Conquest Unbound, page 38
Krult was picking his teeth with a long, sharp sliver of something as Celarais approached him. She felt a curious stab of jealousy. Krult seemed to have life worked out, without any of the complexities of her own.
‘Blimey, but your tin mate was a joker, weren’t he?’ he chuckled. ‘Still ain’t found out what all that fizz and spittle tastes like.’ He looked across at the nearest Stormcast speculatively, then put on an expression of exaggerated regret. ‘Next time, maybe. Panhandle’s cookin’ up a storm, ain’t he? Don’t want to spoil me appetite.’ This was a feat Celarais strongly suspected was impossible. ‘And then I reckon we’ll be on our way.’ He watched her keenly. ‘For now.’
‘For now,’ she acknowledged, knowing that, however many big words Krult had learned, none of them would sate him for long. ‘It’s been a pleasure, Krult.’
‘It’s been,’ he said, ‘an ed-yoo-cay-shun. Look.’ He held up his toothpick, a jagged shard of thigh bone. ‘Turns out you can get some use out of the crunchy kind after all.’
THE OFFERING
Andy Clark
In the dark of Nost’rnight,
When all’s cold as a tomb
Then comes Grobbi Blackencap,
A-creeping from the gloom.
To ward him from thine hearth and home,
A price you have to pay
Or through the starless night he’ll steal,
And drag you all away.
Elder led his villagers through the forest gloom. They pushed laden barrows: barrels of salt-meat and shald-wine; glassware from Anvilspire traders; sacks of argentite nuggets. That last was their only real wealth, and not easily given away.
But the offering had to be made.
The path was muddy. Glintwyr roots poked through the soil, snagging wheels and feet. The trees’ silvery needles glimmered in the twilight, emitting metallic rasps in the breeze.
Elder heaved his barrow up a final rise and into the presence of the Offering Tree. Despite the chill, he snatched off his cloth cap and used it to mop his brow. One by one his companions joined him. All were younger, even old Martyn, but they were puffing and blowing too. He glanced at the darkening sky. Nost’rnight was almost upon them, when not a single star shone. They would be home safe before truedark, he promised himself.
Even then he wouldn’t feel safe until Hyshlight crept over the horizon the following dawn.
‘Never gets easier,’ he commented.
‘Never does,’ agreed Martyn, distracted. Like the rest, he couldn’t take his eyes from the Offering Tree. It hunched alone, as though the other trees had recoiled from it, and its bloated trunk was thick with fungi. It coiled skywards, branches outflung as though in supplication. The Offering Tree stank like an infected foot, the reek wafting from deep crevices in its bark.
Narry was last into the clearing. He was a scrawny lad just come of age, and he was sweaty and scowling.
‘What are we doing here?’ Narry’s demand shattered the deep arboreal quiet. They all cringed.
‘Keep your voice down!’ hissed old Martyn.
Narry was not to be dissuaded, though Elder noted the lad dropped to a hoarse whisper.
‘What are we doing here?’ he repeated.
‘You know,’ snapped Martyn.
‘I know we’re wasting produce, and we’re going to lie about it to the Anvilspire assayers,’ said Narry. ‘I know we’re giving this lot away to some local bandit for the sake of fae-tales and nursing rhymes.’
Elder reckoned the lad had rehearsed this speech. Narry perhaps expected amazement from them, dawning realisation and shame. Instead they glared. Narry’s jaw set, ready for an argument.
Won’t keep until we get home, Elder thought, resigned. Always the young’uns think they know better.
Elder raised a placating hand, then stepped close to Narry and laid it on the lad’s shoulder. He felt the tension there, a live wire under his hand. Narry was frightened, and angry with himself for it. He didn’t want to lose face. Problem was, if he weren’t careful, Narry’s youthful insecurities might be the death of them.
‘Listen to me, lad, because lives depend on it,’ said Elder. He pinned Narry’s roving gaze. ‘You listening?’
