Dead Winter

Chapter VIII

Altdorf

Ulriczeit, 1111

The Courts of Justice, the Imperial Courthouse of Altdorf, was a gigantic stone fortress, crouched almost in the very shadow of the Emperor’s Palace and facing towards the Great Cathedral of Sigmar. Its grey walls were built from massive blocks of ashlar, great bartizans looming out into the wide square that Altdorfers had grimly named the Widows’ Plaza. Soldiers in the gold-chased liveries of the Palace Guard patrolled the walls of the Courthouse. Dozens of halberdiers flanked the gatehouse, their weapons kept at the ready, their faces alert and resolute. From the heights of the Tower of Altdorf, the great round bastion rising above the Courthouse, a score of archers were held in reserve, men chosen for their unerring skill with the bow.

Such were the visible guardians of the fortress. Erich knew there would be others once they were actually inside. Traps and tricks devised by Emperor Sigismund’s dwarf engineers, as well as whatever new surprises Emperor Boris and his minions had added since. Everything had been done to ensure there was no chance of escape for those languishing in the dungeons below the fortress. Erich only hoped nobody had put as much thought into people wanting to break into the Courthouse.

The young captain shifted uneasily in the black robe he wore over his armour. As a concession to speed and mobility, the knights had adopted simple suits of brigandine instead of their scale mail. Erich couldn’t shake a feeling of vulnerability with only a cuirass of boiled leather with a few plates of steel woven between its layers. Even more uncomfortable, however, were the robes that formed their disguise. Wearing the raiment of a priest of Morr wasn’t the sort of thing that cheered a man’s spirits. There was just a chance that the god of death might take offence and decide to summon the perpetrators to his realm to discuss the transgression.

Erich shifted his gaze away from the forbidding Courthouse to inspect the disguises of his comrades. Even with the black robes, he thought they looked too big to pass for Morrite priests. ‘This isn’t going to work,’ Erich grumbled.

‘Have faith in Sigmar, my son,’ admonished the man at the head of the procession, the only one who actually looked the part of a priest. That was only natural, since the man was a priest. Erich didn’t know who he was; he’d kept his face hidden in the folds of his hood and Prince Sigdan had only introduced him as ‘an ally from the clergy’. By the man’s frequent invocations of Sigmar, however, Erich guessed he didn’t belong to the temple of Morr.

The priest set his hand against Erich’s arm, tugging at the coarse cloth of his robe. ‘People see only the habit. They hold Morr and his servants in too much dread to look too closely at the man beneath the hood.’ He nodded his head emphatically. ‘That is the key we will use to set your Grand Master free.’

Erich took the priest’s suggestion and silently asked Sigmar to pour conviction into his heart. While he was at it, he snapped his fingers to invoke the luck of Ranald. On an enterprise like this, the good favour of the god of tricksters couldn’t hurt.

Five knights and a priest. It was a ridiculously small force to try to storm the Imperial Courthouse. The Bread Marchers had tried it with two hundred men and been slaughtered. The very audacity of trying it with this few men gave the captain pause. Yet it was the very impossibility of their mission that gave them their best chance of success.

Emperor Boris, in a fit of rage, had ordered Reiksmarshal Boeckenfoerde to muster the Imperial Army and move against Talabheim. The city-state had offended His Imperial Majesty by breaking off all contact with Altdorf — a precaution against the plague and risk of contamination. Incensed at the audacity of Talabheim’s grand duke, Boris had ignored his generals and his advisors, dispatching the army to forcibly reopen the Talabheim markets, despite the logistical hazards of a winter march. The Emperor’s detractors said it was the loss of tax revenue rather than Talabecland food shipments that worried the greedy Goldgather.

To muster an army big enough to lay siege to Talabheim had required employing peasant conscripts and drawing down the Altdorf garrison. In that fact lay the reason Erich hoped that once inside the Courthouse they might be able to free Baron von Schomberg. As formidable as the troops on the walls appeared, Boris’s ransacking of the garrison meant there would be far fewer guards on the inside.

