“I can understand that,” Rudi said. It didn’t matter, he told
himself, despite the sudden pang of disappointment. The face of Gunther Walder
was still vivid in his memory, and that was the only image of a father he’d ever
needed. “After all, they were executed as heretics.” Burned like their
portraits, he thought, and forced the uncomfortable notion away as quickly as he
could. He gazed at von Karien, trying to read his expression, but the nobleman’s
face was neutral. “I suppose there was no doubt of their guilt?”
“None whatsoever.” Von Karien shook his head. “They were
taken in the very act of performing some blasphemous ritual. Fortunately, we
were able to intervene before they could complete it.”
“You were there?” Rudi asked, stunned at the revelation.
“Of course I was,” said von Karien. “It was my duty as a
member of a knightly order. I knew the estate, and coordinated the assault on
it.” He sighed, and replaced his tankard on the table. “You might as well know
the rest now, as hear it from someone else later. It was me who denounced
Manfred to the witch hunters in the first place.” He watched Rudi intently,
clearly wondering how he was going to take this latest surprise.
“I see,” Rudi said levelly. He took another gulp of the thin,
sour ale, more to help order his thoughts than because he wanted it. “Can you
tell me why you did that?” He kept expecting some flare of violent emotion to
shake him, but nothing came. Manfred and Gertrude were just names to him,
whatever their blood relationship had been, and he couldn’t bring himself to
care for them, or their hideous fate, at least not yet.
“I had no choice,” von Karien said. “My duty demanded it, to
the Empire, and to civilisation itself. How could I put family feeling ahead of
that? The damage they were doing to everything I swore to protect…” He shook
his head. “How they were ensnared in the first place, I don’t know. By the time
they were taken, neither was in a fit state to answer questions. Neither were
most of their acolytes. They all put up quite a fight.” He shook his head again,
clearly moved by the memory. “There were sorcerers among them too. Those we
burned first, of course.”
“I see.” Rudi nodded. “And did anyone manage to escape?”
“At least one, we assumed.” Von Karien’s eyes were fixed on
the past, reliving the traumatic events of a decade and a half ago. “After all,
someone must have spirited the boy away, although how and why we had no idea.”
He shrugged. “I’d always assumed he was long dead, sacrificed to the blasphemous
thing they worshipped.” His eyes fell on Rudi again, cold and appraising. “Then
you turned up tonight on my doorstep, stirring up memories I’d rather leave
buried.”
“I can understand that,” Rudi said sincerely. He took another
mouthful of ale that he didn’t really want. “What made you suspect your cousin
in the first place?”
Von Karien sighed. “I’d spent more time among the minions of
Chaos than any sane man would care to. By the time I returned to civilisation, I
knew the signs of their presence. Even the ones most people would miss.” He
emptied his tankard. “I tried to dismiss my suspicions at first, telling myself
I’d become so used to looking out for the taint of the Dark Powers that I was
seeing their traces where none truly existed, but after a month or two, I could
no longer deny the evidence of my own eyes. I returned to Altdorf, and sought
the advice of the Templars of Sigmar.”
“That must have been difficult for you,” Rudi said tactfully.
“It was.” Von Karien began to pour himself another drink, and
frowned at the last trickle of ale as it poured from the jug. There was barely
enough in his tankard to cover the bottom of it. “But it was the right thing to
do.” He laughed harshly. “Of course there were those who said I’d only denounced
Manfred to get my hands on his inheritance, petty-minded maggots. I soon put a
stop to that, though.”
“How?” Rudi asked, intrigued.
“I gave the whole thing over to the Church,” said von Karien.
“I didn’t want the estates, or the mansion, or the money. Just thinking about
owning anything my cousin had left made my skin crawl. Let it do some good for
once, make restitution for the evil that the family had done.” He gestured
around them again. “This pest-hole is all that’s left of the family fortune, and
I’d have burned it to the ground by now if I didn’t need a roof over my head.”
He looked at Rudi appraisingly. “Disappointed?”
