A GOOD THIEF
by Simon Jowett

IS THAT IT, Francois Villon wondered? The polite applause that greeted the end of his performance failed to rise above a ripple and was quickly drowned out by the babble of his erstwhile audience taking up conversations that had been interrupted by the Graf's call for silence, which had also served as Villon's cue to begin.
This evening's poem had been Villon's most ambitious work: the product of a week's pacing through the town's muddy streets and along the marshy banks that bounded the tributary of the Reik that provided Wallenholt with its connection to the civilised centres of the Empire. A week spent honing every line, shaping every verse and memorising each new version. And for what? To flatter the ego of his patron, Bruno, Graf von Wallenholt, and to interrupt the drinking of those townsfolk and travelling traders who made up what passed for ''society'' in this boggy backwater.
Sigmar take them, Villon shrugged inwardly. It still beats working for a living. He reached for one of the wine-filled goblets on a passing servant's tray, drained its contents and reached for another from the tray of a servant passing in the opposite direction.
Yes, he reminded himself as the blood-rich wine slid easily down his throat, it was better to live as a pampered pet in this out-of-the-way place, than to rot in chains in one of Marienburg's danker oubliettes - which was where he would have spent the last months, had certain friends and drinking companions not warned him of the warrant that had been sworn against him by that hypocritical prig, Gerhard von Klatch.
Hypocritical prig or not, Villon would not have deliberately made an enemy of one of the Merchant Princes of Marienburg. It was just that everyone knew about the extra-marital activities of von Klatch's wife and, when set against von Klatch's pompous pronouncements on the subject of ''family values'', they seemed the perfect subject for a rhyme. Or, they seemed so to Villon's wine-fuddled brain at some point in the midst of a week-long binge financed by the ''acquisition'' of the collection money from the temple of a middle-ranking deity near the pleasure gardens.
Had he been sober - or even within hailing distance of sobriety - Villon might have thought twice before extemporising the poem that later saw print as ''Madame Klatch's Menagerie''. A number of his other drunken satires had been transcribed and circulated around the docks and lower quarters of the city, but he would never have imagined that a transcript of his latest opus might find its way from the pages of Marienburg's yellow papers - scurrilous rumour-sheets printed on stuff better suited for use in the privy than for the absorption of ink - to those of a more respectable journal, more usually associated with political and economic news. Obviously, von Klatch had enemies and Villon's rhyme was a convenient weapon to hurl against the old windbag's political ambitions.
'The Heroic hexameter,' the voice came from behind Villon as he waved to a flagon-bearing servant with his now-empty goblet. 'An unusual choice.'
Villon turned. The speaker was a stranger to Wallenholt - one of a small group of visitors in whose honour the Graf had ordered this soiree. Villon had assumed them to be of greater-than-average wealth and power to warrant the full deployment of the Graf's hospitality, though the man he found himself looking at as the servant refilled his goblet showed very little outward sign of wealth or power. Dressed from head to toe in close-napped black velvet, he was over average height and build. His features, though edging on the handsome, were pale grey eyes, a narrow nose, a black beard, neatly trimmed and peppered with grey - a description that might apply equally to an uncountable number of men.
What marked this man out to Villon's eyes, eyes which had years of practice in judging the relative wealth of potential victims and/or patrons, was an absence of certain details: he wore no house, guild or family insignia.
And he recognised the Heroic hexameter, a six-beat rhythm that had passed out of poetic favour centuries ago.
'It was an experiment,' Villon replied, adopting his most refined accent and most polite form of address. 'I heard La Rondeau de Sigmund when a child and the six-beat metre struck me then as very strange and beautiful. And very challenging to those like us who are more used to the pentameter that is the fashion of today's verse. You are a man of rare sensibilities, sir, to recognise it.'
'I have no use for poets,' the stranger cut across Villon's attempt at flattery. 'The Graf tells me that you cannot read or write. Is that true?'
'There is more to writing than the mere act of making marks on paper,' Villon shot back, more forcefully than was seemly. Despite his privileged status within the Graf's household - he had no other duties than to compose verse to flatter his lord's vanity and act as a living example of Wallenholt's rising status within the Empire - he was still a servant. And the man whose aesthetic sense he had just insulted was an honoured guest.
Mouth running away with you again, Francois, he scolded himself. He cursed the third goblet of wine and searched for a form of words to ease the situation.
'But I... I know enough to make my mark,' was all he could find to say. That ''mark'' was no more than a shaky ''V'' which could be found on the very few documents he had ever been required to sign - mostly papers recording his appearances in court to answer charges of street theft, swindling and burglary. When one had been born in the gutter and set to thieving almost as soon as one could walk, the learning of letters was not a priority.
The stranger cocked an eyebrow. To Villon's surprise, he seemed amused.
'An illiterate poet,' he murmured. Villon was unsure whether he intended anyone to hear him. 'An interesting contradiction.'
At that moment, the Graf swept up to them. Villon's heart jumped - had he heard that his pet poet was arguing with one of his guests? If so, the best he could hope for was to be escorted beyond the town walls to return to the sorry state in which he had fetched up in Wallenholt after fleeing the warrant in Marienburg. Villon didn't relish the thought - day upon day of muddy roads, eating roots and berries and sleeping up trees to avoid roaming predators.
'Magister,' the Graf began without sparing Villon a glance. 'There is someone I have been meaning to introduce to you...'
Villon's heart resumed a more sedate rhythm as the Graf lead the stranger away. Villon took this as his cue to quit the evening's festivities; the longer he stayed, the more he would drink; and the more he drank, the more likely he would be to say something else that he would regret.
He moved towards the doors to the hall unnoticed and unmolested by any of the other guests - proof, he believed of the regard for poetry among Wallenholt's elite. He had been lucky, shortly after arriving in the town, to hear that the Graf had a taste for verse. What was it about men of power that they desired some recognition of their finer sensibilities? The Graf had begun to talk of a printed collection of Villon's verse - calf-bound, subscription only - though the von Wallenholt name would be the only one to appear on its pages.
At the doors he paused and looked back into the hall. He spotted the Graf and the stranger; they were talking to, or rather being talked at, by another of the out-of-towners. Probably a travelling representative of the Nuln Cheesemakers Guild, Villon chuckled to himself. Now, perhaps, the stranger would feel more appreciative of the conversation of poets.