The six men in the sombre robes walked towards the gatehouse. The guards posted around the portcullis drew away as the Morrite clergy came near, conversation dying away as they shifted uneasily towards the reassuring solidity of the wall behind them. A nervous-looking soldier wearing the armband of a sergeant stepped forwards to accost the approaching priests.

‘You have business within the Courthouse, father?’ the sergeant asked.

The disguised Sigmarite clergyman bowed his head and addressed the soldier in a hollow voice that was midway between a snarl and a whisper. ‘I fear we have business throughout Altdorf, brother. The Black Plague has visited many and set many souls wandering. We are kept quite busy bringing the restless spirits peace and consigning them to the grace of Morr.’

Already anxious, the sergeant’s face went a few shades paler at mention of the Black Plague and the suggestion of ghosts of victims haunting the Courthouse unless they were laid to rest. It was a combination that killed any other questions the soldier might have had. He gestured to the troops in the gatehouse above, and the portcullis began to rise. Nervously, the sergeant waved the priests forwards. The Sigmarite crossed his palms over his breast, making the sign of Morr’s raven. The knights following behind him copied the gesture as they passed the sergeant.

‘They will be keeping the Grand Master in the tower,’ Erich whispered to the priest.

‘Indeed,’ the Sigmarite said. ‘The dungeons will still be crowded with Bread Marchers. Even the plague can’t kill them fast enough to suit Commander Kreyssig.’

Erich could feel his heart pounding against his bones as the invaders entered the inner bailey and stole through the winding passages of the Courts of Justice. Everywhere plaster statues of Verena in her aspect as goddess of justice glowered down at them, her right hand raised and holding a cornucopia for the innocent, her left lowered and holding a grinning skull — death for the guilty. It was a forbidding image, one that became ever more oppressive the more often the knights encountered it. Erich’s skin crawled, an icy trickle seeping along his spine. It was as if the goddess herself glared at him from the stern visage of her statues, promising that this trespass would not go unpunished. Verena, wife of Morr; because justice often demanded death.

It took a supreme effort of will for Erich to extricate himself from the toils of the superstitious dread that held him in its grip. Fortunately they had encountered no human opposition. The guards within the Courthouse seemed just as eager to ignore the grim procession of Morrite priests as those at the gate. Not until they reached the barred entrance to the Tower of Altdorf did they encounter serious opposition. The sentry behind the gate was more attentive than his fellows, with a frustratingly keen level of discipline.

Erich quickly assumed control of the conversation when he saw that morbid platitudes weren’t going to get the door open for them. Pushing the Sigmarite aside, Erich lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

‘Commander Kreyssig sent us,’ he told the guard. ‘He wishes us to offer the prisoner the grace of Morr. I need not tell you that in order to receive that grace, he must unburden himself of sin. The commander was quite interested in hearing that confession.’

The guard behind the gate nodded in understanding, but he still had his suspicions. ‘One of you may pass,’ he said. ‘It needs only one set of ears to listen to a traitor’s words.’

Erich shared a look with his fellow knights. As soon as the gate was pulled open, he stepped across the threshold. For an instant, the guard’s attention shifted to the priests he had told to stay outside. In that moment of distraction, Erich struck, seizing the guard’s neck with one hand and the edge of the gate with the other. Savagely he brought the two together with a sickening crunch. The guard didn’t utter a sound, he just collapsed in the doorway.

The others rushed into the tower, closing the gate behind them and dragging the stunned guard behind the curve of the structure’s spiral stairway.

‘Othmar, take Josef and spike the trap leading up to the guardroom,’ Erich said, his voice falling into his accustomed tone of command. ‘The last thing we need are all of those archers walking in on us. The rest of you will look for the Grand Master. Subdue any guards, but only kill if it is absolutely necessary.’

The knights quickly separated, hurrying to the tiered levels of the tower. Such resistance as they found was quickly vanquished. Erich winced at each conflict, fearing that the sound would alert the garrison, but here the ponderous construction of the Courthouse served them well. The thick walls smothered all noise. This close to the Imperial Palace, silence was an essential. Emperor Boris found the cries of his captives disturbing.

It was Konreid who located Baron von Schomberg’s cell. Erich knew something was wrong when instead of freeing their Grand Master, Konreid came went to find his captain.

