Pieter

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Approaching the Ward, Pieter heard the sound of many voices from up ahead – curiosity piqued, he moved closer, doing his best not to look conspicuous. A scattered crowd of locals were standing around, looking rather disorientated: as he came around the corner of the nearest of the ramshackle buildings that ringed the well, he saw why.

The muddy yard was thronged with Hounds – a pack of them clustered around the well itself, while others were passing in and out of the open front doors of the surrounding houses, manhandling the inhabitants outdoors as they conducted a noisy search of each squalid dwelling-place. The residents stood about in mute distress, infants squalling and squabbling as their parents kept one eye on the militiamen ransacking their homes.

The Hounds by the well seemed to have set up some kind of pulley system, one or more of them presumably down there by the way the others craned their necks to look down into the shaft. Halbermann was among them, overseeing the whole operation: there had to be at least a score of the militiamen in the cramped square, maybe more.

Most eye-catching of all, however, was the mounted figure in the centre of it all: sat atop a tall, black horse, the aquiline features of the Lector were instantly recognisable, surveying the busy scene beneath him with the dignified stillness of a hawk on a high pinnacle. Striding towards him through the crowd was a man in subdued noble’s attire, broad-shouldered and with a tremendous, bushy black beard.

“What in Sigmar’s name is the meaning of all this?” blustered the man, making a bee-line for the Lector. “This is my property, sir, my property, and my tenants –“
“Your property,” replied the Lector, coolly. Belatedly looking down at the red-faced man glaring up at him, he raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Mr... Helstrum, is it not?”
“It is,” growled Helstrum. He pointed a quivering finger at Halbermann and his men. “Explain yourself, sir!”
“I was rather hoping you would be the one offering the explanations, Mr Helstrum,” said von Kemperbad, not one chink appearing in his tone of patrician calm. “As you said, this is your property. Are you aware that your well has been spreading contagion?”
Helstrum opened his mouth to reply – the Lector cut him off.
“Or that your property appears to be honeycombed with tunnels?” The priest watched the man’s face change, his own an unmoving mask. “The changeling Puderbrand was notably keen on tunnels. One of your tenants has told us he lodged here. Is there anything else you would like to tell us, Mr Helstrum? To save time?”

His face still red with suppressed indignation, the bearded man seemed to keep his mouth shut with difficulty, slowly shaking his head.

“So I thought,” said von Kemperbad, softly. “The sergeant’s men are searching this place for further evidence. You are to offer them every assistance. Starting, I think, by clearing your tenants out of their way.”

Still smouldering with suppressed wrath, Helstrum nodded and turned away – recognising a volcano about to go off in the face of the first fool to give it an opening, the peasants scattered before him like sheep before a wolf, practically running for cover.

Seemingly satisified for now, the Lector turned back to watching the search.