'VILLON!' HE WAS back in the Blind Monk, on Grosse-festenplatz, down by the docks. He had drunk far too much cheap wine to be sure of exactly how long he had been in the tavern - longer than a day, not so long as a full week.
'A verse!' the cry went up around the room. 'A verse from Villon!' The cry was repeated; a steady drumming of tankards and fists upon the tavern's tables beat against the fetid, belch-ridden air.
This was how it always happened: such was his reputation that, if he spent long enough in one tavern and drank enough wine, one of his fellow drinkers would think to call for a verse. And, because he had spent enough time in that tavern and had drunk more than enough wine, he would, after a moment's thought, oblige:
'I rhyme of the lady, von Klatch...'

'FRANQOIS!' THE YEARS had fallen away; he was in Brother Nicodaemus's study. A bitter winter breeze was slicing through the shutters of the room's single window.
'Francois!' the old priest repeated. He was the only adult the young urchin could remember taking the time to repeat an instruction. More usually, his lack of attention was rewarded with a slap about the head.
'Yes, father,' Villon looked at the priest. He had been thinking about how cold he felt. Nicodaemus never seemed to feel the cold, not did any of the other priests - though Villon could tell by their expressions whenever they saw him that his presence in their monastery was as welcome as the stench of an over-full privy pot.
'I asked you to explain the pentameter, Francois,' Nicodaemus told him. The old man had caught the young Villon trying to steal from the vegetable garden within the monastery walls. He was surprisingly nimble and strong for an old man and, despite his gentle demeanour, more than willing to administer enough of a beating to pacify the struggling young thief.
But that had been the last time he had touched Villon. Nicodaemus, it seemed, had certain theories about the training of the young and, before he died, he wished to test them. Villon had appeared at just the right time and presented quite a challenge.
'A pentameter is a line made up of five feet,' Villon parroted.
'Very good. And what is a foot?
'A foot is a poetical unit of two syllables,' Villon replied. 'The Gothic pentameter is the most popular of these, in which the stress is placed on the second syllable.'
'Very good!' Nicodaemus smiled. He had not asked Villon to explain the Gothic pentameter, but he could see that, of all the subjects he had introduced to the child, poetry was the one that most drew him in. It seemed that his theories may bear fruit after all.
'Extemporise upon the Gothic pentameter for me,' Nicodaemus continued. Villon had already begun to exhibit his peculiar gift for creating verse on the spur of the moment and the priest regularly used this as a means of maintaining the boy's interest. 'I shall beat time.' He began to stamp rhythmically upon the flagstone floor. Villon began:
'The twin-tailed comet crossed the sky, Bright Sigmar's birth to prophesy...'

'VILLON!' THE VOICE was louder, rougher, more insistent. The drumming had also changed. No longer the slapping of the old monk's sandals on the bare flags, it had the demanding, heavy quality of a fist on wood.
'Villon, in the name of the Graf, open this door!'
Villon opened his eyes. He was in his small room in the servants' wing of the Graf von Wallenholt's manor house. Weak, early morning sunlight leaked in through the room's high, narrow window, running in a shaft to the door. The door jumped and shuddered with each impact from the other side.
This, he quickly realised, was not a dream.

HIS ROOM MIGHT have been small, Villon reflected, but it had been dry and private - unlike the space he now found himself in: set well below ground level, it was broader than his room, but the moss-covered stones of its walls ran with damp, it stank like an open sewer and a set of bars, each as thick as a man's wrist, ran from floor to ceiling, bisecting the space and standing between Villon and the door.
Nor was he alone. A rotund imbecile, who Villon decided looked more toad than man, squatted in the dampest corner of the cell. He hadn't moved since Villon had arrived: thrown through the then-open gate in the bars by the constables who had burst into his room the moment he opened the door, bullied him into his clothes and dragged him down seemingly-endless flights of stairs, each one darker and damper than its predecessor.
'A new friend for you, Tobias,' one of the constables shouted after the gate had clanged shut. His fellow law-keepers laughed. Tobias the toad-man regarded Villon with eyes that bulged so far from his face that Villon expected them to burst like water-filled bladders thrown by mischievous children. And while he stared at the new arrival, Tobias licked his lips.
For all Villon knew, Tobias might still be licking his lips. The constables had taken their lanterns with them and left the dungeon in complete darkness.
This wasn't a new experience for Villon. Incarceration was a hazard he had lived with since he stole his first loaf, at the age of four or five; not knowing his exact date of birth, he couldn't be sure. Every one of his companions had likewise spent time in various cells, but Villon was a better thief than most, was rarely spotted in the commission of his crimes and was caught less often still. Even when the constabulary or militia knew he was the culprit, he was usually able to evade them in the narrow maze of Marienburg's rookeries - sprawling acres of close-packed slums into which a wanted man could disappear and into which the officers of the law would not enter unless equipped as if for war.
There were taverns in the rookeries, buyers and sellers of stolen goods and women who were more than happy to entertain a man flushed with loot from his latest job. By the time his money was spent, the constables would be occupied with other crimes and the way would be clear for Villon to set about refilling his pockets.
But, since his arrival in Wallenholt - or since the Graf decided to become his patron, at least - Villon's conduct had been exemplary. The allowance he received from the Graf, though not extravagant, was sufficient; he ate with the servants, when not performing for the Graf, and avoided indulging in prolonged bouts of drinking, hence the poetry he had composed since his arrival had been of the most proper and decorous type. In fact, the three goblets he had drunk the night before his arrest had been the most wine he had consumed for close to a month...
That had to be it. The guest in black. Monsieur ''I have no use for poets''. The pompous lick-spittle must have taken offence at something in Villon's tone after all. Not for the first time, he cursed the foibles and caprice of the wealthy, then set to thinking about how best to effect his escape from this pit. His accuser would be gone in a few days' time - he might already have left Wallenholt. All Villon would have to do was re-establish himself in the Graf's favour. Knowing the Graf, a poem of the most astonishing and shameless flattery would do the job. Vanity was one of the foibles of the wealthy he had used to his advantage many times in the past.
He had begun to sift through possible subjects for his verse when he heard a soft scraping from the far side of the cell. This was followed by a wet-lipped, child-like giggle, then the scraping resumed. It sounded as if something soft and heavy was being dragged - or was dragging itself - across the rough stone floor.
'You want to keep those bloated guts inside your scab-ridden skin, Tobias,' he spoke into the darkness. 'You'll stay exactly where you are.'