‘The Grand Master says he won’t go,’ Konreid reported, tears in the old veteran’s eyes. It was with a sad desperation that he led Erich and the Sigmarite priest to the tower room where von Schomberg was imprisoned.

The Grand Master was thin, a pale shadow of the nobleman who had led the Reiksknecht through countless battles and had dared to defy a tyrant over a matter of conscience. He lay sprawled upon a bed of straw, his only garment a threadbare linen gown. His cell stank of filth, ugly black rats scurrying about in the dark corners. A pot of brown water that looked to have been dredged from the bottom of the Reik rested on the floor beside the captive’s bed. A wooden slop bucket was the only other accoutrement. If not for the rushlight Konreid had wedged between the bars of the cell door, the Grand Master would have been consigned to complete darkness. No window marked the walls of his cell.

Erich took one look at his leader and felt a cold fury blaze up inside him. His knuckles cracked as he gripped the bars, jostling the door in its frame, testing the strength of its construction. It was solidly built, but it wasn’t going to stop him from freeing the Grand Master.

‘Stop,’ the wheezing voice of Baron von Schomberg arrested his attack on the door. ‘That will serve no purpose. You must leave me. It is important that you leave me.’

The young knight peered through the bars, wondering what delusion gripped his master. He could not imagine what tortures von Schomberg must have endured at the hands of Kreyssig’s minions.

Feeble as he was, the Grand Master was still sharp-eyed. He could read the thought he saw etched upon Erich’s face. ‘No, I am not mad. But there are bigger things to concern you than preserving my life. Boris Goldgather has become a tyrant. If he isn’t stopped, he will tear down the Empire with his greed. You must find others, gather an alliance to depose him. That is the only quest left to the Reiksknecht now!’

Erich shook his head. ‘We will do all that,’ he vowed, pressing his shoulder against the door. ‘And you will lead us,’ he grunted as he tried to force the barrier.

‘I will be more valuable to your cause as a martyr,’ von Schomberg declared. ‘I am to be beheaded in two days by Gottwald Drechsler, the Scharfrichter of Altdorf. My death is intended to make the other nobles cower in fear before Emperor Boris. You must make my death have a different meaning. You must make it a lesson that none of them are safe, that if he dares execute the Grand Master of the Reiksknecht, then he will dare even greater outrages. You must make the great and the powerful understand that they can only be safe if they rise up against this tyrant!’

‘Prince Sigdan is already with us,’ Erich told von Schomberg, trying to make his master see that his martyrdom wasn’t necessary.

‘You will need more than just the Prince of Altdorf,’ the Grand Master said.

‘They have other allies,’ the Sigmarite priest declared. Throwing back the hood of his robe, Sigdan’s nameless clergyman friend revealed the face of Arch-Lector Wolfgang Hartwich. Erich and Konreid stood in stunned silence, never suspecting that the second-most powerful man in the Sigmarite temple had been their accomplice.

Hartwich came to the door, smiling kindly at the Grand Master. ‘You see, there is no reason to make this gesture. You can help this great cause much more as a living soldier.’

A ragged cough shook von Schomberg’s frail body. ‘It is too late for that, father,’ he said. ‘That choice has been taken from me.’ Panic shone in the Grand Master’s eyes as Erich made another attempt to force the door. ‘No!’ he commanded. ‘Stay outside! Do not come near me!’ His voice dropped to a mournful whisper. ‘Death sits here beside me. The Black Plague.’

‘You… you have the illness?’ Erich asked, instinctively recoiling from the door.

Grand Master von Schomberg nodded his head sadly. ‘At first Emperor Boris wanted to save my execution for the anniversary of his accession. Now he fears I will die before the Scharfrichter can take my head with his sword.’ The prisoner’s thin hands clenched into fists. ‘But I will survive that long. I must survive that long.’

Erich turned away from the cell door, his hand reaching for the sword hidden beneath his priest’s robes. He relaxed slightly when he saw Othmar and Josef come rushing into the hallway. The troubled expressions on their faces made it clear there wasn’t any more time to debate the question.

‘The archers know something is wrong,’ Othmar reported. ‘We could hear them trying to smash open the trap. It won’t be long before one of them decides to shout down to the courtyard for help.’

