by Dan Abnett
A WARHAMMER NOVEL
FELL CARGO
Dan Abnett
(An Undead Scan v1.0)
For Jony Wardley and the crew of the Kymera.
This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.
At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.
But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs heroes like never before.
“And on the eighth day, a bark was espied
Full sheet, though the wind had no breath
A sea-devil carrack, fell cargo inside
Bound for the court of King Death.”
—from a Tilean mariners’ chantey
I
Come twilight, they rowed ashore and beached in a small, high-sided cove of shingle and mossy rock west of the harbour bay. He knew the way, and led his companion sure-footedly up the cove path, over the grassy headland and down towards the lantern lights of the ramshackle town.
The sky was violet and stars were scattered across it like a haul of silver doubloons. Down in the bay, marker bells tinked and clunked in their moored baskets, rocked by the tide, and the great braziers on the horns of the harbour blazed into life, marking the port for latecomers and raising a defiant finger to the revenue men of Luccini across the channel.
Sea breezes nodded the hemp grass and tusket flowers covering the headland. His companion stopped and gazed down at the thousand winking lamps of the notorious town. Catches of music and song floated up in the night air.
“That’s it?” asked his companion.
“Indeed it is,” he replied, his deep voice a purr of relish. He knew he’d missed it, but he hadn’t realised how certain he had been that he’d never see it again.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Not even slightly,” his companion replied. “Going in there. I mean, that place. And you without even a sword.”
“I’ll have one,” he reassured his companion, “when the time comes. Now be on your guard. Down there, that’s everything you damn people are afraid of.”
In daylight, the Hole-In-By-The-Hill was nothing to look at: a cave in the limestone cliff above Peg Street
, its mouth extended with dank canvas awnings, filled with a litter of tables and stools. But after dark, it came to life. Barrel fires lit up, and torches and lanterns too, strung from the awning poles or hooked to the cliff face. Hogs and fowl, blistered black with honey, were spit-roasted over the smoking fire pits in the cave, and firelight glowed like gold off the low-hanging canvas. The tavern filled up with hot smoke, laughter and the stench of pipes, hops, swine fat and salt sweat.
That night, a blind gurdy-man was turning out jigs and reels, aided and abetted by a drunken campanica player. The pot girls, all of them well upholstered, for that was the way Grecco liked them, planked out jars of muddy ale or basket-bottles of wine for those with deeper purses. One of the girls was dancing, twirling her tatty petticoats. Customers clapped in time and threw silver coins.
Grecco himself was in the cave, his huge bulk sooty and glistening with sweat as he worked the spits. He contentedly watched his custom grow. His red macaw bobbed and shuffled up and down the wooden rung above his head, between the hanging ladles and meat forks. It would be good eating one day, went the tavern joke. When it died, it would be ready-smoked.
At the main tables under the awning, the Lightfingers ate and drank and diced. There were forty or so of them, just the seniors and the veterans. The other hundred and twenty of them, the dog-sailors and ratings, were away down the bay for the night in the cheaper stews and inns.
Lightfingers, Grecco mused. They hadn’t owned that name for long, maybe a year at most. It was none too well worn. Before that, they had been the Reivers, an altogether more virile name in his humble opinion. But names came and went, like reputations and fortunes, serving girls and lives. This was Sartosa, after all. Nothing lasted forever.
The master of the company was a bullish, shaven-headed man with a long chin-beard braided with beads. He set down his empty jar and beckoned to a passing pot-girl.
“More sup for all! And a favour from you too, little maid!”
The girl smiled and obligingly allowed herself to be tugged onto his knee.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked her, wiping his clattering beard with the loose cuff of his once-white shirt.
“You would be Master Guido of the Lightfingers.”
“Uh uh uh, now! Captain, it is! Captain Guido!” he cried. His men thumped the table boards, all except Tende, the big Ebonian helmsman, who simply gazed into his half-empty jar.
“Do you know why we’re called the Lightfingers, my girl?” Guido asked, slapping the rump of the female on his lap.
“I cannot imagine,” she replied.
“Because we…” he dropped his voice and leaned into her face conspiratorially. She stopped breathing through her nose and smiled a fake smile. “Because we,” Guido continued, “can lift a king’s ransom from under the noses of Luccini and Remas and every merchant prince in Tilea!”
Rowdy assent followed. Jars smacked together in toasts.
“Really?” asked the girl, in mock wonder.
“Oh yes!” Guido snarled. “Manann smiles upon us, lass.” He buried his face in her cleavage, snuffling. She put up with it for a few moments, looking bored and occasionally saying, “Oh, stop it… you beast” in a faintly encouraging way.
“Hey, Guido. Why don’t you tell her why you’re really called the Lightfingers?”
Guido halted his snuffling and slowly drew his face out of the girl’s ample bosom.
The table had fallen silent. The whole damn inn had fallen silent. At the back of the cave, Grecco left his spits and moved out so he could see with his own eyes. He folded his grease spattered arms and shook his head in wonder.
Defying fortune, and the fate everyone insisted had befallen him, Silvaro had come back.
II
Everyone gazed at the big man standing in the shadows under the breeze tugged flap of the awning.
“Luka?” hissed Guido.
“Yes.”
“You’re back?”
“Yes. I’m back.”
“But they said… you’d been executed.”
“Not effectively, it seems.”
Guido got up suddenly. His stool fell over.
Luka looked over at the girl. “He’s called ‘Lightfinger’ because he’s light on fingers. He used to be my number two, and I took a finger off him every time he played me wrong. Didn’t I, Guido?”
“Yes.”
“Show her.”
Guido raised his hands. The heavy cuffs of his velvet jacket slid away, revealing hands that were just claws. Just index fingers and thumbs.