VILLON WAS ON his feet as soon as he heard the door opening. 'Ah, good constable, at last,' he began. 'There has clearly been some egregious error, but I believe I know a way to solve the problem and smooth any ruffled feathers. If you would only take a brief message to the Graf, this unfortunate affair will soon be at an end.'
'You may have received little schooling, but you have certainly mastered the art of buttock-kissing.' A lantern's shutter hinged back with a clank. Villon blinked in the sudden light until, as his eyes grew accustomed to the lantern's glow, he was able to make out the features of the speaker: fine, but not quite handsome; regular, but unremarkable.
'Kind sir, we meet again,' he adjusted his approach, determined not to give his accuser further offence. 'I had hoped to find a way to mend any injury I had caused you when we last met. Though doubtless I deserve the time I have spent in this darkness, cut off from the light of those such as your good self and my lord the Graf-'
'Enough, poet, enough.' Villon again heard amusement in the stranger's voice. 'Your over-honeyed words are wasted on me. I had nothing to do with your fall from favour. It seems your past has caught up with you.'
'My past, lord?' Despite his innocent tone, Villon's guts had suddenly started to churn. 'By my troth I don't...'
'Keep your troth to yourself and stop treating me like the kind of preening idiot who gives a good damn about how others think of them.' What sounded like genuine anger had replaced the amusement in the stranger's voice. 'Does the name von Klatch mean anything to you?'
'Von... Klatch.' Villon's stomach had stopped churning and had begun a tumbling free-fall.
'Madame von Klatch, it seems, has several brothers,' the stranger continued. 'One of whom attended the Graf's soiree. His family name, and that of Madame von Klatch before she married, is Liebermann. The name Villon was well known to him before he came to Wallenholt.
'Herr Liebermann has told the Graf much that he was unaware of regarding your past. He was surprised to learn that you have a reputation as an accomplished thief. However, when you begin your journey back to Marienburg tomorrow, you will be going to answer for the insult you paid Madame von Klatch. The Graf von Wallenholt knows better than to cross one of the Merchant Princes of Marienburg.'
'This... This Herr Liebermann is mistaken,' Villon stuttered. 'He has mistaken my name for that of the thief of which you speak. Perhaps he is called Villain, or Villette, or-'
'I do hope not,' the stranger interrupted. 'If that were the case, I would have no reason to help you escape.'