The captain turned back to the cell, a bitter taste in his mouth. Snapping to attention, he saluted the sickly von Schomberg. ‘The Grand Master has decided that he can best serve our cause by remaining here,’ Erich told the other knights. Othmar looked ready to object, but the sad resignation he saw on his captain’s face made him realise there was something more, something that made rescue pointless.

‘Get the others,’ Erich ordered. ‘We can use the cellar beneath the tower to gain entrance to the dungeons.’ The other knights nodded. They had studied the floor-plans of the Courthouse carefully before setting out. The dungeons connected to an older network of catacombs, which in turn led back into the dwarf-built culverts. The underground route had been too risky to effect entrance to the tower, but with the alarm raised, there was nothing to lose using it to escape.

‘Sigmar’s strength be with you,’ von Schomberg called out to his knights as they reluctantly left him to await his doom.

‘We will not forget your sacrifice, Grand Master,’ Erich vowed.

Nuln

Ulriczeit, 1111

Gaining access to poor old Erwin’s tannery wasn’t especially hard. After the man’s murder, the place had become shunned, more for the belief that plague victims had done the crime than any fear of the crime itself. A belief was taking hold that the plague was spread by the sickly breath of the diseased. There was a chance that the sickly exhalations of the killers might be lingering in some dark corner of the building. No one wanted to take any chances.

Walther wasn’t sure if he believed the plague was spread that way. What he was sure of was that Fritz hadn’t been killed by anyman, sick or not. His killer was a monster, a rat bigger than a sheepdog, with fangs like daggers. People might laugh at him for believing in such a beast, but when he caught the giant, he would drag it out into the light of day and make his detractors eat their words.

The tannery was a filthy shambles. Housed within a boxy building with mud-brick walls and a floor that was depressed a good three feet below ground level, the tannery had acquired a thin scum of ice along much of the floor. With none to maintain the place, run-off from melting snow in the street had seeped into the building to form a crust of dirty brown frost. The big clay pots where the tanner stored the acids he used to cure hides still exuded the stench of urine despite being frozen solid. A motley confusion of half-cured goatskins and ox hides drooped from ropes suspended from the ceiling while a stinking heap against one wall denoted skins Fritz had never gotten around to.

Rats had, however. The pile of skins showed every sign of being rifled and pillaged by the vermin. Pellets littered the floor around the hides, scraggly scraps of fur and hair were strewn about. Any hint of flesh clinging to the skins had been plundered by the marauding rodents. Nor had the animals contented themselves to the meagre pickings left by the tanner. Several dozen rat carcasses were lying frozen to the floor, their skins turned inside out as their cannibalistic comrades stripped them clean. Walther had no idea how a rat managed to so utterly devour another rat. He was fairly certain he didn’t want to know.

More important than the common vermin, however, had been the spoor of the giant. Walther had spotted a few of the monster’s paw-prints in the ice and the terriers had uncovered a rat pellet as big as his own hand. It was obvious the giant had marked out the tannery as part of its range. The giant would be back to forage, and the rat-catcher would be ready for it.

A dozen box-like traps had been set up around the tannery. One thing Walther had always noticed about rats was their tendency to scurry in straight lines, keeping one flank against a wall at all times if possible. Playing upon that verminous habit, he placed his traps against the edges of the walls, far enough away from any holes or windows the giant might use to creep into the building that it wouldn’t get suspicious. Each of the traps was the product of his own design, operating upon a counterbalance that would use the giant’s own weight to trigger it. The rodent would slink into the box to retrieve the scrap of beef placed inside as bait. The increased pressure would tip the counter-

balance and release the taut bowstring suspended above the box. Walther knew the design would work. He’d spent several hours adjusting the counterbalance after normal-sized rats sprang some of the traps. The bowstring had sliced the inquisitive vermin clean in half.

‘Aren’t you going to arm the rest of the traps?’ Hugo asked when Walther rejoined him in their hiding spot between the wooden vats Fritz had used to soak the hides after curing them.