“Not really.” Rudi thought about it, trying to be as honest
as he could be. “I came here looking for answers, not money or a title, and from
what I’ve seen of Chaos, I wouldn’t want either if they’d been touched by it.”
He nodded at his bow and backpack, still lying beside the table. “Besides, I’m a
woodsman. It’s all I know, apart from a few months of picking drunks out of the
gutter in Marienburg. Whatever your friend has to say about my lineage, that’s
all I want to get back to: a hut in the forest where I can be left alone to live
my life in peace.”
“Well said.” Von Karien was looking at him with a strange
expression on his face. “Not many people would have felt the same, I can promise
you that.” He stood, a little more slowly. “Is there an inn I can find you at
tomorrow?” Rudi shook his head.
“I haven’t found anywhere to stay yet,” he said. “Could you
recommend somewhere around here?” Von Karien laughed.
“Not to anyone I liked.” He turned, picking up a candle from
the table. “It doesn’t matter. There are plenty of rooms I don’t use. Some of
them have beds in, I think.”
“Thank you,” Rudi said, still trying to assimilate the events
of the evening. Von Karien was strange, it was true, but he seemed willing to at
least entertain the possibility that Rudi was indeed his long-lost relative.
Perhaps he was as pleased as Rudi had hoped he would be; to find some solace in
what appeared to be a solitary and shunned existence. Despite himself, he yawned
widely. “That’s very kind of you.”
“We’ll talk more tomorrow,” von Karien said. He stood aside,
and gestured to the doorway. “Help yourself to a candle.” Rudi did so, picking
up his pack and weapons with the other hand. As he passed von Karien, a new
thought occurred to him.
“The missing boy,” he said, “Manfred’s son. What was his
name?”
“Rudolph,” von Karien said. He glanced across at von
Eckstein’s letter, discarded among the remains of the meal they’d shared. “But
I’m sure you can’t be surprised by that. It’s often shortened to Rudi, isn’t
it?”
Rudi awoke slowly the next morning, a little disorientated by
the absence of the faint rocking motion that he’d become used to in his time
aboard the
Reikmaiden.
A thin shaft of sunlight was forcing its way
between the warped wooden shutters, leaking inwards to illuminate the room in
muted tones of pale grey, and after a moment he remembered where he was: von
Karien’s house. Last night’s conversation replayed itself in his mind as he
struggled back to full wakefulness, and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
It seemed he had the answers he’d been so desperate to find
at last. Unfortunately, they only appeared to confirm his worst fears. If he
truly was Rudolph von Karien, then his legacy was a dark one indeed: the son of
two heretics, dabblers in the darkest of arts, he could hardly expect Gerhard to
stop his obsessive pursuit of him now. Just the knowledge, which he could no
longer deny, that his adopted father had been a member of a Chaos cult back in
Kohlstadt had been enough to keep the witch hunter on his trail, at least until
their mutual confrontation with Magnus and his disease-riddled minions in the
most blighted corner of Marienburg. If Gerhard ever learned the truth about his
origins, Rudi was sure that he would redouble his efforts to track him down.
Pulling on his britches, he took stock of his situation. At
least things weren’t quite as bleak as they might be. He’d found shelter, and
possibly an ally in Osric von Karien. His father’s cousin was undeniably
eccentric, but given his tragic history and the opprobrium that had overtaken
the family name, that was hardly surprising. The authorities seemed to think
that his probity was beyond doubt, at any rate, and that might be enough to
shield him from the witch hunters too, if his strange relative could be
persuaded to vouch for him.
Yawning, he filled the washbowl from the pitcher that von
Karien had provided the evening before, and banished his whirling thoughts and
the last vestiges of sleep in the welcome shock of cold water.
His host hadn’t been exaggerating about the house having
plenty of extra space, Rudi thought. The room he’d been given was evidently
unused, at least in the normal course of events. Indeed, it was quite obvious
even to a cursory glance that no one had set foot in it for months, if not
years. A thick layer of dust covered everything, and he could clearly see his
own footprints on the worn wooden floorboards.
