“Who told you?” Rudi sat, and accepted a haunch of the
sizzling meat. It was only as he began to chew it that the full extent of his
hunger struck home, and it was all he could do to restrain himself from bolting
the food down like a starving dog. Gofrey watched him eat for a moment with an
air of quiet amusement, and then started in on the coney’s other hind leg.
“News travels, even in the Wasteland,” he said around a
mouthful of rabbit, leaning forward to sprinkle another pinch of herbs over the
second one. As the first couple of mouthfuls eased his hunger, and he began to
eat more slowly, Rudi began to appreciate the subtle flavour of his own portion.
Clearly, Gofrey had a keen appreciation of herbs, which went far beyond the
practicalities of his calling. “Not all of it by the most conventional of
routes.”
“You came here to meet someone,” Rudi said. He glanced around
the clearing, looking for evidence of other footprints, but night was falling in
earnest, and the fire didn’t cast enough light to reveal them.
The healer nodded. “I did. There are places like this all
over the Empire, and far beyond it too, probably; anywhere there are people
living in fear of the ignorant. People like me, and your friend Hanna.”
“What do you know about Hanna?” Rudi asked, suspicion flaring
again. He glanced round at the encircling trees, half expecting Gerhard and his
mercenaries to ooze out of the shadows.
Gofrey held out his hand. “I know she can do this. Or
something very like it.” A small flame, tinted a delicate blue like the skies of
midsummer, burst into life in his upturned palm. Rudi watched it flicker for a
moment, bemused, and then nodded slowly.
“You’re a hedge wizard.”
Gofrey echoed the gesture, and closed his hand, extinguishing
the magical flame.
“I see you’ve learned enough not to call me a witch, at any
rate.” He held out another portion of rabbit. “Thank you for that.”
“How do you know about Hanna?” Rudi asked, accepting the
sizzling meat eagerly. “Or me, for that matter.” He shivered, not entirely from
the cold. “Have you been watching us?” He wasn’t sure how that was possible, but
some mages, he knew, were able to see through other eyes, or cloak themselves in
other forms.
The hedge-wizard laughed. “Some of us stick together,” he
said. “We meet from time to time and pass on whatever information we have to
share, especially about anyone the witch hunters are taking an interest in. The
news about you left Marienburg almost as soon as you did, but it travelled a lot
faster than a riverboat.”
“Can you help her?” Rudi asked.
Gofrey nodded. “I can try, but it sounds as if all she needs
is rest.”
Rudi shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. If you have
friends, and they know about people like Hanna, they must be able to help keep
her safe.”
The hedge wizard took another bite of rabbit before replying,
clearly buying the time to order his thoughts.
“That’s probably not such a good idea,” he said at last. “Her
best chance is to apply to one of the colleges in Altdorf. That’s the only way
anyone with the gift will ever be truly safe, and the colleges don’t like us.
They’re almost as bad as the witch hunters.”
“You mean you think she’ll betray you if they accept her,” Rudi said.
Gofrey smiled ruefully. “I hope not, but I’ll be moving on from here long
before you get to Altdorf, just to be on the safe side. The rest of my friends
in the Wheel wouldn’t thank me for placing them in the same situation.”
“Hanna wouldn’t do anything like that!” Rudi said hotly.
“We’ll all do whatever it takes to survive, my young friend.” Gofrey
shrugged. “She might surprise you yet.”
Rudi tried not to think about the expression on Gerrit’s face as he lay
twitching in the snow, or the bloody ruins of the Black Cap gunners thrashing
about on the jetty.
The mage continued. “Besides, how much of a chance do you think she’ll have
of getting a college to accept her if they find out she’s been consorting with
witches? They’ll burn her on the spot.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Rudi said. There was much the man
wasn’t telling him, of that he was sure, but he didn’t press the point. Instead,
he stood, and approached the stand of trees. “I’d better get some more wood.
Like you said, it’s going to be a cold night.”
Dawn crept slowly through the curtain of trees, shrouded in
mist. Rudi started awake, grateful for the residual heat of the fire, the embers
of which still glowed warmly in their blanket of ash. He stretched, yawning,
feeling surprisingly refreshed. He’d expected to be awake for most of the night,
but the warmth of the fire and the food in his belly had combined to make him
drowsy surprisingly fast. Or perhaps the herbs that Gofrey had used on the
rabbits were for more than enhancing the flavour.
