnian summer, and stepped down to greet them.

The guide tumbled from his saddle, and one of his knees cracked on the cobbles.

‘My lady,’ he said, his voice choked with either pain or passion.

‘Heinrich,’ she said. ‘I’m so relieved to see you. And you, Monsieur d’Artaud. And Le Comte,’ she curtsied towards Lorenzo, who was so delighted by the expression of jealous misery on Heinrich’s face that he bowed in the saddle.

‘So tell me,’ she asked, ‘is it done?’

‘Yes, my lady.’ Heinrich told her, and took her hand to plant a kiss upon it. She let him kiss her hand as she might have let a favourite dog lick it, but her eyes were already on Florin.

‘There’s no doubt?’ she asked. ‘It is done?’

‘No doubt at all, your ladyship,’ Florin told her. ‘The Baron is gone. Whatever schemes he schemed are over.’

Adora smiled, and for the first time it seemed to Lorenzo that her expression was genuine. Although as beautiful as ever, her features had taken on a hard, razor’s edge. She withdrew her hand from Heinrich’s clutches and absentmindedly wiped it on her cloak. Then she sighed, and her eyes narrowed with the dispassionate satisfaction of a chess player who has forced a checkmate.

‘Then, Monsieur d’Artaud, our business is done. Your ship is in the harbour. Much as I would enjoy your company, it may be as well for you to go.’

‘Your ladyship.’ Florin bowed and turned his horse towards the harbour. Lorenzo thumbed his chin at Heinrich, who was too busy looking at Adora to notice, and followed him into the town and down to the harbour.

The Katerina was at her moorings, just as Adora had promised, and Florin thought that she looked like the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Her mottled hull glistened with dew, and the upright of her central mast stood tall enough to catch the first beams of sunlight that slipped between the grey slate of Vistein’s high-sloped roofs.

‘I wonder what we should do with the horses.’ Lorenzo said as they clattered through the entrance and into the harbour proper.

‘What do you mean?’ Florin asked, still concentrating on the ship. The harbour was deep enough so that they wouldn’t have to wait for the tide and, judging by the pennant that fluttered from Katerina’s mast, there was a perfect north-westerly wind blowing.

‘I mean,’ said Lorenzo, ‘shall we take them, or sell them, or turn them loose?’

‘You should dismount,’ a voice said.

Florin and Lorenzo turned to find the speaker. They recognised the sergeant who had arrested them the night before. He looked no prettier by the light of day. Nor did the men who were waiting with him. There were maybe a dozen, Florin thought. Then, as more of them appeared from behind bails and in windows he realised that it was more like a score. And each and every one of them had a vicious steel crossbow.

Before Florin could reply there was the shriek of steel against stone from behind him. He spun around, his cutlass half drawn, and saw that a portcullis had fallen into place beneath the arch through which they had just passed.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘You’re under arrest,’ the sergeant told him.

‘What for this time? Riding during daylight hours? Wearing blue? Don’t waste our time. We’re leaving this barbaric place, anyway.’

‘You’re under arrest,’ the sergeant said with relish, ‘for the murder of the Baron Vistein. You will accompany us to the gaol, there to await your trial.’

Florin’s mouth was suddenly dry. He looked at Lorenzo, who was looking at the men who surrounded them. Although their uniforms were mismatched and stained, their crossbows were solid, and they looked calm and professional. He turned back to Florin.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Florin said. ‘We haven’t murdered anybody.’

‘Then you have nothing to worry about,’ the sergeant assured him. ‘Now dismount.’

Florin looked at Lorenzo again, but the older man just shrugged.

‘Too many,’ he said. Florin nodded and, as the guards closed in on them, he kicked out of his stirrups and swung himself off his horse.

‘No need for that,’ he said as one of the guards approached with manacles. The man hesitated and looked to the sergeant, whose face unclenched. He smiled.

‘Humour us poor northern barbarians,’ he sneered. ‘And our stupid customs.’

The shackles snapped shut on the two Bretonnians’ wrists, their sword belts were taken, and they were led to the gaol.

‘Women,’ Lorenzo spat.

Florin said nothing.