Narry nodded, the angry jerk of a youth’s disingenuous agreement. Did he plan to argue? Maybe slip away on the walk back, double back for his barrow or catch his imagined bandits in the act?
‘Sigmar knows I’d rather tell this tale anywhere but here. But you need to hear this.’
Narry didn’t speak, but he didn’t push Elder’s hand away either. The others drew closer, as though Elder’s voice were a fire to huddle around. Most had heard this story before, but he supposed anything was better than listening to the Offering Tree creaking.
‘There was one Nost’rnight when we didn’t make the offering,’ Elder began. ‘It’s not jumping ahead to say it didn’t go well…’
The carriage rattled along the dirt road. Within, Gustav Thatcher battled nausea. He felt hot and claustrophobic. Shoving his head out the window didn’t help, as then he was treated to the depressing sight of the glintwyr forests marching away into the rain.
Mud, trees and filthy peasants, he thought with weary disgust.
The long carriage ride hadn’t helped his hangover. Neither had passing through a Realmgate earlier that day. But who could blame him for a few nights’ drowning his sorrows?
Exiled.
He scowled. Gustav had always thought himself too cunning to be caught with his hand in the war coffers. His mistake.
He wasn’t a physical presence, and he knew deep down he lacked for charm. A loathed former acquaintance had once described him as the bastard child of a leech and a gyrferret. Yet Rahme Thatcher’s third son had a keen eye for financial wrangling and had long turned his skills to lining his pockets, and to destroying such fools for their slights. The thought lifted Gustav’s spirits, but the next hard jolt of the carriage dashed them anew. He leaned out and yelled at the coachman.
‘Are you aiming for the potholes, cretin?’
‘Sorry m’lord,’ the man’s voice floated back to him. ‘Road to the Anvilspire front ain’t in a good way.’
‘I thought this road was meant for Lord Sigmar’s armies?’ sneered Gustav.
‘T’is, m’lord. But there’s pyryke crystals in the soil. Engineers dig ’em out, but they just grow back.’
Gustav wondered whether the military funds he had embezzled had been earmarked for road maintenance.
Sigmar, have you such a sense of irony? You’d think exile from Azyrheim to some grubby Chamonite backwater would be punishment enough…
Gustav looked back down the road to where Captain Thorne rode at the head of his household guard. It was a grand title for ten weather-beaten Freeguilders riding somewhat aged-looking horses, but they were all his father had granted.
At least he managed to spare me the noose, thought Gustav. Then the carriage bounced again.
‘Captain Thorne,’ he barked. She set spurs to her steed, cantered up alongside the carriage.
‘Sir?’ Thorne enquired.
She was young for an officer, heavyset from easy Azyrheimer living. As always, though, Thorne’s jaw was set and her gaze keen; Larinda Thorne’s assignment to his guard was the only sign that his father cared whether his disgraced son lived or died.
‘If the inbred driving this carriage hits another pothole, shoot him.’
It was there and gone – the flicker of loathing in Thorne’s eyes. Gustav didn’t mind. He enjoyed exercising power over those who resented him.
‘Understood, Lord Thatcher,’ Thorne replied. She unholstered her coglock pistol and spurred her steed, drawing level with the coachman. Gustav settled back, smirking as he listened to the man bluster.
Soon be there, he thought.
In the end though, driving slower for fear of his life, it took the coachman another three hours to reach Breaker’s Vale. By the time they passed through the gates of the small mining town, Gustav was tempted by the hempen caress of the noose after all.
Gustav peered out at the muddy main street. The buildings were charmless slabs of metal and stone with a little wood worked into the more salubrious structures. Relative term, thought Gustav, wistfully picturing the magnificence of Azyrheim. In Breaker’s Vale, it seemed, a second storey was opulence indeed. He passed dwellings with smoking chimney holes and heavy shutters, a smithy, a local inn. Folk watched his carriage pass. Gustav saw careworn clothes and faces, unfriendly eyes that made him shrink back. He made a mental note to keep Thorne and her soldiers close.