The rat-catcher sighed as he climbed down between the vats. He pushed away the affectionate welcome of the terriers and explained to his apprentice for the fifth time why some of the traps weren’t armed. ‘A rat is a clever brute,’ he reminded Hugo. ‘The traps will be new to him. He’ll study them a bit when he sees them, sniff about and then play it very careful. Now, if he nips inside real quick, he might get away. So I leave the traps closest to the windows and holes baited but unarmed. That way he can get inside and treat himself to a bit of beef. It’ll make him figure the other traps are safe too. And that’ll be his last mistake.’

At first Hugo nodded, but then he began to shake his head. ‘I don’t see how this giant can get inside unless we leave the door open. The windows are too narrow and those holes you are talking about wouldn’t let Alex wiggle through.’ Hugo patted the head of one of the ratters, provoking a frenzy of tail-wagging.

Walther sighed again and explained again some of the peculiarities of a rat’s physiology. ‘A rat’s skull isn’t solid,’ he said. ‘The whole thing can dislocate, sort of collapse inwards so the vermin can squeeze into tight places. If its flattened skull can fit, then the rest of the brute will follow. I’ve seen one-pound rats crawl out of holes no wider than my thumb. Our giant has lots of options to get back in here if he has a mind to.’

The explanation seemed to sink in this time. Hugo’s eyes roved across the walls of the tannery, staring at the narrow windows and peering into the dark recesses of the holes in the plaster.

Walther left his apprentice to his vigil, turning his attention to the cold meal Zena had prepared for him. A bit of rye bread, an almost shapeless nub of cheese and a sausage that he prayed hadn’t been bought from Ostmann. Not the most lavish supper, but it was the thought that counted.

As he moved to take his first bite of the bread, Walther’s face turned upwards. His hand froze before it could reach his mouth. His eyes bugged in shock. A grim pallor spread across his skin.

Staring down at him with beady red eyes was a creature spawned from a madman’s nightmare. Squatting among the rafters, its whiskers twitching, its hideous naked tail dangling obscenely from its hindquarters, was the giant rat. The smells of the tannery must have hidden its presence from the dogs and the rat-catcher’s labour with the traps had kept his own attention focused downwards, not upwards. How long the wicked thing had been sitting up there, watching Walther and Hugo, it was impossible to say. Perhaps it had been the smell of his supper that had lured the giant from whatever hole it had been hiding in. Whatever the circumstances, Walther was getting his first glimpse of the monster he had taken it upon himself to track and trap.

Hugo’s words about needing bigger dogs came back to him as an unheeded premonition. The rat seemed to Walther’s eyes to be as big as a pony, its back arched, its fur standing out in angry bristles. Its ghastly fangs, those chisel-like teeth which had visited such horrendous damage upon Fritz, glistened in the darkness.

The traps were a joke! This brute would never fit inside one of them! With those fangs it could gnaw its way clean through even if it did get caught. The bowstring wouldn’t make a scratch on all that bristly brown fur.

Walther was about to whisper a warning to Hugo when one of the terriers, noticing the rat-catcher’s fright and following the direction of his gaze, looked up and saw the giant. A low growl rumbled from the dog’s throat.

The giant rat’s beady eyes gleamed from the shadows, its hideous fangs clashing together. Walther had half-expected the monster to flee when the dog growled at it. For a second, disappointment flickered through his heart, fear that his quarry would escape.

Disappointment evaporated as stark terror raced down the rat-catcher’s spine. The giant wasn’t scampering off. Instead it launched itself from the beam, leaping straight at the littler dog. Horror flared through Walther’s mind as the verminous body hurtled past him, its bristly hair and scaly tail brushing against his cheek. The colossal rodent struck the terrier head-first, the momentum of its leap sending both itself and the dog crashing against one of the vats, knocking it over.

A sickening yelp escaped from the little dog before its life was crushed between the rat’s snapping fangs. The monster held its victim by the neck, shaking its own head from side to side to dig its fangs deeper into the terrier’s throat. Blood sprayed from the mangled dog, steaming on the icy floor.

Without thinking, the stunned rat-catcher struck out at the marauding rat. Walther’s pole cracked against the brute’s flank. The giant didn’t even squeak in pain as it dropped the dead dog and spun around to bare its fangs at the man who had dared attack it. Blood dribbled from the giant’s whiskers, flecks of foam oozed between its sharp teeth. There was an almost calculating malevolence in the rat’s eyes as it glared up at Walther.