There didn’t seem anything else to say.

Baron Vistein savoured the taste of the wind that blew in from Vistein itself. It smelled mainly of rotten seaweed, but he didn’t mind that. It was enough that he could feel the chill of it against his face, and watch it as it lifted the pennants that he had given each of his captains. After spending so long lost within his memories, it felt good to be alive again. Good to be buckled into his armour again.

Good to be at war again.

A wolfish grin lifted the waxed blades of his moustaches as he turned to survey his ramshackle army. It had taken him a week to raise it, and although he could have probably found more followers, he had decided that time was of the essence.

As it was he had almost two hundred men. Two hundred farmhands, fishermen and others. Many were the vassals of his friends. Others were freed men who owed their lands to his family’s generosity. Some were mercenaries; bandits who welcomed the opportunity to do a bit of respectable robbery.

Although they marched in time, their footsteps were the only uniform thing about them. They looked more like a collection of scarecrows than the regiment the Baron had once commanded, but he didn’t mind. He was an old enough soldier to know that you fought with what you had, and his instinct told him that what he had was enough.

He turned back to gaze upon Vistein. It lay below him, snug in the inlet in which it had been built and secure behind the granite of its walls. The Baron felt that old thrill of doubt that always attended the translation of a plan into reality. Then he turned to the man riding beside him.

‘Lift the banner,’ he said, and for the first time in a decade Vistein’s coat of arms unfurled in the breeze. It was faded with age and stained with the blood of countless battlefields, but it was bright enough to set a light blazing in an old man’s heart.

The Baron raised a mailed fist to signal the advance, and his column moved down towards the gates.

‘I wonder if the advance party have done their job, your lordship?’ Aukshanks asked. The Baron turned and winked at his old comrade.

‘Let’s hope so,’ he said. ‘Remember what happened in Eisenberg?’

‘Yes,’ Aukshanks smiled at the memory. ‘I’m trying to remember that, and not what happened at Waldstein.’

The Baron barked with laughter.

‘Never mind,’ he said gleefully. ‘We’re in Sigmar’s hands now.’

But if his life was in Sigmar’s hands, the Baron now saw, at least the gates were in his. The dozen men he had sent ahead had done their work. The gates remained open, and behind the cordon his men had formed beneath the arch of it, the Baron could see their bundled captives.

The Baron drew himself even higher up in his saddle as he led his men through the gates. Some of the town’s citizens fled. Others, knowing what was good for them, started to cheer. The Baron removed his helmet and waved to them.

‘Now, let’s go and have a word with the Provost Marshal,’ he said, and led his column towards the crumbling walls of the palace.

They were no more than fifty yards from the palace when, without warning, the air was suddenly threaded with a lethal steel blur of crossbow bolts.

‘Ambush!’ the Baron cried. He unsheathed his sabre with a flourish and looked eagerly around for his attackers. His horse jittered beneath him as he squinted, searching for the enemies who had so sportingly presented themselves.

Behind him, his followers milled about in confusion as another volley of quarrels hissed towards them. The Baron frowned as he heard the first screams of pain from behind him.

‘Look there,’ Aukshanks told him. ‘They’re hiding in the houses on the right, firing from the upper windows.’

The Baron squinted through the beginnings of cataracts. It was the movement he saw, a glitter of steel as the third volley raked through his men.

He turned back to them and scowled. Any semblance of a military formation was long gone. Instead they clustered uncertainly around their fallen comrades. The Baron may have been half-blind, but a lifetime of war had given him the ability to sense when confusion was starting to give way to panic. Well, he couldn’t have that.

He made a decision.

‘You men,’ the Baron bellowed. ‘Yes, all of you! Get into those houses. Break down the doors. Kill anybody with a weapon.’

Still his men, few of whom had ever killed another human, hesitated. With a roar of frustration the Baron spurred his horse and rode down the line. He circled his sabre above their heads in a gesture that was half encouragement and half threat.

‘Attack!’ he cried, his voice drowning out the hiss of yet another lethal volley. ‘Attack!’