Struck by that thought, and the sudden memory of how Hanna
had drugged the mercenaries the night they’d helped Fritz to escape, he sat
upright, reaching for his sword again. Then he relaxed. The hedge wizard was
snoring loudly, wrapped up in his cloak against the cold. Rudi clambered to his
feet, feeling faintly foolish, and went to find a convenient tree.
Returning, with the pressure in his bladder comfortably
relieved, he found Gofrey awake and pottering around the clearing.
“Ah, there you are.” The healer hailed him. “I was beginning
to think you’d fallen in the swamp.” He sat on a convenient tree branch, and
started tying what looked like a lump of moss around his ankle. “I’m afraid
we’ll have to put off breakfast until we get back to the landing.”
“I can wait,” Rudi assured him. Compared to the privations he
and Hanna had endured on their journey to Marienburg, a late breakfast was
barely worth considering. The mist was rising fast, and he would be able to set
off and find his way back to the settlement without any danger fairly soon. As
if to confirm the fact, a shaft of watery sunshine struck through the
latticework of branches enclosing the glade, turning the frost-speckled grass
into a rippling mirror. He nodded at the poultice. “What’s that for?”
“Sprained ankle,” Gofrey explained. “Blackmoss makes the
flesh swell up, and the skin look bruised. We’ll need some excuse for staying
out here all night.” He limped for a couple of paces, nodded in quiet
satisfaction, and resumed his normal gait. “I’ll just need to hobble about a bit
for a couple of days. Then the next boat to put in will bring an urgent letter
from my cousin about a sick relative, I’ll wave everyone here goodbye, and find
somewhere else quiet and in need of a healer.”
Rudi nodded. It was clear that despite his assurances, Gofrey
was still determined to move on. Well, he couldn’t fault the man for being
cautious. He’d obviously stayed ahead of the witch hunters for a long time,
decades judging by his appearance. He tried to imagine what that must be like,
never being able to settle anywhere or fully trust anyone, and smiled sourly. He
didn’t have to imagine it. He might not have mystical powers, but he was in
almost exactly the same position as the hedge wizard.
Not quite, though. He still had a goal beyond simple
survival, in a world that seemed to become more bewildering and threatening the
more he discovered about it. The mystery of his origins continued to torment
him, the questions buzzing around his head like flies around a midden; questions
he hoped to find answers to in Altdorf. All he had to do was evade his enemies,
track down some surviving member of the von Karien family, and…
Well, after that he wasn’t sure. He supposed it would depend
on the answers he got. Once Hanna was safe, he’d have to move on again, that
much was certain, perhaps further upriver. There were vast tracts of woodland
beyond Altdorf, he knew, and he had little doubt that he could live well in
them. A lifelong forester, he should be able to elude any pursuers with little
difficulty in such an environment. It would be a dubious haven at best, though.
Bandits had fled to the forests for generations, and fouler things by far had
always lurked in their deepest clearings: things grown more numerous and
desperate than ever since the tide of war had turned in the Empire’s favour,
leaving the flotsam of the Chaos invasion stranded in isolated pockets wherever
they could find places to hide.
Or perhaps they were closer at hand. As the sunlight
strengthened, he began to see tracks in the floor of the glade, as he’d hoped to
the previous night: his and Gofrey’s, of course, but others too, entering and
leaving from other directions. One set caught his eye at once, standing out from
the rest because of their depth. Whoever made them was far larger and heavier
than an ordinary man. There were other indentations too, just ahead of each
step, which seemed to indicate that the feet were equipped with fearsome talons.
His mind racing, Rudi looked more closely at the prints. As
he’d half expected, they were accompanied by a second pair, quite normal
looking, left by a woman’s shoe.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Greta and Hans had been here?”
he asked, as casually as he could. There could be no doubt in his mind. He’d
followed the tracks left by the mutant, who had once been Hans Katzenjammer,
into the woods outside Kohlstadt, and he’d seen them again in the offices of the
lawyer in Marienburg, who had apparently been a part of Magnus’ Chaos cult.
These prints couldn’t have been left by anyone, or anything, else. That meant
that the woman who’d left her own alongside them must have been Greta
Reifenstahl. Gofrey shrugged.
“Who?” His expression was open and ingenuous.