AFTER AN UNGUESSABLE amount of time in the dark, they came for him, manacled his wrists and ankles and led him up into the dawn.
A donkey cart was waiting for them in the stable yard. They all but threw Villon aboard and clucked the donkey into rattling motion through the still-quiet streets. Villon was left to roll painfully about in the bottom of the cart, receiving a kick every time he rolled too close to the feet of one of the constables that had climbed aboard after him. It was, unfortunately, a very small cart.
The slow-running Kleinereik fed into the Reik several leagues to the west and served as Wallenholt's main trading route to the Empire. But the boat moored at Jetty Number Four, a river cutter that was flying a crest Villon assumed to belong to the Liebermann family, had more to do with politics than trade; it was going to take Villon back to Marienburg.
Villon was able to swing his feet under him as he was rolled off the cart and, with the aid of an inelegant stumble-and-shuffle, he managed to stay upright. However, the over-zealous prod in the back he received from the chief constable's short club almost pitched him into the dirt. With a constable keeping pace on either side, he shuffled towards the jetty.
Looking about him, he saw that the quayside was not much busier than the rest of the town at this early hour. Another cutter had finished loading and its crew were in the process of casting off; another, two jetties along, was still being loaded. The door of the Rudderless Cutter, the tavern that catered night and day to dock workers and rivermen, stood open, though the lack of noise from within suggested that business was slow this morning.
'It'll be a long time before you see the inside of a tavern again,' the chief constable snarled in Villon's ear, then prodded him again with his club. 'Get a move on. Your carriage awaits.'
Villon continued to glance up and down the wharfside as he shuffled along the short wooden jetty. At least he didn't have to invent some pretext for slowing his progress towards the cutter. He wanted to give the stranger - what had the Graf called him? Magister? - as much time as possible to make good on his promise.
But, when his foot touched the lip of the gangplank that angled between the jetty and the cutter, Villon had to admit the possibility that the Magister had reconsidered his plan.
'Curse you, man! I'll not have anyone say that about my sister, even in jest!'
'Get back, you blackguard, or I'll do to you what I did to her - but you won't enjoy as much as she!'
'That's it! You're going to eat those words!'
The sounds of an argument exploded into the still air. There was the sound of heavy footsteps on wood. Villon, one foot on the gangplank, craned to look over his shoulder.
There were five of them, rivermen judging by their clothing. A couple of them still held flagons in their fists, though Villon had the impression that they had come from the opposite direction to the Rudderless Cutter.
They were already on the jetty. The last of them to speak shoved another in the chest, forcing him to stumble backwards towards Villon and his escort. The aggressor chased after him; the others crowded onto the jetty behind him.
'You men, stop that!' the chief constable stepped away from Villon and pointed at the men with his club. 'By order of the Graf, go home and sleep off whatever idiocy it is that you're arguing about!'
'You calling me an idiot?' The riverman who had been pushed backwards along the jetty had regained his balance and turned to face the chief constable. Villon noted that he held a flagon down by his hip.
It didn't stay there for long. The crack of its impact on the chief constable's skull was as loud as a musket's report. The chief constable staggered, came close to stepping off the jetty's edge, but recovered. Clearly the metal skull cap helmet that was regulation wear for the constables of Wallenholt had absorbed a good deal of the blow.
The chief constable's attacker stared for a heartbeat at the dented drinking vessel before hurling it aside. The constables were pounding towards him; his companions were racing to meet them. Villon didn't envy him his position at the meeting point of the two opposing forces...
The riverman dived at the constables' feet, clearly hoping to trip them. Ready for him, they leapt over his sprawling body and continued their forward rush. Rolling to his feet, he looked around for another target. Unfortunately for him, his first target found him.
Stepping close behind the riverman, the chief constable hooked his club under his chin and levered backwards. To avoid strangulation, the riverman managed to half-turn towards his assailant and they grappled, staggering back and forth across the width of the jetty, each trying and failing to hurl the other into the river.
Behind Villon, the cutter's crew looked on, unsure of whether or not their duties included going to the constables' aid. Villon imagined that, if their sympathies lay anywhere, it would be with their fellow rivermen. Past the struggling figures of the chief constable and his attacker, one of the chasing group had already been launched into the river, courtesy of a well-timed blow from one of the constables, but the remaining two were meeting every one of the constables' blows with one or more of their own.
As yet, none of cutter's crew had thought to complete Villon's transfer to their vessel and Villon wanted to be far from the wharf before the thought occurred to them. The manacles made swimming impossible. There was only one way off the jetty: past both sets of combatants.
Nervously, Villon shuffled away from the gangplank. Ahead of him, the chief constable seemed to be getting the upper hand. He paused, hoping to spot a chance to ease past them unnoticed.
'You! Stay!' the chief constable had succeeded in applying a head-lock to his opponent that looked at least halfway secure. Both hands occupied, he was relying upon the authority in his voice and the threat in his eyes to root Villon to the spot. Not about to be frozen like a frightened rabbit, Villon took another manacled step towards the wharf's end of the jetty.
'I said stay!' The chief constable shot a clawed hand at Villon, who jumped backwards more vigorously than the manacles were designed to allow. Suddenly, he was falling, feet tangled in the manacles' chains, hands clutching at air.
The river folded itself around him, pushing foul-tasting water up his nose and down his throat. Eyes still open, the world suddenly lost focus and took on a greenish tinge.
Arms and legs pumping as best they could, he somehow broke the surface long enough to gulp down barely half a lungful of air. Then the weight of the manacles dragged him back under. As he kicked and clawed at the water around him, desperate to regain the surface, he had the dim sense of a sluggish current carrying him away from the jetty.
Grey mist edged his vision as he redoubled his spastic, frog-like swimming stroke. This time, he managed to take a whole shuddering breath before the manacles' dragging mass reclaimed him for the river.

HE HAD NO idea how long he had been unconscious. He woke to the sensation of being lifted clear of the river's dank embrace. Was he being carried to stand before Morr's dark throne and be judged? He struggled to breathe, then coughed and what felt like a barrel's worth of river water jetted from his throat. Somehow he didn't imagine that his final journey would feel like this.
'Alive then.' Now he was flat on his back in some kind of rivercraft. Cracking his eyelids he could see the sides of the wooden hull rising over him. Something was hanging over him, he noticed. Fixing his bleary gaze upon it, he made out a face: pale eyes; black beard, neatly trimmed.
The stranger moved away from Villon, who struggled into a half-supine position. He seemed to be in a smaller craft than the trading vessel moored at the jetties: narrow, shallow and fitted with a single sail, which the stranger was in the process of trimming, though there didn't seem to be much point in raising a sail on a windless morning like this.
Raising his head above the gunwales, Villon was surprised to feel that a wind had indeed sprung up and was filling the small sail. He also realised that, rather than heading downriver with the current, the stranger was steering the craft back towards Wallenholt. Hauling himself into an unsteady position somewhere between kneeling and crouching, he stared ahead: there was Wallenholt; there was the ship that was to return him to Marienburg; and there were the constables, standing on the jetty, waving as if they expected the stranger to steer his boat towards them. There was no sign of the argumentative group who, deliberately or otherwise, had facilitated his escape.
'Master!' he rasped out through a throat made rank by river water.
'Magister,' the stranger corrected, without turning his head. He seemed to be looking for something further upriver, past Wallenholt.
'Magister,' Villon added. The stranger seemed to be very particular about titles and Villon saw no profit in antagonising him. 'While I am in your debt for rescuing me from the river, I confess I am surprised to find us returning to Wallenholt. Given our conversation in the cells, I had formed the understanding that you wanted to help me escape.'
'We're not returning to Wallenholt. Our path lies in this direction.' The Magister pointed upstream. Wisps of river mist clung to the banks further upstream.
'But the constables...' The boat was close enough for the shouts of the frustrated law officers to reach it. Villon saw that the chief constable was engaged in animated discussion with a man Villon took to be the captain of the river cutter. The chief constable jabbed a finger at the craft in which Villon sat, feeling particularly vulnerable. The captain thought for a moment, then nodded.
'They're coming after us!' The cutter's captain was barking orders to his crew, orders which were answered at a run by his crew. On the jetty, the constables began to unfasten the cutter's mooring ropes. 'They'll run us down!'
'Not if they cannot find us,' the Magister answered calmly. He pointed upstream. 'It seems the river mist is especially persistent this morning.'
'What?' Villon couldn't understand why the Magister should give a damn about the weather - until he looked past the low prow of the boat and saw that what had, only moments earlier, appeared to be faint wisps of mist had thickened and grown into a bank of dense white opacity that stretched from bank to bank. Nor was it simply sitting there. It was moving downriver towards them.
The Magister's craft had passed the Wallenholt Wharf. As it left the town behind, it seemed to be picking up speed, as if the wind that filled its sail was growing stronger. But, if the wind was blowing upstream, Villon realised, what was propelling the bank of mist downstream?
Villon had no time to ponder this further. The combined speeds of the Magister's boat and the mist brought the two together more quickly than might be considered entirely natural and Villon's world turned white.