And suddenly the Baron’s rage set his ragtag army alight. With a desperate cheer they hurled themselves at the buildings which sheltered their ambushers. They chopped their way through doors and smashed their way through windows. Here an entire wattled wall caved in, and soon the screams of the inhabitants could be heard above the splinter of timber.

Then the first cries of victory as the ambushers found themselves cornered and cut down.

The Baron listened to the screaming women and children who the battle was now being fought amongst. Here and there bodies were hurled through windows. Some of them wore the washed-out black uniforms of the Lord Provost’s men. Most of them wore no uniforms at all.

Well, that couldn’t be helped.

It wasn’t until the sounds of combat gave way to the cruel laughter and delighted cries of looting that the Baron judged the engagement won. He bullied those he could back into the ranks and led them up to the palace.

By now the doors, heavy oak dark beneath centuries of polish, were locked. The Baron dismounted, strode over to the doors, and banged on them with his mailed fist.

‘Open up,’ he cried. ‘Open up in the name of the true Lord Provost.’

There was no reply. He hadn’t expected there to be.

No matter.

‘Bring fuel,’ he said, ‘and fire.’

After the first two days, Florin and Lorenzo had started to think about escape. Alone in a windowless cell, their lives lit by a single candle, there wasn’t much else to do.

They had considered bribery, although since their copper had been confiscated, they didn’t consider it worth trying. They thought about taking a guard hostage, but the guards had obviously thought about that too, which was why they never entered the cell. Instead food was shoved in through a slit in the iron door.

Eventually they had decided that the only way out was to dig, and so they had set about the mortar, crumbling it up and disposing of it through the open sewer which served as their latrine. By the end of the week they had managed to loosen enough of the stones to discover that there was nothing beyond but the sheer rock of the cliff face.

That’s when the arguments had started.

It was in the middle of one of these arguments that they were rudely interrupted.

The door was flung open and the guards threw a plump man into the cell. He looked vaguely familiar.

‘Traitors,’ the plump man yelled at the guards, although not until after they had shut the door. ‘Dogs! The Elector Count will have you hung for this!’

The effort of his invective seemed to exhaust him. After a nervous glance at Florin and Lorenzo he retreated to a corner and sat down on the hard stone, his face in his hands.

The two Bretonnians, their quarrel forgotten, examined their new companion. Even in the candlelight, it was obvious that his torn clothes had been finely made. The velvet of his jacket alone was worth a good horse. He also had the clear skin and chubby features of a man who had lived well, and his fingers were bruised where rings had obviously been forcefully removed.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Florin said.

‘Leave me alone,’ the man squeaked, and looked at his two fellow inmates with wide, fearful eyes. ‘I’ve got nothing left to steal.’

‘Nor do we,’ Florin said, ‘so we should all get along fine. Are you thirsty? We’ve got some clean water left in the jug.’

The man ran a hand through his well-cut hair and a look of pathetic gratitude spread across his face.

‘I am damnably thirsty, yes. Thank you.’

Florin took the jug and, moving slowly so as not to alarm the man, walked over to him and stooped to pass it to him. As he did so the candle lit his face, and he smiled reassuringly.

‘Thank you so much,’ the man said, taking the jug and emptying it in one, long swallow. ‘You’re very kind. In fact, you look a little familiar. What’s your name?’

‘Florin d’Artaud,’ Florin said and, making up with formality for what he lacked in facilities, he executed a perfect bow.

But the new prisoner was beyond such niceties.

‘You!’ he cried, and suddenly he looked not so much like a beaten dog as an enraged wolf. ‘You! It’s all your fault.’

Before Florin could decide how to handle this outbreak of lunacy, the man swung the clay jug at his head in a clumsy, round house swing.

‘Hey,’ Florin said, springing easily out of his reach.

‘You ruined me. You

You

‘ the man’s mouth worked as he fought to find adequate words. Finally he gave up his attempt at speech and charged at Florin, podgy fists flailing.

Florin reacted instinctively, jabbing his thumbs into the nerves on either side of his assailant’s neck and then kneeing him in the stomach.

The man fell backwards onto the floor, then backed away until he reached the wall.

‘What in Ranald’s name is wrong with you, you lunatic?’ Florin demanded.