The rat-catcher cringed away from the monster’s gaze, his mind reeling with horror. The image of Fritz with his throat torn out, the loathsome thought of the cannibalised rats with their innards eaten away and their skins turned inside out, these came crawling through his brain like black prophets of doom.

The giant was tensing itself to leap at the paralysed rat-catcher when the brute was suddenly struck from the side. This time it cried out, an angry chirp that sounded like steel scraping against steel. Hugo jabbed at it a second time with his pole and the brute spun around, springing at the man without any warning. Hugo screamed as the giant’s weight tore the pole from his grip and the fangs stabbed into his hand.

Hugo’s scream snapped the remaining ratters from their fright. Snarling, the two dogs fell upon the giant, one seizing an ear in its jaws, the other darting in to snap at the rat’s belly. The giant ripped away from Hugo, turning on these new attackers.

While the monster was busy trying to fend off the dogs, Walther drove in upon it. A thick hunting knife in his hand, he came at the brute from behind, stabbing its back again and again, thrusting the blade deep into the vermin’s flesh. Pained squeaks streamed from the rat as blood bubbled from its wounds. A terrible frenzy came upon it, enabling it to shake free of the dogs and drive Walther away with a lash of its naked tail.

The effort came too late to do the giant any good. The rat had taken too much damage; Walther’s knife had pierced past ribs to puncture the brute’s lungs. Wheezing, panting, it hobbled a few paces, then slipped on the icy floor. The dogs were on it in an instant, tearing at its throat and avenging their fallen comrade.

Walther shook with excitement, that curious alchemy of terror and jubilation familiar to any victorious soldier. ‘We did it!’ he shouted, his voice so loud they might have heard him back in the Black Rose. ‘Get ready, Bremer! You’re going to have a heart attack when you see what I’ve brought you!’

The rat-catcher turned towards his apprentice. Hugo was sitting on the floor, hugging his arm against his side. Walther clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Did you hear! Our fortune is made!’

Hugo nodded weakly, then his face contorted in a grimace of pain. ‘Very… nice… Herr Schill,’ he muttered. ‘But… do you think… you could… get my fingers… out of its mouth…’

Middenheim

Ulriczeit, 1111

‘Your grace!’

Franz’s cry had Mandred clenching his teeth. It was bad enough that he had been unable to shake his bodyguard, but now it seemed the knight was determined to let everyone in the Westgate district know that the Prince of Middenheim was walking the streets.

Mandred pulled his wool cloak a bit closer and ducked into the closest alleyway. For a moment, he thought about ducking out the other end of the alley but then decided that Franz would only catch up to him again. Or maybe the buffoon would start asking around the neighbourhood if anybody had seen the Graf’s son prowling about.

When Franz appeared at the mouth of the alley, Mandred grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up against the wall. The knight’s hand fell to the grip of his sword, but quickly relaxed when he recognised the prince’s features beneath the brim of the battered fur cap.

‘Your grace,’ Franz said, trying to affect a stiff salute within the narrow confines of the alley.

Mandred rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘You do understand that I’m trying to go unnoticed,’ he reminded the knight.

A bewildered expression came across Franz’s stony features. ‘Of course, your grace,’ he said. ‘You made that clear when we left the palace.’

‘Then can I ask you to stop addressing me as “your grace”?’ Mandred snapped. ‘And stop bowing and saluting every time I look twice at you. We’re supposed to be ordinary peasants, nothing more.’

Franz nodded. ‘Yes, your grace.’

Mandred felt an ache growing at the back of his skull. Rumours of refugees sneaking into the city had reached the palace, accompanied by rumours that incidents of plague had started cropping up in the poorer sections of the city. Graf Gunthar had already dispatched troops to investigate the rumours, even going so far as to request Thane Hardin send some of his dwarfs down into the old Undercity to see if someone had found a way up through the tunnels. His father would put a stop to the stream of refugees once he uncovered the source. Mandred was determined to keep that from happening.