'IN CENTURIES PAST, the Kleinereik was known for the peculiarity of its weather.' The Magister handed Villon a key and nodded at his manacles.
'Really.' Villon got the impression that his rescuer didn't really care whether or not he believed him. He got on with fitting the key to the thick metal cuffs that bound his wrists and ankles. They hit the soft, slightly boggy soil of the river bank with a muffled clank. The grey mare that had been waiting, tethered, on the bank - the opposite bank to that on which Wallenholt stood, at least a day's ride downstream - shifted its weight and whinnied softly at the sudden noise. Villon offered the key to the Magister, who took it - then tossed it into the river.
'Do likewise with the chains,' he instructed Villon. 'I prefer to leave no trace.'
By the time Villon had gathered up the manacles and propelled them as far away from the bank as possible, given their weight and awkwardness, the Magister had reached into the boat and lifted out a set of saddle bags. He handed the bags to Villon.
'In there you will find a map, some provisions and a small purse,' the Magister said without preamble. 'The map will guide your through the Reikwald Forest to a backwoods town which, I am informed, has become the base of operations of one Gerhard Kraus. Kraus is a bandit, nothing more, though he has ambitions towards respectability.' He broke off to snort derisively.
'I commissioned Kraus to acquire a certain... artefact,' the Magister continued. 'This he did, but subsequently reneged on our agreement, preferring to keep it for himself. In return for your liberation, you shall acquire that artefact from Kraus and deliver it to me.' The Magister had turned his pale gaze on Villon. It was clear that he did not expect Villon to object.
'What is it that you want me to acquire?' Villon asked.
'Oh, you will know it when you see it,' the Magister replied. 'It has a certain quality that you are sure to recognise, given your poetic sensibility.' It was impossible to miss the weight of mockery the Magister loaded upon the word ''poetic''. 'Kraus is a vain man who enjoys the flattery of poets. That and your talents as a thief shall be his undoing.'
The Magister turned and stepped into the boat, unhitched its mooring rope from the overhanging branch to which he had tethered it and pushed away from the bank. As the boat began to drift downstream, this time obeying the river's natural current, he looked up at Villon.
'I shall travel to Altdorf and stay there for the next seven days,' he said. 'You will find me at The Broken Bough, on Karl-Ludwigplatz. 'Do not disappoint me. Do not try to run. I will find you.'
'I believe you,' Villon replied - but the Magister had already turned to set his sail. That done, he settled into the stern of the boat, hand on the tiller. He didn't look back and was soon lost to sight around the first bend.

VILLON HAD HEARD his destination before he saw it: the sound of hammers, saws and shouted instructions.
A wall of stakes, taller than two men, was being erected around the town. A closer look at the labour force over the next couple of days would show that the townsfolk were building the walls of their own prison, supervised by the bandits who had taken possession of their home.
'Welcome to Krausberg,' the taller of the two gatekeepers growled. Like his fellow, this man was heavily armed, heavily bearded and just plain heavy. He held out an open palm and growled again: this time informing Villon how much it would cost to enter the town.
Villon paid the toll and was allowed to enter. He knew little about military matters, but the fortifications looked sturdy enough - though, he noticed the wall of stakes had yet to completely encircle the town. He made a mental note of the locations of the open sections, then made enquiries about the availability of a room for a weary traveller.
With surprising shrewdness, Kraus had barracked his men in the homes of the townsfolk and left the town's two lodging houses and its single inn open to accept paying guests. After visiting both guest houses, thus providing himself with an excuse for wandering through the streets, setting in his mind the locations of the gaps in the wall, he took the cheaper of the two rooms available at the inn.

IT WAS SOMETHING Villon had done hundreds of times before: pretend to become the friend and drinking partner of someone he fully intended to fleece. The only difference this time was that he was pretending to become the friend and drinking partner of somewhere between fifty and seventy men simultaneously, in the hope that his hurriedly-assembled reputation would reach the ears of Gerhard Kraus.
In the three days that had passed since his arrival in Krausberg, the man after whom the town had been re-named had not left the confines of what used to be the mayor's house at the far end of the main street. Direct questions regarding Kraus had met with hostile, suspicious glares, so Villon had concentrated on entertaining his new friends with verses that had proved popular in the stews and taverns of Marienburg. Ironically, ''Madame Klatch's Menagerie'' proved to be the most popular of all.

