Stalking the Shadows Read online

  “Indeed,” Kreigel spoke into the silence that followed. “But what of Duvel?”

  Matthias sighed deeply. “Suppose it’s my fault really. He had to go down there instead of me the next night didn’t he? And he saw the King as well - again, poor sod! - and this time he only just got away from him!”

  “He was attacked?”

  “Same sort of story as mine; he happened on him, the distance of a tunnel between them, only Gurney’s dog was loose and set off after old Kingie as soon as she saw him! Gurney yelled her back, but she was going to have him and there was no stopping her. A good little dog, Lobker - nice as pie to you or me, but mean as they come to the rats.

  “Anyway, the King snaps round in a flash and Fsshhw! - slices her completely in two! A dagger in each hand, Gurney said, he scissored the air as she jumped for him and she fell to the floor in three bits! Then he starts after Gurney, but old Gurn’s already started to run!

  “From what he told us, where he was and all that, there was at least a hundred yards between them, probably a bit more, and only five to the ladder Gurney went up. Even so, the King caught him! Well, just about - left some serious gashes down one leg, but he couldn’t grab hold of him properly and old Gurney got out!

  “Well, he screamed and hollered and shouted his lungs out as he ran through the streets - the Night Watch picked him up pretty sharpish. Locked him up for his own safety like - he was going nuts they reckon. Next day, after we’d gone and seen him he got a visit by some of your people and got sent straight to the Barn; a gibbering madman they said...”

  “I’m sure they did,” Henkel muttered quietly.

  “Be that as it may,” Kreigel silenced him with a frown, “who has been Catching in that part of the Stad since then?”

  Gilbert shrugged. “Well... no one my lord.”

  “No one?”

  “Like I said, there’s not many of us as it is, and what with us being four down... The King aside my lord, there’s better a penny to be made in the other parts of the Stad, see? If they’ve got to leave a district or two for a few days... well, there’s not so many rats down in that part of the Schoenmarkt and Centrum. Not normal sized ones anyway...”

  After Gilbert had been shown out they halted the interviews, Kreigel deciding they had heard all they were going to that could be useful.

  “Useful?” Henkel snorted. “Surely you’re not giving any credence to any of that? A man-sized King Rat stalking the sewers and chopping up dogs, eating anyone not fast enough to get away? The whole thing’s preposterous!”

  Karl’s lips tightened as he frowned. “Well, some of it perhaps, but there’s enough in that man’s story to make me think it’s worth going to see this Gurney Duvel -”

  “You’re not serious? He’s in the Barn, Kreigel - he’s a raving lunatic! The fumes have got to him down there probably, after so many years. You know how superstitious the burghers can be. Bad hooch and sewer-fumes, that’s all that got to Duvel, you mark my words!”

  “Maybe,” Kreigel answered, “but don’t you see what else this tells us?” He checked the notes he had been making during Gilbert’s interview. “Somebody - whether a King Rat or something a little more plausible - has been down in our sewer system! Five sightings in two weeks, plus two workers missing, one who fled the Stad with another threatening to join him, and one taken into St Barneva’s for his own safety. And nobody was down there for four days before the assassination attempt! Four days! The man’s had the run of the place, verdomme! Probably has half a dozen ways in and out of the Stad - more even! It’s likely by now that he knows the sewers better than we do!

  “No, there is more to this story than meets the eye. Ludo, after lunch I want you to dig out any maps we have of the sewers, no matter how old they are and see if you can get some idea of the most likely ways in and out, from outside the Stad to Veeldonk, Centrum and the Schoenmarkt. Maxwell, see how Dupont is doing. Find out if our Burghermeister has calmed down enough to come out of his chambers yet.”

  “And you?” Weisselsbloed asked.

  “I will be going over to St. Barneva’s. I’ll know just how much we should believe any of this once I’ve spoken to Gurney Duvel, lunatic or no...”

  *

  Sergeant Spöllner ran. He ran and ran and ran, his boots skidding and slipping on the damp brickwork of the sewer floor as he tried desperately to get away. The treacherous cobbles, slick with moisture, glistened in the light of the spluttering torch which he held out shakingly in front of him. The light, being waved frantically around as it was, reflected the fear and madness in his eyes.