‘You are what’s wrong with me,’ the other man yelled, and although he was still mottled with rage at least he made no further attempt at violence.

‘Gentlemen,’ Lorenzo said, finally standing up between the two glaring men. ‘I can see that you haven’t been properly introduced. Florin d’Artaud, meet the Provost Marshal of Vistein. Provost Marshal, Monsieur d’Artaud.’

‘Oh,’ Florin said. ‘I see.’

Hearing his title seemed to have a pacifying effect on the Provost Marshal. His rage evaporated and he slumped back, defeated once more.

‘She talked you into it, I suppose?’ He asked hopelessly.

Florin cautiously sat down too.

‘Who?’

‘Adora, of course,’ the Provost Marshal said. ‘That stupid, scheming bitch.’

‘That’s no way to talk about the Lady Adora,’ Florin told him, and was rewarded with a look of absolute contempt. The contempt disintegrated into a miserable frown, which finally melted into sobs.

Florin and Lorenzo sat and watched the fat man cry.

‘What I don’t understand,’ Florin said, ‘is what we have to do with you being in here. I mean, whatever we might have said to the Lady Adora, we didn’t actually kill anybody.’

For a moment it looked as though the Provost Marshal was about to fly into another rage. Instead he leaned back against the grimy wall of his gaol and sighed.

‘I know you didn’t kill him, you fool,’ he said. ‘That’s why I’m in here. Because you told that old lunatic the Baron that I wanted him dead, he decided to come and take the town back. It’s so unfair. Apart from anything else, I didn’t want him dead. I was going to sell my corn, ask him to take the lousy title back, and then take a ship to Estalia before everybody found out how bad things are. It’s nice in Estalia,’ he added ‘Sunny. But would Adora listen to reason? Oh no, she just had to be Lady stinking Vistein. I don’t know why I offered to marry her. I must have been mad.’

Florin was no longer listening.

‘That’s fantastic news,’ he told the Provost Marshal, who looked at him blankly. ‘If the Baron is in charge, we’ll be freed. Didn’t I tell you not to worry, Lorenzo?’

‘Yes,’ said Lorenzo, who was gnawing his lip.

‘Didn’t I tell you that the Lady would provide?’

‘By the way,’ Lorenzo ignored him and turned to the Provost Marshal. ‘How is the Lady Adora?’

‘Oh, she’ll be all right,’ the man said bitterly. ‘She always is.’

‘Cheer up,’ Florin told him. ‘We’ll put in a good word for you. The Baron is a reasonable man.’

The thoughtful silence that followed lasted until the next day. Then another day passed.

And another.

By the end of the week Florin and Lorenzo were as close to losing hope as the Provost Marshal himself was. But before they could, the guards returned with orders to bring all three before the Baron. They locked shackles around the prisoners’ wrists and led them out into the cold light of a brand new morning.

It wasn’t until they had been chained to the side of a wagon with a dozen other beaten and bruised men that it finally occurred to Florin that the Baron was perhaps not as reasonable as he had hoped.

But by then, of course, it was too late.

The Baron wore the traditional wolfskin mantle around his shoulders. It still stank of smoke, but the Baron didn’t mind that any more than he minded the dents in his armour. Such souvenirs were as good as any medal.

The fighting in the palace had been fierce but brief. Once he had killed half a dozen of his opponents, slaughtering his way through them with a howling glee, the rest had broken, leaving their employer hiding behind his throne, much to the Baron’s hilarity.

Neither the victory or the bloodshed had done anything to diminish the Baron’s renewed vigour. Quite the opposite. Within the first twenty-four hours of his reign he had discovered the extent of the famine facing Vistein, and he attacked that problem with as much verve as he had the palace. First he had sent a messenger to the Elector Count with a letter requesting aid. Then, much to their horror, he had confiscated all of the grain the merchants had been hoarding. He set up a system of rationing which, inadequate as it was, promised to alleviate the worst of the approaching famine.

Sigmar had also sent him the opportunity to get to the root of the problem. When a group of the verminous beastmen had been found tampering with the remaining stores he had sent a party of men after them; men with orders to track them back to their lair.