'KLATCH! KLATCH!' VILLON wasn't sure what the time was, but he was pretty certain that he had already recited that particular verse once already this evening. His audience, however, had decided what it wanted to hear.
Holding up his hand for quiet, Villon prepared himself. Sweeping his flagon from the bar, he took a long draught, making sure to spill most of it down his shirt front in the process. Had he swallowed a fraction of what he appeared to have drunk, he would have been insensible hours ago. Placing the empty vessel on the bar, he took a breath.
'I rhyme of the lady, von Klatch...'
'Not again, poet!' At the sound of this voice - one Villon did not recognise - all eyes turned to a corner, a short way from the door. A heavy-set, red bearded man stood there. Where the bandits wore the rough fabric and oiled leather harnesses of professional cut-throats, he wore velvet and linen which would have been more suited to a merchant's salon. The mere fact that he would dare to wear such clothes in the company of the inn's other patrons left Villon in no doubt that this was the man he had been sent to find: Gerhard Kraus.
'Bawdyhouse rhymes are all very well,' Kraus declared, 'and you have some facility with them, as I have been told.'
'Thank you, my lord.' Villon bowed. He didn't imagine that Kraus would be too pleased to see the mocking smile that cracked his face. 'Some facility' indeed! This from a man who was better acquainted with the pleas of his victims and the screams of the dying than with meter, scansion and rhyme!
'But there are forms of verse capable of stimulating Man's higher functions, rather than merely pandering to his baser tastes,' Kraus continued. Villon thought he was going to laugh out loud at the bandit's slab-tongued attempt at literary critique.
With an absurdly foppish flourish Kraus produced from a pocket of his tunic a small book. It almost vanished in his ham-like grasp as he brandished it before the crowd. 'Perhaps you would care to hear one of my most recent efforts?'
'I'd be honoured, lord,' was all Villon trusted himself to say; the urge to laugh in the bandit's face was almost too great.
That urge died the moment Kraus began to read.
The subject matter - an episode from the youth of Sigmar - was traditional, unsurprising; but the seven-footed meter in which it had been composed, as well as being much older than the Heroic hexameter, was used with a flexibility that one in a hundred poets might hope to achieve after a lifetime's practice.
This alone left Villon in no doubt: whoever had composed this poem, it was not Gerhard Kraus.
And the effect the poem had on its audience made Villon doubt the unknown poet's humanity.
Every drunken thug in the place had turned his attention to the verse; they leaned forward, anxious to catch the next word, the next line, as if they were collegium-trained aesthetes in a Marienburg salon, not bandit scum, drunk out of their minds in the middle of nowhere.
And though he couldn't have described it in words, Villon knew why.
It was there, in the back of his mind: a tingling, like an inaccessible itch. Not a voice. Something softer, more insidious, something that made it impossible to turn away. Villon felt as if he had gone without water for days and the words that fell from Kraus's lips were droplets from a mountain spring. A quick shake of the head cleared his mind long enough for him to take in the rapt expressions of those around him. Looking towards the back of the room, Villon saw the effect it was having on Kraus.
He could have been a different person. Though physically unchanged, everything about him was different: his posture, his expression and, most of all, his voice. Kraus's rough bass had become a delicate, flexible instrument, capable of octave-wide leaps and swoops. The verse sang through it, through Kraus's entire being.
'You will know it when you see it...' Villon remembered the voice from somewhere. It had sent him here to find something. He struggled to recall the vague outlines of a face - a beard? - but the name eluded him. Had he been asked his own name, he realised, he would be hard put to provide an answer.
He was being drawn back, drawn back into the verse, whose words filled the tavern, filled the minds of everyone present...

THE SILENCE WAS deafening. Villon had no idea how long it had lasted, or how long it had taken him to realise that it was over. Looking around, he saw several of the tavern customers were shaking their heads and blinking stupidly, as if emerging from a deep sleep. At the back of the room Kraus hung between two of his bodyguards like a limp puppet; the power and elegance that had possessed him while reading was gone. He jerked his head drunkenly towards the door and was half-carried, half-dragged out into the night.
Villon waited as long as he dared then moved across the tavern and cracked open the door. The retreating silhouettes of Kraus and his bodyguard were already halfway down the street. Easing the door open further, Villon slipped after them.

AS FAR AS Villon had been able to ascertain during his evenings at the inn, the town's original inhabitants were not under curfew. Evidently, the back-breaking work on the fortifications and the type of person one was likely to meet of an evening in Krausberg were enough to keep them indoors after sunset. The main street was empty as Villon made his way through the shadows towards the former mayor's dwelling. He hung back in the lee of a barber-surgeon's shop until they had bundled Kraus inside, then made his way cautiously around the house, looking for a way in.
A small outbuilding leaned against the rear wall of the house. A running jump gained Villon a finger-hold on the edge of the roof and he hauled himself up. The roof inclined towards a narrow window; Villon edged towards it, wary of the roof's stability. Overconfidence - usually as the result of over-indulgence - had delivered him into the hands of the local law or more than one occasion. Should that happen tonight, he doubted that he would be lucky enough to spend any time in a cell.
Upon reaching the window, he drew a short, thick-bladed knife that had been among the articles he found in the Magister's saddlebags. A few minutes work with it between the rough-fitting window at its frame and he was able to flip the catch and slip silently inside.
He found himself in an unlit corridor, where he paused to take in the sounds of the house. Muffled conversation reached him from one end of the corridor; he edged towards it, careful to keep to the middle of the passage and thus avoid banging into furniture or ornaments. A corner revealed the house's main staircase. Dim light reached the landing from below, as did the voices; they faded as he listened - probably the bodyguards heading for the kitchen.
A table stood at the head of the stairs. A lit candle in an ornate wooden candelabrum stood on the table. Villon took it with him as he padded softly down the corridor that lead away from the staircase at an acute angle.
The first door was unlocked - a linen cupboard. The second was locked, but the latch was not the work of a craftsman. A few seconds' work with the knife and the latch gave. After a glance back down the corridor, Villon cupped his hand around the candle flame and stepped inside.