The carriage rounded a bend, furnishing Gustav with a view out over the valley. More silver-leafed glintwyr trees marched away until they reached the towering cliffs, where lay the argentite mines.
The one good thing about this mess.
The bead-pushers of Azyrheim were cunning foes. But if a percentage of this little town’s output went astray before reaching the counting houses of Anvilspire? Gustav was certain no one out here would have the wit to notice. Argentite was a precious ore, and some alchemist or armourer in one of Sigmar’s cities would doubtless pay well for their own personal, unregulated supply.
A few years feathering my nest, then–
His musings were disturbed as the carriage halted. Muttering biliously, Gustav craned out to see the coachman clambering from his perch.
They had arrived.
He looked upon his new home. Beyond a drystone wall, the manse was a three-storey slab of stone with wooden sills and beams and a slate roof. A sodden excuse for a garden surrounded it. A stable stood off to one side.
Some nest, Gustav thought. He sighed and disembarked. Mud squelched underfoot. The coachman shielded Gustav with an umbrella as he passed through the manse’s outer gate and up the path to its steps. A handful of staff clustered there, sheltered by the stone portico. Gustav noted they were dressed little better than the peasants.
A young man with a thatch of black hair and earnest blue eyes stepped forward, clutching a rolled and sealed parchment scroll.
‘M’lord, my name is Saul. I’m the head of your household. These are your staff. I have written here a full account of the people and assets that accompany the manse as instructed by your honoured predecessor, may Sigmar rest him. We welcome you to your new home, and hope your journey was–’
‘The journey was abominable, and I need a piss,’ Gustav said, interrupting him. The young man blinked in shock but recovered quickly.
‘Of course, my lord is road-weary. Yeni, Dathyd, fetch his lordship’s things. Gethyn, show his lordship to his rooms. Evenmeal is cooking, m’lord, and–’
‘Have it brought to my rooms, the scroll too, then for Sigmar’s sake leave me alone.’
Gustav watched Saul deflate. Manservant’s garb and a few learned letters doesn’t make you any less a peasant, he thought, pushing past into Argent Hall’s dingy interior. Gustav heard Captain Thorne addressing Saul, something about stabling the horses. Matters below Gustav’s notice. He stared about at the rickety staircase, the faded portraits of former mayors, the statues of Sigmar and the beast-pelt rugs. It was parochial, trying to be something it wasn’t. Gustav sighed again, then followed a nervous maid to his chambers.
What a nest indeed…
Rain spattered the study windows. An ornate horologue ticked. Gustav’s quill scritched. The mayor of Breaker’s Vale hunched over his ledgers. It was rare that Gustav liked or trusted people. But ledgers? They confided in him, and they were biddable in a way no bribe could secure.
My only real friends… He snorted with bitter mirth. Saul, hovering at Gustav’s shoulder, misinterpreted the noise.
‘M’lord, do you–’
‘As usual, I do not,’ snapped Gustav.
‘Sorry, m’lord, I thought–’
‘How long have I been here, Saul?’ asked Gustav.
‘Three months and six days, m’lord.’
Gustav winced. It felt longer. He’d managed to shirk most of his duties thus far, letting the grubby little town run itself.
‘In that time, how often have I sought your opinion?’
Saul paused, no doubt reluctant to play his part in the demeaning rigmarole.
‘Never, m’lord.’
‘There’s a lesson there, Saul,’ Gustav sneered. ‘Now, as you’ve shattered my concentration you can fetch me a carafe of shald-wine. Can you manage that?’
Looking stricken, Saul bowed his way out of the study. Gustav smirked.
Fool.
He turned back to the ledger and ran his eyes along the next column of figures. It was the last before the bottom of the page, and he frowned to find that he had smudged its ink a little. Was that a four, or a seven? If the latter, then it put his calculations on the following page out of true. Gustav hissed with frustration, set his quill in its inkwell with a wet clink, and rubbed his tired eyes.