When neither the troops nor the messenger had returned, the Baron would probably have become concerned, and taken further steps. But by the end of the week he had met Adora.

The rekindled passion which had roused him from his retirement had been bright, but the passions she stoked in his old chest had been devouring. He couldn’t remember a woman like her. There was something about Adora. Something about the way that she reached into his soul and plucked at the strings of his desire as expertly as a musician with a harp.

Within days the flame of the Baron’s love had eclipsed almost every other thought. It had been her idea to clear the gaol with pardons and executions and the Baron, as exhausted as he was entranced, had agreed to this as easily as he had agreed to let her take charge of the rationing.

So it was that as Florin, Lorenzo and a dozen other unfortunates came clinking into the crowded square, he watched them from his throne with a jaundiced eye. The wolfskin cape, which only a week ago, had worn like an Emperor’s cloak, now hung around his body like an invalid’s blanket, and his right hand, which only a week before had wielded his sabre like the judgement of Sigmar himself, was trembling.

Perhaps that was why a gibbet had been set up in the square. The nooses which hung from it swayed in the breeze with an easy, murderous promise which the Baron could unleash with nothing but the lift of his finger.

‘Thank the Lady you’re here,’ Florin shouted to the Baron as he and his fellow prisoners were lined up in front of Vistein’s new lord. ‘I wondered how to get word to you. Congratulations on your victory.’

The Baron peered at the Bretonnian, and his moustaches drooped in a troubled frown.

‘You were wise not to listen to our advice,’ Florin declared. ‘Although, of course, we only had your welfare at heart.’

‘Which is why we warned you,’ Lorenzo added, although without Florin’s cheerful confidence. He had already seen the cause of their problem.

Adora wore a sable coat, one of many gifts that she had received since taking control of Vistein’s dwindling grain stores. The black fur set off the sunlit glow of her hair so that it shone like gold on onyx, the dull lustre only matched by the deep blue of her kohl-framed eyes.

She sat beside the Baron, and as the Bretonnians had been speaking she leant over and whispered into his ear. He frowned and then nodded.

‘These men,’ he pointed towards Florin and Lorenzo, ‘are oath breakers. They have dishonoured the great name of this city, and like all who have done so, they will pay the price.’

‘Oath breakers?’ Florin cried. ‘We saved your life, you old fool!’

‘Oh, well done,’ Lorenzo muttered. ‘That’s the way to persuade him.’

The Baron frowned again, and doubt crossed his features momentarily. Adora leaned forward and whispered again, and the Baron nodded.

‘They’re to be hung,’ he decided with an impatient gesture.

‘Wait,’ Florin cried, but it was too late. Hands gripped them and they were already being dragged away towards the scaffold. The crowd cheered as nooses were looped around their necks, but it was a half-hearted cheer.

Florin looked at the Visteiners who had gathered for the morning’s entertainment. He saw their gaunt faces and hungry pallor. These were not the same people who had cheered him at the fighting pit barely a week before. An air of hopelessness hung over them.

An air of hopelessness hung over the Provost Marshal too. He had been lost in his own private world of misery since his imprisonment and even now, as he was dragged forward to face his nemesis, he seemed hardly to care.

It wasn’t until he saw Adora, as sleek and beautiful as a well-fed cat, that his despair gave way to rage.

‘You Jezebel,’ he roared, lifting his manacled hands to point an accusing finger at her. ‘You betrayer.’

Adora never wavered as she watched him. If there was an expression on her face, it was the expression of a woman regarding a poorly-sculpted statue, or a badly-daubed painting.

The Baron, though, lacked her reserve. Bad enough that this commoner, this merchant, had forced him to return to Vistein, but he’d be damned if he’d stand by while he insulted a lady.

‘Silence,’ he barked. ‘You are here to be judged, you dog. A Provost Marshal of Vistein does not hire assassins. Especially,’ he pointed towards the two Bretonnians who were even now having their nooses tightened, ‘foreign ones. Empire killers not good enough for you, you damned traitor?’

The Provost Marshal spared the Baron a look of quick contempt, then turned back to his wife.