ONE LOOK AT the figure sprawled across the bed told Villon that he didn't need to worry about the candle light waking the room's occupant. Kraus might have been dead drunk but Villon hadn't seen him take a drop. His performance at the inn had robbed him of all but the strength required to maintain the shallow breathing that barely lifted his over-fussy shirt front.
And there, under one out-thrown arm, was the book.
Tucking his knife back into his boot, Villon reached out and prepared to gently ease it free.
Nothing could have prepared him for the shock of touching the book. It felt as if he had placed his hand into a bucket of freezing water. The chill ran quickly up his arm, hitting his chest with enough force to make him gasp involuntarily, then seemed to dissipate, leaving Villon at first shivering then sweating profusely.
Villon glanced at Kraus. The bandit hadn't so much as twitched at the sound of Villon's gasp. Villon took a breath, then eased the book from under Kraus's arm. Again, the bandit didn't move. Villon stepped away from the bed and stared down at the slim volume's plain calfskin cover.
Had it been real - the racing chill he felt when his fingers touched the soft brown cover? It was just a book, probably a privately-printed volume of the kind von Wallenholt had planned for Villon's verse. And the Magister was just a collector of such volumes with too much money to spare and a sideline in parlour magic.
But Villon knew this was untrue. What had happened in the tavern was not natural. The chill that shot up his arm had been real. And there was something else about this book: it felt heavier than it should for a volume this slim, as if something had found a way to slip between the words, conceal itself among the fibres of the parchment pages, but could not prevent its weight giving away its presence.
The Broken Bough, Altdorf. He should already be on his way, not standing here staring at the book he had agreed to steal. He should be heading for the door, then padding down the corridor, past the stairs and on to the window over the outbuilding.
But he remembered what had happened in the tavern. The audience had been unable to turn away. Even he had been sucked into its world. What kind of verse could do such a thing?
He didn't remember putting the candle down on the table beside the bed. His hands might have been moving under their own volition as, with something approaching reverence, they opened the book.
Words. Page after page of marks in faded ink on slightly yellow parchment. Words that Villon could not read.
Villon sucked in a deep breath, surprised to find that his chest felt as if it had been squeezed tight since he had first touched the book. Something had withdrawn from him, leaving only a vague sense of disappointment floating on the air.
He shook his head, closed the book. Definitely time to go.
The sound of creaking bed boards and rustling fabric told him that he had waited too long already. There came the smooth rasp of a sword leaving its scabbard and Villon threw himself away from the bed - a heartbeat before the heavy cavalry sabre cleaved the air where he had stood.
Villon landed and rolled into a half-crouch in the middle of the room - and cursed his luck for not taking him closer to the door. Kraus was off the bed and standing between Villon and the door. At least, it looked like Kraus...
The bandit seemed to sway as he stood there, like a puppet held too slackly on its strings. The sword, which he had drawn from a scabbard propped against the other side of the bed, hung in a loose, almost careless grasp. His head lolled unpleasantly and, in the flickering of the candle, Villon saw that his eyes, though open, had rolled back in their sockets. The candlelight played across the exposed whites.
Villon backed away from Kraus, mind racing, eyes flicking about the room, seeking a way out. Slack-mouthed, Kraus stared after him, the tilt of his head giving him an air of detached curiosity, as if he were an astrologist studying the movement of the heavens. Villon began to entertain the hope that he might be able to step gingerly past the immobile imbecile and slip out the way he had come.
Then he heard it, rising in volume: a reedy ululation, that seemed to come from Kraus's mouth without any effort on his part. It echoed from him as if from the distant recesses of a mountain cave - a mountain cave in a very cold part of the world.
Villon had heard it before - as an undertone to the verse Kraus had performed in the tavern. Villon felt again a rising chill in his bones. Without the poetry to sweeten it, the sound was repulsive, but this did nothing to dilute its effect: as he had been drawn into the world of the verse, Villon felt himself being drawn into the world from which the sound emanated. Somewhere cold and dark.
Instinct saved him again. Some animal part of his brain knew that, after rooting his prey to the spot, Kraus would strike. It was only a stiff-legged stumble, but it took him backwards and out of the range of the descending sword. The sound of the heavy blade biting into the floorboards jolted Villon back to proper wakefulness.
After jerking the sword free of the floorboards, Kraus came for him again. Villon had snatched up a chair and used it to fend off the attack.
Kraus hacked at the chair, severing one of the legs - whatever power motivated him had endowed him with strength beyond the human. He might well carve his way through the chair even before Villon tired of holding it.
'Boss!' the shout from the other side of the door was accompanied by the sound of running footsteps. 'Boss! You all right in there?' Whoever was in the corridor didn't wait long for a reply. There was a loud thump. Luckily, the catch which Villon had refastened after entering the room held. But it would not hold for long. Still backing away from Kraus, and now holding a two-legged, one-armed chair, Villon, risked a glance behind him, judged the distance between himself and the chamber's heavy, diamond-leaded windows.
Kraus drew back his sword-arm, ready for another hacking strike and Villon hurled the remains of the chair at him. The impact would have knocked a normal man to his knees. Kraus took two steps back, then came forward again.
Villon still did not dare turn and work at the window latches. He had already pulled his knife from his boot for the purpose, but, as Kraus charged towards him, he knew he'd have to use something else to open the windows.
Kraus swung for Villon with all the force he would have used against the chair. Villon ducked beneath the neck-level swing of the blade, then rose and slammed the knife into the bandit's right eye. For the first time since he woke, Kraus uttered a human sound - a low grunt of pain - as his sword fell from his suddenly nerveless grasp and he keeled over, landing heavily on the floor.
At this, the shouts and thumps from the other side of the door increased in volume and frequency. The door creaked, began to give way.
Leaving his knife in Kraus's socket, Villon once again hefted the chair. This was no time for subtlety, or for struggling to free his knife, should it have wedged itself into Kraus's skull.
The window exploded into fragments of lead and glass as the chair flew through it. Villon was halfway through the resulting gap when he heard movement and something approaching a groan. He looked back into the room.
Kraus was halfway to his feet. With one hand he scrabbled after his sword. With the other - his right - he reached up to his face.