“The woman from Marienburg who told you about us. She’s Hanna’s mother.”
“Ah.” Gofrey nodded. “We don’t use names, or show faces either if we can
avoid it. In case the witch hunters take one of us and put us to the question.
We can’t give up what we don’t know.” The thought seemed to disturb him, as well
it might. He shrugged. “Why didn’t you leave town with her?”
“We lost touch,” Rudi said shortly. Gofrey nodded. “What about her…
companion?”
“Big fellow, didn’t say much. He kept to the shadows, bundled up in a cloak.”
Gofrey shot him a challenging glance. “Yes, he probably was a mutant. They’re
just people too, most of them, living ordinary lives, until suddenly they start
changing through no fault of their own. If he’s found someone to help him, good
luck. Witch or mutant, it doesn’t matter to me. We’re all brands for the bonfire
if we don’t stick together.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Rudi said. “He’s saved my life a couple of times,
although Sigmar knows he’s got no reason to. I’m just as dead as the rest of you
if the authorities catch up with us.”
“Well then.” Gofrey shrugged. “Shall we go?” He turned, and
started towards the path leading back to Nocht’s Landing. Finding nothing else
to say, Rudi followed.
As they came in sight of the palisade, one of the villagers
hailed them, waving frantically, and within moments of passing through the gates
they were surrounded by a chattering mob, firing excited questions at them in a
babble of overlapping voices, hardly pausing to draw breath or wait for an
answer. Gofrey leaned against Rudi for greater effect, his assumed limp growing
more exaggerated by the moment, and waved a tolerant hand at his friends and
neighbours.
Struck by how glad they all were to see the friend they’d
given up for dead, Rudi felt a pang of regret that his and Hanna’s presence
would soon force the man to depart. Perhaps this was a foreshadowing of his own
future, he thought, forced to wander from one temporary refuge to another for
the rest of his life. If Gofrey felt any regrets at being forced to leave, he
gave no indication of it, just smiling happily in response to the chorus of
greetings as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“It was my own fault,” he said cheerily. “I saw some
feverleaf growing a bit off the path, and hopped across to get it. Then I saw
some spleenwort a bit further out. Before I knew it I was out of sight of the
track, and twisted my ankle trying to jump back. If this lad hadn’t come along,
I’d have been swamp bait for sure.”
“Shallya must have sent him, right enough,” Ranulph agreed,
slapping Rudi on the back and passing him a hunk of bread dripping with honey.
“They say she looks after the feeble-minded.” Gofrey bellowed with laughter.
“Then she’ll have her work cut out around here.” He took a
deep draught of the mug of mulled ale that someone had handed to him. “Ah,
that’s better. It was a bit chilly out there in the dark.”
“Did you see any monsters?” a child asked, tugging at Rudi’s
trouser leg. Swallowing a mouthful of bread, he shook his head.
“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” he assured the girl, with a
wink at the assembled adults. “They all ran off when they saw there were two of
us.” The simple pleasures of conversation and goodwill were almost intoxicating.
The morning was fine, growing brighter and clearer by the minute, and the food
in his stomach seemed astonishingly reviving.
“So where’s my patient?” Gofrey asked, pulling clear of the
little knot of excited villagers. “First things first.”
“On the boat.” Ranulph pointed to the wharf, where the
Reikmaiden
still lay. At the sight of her, Rudi let go a breath he hadn’t
been aware he was holding. Shenk would undoubtedly assume he was dead by now,
and would have had no reason to delay his departure. As they walked slowly
towards the gangplank, Rudi still supporting Gofrey for the sake of appearances,
the captain himself appeared on deck.
“If you’re going to leave it to the last minute to come
aboard every time, you might not make it as far as Altdorf,” he said mildly.
Rudi nodded.
“I brought the healer. How’s Hanna?”
“Not much different,” Shenk said. “She’s stirring a bit, but
she’s still asleep.”
“I’d better take a look at her,” Gofrey said, “since this
young man seemed so keen to find me.” Rudi supported him up the gangplank,
glancing around at the rest of the crew. Pieter waved a greeting, but Busch and
Yullis could barely conceal their disappointment at his return. Ansbach wasn’t
even bothering to try, glaring at him as if his failure to drown in the swamp
was a personal insult. Berta and Shenk’s expressions remained neutral.