  He panted and gasped for air as he ran, gripping his side with his free hand to help ward off the stitch that threatened to slow him down or - Gods forbid - stop him completely. His legs had long since ceased burning and had instead turned to jelly, so it was already difficult enough to run, but still he lurched on, turning and spinning around with every sound, jumping fearfully at every flickering shadow.

  Turning left down one passage, right down another, his flight was totally random and it was pure adrenalin that drove him on now; adrenalin and the instinct for survival, the continued need to get away screaming at him through every nerve, bone and blood vessel in his body. Every aching muscle wanted to cramp and seize up at any moment, but Sergeant Spöllner knew that that would be his death.

  “Not yet!” he pleaded with himself in rasping breaths, gulping in huge lungful’s of mouldy air to try and help himself along. “Please Puurs... Talal... Sulaika! Just a bit further! Just... a bit... further...”

  Finally though he staggered to a halt, collapsing against the curved masonry of the tunnel, slimy and blackened from the constant, foetid moisture. The torch fell from his exhausted hands and rolled slightly on the cobbled floor, but thankfully it kept burning.

  “Ok, half a minute,” he said to himself, bent over double to try and gasp in as much oxygen as he could. His feverish eyes flickered all around, but mainly back from where he had run, searching, scanning, probing the passageway for any shapes which might at any moment leap out of the shadows like the sinister avatar of death that had attacked them.

  Taking up the torch once more, he set off again, a little bit more slowly this time - not through any sense of lessening danger, but simply because his wobbly legs could not carry him much further, especially if he continued to let panic dictate his pace and direction.

  Surely he was safe now, he dared to hope after another minute. Maybe there really was a chance he could make it out of here! If he could just get to a culvert, and he knew there was one around here somewhere because he recognised this part of the tunnel as one that they had come down when he had first entered the sewer system with his squad earlier that afternoon. If he could just make it a little further...

  Why hadn’t the others run? He had given the order soon enough, he was sure, but they had just stood there as that... that thing had exploded out of nowhere and torn them apart! So fast! How could anything move that quickly? It wasn’t natural! It wasn’t possible!

  Some would say he should have stayed with his men - he was the Sergeant after all - but they hadn’t been there! They hadn’t seen it! Seen the way the monster had flown out of the blackness and carved through his patrol in a blur, slicing, slashing, ripping and rending in a whirlwind frenzy of death!

  The first of them had dropped without knowing what had hit them; they were the lucky ones. The others had all had time to look upon the very devil himself - for a creature of the hottest hells it must surely have been! - as it continued through their squad in a grisly flurry of blood.

  It must have only been chest high, the monster - brown and fur-covered with a dark and tattered cloak shrouding its hideously animalistic body, a cruel and jagged blade gripped in each clawed hand. The tip of a rodent’s mouth and nose protruded from the folds of its hood, its wicked, yellowed teeth jutting out at horrifying angles.

  It hissed and squealed as it whirled about in a way that made the very blood
freeze in your veins, but it was the speed of the thing that was most frightening. It moved like nothing that size should ever be able to, and even those who had managed to react at all did so way too slowly. They were simply no match for it; none at all.

  The way Janssens had stared, wide eyed with blood oozing from his mouth as his throat and belly were slashed open in the blink of an eye... That image Spöllner was sure would stay with him for the rest of his days, haunting his dreams and tormenting his waking moments. That look of shock and hopelessness; pain and fear...

  The last thing Spöllner had seen was Fat Eddy, the Catcher who was guiding them through the sewers, having his belly opened up and his innards spilling onto the floor in horrible, blubbery coils. His throat was torn open half a second later and he had collapsed like a slaughtered cow. That’s when he yelled for the rest of them to run, and he himself had turned and fled.

  At least, he thought he had shouted out, but how could he be sure? In all that madness, how could he be sure of anything...?