'I'D NOT HAVE believed it if I hadn't I seen it with my own eyes.' Villon paused to smile ruefully at the unintentional pun. 'He - Kraus, whatever it was - just pulled the knife free as if it were a splinter in his thumb.' He took a long swallow of the wine the Magister had ordered before ushering him into a small private room at the rear of The Broken Bough.
Villon wiped his lips and continued: 'The door gave in at that moment and I decided it would be much to my advantage if I was elsewhere. I had to drop to the bare ground, but it's not the first time I've done such a thing - I know how to land to avoid sprains or breaks.
'On my way to the livery stables, I stopped off at the tavern to raise the alarm and sent Kraus's men to the mayor's house to defend their leader from a monster with one eye. It was all nonsense but, fortunately, those in the tavern were very, very drunk.'
'You got away unseen.' The Magister had barely touched his own goblet. The well-banked fire that burned in the grate seemed to have no effect upon him, while Villon was beginning to sweat.
'Yes. The livery was close by the gate, but the guards had answered the general hue and cry. And anyway, I doubled back along the inside of the fortifications until I came to a gap. Kraus's men will have assumed I took the track from the gate. Thanks to your map, I was able to follow a less obvious route. I didn't want to risk missing you, so I rode as hard as I could for Altdorf. I took a room and stabled my - I mean your - horse and came straight here.' Villon decided not to mention his brief visit to the collegium library en route to the tavern.
'And the artefact?'
'You mean this?' Villon withdrew it from his tunic and placed it on the table between them. 'It seems a strange thing to risk one's life for.'
'Many have lost more than their lives due to its malign influence,' The Magister replied. He picked up the book and flung it into the fire. Villon leapt up, reaching involuntarily towards the flames.
'Leave it!' The Magister commanded. In the grate, the fire had already begun to consume the book's old, dry pages.
'You will already be aware that it was no ordinary book of verse.' The Magister seemed to be enjoying Villon's surprise as he took his seat again. 'It is the last surviving copy of the work of a damned poet - his name is of no matter, since it belongs in the lists of those lost to the darker powers. Some say he was a sorcerer, others that he was possessed, a mere conduit through whose verse those unseen powers sought to render other men susceptible to corruption, possession and eventual damnation. From what you say, they had already seized control of Kraus's soul and was beginning to twist the minds of his men. You will have felt something of its power when he read from the book.
'Kraus fell victim so quickly after acquiring the book for me because he could read. The power behind the verse could reach out to him directly from the page.' The Magister smiled. 'Who would have predicted that of a wandering cutthroat?'
'That's why you were so interested in me at the Graf's reception,' Villon interjected. For the first time, he had the sense that he understood at least part of the Magister's actions. 'Because I cannot read.'
'Your ignorance was to you as armour is to a warrior on the battlefield,' the Magister smiled again. 'Why else would I bother to save you from trial in Marienburg? I have no time for poetry and no use for poets.' He dropped a heavy purse onto the table, motioned to Villon to take it.
'Thieves, however, always have their uses.'

'THIEVES, HOWEVER, ALWAYS have their uses!' Villon parroted the Magister's final words to him as he strolled back towards his lodgings - a tavern tucked under the city walls. He felt the weight of the purse inside his tunic, next to the slim calfskin volume that had nestled there since his arrival in Altdorf. He had slipped the book stolen from the collegium next to it before making his way to The Broken Bough, where the Magister had helpfully disposed of the evidence of the theft.
The Magister had never seen the book he had gone to such lengths to acquire, therefore he'd not know if the volume Villon handed him was the right one. Villon could hand him any book of verse and receive his reward. Enchanted or not, there were bound to be others willing to pay handsomely for the volume he had, after all, risked his life to acquire.
Why get paid once, when you could get paid twice - or, if you played your hand well, more than twice?
Why indeed? Villon chuckled to himself. Why indeed?

HE DIDN'T HEAR them coming. Admittedly, he had been drinking non-stop for close to a week by the time the City Guard broke down the door of his room at The Weil-Paid Wanton. His companion had been handed her clothes and sent packing and he had been dragged naked through the streets to the nearest holding cell. No doubt the landlord would take the remainder of the Magister's money to pay for a new door.
'It would seem that the good burghers of Marienburg will have their satisfaction after all.' As he had sat on the cell's damp flagstones, with only a length of lice-riddled sack cloth for warmth, Villon had been waiting to hear that voice.
'How did you find me?' he asked the Magister, who stood on the other side of the barred cell door. 'How did you know?'
'How did I know?' The Magister addressed Villon's second question first. 'Most of my life has been spent working to protect the Empire from the encroachments of the Outer Dark. I sometimes work alone, I sometimes employ agents such as yourself. It is a loose, collegiate organisation. An invisible college, you might say. During that time, I have developed something of an instinct for the truth of a situation. On reflection, I did not feel that about our last meeting.
'As for finding you, that wasn't hard. You enjoy your reputation too much and once again it has landed you in a cell, awaiting transportation for trial. If my opinion means anything to you, I do believe you to be a good poet, but you know what little use I have for them, good or bad.'
Villon knew what was coming next, the way a condemned man knows the next thing he will feel will be the bite of the executioner's axe.
'Thieves, however are another matter,' the Magister continued. 'I have a job for a good thief. Would you be interested?'
Defeated, Villon could only nod.