The bed had been comfortable enough, though. The mattress
smelled faintly damp and musty, it was true, and the straw within it had
coagulated into hard lumps in several places, but to someone used to sleeping
outdoors that had hardly been a problem. Bundled up in his travelling blanket,
his head pillowed on his rucksack as usual, Rudi had slept far more soundly than
he’d expected to. Up on the second floor the ever-present clamour of the city
streets was muted to some extent, which had probably helped as well.
Buckling his sword belt on, Rudi made his way to the door. He
hesitated at the threshold, glancing back at his bow and his pack, and then
shrugged. They’d be safe enough, and he didn’t see any reason to take them with
him.
The corridor outside was shrouded in darkness, as it had been
the night before when von Karien had shown him up to his room and bidden him
goodnight, but enough light penetrated to reveal a little more of his
surroundings. Several doors, all firmly closed, receded into the distance, the
dust outside them undisturbed, except for the one immediately opposite his. Here
the ubiquitous grey blanket was channelled with a thin, clear path, leading
directly to it from the landing. Rudi didn’t need to call his tracking skills
into play to infer that this was von Karien’s bedroom, chosen, he suspected,
simply because it was the nearest one to the stairway. Unsure whether his host
had risen yet he paused, just long enough to knock hesitantly on the thick
wooden panel.
There was no reply, and he was just about to move on when
something caught his eye. A single hair, stretched across the latch, practically
invisible in the all-pervading gloom. Had it not been for his tracker’s
instincts, which had been trained to register such minute incongruities as a
matter of course, he would never have noticed it.
Shrugging, he turned away. Evidently, Osric von Karien wasn’t
quite ready to give him the benefit of the doubt yet after all. Well, he could
hardly blame the man for that.
The landing was just as small as he remembered from the
previous night, although the tenuous daylight seeping into it did reveal one
more detail that he’d overlooked on his way to bed. What he’d taken for a deep
patch of shadow the evening before turned out to be a narrow flight of stairs,
disappearing upwards towards the roof space. To his complete lack of surprise,
though, no one seemed to have used it in a very long time.
“The servants’ quarters,” von Karien said, appearing from the
floor below, and immediately noticing the direction of his gaze. “Currently
unoccupied, of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?” Rudi asked.
Von Karien shrugged. “Would you want to work for a man with
my reputation and family name? Even around here there are precious few that
desperate.” He turned, and began to descend the stairs again. “I just came to
see if you were awake. There’s breakfast downstairs if you can stomach it.”
Suddenly aware that he was hungry, Rudi followed.
“It does seem a little odd, though,” he said, as they passed
through the first floor landing. A corridor led off the stairwell, just as it
did upstairs, although here it evidently provided access to the house’s suite of
living rooms. To Rudi’s complete lack of surprise the carpet of dust was almost
undisturbed here too, although a few blurred footprints showed that von Karien
was evidently in the habit of visiting one of them from time to time. “The Graf
von Karien doing his own cooking and laundry, just like anyone else.”
“Osric,” von Karien said. “If you must call me something,
call me that. I renounced the title when I gave up the estates, and I prefer not
to use the family name if I can avoid it.” His voice mellowed a little. “Even if
your claim is substantiated, you might do better to stick with ‘Walder’. I would
in your position.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Rudi said, following him down the
final flight of stairs and into the kitchen. A pot of porridge was bubbling on
the stove, and he sat gratefully at the table while von Karien ladled most of
the contents into a couple of crude earthenware bowls and dropped them on the
wooden surface between them. It was thick and lumpy. The nobleman was evidently
as accomplished a maker of porridge as he was of stew. He sat down opposite
Rudi, and spooned up a glutinous mouthful.
“Besides, I could hardly drag a valet around with me in the
Chaos Wastes, could I? I had to fend for myself then, and I don’t see any reason
to break the habit now. Too hot for you?”
“No, it’s fine.” Rudi took a cautious mouthful, and decided
that it was no worse than he’d expected. He continued eating, grateful that at
least it was warm and filling. “So what do we do now? Go and look for this
friend of yours?”
Von Karien nodded.
“I can leave word at his house that I need to talk to him,
and if we’re lucky, he might be at the temple today already.”