No outsider could possibly manage to sneak into Middenheim without help, a native of the city who knew how to get around the Graf’s guards. Mandred was going to find that someone. Find them and warn them before his father could step in and stop the flow of refugees.

If he could only find one of the refugees and convince them of his sympathy, then Mandred might be able to learn who was helping them. But so far he had had no luck in finding anyone who didn’t belong in the city. And the longer he looked, the greater the chance that Franz’s blundering would give his presence away.

‘Perhaps we should go and check the Pink Rat again, your grace?’ Franz suggested, licking his lips at the thought of the notorious tavern.

Mandred closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to Ulric for guidance, or at least the self-control to keep him from strangling his own bodyguard.

The prayer for patience, it seemed, went unheeded, but a cry for help came drifting down the alleyway. It was the sort of appeal Mandred would have responded to anyway, but a thrill coursed through his body as he recognised a foreign tone to the shout. He opened his eyes and stared up into the grey sky. ‘Thank you, Wolf Father,’ he said before sprinting down the alley in the direction of the shout.

‘Your grace!’ Franz called after him.

Mandred didn’t slacken his pace. The cry hadn’t been repeated. Instead it had been replaced by the crash of steel and the inarticulate snarls of fighting men. The prince drew his own sword. He might have donned a simple horsehide sheath as part of his disguise, but the sword was the same keenly balanced dwarf blade with which he fought his duels with van Cleeve.

Through the maze of alleyways and side-streets, Mandred pursued the sounds of conflict until he burst out into a little square with a stone fountain at its centre. Dilapidated timber longhouses, their tile roofs groaning beneath a heavy snowfall, bordered the square on every side. Snow was piled high against their walls, almost to the very eaves, and a thick layer of snow carpeted the ground inside the little square. At once, the prince noticed the bright crimson splotches marring the ground.

Three men were sprawled in the snow, blades and bludgeons lying beside their bodies. Four ruffians in wool breeks and rough cowhide cloaks circled a lone fighter dressed in a heavy black cloak and wielding a fat-bladed broadsword.

It took Mandred only a moment to decide which side of the fight to make his own. ‘If it takes four of you rats to fight one man, maybe you’ve taken up the wrong vocation,’ the prince shouted. The combatants turned in surprise at his cry.

‘There were six of them when they started,’ the man in the black cloak boasted, his accent clipped and guttural, the mark of a Reiklander’s voice.

‘Stay out of this!’ one of the cowhide ruffians growled. He gestured with an ugly iron bludgeon at the Reiklander and again at the third body lying in the snow. ‘This scum has brought the Black Plague into the city!’

‘So you thought you’d avoid the plague by getting into a swordfight?’ Mandred said. He smiled with cool confidence at the four thugs. ‘A fine idea. I’ll be happy to oblige anyone who thinks six against two is honourable combat.’

‘Take the meddler,’ the thug with the iron club growled at two of his companions. ‘Hans and I will finish the outlander.’

The ruffians separated into pairs. While the man with the club and a brutish thug wielding a crooked long-sword converged upon the Reiklander, Mandred found himself opposed by a scar-faced rogue gripping an axe and a wiry villain armed with a horseman’s mace. Just from the way they came at him, the prince decided that the maceman was the more experienced of the two and therefore the more dangerous. Before his foes could quite get to either side of him, Mandred lunged forwards, seeking to take the maceman by surprise.

The villain drew back, but not quite with the shock Mandred had hoped for. Instead of leaving himself defenceless, the man twisted aside from the prince’s sword and delivered a hurried swipe of his mace that glanced off the boy’s shoulder. Had it landed more squarely and with more force, the blow might have staggered Mandred and left him open to a more conclusive attack. As it was, the prince’s body was simply jostled to one side, throwing his balance off for a fleeting instant.

Even that brief interval might have been too long if the axeman had been a more competent fighter. Instead the ruffian was still trying to get his mind around Mandred’s sudden attack. The prince didn’t give the man the chance to gather his wits. With the maceman momentarily on the defensive, Mandred swung around and slashed at the other ruffian. His sword rasped through the thug’s knuckles just beneath the head of his axe. The man shrieked as blood spurted from his maimed hand and severed fingers tumbled into the snow.

