“Judge a dog by his master and a master by his dog.”
– Strigany saying Averland’s audience chamber was not a cheerful place. It was a cold, austere room, dominated by an empty fireplace. There was a great table in the centre of the room, which had once groaned beneath Averland’s ancestors’ enthusiasm for feasting, but now remained always empty.
The current elector count didn’t believe in gluttony.
Even the figures on the tapestries seemed miserable, their expressions faded by the joylessness of the place. The huntsmen and animals, and wenches that cavorted through the old wall hangings had been commissioned by rowdier men than the current Aver-land, who, apart from the occasional shriek of rage, went through his life with the anxious solemnity of a professional mourner.
The elector count sat, silent and morose, at the end of his audience chamber. In front of him, a yellow parchment had been pinned to an easel, the towns, rivers and roads of the Empire inked onto it. Here and there, marks indicated where his men had found and dealt with Strigany caravans; those Strigany caravans that had been small enough for the cowards to handle, anyway.
Averland felt his anger welling up at the thought of all those that his men had allowed to escape from his lands. The knowledge that so many had escaped, disappearing like sand through an hourglass, filled him with a black despair. It eclipsed the joy that he should have felt at the number of the filthy creatures that had been dealt with.
It was all his retainers’ fault: all their fault that the exhilaration that had marked the beginning of this great quest had curdled into the depression that lay so heavily upon him now. Averland felt like a fisherman who had found the greatest shoal of his life only to discover that his net had been destroyed by the incompetence of his servants.
Unfortunately, even punishing them hadn’t helped to lift his mood. After the last of them had been flogged into bloody ruins, the fact remained that Averland was perhaps partly to blame for the failure. After all, he had hired the fools in the first place.
So it was that he had summoned the man, who stood before him now, almost as an act of contrition.
Blyseden, he was called. Marshal Blyseden he had been once, and then Witch Finder Blyseden. Now, after one of the many disputes that had marked the mercenary’s career, he was just plain old Blyseden again.
He was short and stocky, with a peasant’s lumpen face, and a butcher’s meaty arms. There was something of the butcher in the way he bore himself, too. He had the quiet confidence of a man who has mastered an important trade.
Perhaps, Averland thought vaguely, he might be as competent as he seems… Perhaps.
“So,” he said, finally deigning to acknowledge the man, “Blyseden.”
“Yes, my lord,” Blyseden said. His beard jutted as he lifted his head, as if proud at the very mention of his name.
“Yes,” Averland sighed, gesturing towards the map. “See that, Blyseden? That’s a map, and those marks are where my men have managed to wash it of Strigany.”
“Yes, my lord,” Blyseden said, nodding. “I have heard about their endeavours.”
“Endeavours,” Averland said, laughing bitterly. “Yes, I suppose you could call them that.”
The elector count lapsed back into resentful silence as he thought about the caravan that some of his hirelings had lost just two weeks ago. They had found it poisoning some villagers, but when they had tried to inflict justice upon it, the idiot captain had got himself killed, and the rest of his men had fled.
Averland dwelt upon the bittersweet memory of the flogging he had rewarded the survivors with. He had thrown up afterwards: all that blood.
Blyseden watched the expressions that played across the elector count’s face, impassively. He had the natural patience of the born predator. He would wait all day, or all week. It made no difference to him.
“The Strigany,” Averland said at last, dragging himself back to the matter at hand, “are a cancer within the flesh of our lands. Don’t you agree, Blyseden?”
“Yes, my lord,” Blyseden said without the slightest hesitation.
“Yes, my lord,” Averland repeated. “Agreeable fellow, aren’t you?”
“Yes, my lord,” Blyseden agreed.
Averland looked at him, and was seized with a sudden, horrible suspicion that he was being made fun of. Well, he’d soon see about that.
“Tell me, Blyseden, what happened when you were a marshal?”
“I killed my lord’s enemies,” the man said simply.
“Very commendable,” Averland said, “and what else?”
“There was little time for anything else, my lord.”
Averland, whose patience never stretched to games of cat and mouse, scowled.
“I mean, why were you removed?” he snapped.
“I had to burn a so-called shrine where some of my lord’s enemies had taken refuge,” Blyseden said mildly, “and, in order to burn the shrine, I had to burn the town around it. I couldn’t take the risk of any of my lord’s enemies escaping, so I ordered my men to kill every living thing that came out of the flames.”
“Women?” Averland asked. “Children?”
“Yes, my lord,” Blyseden nodded, speaking with the satisfaction of a man who has done a difficult job well. “Some of my men mutinied, so I killed them too.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about Grenborst. How many did you kill in all?” Averland asked.
“All of them, my lord. I am very thorough.”
Averland shifted on his throne, and scratched at his chin. He was starting to cheer up.
“All of them, hey? Well, well done, and yet still you were removed.”
“Politics, my lord,” Blyseden explained with a shrug. “I don’t bear a grudge.”
“Very decent of you.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
“Then you were a witch finder, apparently. What happened with that? Not your true vocation, perhaps.”
“I don’t have a vocation, my lord,” Blyseden told him, “unless it is to be as good a workman as I can be. I had to leave the business of witch finding because I hated to see work done so badly.”
“Really?” Averland asked with a hint of disappointment. “One of these people who disagree with their methods, are you? Wouldn’t have thought you’d be the sort.”
“It was the sloppiness I couldn’t stand, my lord,” Blyseden told him. “They would burn one or two people, but not their family, or their village. Sorcery’s like lice, I reckon. To get rid of one you’ve got to get rid of them all. Anyway, I finished my contract by doing what should have been done in the first place. It worked, too, my lord. As far as I know, there have been no further reports of witchcraft from the province where I worked.”
“No,” Averland mused, “I suppose there wouldn’t be any more accusations if the accusers knew that… Well, never mind.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Averland sucked his teeth, and thought about what he had heard. He thought about what he knew. The Grenborst massacre was infamous, and, as to Blyseden’s time as a witch hunter, the number of his victims was quite astonishing. One report said that the fat that melted from his quarries’ burning bodies had run thick enough to grease the square of an entire town. Other villages had been slaughtered to the last inhabitant.
It took a lot to be called overzealous by the Empire’s witch hunters, but Blyseden had managed it. Yet here he stood, recounting these atrocities with no more emotion than if he’d been discussing the weather.
Averland suspected that, at last, he had found a worthy tool for the work that lay ahead.
“Tell me, Blyseden, how do you feel about the Strigany?”
“I don’t feel anything, my lord,” Blyseden said.
“What?” Averland asked, his voice flat with disappointment.
“I never feel anything for my employers’ enemies, my lord, no more than a rat catcher thinks about the vermin he deals with.”
Averland smiled with relief. He had been right about this man after all. For a moment, his expression took on a warmth that eased the bitter wrinkles of his face, and he almost looked handsome.
“It would seem, Blyseden,” he decided, “that you are indeed the man I need. Looking for a job at the moment?”
“I am indeed, my lord.”
“Good,” Averland said. He cast off his cloak and bounded out of his chair. His depression had vanished like dew beneath the heat of his renewed enthusiasm, and he gripped Blyseden’s shoulder with the sudden, bubbly joy of a child. “Come take another look at the map,” He said. “Your work will take you south, to a place called Flintmar, and, I think that it will make you a very rich man.”
Averland began to explain his plan, his gestures becoming more expansive and his tone more excitable by the minute.
Blyseden was impressed. This aristocrat might look like the usual weak-blooded fop, he thought, but, by Morr, he thought big.