  Rounding a sweeping curve in the tunnel Sergeant Spöllner caught sight of a set of iron rungs embedded into the wall, and the culvert he had so desperately hoped to find! Still darting glances in all directions, he sped towards it, the sudden hope of escape giving him a renewed sense of strength. Leaping onto the rungs he began to climb frantically, dropping his torch to free up both hands.

  Just another six yards and he was free! Five to go and I’ll be out!

  There was a scratching, scuttling noise from back down in the tunnel and Spöllner’s heart almost froze mid-beat. “Noooo!” he croaked voicelessly, desperately climbing, stretching, reaching for the cover that led out onto the street. Please no, not now! Only two yards to go... One!

  A clawed hand grabbed his boot and yanked, hard. Scrabbling to keep his grip, Spöllner flailed a despairing hand out which rattled the culvert’s cover, pushing it partly aside and allowing a shaft of moonlight down into the sewers. It was the light of the Pearl, Queen of the Night Sky and Beloved of Puurs, the largest of the three moons otherwise known as the Lantern or the Lamp because of the brightness of her light. But there, lurking behind her and glimmering red, was the Eye, the smallest of the three, the evil one. The Cursed Moon; the moon of ill-omen.

  His grip failed and he succumbed to the murderous weight tugging on his legs. Falling backwards he found his voice finally and screamed, but with one lightning slash of a sadistically-toothed knife his scream was cut sickeningly short and he landed wetly in a heap at the bottom of the ladder, dead before he hit the cobbles.

  *

  Max Weisselsbloed entered the Secretary’s office nestled in the midst of the Administration wing of the ground floor, a much smaller, more functionary room than the Council Chamber situated above it. The Stadhuis was only slightly busier than normal and other than the ring of guardsmen standing like a circlet of steel around the perimeter, you might be forgiven for not guessing at the Stad’s recent events.

  “Peter, how is everything?” he asked the drawn looking secretary.

  “Ahh Maxwell, come in, come in,” van Buren ushered the old man in as he put the finishing touches to a document bound for the Treasury department, located in the eastern wing on the same floor. He put his quill down in its stand and sat back, sighing heavily.

  “You look tired Peter,” Weisselsbloed told him. “Worn out if truth be told. Where is the Burghermeister?”

  “Sleeping still, in his suite.”

  “Sleeping? It’s past noon!”

  “Well, maybe not sleeping then, but he’s in there anyway. He’s refused to open the door since he moved in there after the attack.”

  “But that’s two days ago!”

  Van Buren spread his arms wide. “I know Max, but what can I do? He’s gone completely to pieces. I think he has suffered a quite severe nervous breakdown.”

  “Yes, yes, I see,” Weisselsbloed looked dissatisfied; unsympathetic even, “but meanwhile he’s got a Stad to run. Is he eating?”

  “I believe so. I’ve had food left for him outside his door and it is always taken, but he waits until there is nobody within sight - what he can see at least, through the keyhole. He shoots an arm out to grab the tray and then the door gets slammed shut again. He locks it and replaces the key, he told me through the door, so that we can’t see inside.”

  “Why on earth would anybody want to? Look, he’s going to have to snap out of it sooner or later - I suppose in the mean time you are doing all the work? You’re not sleeping here as well are you?”

  “No, no,” van Buren assured him. “I go home each night, don’t worry. I am here very early and admittedly don’t leave until well after I should, but I do get home.”

  “Good, that’s something at least. So Dupont is alone here at night? That seems worse to me than returning to his house. Much more dangerous.”

  “He’ll not hear of it Max, I’ve tried, really. Anyway there are guards outside and I’ve brought two of them in to stand by his door each night, just in case, you know? Maybe that’s overdoing it a bit, but Lord Kreigel does seem to think there may still be a danger.”

  “Yes... Yes I suppose there might be. His rooms have windows I take it?” Weisselsbloed asked.

  “Well yes, the entire southern wall is pretty much all windows up there, opening onto the balcony, but it is on the third floor - quite inaccessible I’d have thought.” The secretary leaned forward on his desk, with a worried expression. “You don’t think there’ll be another attempt do you Max? This is too awful!”