‘You will burn for this,’ he told her, his face glowing with terrible enthusiasm. ‘When I get to hell I’ll set such daemons on you that you’ll burn for an eternity.’

The Baron, outrage lending him some of the vitality which Adora’s attentions had so depleted, sprang to his feet.

‘I told you to keep silent,’ he roared, and the Provost Marshal, having exhausted his store of curses on Adora, turned to her new lover.

‘And you, you old fool. May Manaan strike you down for your stupidity.’

He raised his manacled hands above his head as if to summon the very god himself.

And maybe he did.

As he finished his curse the Baron felt a sudden, stabbing pain in his chest. He staggered back, clutching at his heart and feeling for the arrow which he was sure had pierced him. When he found that he was unwounded he glanced around the crowd, his brow furrowed with unaccustomed confusion.

He hit his chair with the back of his knees and sat down heavily. All at once he realised that he had lost all feeling down the right side of his body, and that he was drooling from one numbed corner of his mouth.

‘My lord?’ Adora whispered, clutching at his arm with the concern of somebody seeing their livelihood slipping away. She took one of his hands in time to feel it curl up into a hard claw of agony. He turned to look at her in a last moment of shock, then his eyeballs rolled back up into his forehead and he died.

The crowd stood dumbfounded. The guards looked to each other in their confusion, and even the Provost Marshal seemed shocked by the efficacy of his murderous prayer.

Adora reassured herself that the Baron’s pulse had beat for the last time, then looked around her with a fierce intelligence. This wouldn’t be the first time she had been forced to improvise.

But Florin was even quicker off the mark. Ignoring the way the noose scratched the skin beneath his jaw he took a deep breath and bellowed out in a fit of religious fervour.

‘Praise Manaan,’ he cried and, as all eyes turned to him, he contrived to smile with sickly fire. ‘Praise Manaan for his judgement. See how he has stricken the unworthy so that the true Provost Marshal may save us from hunger.’

An excited murmur ran through the mob, although the guards were regarding him with critical eyes.

He regarded them back.

‘Praise Manaan,’ he continued, ‘for saving the city from starvation and the Emperor’s intervention.’

The guards looked doubtful. The Emperor’s interventions were well known for their bloodthirsty enthusiasm.

‘Praise Manaan

’ Florin went on, and found that he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

The Provost Marshal, perhaps inspired by his own unguessed-at powers, took over.

‘My friends,’ he cried, clambering onto the stage so that he stood between the crowd and the corpse of their previous ruler. ‘In honour of the glory of the great God Manaan, I propose that we hold a feast day, and I insist that the city lets me pay for it.’

There was a cheer, hesitant at first but growing in strength.

‘And praise Manaan,’ one of the merchants said, ‘for an end to rationing.’

The Provost Marshal looked at him and nodded. As the merchants raised their voices in acclamation, the guards unchained their restored master. At his command they then unchained the rest of the prisoners.

‘I don’t know about you,’ Florin said as he rubbed some life back into his hands, ‘but I think it might be time to head for home.’

Without another word the two of them ran to the docks.

Adora had thought about fleeing. Then she had thought better of it. It would be difficult to talk the Provost Marshal around, she knew, but it could be done. Anything could be done. Sometimes doing so could be brutal, or cruel, or degrading. Sometimes it could be a lot worse.

But nothing, nothing, was impossible.

That was why she hadn’t run, and why she had allowed herself to be locked in her boudoir. Her jewels were gone, but her comb and her mirror remained. She sat in the oil light, admiring her reflection as she combed her hair. She had no plan, but as the soothing strokes of the brush whispered though the gloom, she knew that she was ready.

When she next saw Harrald, who was once again the Provost Marshal, she would know how to handle him. She would know it instinctively. She always did.

When she had finished a hundred brushstrokes she turned down the oil lamp and slipped into bed. Another captive might have had trouble sleeping, but not Adora. She was never more relaxed than when in the eye of a storm. Within minutes she was snoring. It was the one imperfection in the perfectly controlled, perfectly contrived image she had created.

She awoke to the sound of screaming and the smell of smoke.