‘Ranald’s teeth!’ the maceman roared, swinging his weapon at Mandred’s head. ‘You’ll pay for that, churl!’

The prince easily ducked under the swipe, bringing his sword in a downward sweep that sliced across the ruffian’s thigh. ‘You’d better flee before you really get hurt,’ he taunted the thug.

The maceman’s face contorted with rage. Snarling, he flung himself at Mandred, bringing his mace hurtling downwards with enough force to shatter the prince’s shoulder. Unfortunately, he signalled the attack a little too broadly. As his arm came rushing down, his foe was darting forwards, thrusting the point of his sword into the ruffian’s throat. The mace fell into the snow as the thug clasped his wound, trying to stop the blood gushing from a severed artery. He staggered towards the fountain, then collapsed into the frozen pool.

Mandred wiped the gore from his blade and looked over to see how the Reiklander was faring. There was a fourth body lying in the snow now, and a cowhide thug fleeing down an alleyway. Like the prince, the Reiklander was cleansing the blood from his sword with the cloak of his fallen enemy.

‘One down and one in retreat,’ the Reiklander said, nodding behind Mandred where the maimed axeman could be seen creeping along a little side-street. ‘Seems we are evenly matched, friend.’

Mandred shook his head and sheathed his sword. ‘You forget that you accounted for two before I even got here.’

A troubled frown came onto the Reiklander’s face. The tip of his boot kicked against the body the ruffians had described as a foreigner. ‘This one was mine too. Defending myself against him was what brought those jackals.’ He chuckled grimly. ‘Like any scavenger, they smelled blood.’

The prince stared down at the dead man. His clothes had a Solland cut to them and his boots were of raw wool, something rarely seen in the north. ‘Why did he attack you?’

‘He was afraid I would talk to the wrong people,’ the Reiklander answered. A sharpness came into his eyes. For the first time Mandred appreciated the fact that the foreigner still had his sword drawn. ‘He was right. I do intend to talk to the wrong people.’

Mandred stared hard at the Reiklander. He appeared to carry himself with a military bearing, not surprising in a man who had just killed four enemies by himself. The clothes he wore were rough, an assortment of furs and wool such as any peasant might cobble together to survive the winter, but the sword in his hand was clearly a blade of quality, the surface etched with elaborate scrollwork. The overall impression was that, like the prince, here was a man trying to present himself as being of a much lower station than the one he belonged to.

‘Who would the wrong people be?’ Mandred asked.

‘Anyone interested in refugees and how they are getting into the city,’ the Reiklander answered. His body grew tense beneath the black cloak, his eyes watching Mandred for the slightest flicker of hostility.

‘If I told you I was one of the wrong people, would you lower your sword?’ the prince asked. He shrugged his shoulders when the Reiklander kept his blade at the ready. ‘As you would have it, but it strikes me that you could use a friend right now.’

The Reiklander relaxed slightly. ‘You have my gratitude for helping me against these jackals, but I am afraid I must make my own way. I need to see Graf Gunthar.’

Before Mandred could react to the Reiklander’s startling statement, there was a commotion in the alleyway behind him. Sword drawn, his face distorted by panic, Franz came rushing into the square. The knight drew up short when he saw the bodies strewn about the snow. He darted a vicious look at the Reiklander who returned it in kind, then focused his attention on the prince.

‘Your grace, are you all right?’

Franz’s slip had the Reiklander blinking in shock. ‘Your grace?’ he echoed the bodyguard.

Mandred ripped the tattered hat from his head. ‘Prince Mandred of Middenheim,’ he announced.

The Reiklander snapped his heels together and bowed to the prince. ‘Sir Othmar, late of the Reiksknecht, at your service, your grace.’

‘Well met, Sir Othmar,’ Mandred said, setting aside for the moment how and why a knight from the Reiks-knecht had made the journey all the way from Altdorf to Middenheim. For the moment, he was only interested in finding out who was smuggling refugees into the city. More importantly, making that discovery before Graf Gunthar.

‘Now that introductions are out of the way, perhaps we should discuss what you wanted to see my father about. And why people are trying to kill you.’