  The old man placed a reassuring hand on van Buren’s outstretched arm. “I don’t know Peter, I really don’t, but as Kreigel said, until we know who is behind this, and why, we can’t afford to rule anything out. Tell me, his family are safe aren’t they? They’re still staying over at Hoskam’s?”

  “Yes. The families have been friends for years.”

  “But he hasn’t been to see them?”

  “No. He asked about them, just once, in quite a panicky, erratic manner, as if he had just remembered them suddenly and then they were out of his mind again. That was yesterday though and since then - nothing. I cannot imagine the state his mind must be in. If it was anybody other than the Burghermeister he might already be in the Barn...”

  “Yes, strange how it can have affected him this badly.”

  Van Buren looked incredulous. “Someone did try to kill him Max.”

  “Your loyalty to the man does you credit Peter, but come on. To lose all vestiges of responsibility? I mean, would you lock yourself away and abandon Ilse like that?”

  The Secretary shook his head, not knowing what to think. Nothing like this had ever happened to him, or anyone he knew. There was no precedent for him to follow.

  “Chin up though, Peter,” Weisselsbloed patted his arm once more. “We’re doing all we can and Kreigel really is very good. All we can do now is maintain our vigilance and wait. If our assailant is as intelligent as Karl seems to think then he’ll probably not come anywhere near the Burghermeister again. We’re awake to it now and hopefully he’ll see that his chance has gone.

  “We should know more in the morning at any rate and who knows - perhaps Puss will return with the man in shackles.” Van Buren nodded at this. “Go home, Peter.” He gestured to all the paperwork on the secretary’s desk. “All this can wait until tomorrow. Go and get some rest.”

  *

  Karl Kreigel checked his personal possessions in with the clerk behind the counter, a sheepish, aging man, meek and humble from years of administrative service with the Sisters of the Saint.

  “You need take nothing with you my lord, save fortitude and strength of mind,” Sister Verbruggen had told him. She was the one who was to accompany him inside the locked ward at St. Barneva’s. “We have found it is best to leave any tangibles outside, as they can be too much of a stimulus for some of our patients, and have had a derogatory effect in the past.

  “Your purse of monies and your knife, while quite norma
l apparel out in the Stad, would be highly inappropriate within the walls of our hospice; they may even prove dangerous. Don’t worry; they will be quite safe with Gus.”

  St. Barneva’s Hospice was a relatively modest building in the south-western corner of the Kerkenplaatz district on the Plaza of the Moons. Given the nature of many of the patients, its presence was only tolerated in this exclusive neighbourhood due to the fact that it was run by the Sisters of the Saint, members of the Church of Sulaika, the much beloved Goddess of Benevolence and Healing. Respect and due reverence for both Saint and Goddess were enough in their own rights of course, but it also helped that the Sisters could be approached at any time for all manner of other ailments, and it was generally agreed that the presence of the Sisters was at least in part responsible for the fact that Werpenstad had never once suffered from a single outbreak of any plague since the town was first founded eight centuries ago.

  Named after a healer from the era five centuries before the birth of the Empire, St. Barneva had devoted his life administering to those unfortunate souls whose minds had been shattered by the innumerable terrors of those times. The Barn had one small wing given over to the treatment of everyday sickness and injury, but most of the hospital was given over to the care, or simply the safe containment of the mentally unstable - or the Barn Pots as they were collectively known, somewhat unkindly.

  “What can you tell me of this Duvel, Sister?” Kreigel asked his diminutive chaperone as they passed the first of two sets of locked doors that led into the Hospice proper.

  “Ahh yes, poor Gurney,” she replied, making sure the first of the doors was firmly locked behind them before putting a large iron key to the second set of locks. “It is a trying and thankless existence for the sewer workers, to spend one’s working life under such conditions, although it is as much down to their diligence and hard work as it is to Sulaika’s beneficence,” both made the sign of the Goddess across their hearts at the mention of Her name, “that our town remains so mercifully free from the ravages of most diseases. Sadly this goes largely unrecognised throughout the Stad and this fact, coupled with the many disturbing experiences these men suffer on an almost daily basis, produces a great strain upon their minds’.”