Flipping out of bed she pulled on a loose gown and girdled it around her waist. There was no way of telling what time it was, but that hardly mattered now. The screams she heard from outside her window were rising into a hellish chorus, and she knew that something terrible was happening.

Heading to the window, Adora could see the moon low on the horizon, but there was no need of the wan light it cast to see the sack of Vistein. The blaze of the burning fleet lit the whole town. The ships’ hulls burned like funeral pyres, and their masts jutted up like huge candlewicks. Here and there the fire had spread to land, and the houses clustered around the dock were already burning with an unnatural ferocity.

Adora scanned the narrow streets and cramped plazas for any attempt to fight the fire, but there was none. Instead the city was alive with struggling figures, blurred by smoke and distance. Small, dark figures moved amongst the townsfolk, and as Adora peered down into the confusion she saw the glitter of firelight on the chains which bound a whole street full of people together. She saw the flicker of what might have been whips, then a cloud of billowing smoke obscured her view.

When it had cleared, the people were gone. In their place a gang of longshoremen, recognisable by their high boots and billhooks, had taken their place. A man in the middle was shouting orders as they moved down the street in a ragged formation.

They didn’t get far. As Adora watched there was the sound of shattering glass and clouds of green smoke rose up amongst them. The men died tearing at their own throats, eyes wide enough for her to see the whites even at this distance.

The door banged open behind her. Adora span around and felt a flash of relief when she realised that it was Harrald. Then she saw the things that were chasing him and the relief vanished.

Even in the firelight she recognised them for what they were. The wiry bodies. The sharp noses. The even sharper teeth. These were the things that the Bretonnians had killed in the arena.

‘Help me,’ Harrald cried as he rushed towards her.

As last words went, they were hardly original, she thought as a blade buried itself between the Provost Marshal’s shoulder blades. Suitable for the fool, though.

She dodged out of the way as his body fell forwards and looked at the two beastmen who followed him into the room. They stank. Even over the acrid odour of the burning town, they stank. She kept the grimace off her face as she met their murderous eyes. One of them raised another one of the vicious throwing stars which had felled Harrald.

Adora dropped to her knees and, a sudden memory of the line of chained captives flashing through her memory, offered up her wrists.

She waited for the sting of the creature’s weapon. Instead she received only the shock of its voice.

‘This,’ it shrieked, its voice like claws drawn down a slate. ‘Your king?’

‘Not now,’ Adora said. ‘Now, you king.’

The creatures made a gurgling hiss and Adora looked up in time to see the distrustful grimace that passed between them. She began to hope.

‘I obey you,’ she said and offered her wrists. ‘I see you are king.’

When the iron clicked around her wrists it felt no heavier than any other piece of jewellery she had been given, and by the time she had been dragged out of the palace to be chained with the other captives her fear had already gone.

She would survive. She always did.

Her sails were fat with the full wind, and the Katerina scudded briskly over white-capped waves. It was cold on deck. Beneath the sharp sting of the sea spray the air was chill with the approach of winter, and the smell of brine was mixed with the tang of the thunderclouds that brooded on the far horizon.

Florin, snug in a seaman’s leather tunic, sniffed the air and sighed happily. It smelled like freedom.

The stink of Vistein’s gaol was behind them. They had been running ahead of the season’s biting winds for three days now, and the city was safely behind them. Florin thought briefly of the gold they had lost there, but only briefly. He had his freedom and his wits and his ship, and for a man with those three blessings opportunities were always beckoning.

Author’s Note.

Nobody ever did learn exactly what happened to the people of Vistein. There were rumours, of course, each as unlikely as the last. In time there were even legends, ridiculous children’s stories about ratmen and enslavement and long, endless journeys through long, endless passages.

Fortunately, the Empire’s scholars are too wise to pay heed to such nonsense. Many towns are deserted after the crops fail. That’s simple economics. As to the dark maggot holes that had gnawed their subterranean way out of the cliffs and into the caverns that surrounded the town, well, what of them? Geology is a new science in the Empire, and one day they will be explored. One day.

In the meantime, Vistein’s crumbling bones are left to the sea and the wind and the weeds, and if ghosts still dwell there, they dwell alone.