He stood and stretched. How long had he sat at his desk? Long enough for Saul to light the lanterns. Darkness had come earlier every day since Gustav’s arrival. Tonight would be Nost’rnight; the locals said it would be starless and utterly dark from dusk until dawn. Why, no one seemed to know, but it was local custom to bar gates, shutter windows and keep lanterns burning until the dawn.
Fear of local fae-tales, no doubt. Credulous twits.
Gustav believed in only one thing: wealth was power, and power freedom. He considered strolling downstairs to check on the vault.
My vault, he corrected himself. Already the stockpile within it was growing, fruits of his nefarious labours. He’d swindled traders with a smile. Assayers from Anvilspire had collected the taxes they believed due and remained none the wiser to his profits. On paper, Gustav hadn’t done anything wrong. Not so any but the keenest-eyed would spot it, anyway.
But then, he’d felt such confidence before, and the smudged figure he’d found rankled. It would need amending. His figures required double-checking. As he had learned to his cost, the slightest error, if left unchecked, was like a crack in a fortress’ foundations that could bring the entire edifice crashing down.
Suddenly uneasy, Gustav returned to his ledgers. He drew his quill with all the purpose of a warrior baring steel and prepared to strike through the offending error. Then he paused, quill point hovering above the page.
That is my writing, isn’t it?
Suspicion tightened his chest and drew his brows downward. Gustav cursed the wavering lamplight that made it hard to see clearly. He brought the page up to the light and peered at it. The tension clenched within him.
That is not my writing!
Someone had managed a passable imitation of his script, certainly, but not good enough. Perhaps conscious of their mistake, they had smudged the number just enough to obfuscate their error.
Or so they hoped. Instead they merely drew my notice! The thought flashed through his mind, triumphant, spiteful and afraid all at once. Hands shaking, Gustav flicked forward to the most recent accounts. He had planned to check these tomorrow, but now they had become the scene of a financial crime and he, in a reversal of fate, the investigator.
Gustav’s unease redoubled at what he saw. He scowled at the columns of numbers, trying to make them match. Here a one had been carefully transformed into a seven, there an eight rounded to become a zero. A flush of outrage crept up his neck. It was done with passable skill, he supposed, but had the culprit really thought Gustav so slapdash that he would not notice eventually? He paged back through the ledger. Now that he knew what to look for, he found further, earlier inconsistencies.
Well, you were sent here in disgrace, caught out doing just this to others, whispered a treacherous part of his mind as he did so. Is it any surprise that they’d take you for an amateur? A fool? And it seems you’ve lived down to their expectations until now.
The fact was that someone had been stealing from him for weeks, skimming a little here and a little there: alcohol; food; argentite; glyntwyr sap; strangest of all, glassware. Not enough to be obvious, but taken together it was enough of a haul to fill Gustav with shame and self-recrimination for not having noticed it sooner.
Even now you only noticed because of a mistake they made in haste.
But who could have done such a thing? Who had access to his ledgers when he was not present? Captain Thorne? He dismissed the notion at once; she was loyal to his family name if nothing else. She gained nothing from the Thatchers suffering further.
The staff then? Who amongst them would have the letters for this?
A memory surfaced then, of an earnest young man pushing a scroll at him upon the doorstep of the manse. I have written here a full account… I have written…
Gustav scattered a stack of papers and almost upended a lantern as he scrabbled in search of the scroll. There, at the bottom of the pile, the first document placed in his hands after his arrival at Breaker’s Vale.
Yes. The handwriting was a match, or close enough to leave him in no doubt. The scroll crumpled where he clutched it in his mounting wrath. Now his manservant’s over-attentiveness took on a new light.
Saul…
An hour later saw Gustav out in the rainy twilight, oiled cape about his shoulders, expression thunderous. Captain Thorne and five soldiers accompanied him, heading for a small warehouse on the town’s western edge.
Saul trailed in their wake. He’d given up the location of the thieves’ stockpile under threat of violence, but clearly still felt he could offer some justification for the theft. His face was the picture of earnest dismay.
‘M’lord, it’s Sigmar’s will,’ he wheedled.