&n
bsp; “How many times did you cross me, Guido?”
“Six times.”
“It’s a bloody wonder I never killed you.”
This, thought Grecco, is going to be interesting.
“What do you want?” Guido snapped.
“My ships.”
Guido snorted. “They’re mine now. Passed on to me, as accords the code.”
“I know,” said Luka Silvaro, stepping fully into the lamplight. He was tall, and as massively built as a four-masted galleon, with a forked black goatee and a thick mane of curly, greying hair tied back in a pigtail. When last they had seen him, he had been fleshy, with an increasing thickness and a distinct paunch brought on by the good living his trade had afforded. There was not an ounce of fat on him now. He looked lean, pinched, hungry, and somehow that emphasised the scale and breadth of his naturally big frame. His eyes, however, were just as they remembered: the colour of the sea before a storm, cannonball grey.
He let his cloak drop off his shoulders to show he was unarmed. “I hereby issue challenge, according the code, to take them back.”
All of the men jostled away from the table. Guido drew his sword. It was a hanger with a stirrup-hilt of gold, heavy, curved and double edged.
“By the code, then. See if any stand with you.”
Luka nodded. “A blade?”
His companion, until then just a shadow in the background, pushed into the light and offered Luka his elegant smallsword.
“No,” said Luka. “No, it can’t be you. Not for the code to work. Step out.”
His companion backed into the shadows again, frowning and not a little ill at ease.
“Who’ll blade him?” cried Guido. “Anyone? Eh? Anyone?”
In an instant, a ribbing knife as long as a man’s forearm landed, quivering, in the bench top beside Luka. It had been tossed by Fahd, the company’s wizened cook from Araby. Almost simultaneously, a flensing dagger thumped in next to it, thrown by the giant Tende.
Guido grinned at the juddering blades. “Choose your weapons,” he mocked.
There was a clatter. A sabre landed on the bench. It was an Estalian blade, a slender ribbon of watered steel curved in a thirty-degree arc, with straight quillons and a wire-wrapped pommel. It was still in its enamelled silver scabbard.
The companion couldn’t tell who had thrown it in, but Luka knew.
He picked it up, drew out the fine blade and tossed the scabbard aside. He made a couple of whooshing practice chops in the air and then smiled at Guido.
“Take your guard,” he commanded.
There was no ceremony They went at each other as the press of men backed further away to be out of reach of the slashing blades. Vento, the master rigger, obligingly scraped the trestle table aside to give them space.
The swords struck and rang like bells, over and over. Guido danced back and forth with a low guard, his left arm swinging free, like a goaded bear at a stake. Luka was more upright, shoulders back, the knuckles of his left hand pressed against his hip like an illustration from a fencing manual. It looked almost comically dainty, for a man so big, but for the undeniable speed of his cuts.
The packed onlookers shouted encouragement. Amongst them, Grecco watched. He’d witnessed enough duels, many on his own premises, to have the measure of this one. There would be three deciding factors. First, if Guido’s brute style could better Luka’s tutored perfection. Second, if Luka had the sense—and skill—to guard his slender sabre against a direct blow from Guido’s much heavier blade. Caught right, the sabre would break under the hanger’s weight. Grecco had seen more than one fight end that way, and had still been sponging the blood off his flagstones the morning after.
The third thing… Well, he was waiting for that. It was against the code, but it always happened, so much so it was an expected part of a code-duel. Any moment now.
Guido stamped in and thrust with the tip of his sword. Luka deflected it away from his heart, but still it slashed a line through the wide sleeve of his shirt. He flicked up, caught his edge against the loop of Guido’s stirrup-guard, and pushed him away, but Guido back-sliced and drew blood from the knuckles of Luka’s sword hand. Only his fat gold signet ring had prevented Luka from losing a ringer.
Now there’s irony, Grecco thought.
Luka whipped round and the tip of his Estalian steel sliced off several strands of Guido’s bead-plaited beard. Guido cursed, and presented with a down slice, followed by a side cut, forcing Luka back towards the cave mouth and the cooking fires. Some of the men were clapping rhythmically now, slap-slap-slap. The campanica player, oblivious in his drunkenness, took this as a cue and started to play until the blind gurdy-man advised him to shut up.
Guido cut Luka across his right forearm. The white linen of his shirt began to stain dark red. Luka rallied and split the tip of Guido’s nose. A gout of blood splashed out and dribbled down his mouth and beard. Guido returned so hard that Luka had to duck his swishing blade.
In the shadows, the anonymous companion began to back away, wondering how far he would get if he started to run now.
The fighters clashed blades, locked, pushed each other away, and then clashed again. Guido kicked his former captain in the shin. Both swords swung, and both missed.
They’re getting tired, Grecco thought. If I’m any judge, that third factor will come into play just about…
Two of the company broke from the onlookers and rushed Luka from behind. Girolo, a hairy brute in a blue satin frock coat that he insisted on wearing even though it was too small, and Caponsacci, the barrel-chested yardsman.
“Have a care!” roared Grecco.
Luka broke fast, spinning to deflect Caponsacci’s razor-edged tulwar, and then back-cutting to knock away Girolo’s stabbing sabre. The three swordsmen drove at Luka from the front quarters, jabbing and slashing, forcing him back out from under the awning, into the keg-yard. The audience scattered to let them through.
Girolo lunged and Luka ripped him away with a horizontal blow that sliced the meat of his shoulder. Girolo wailed and fell back. Caponsacci pressed in. Luka darted to the side, wrenched over a keg full of ale, and rolled it hard at Caponsacci with his foot. The yardsman tried to leap it, but it caught his shins and toppled him onto his face.
Guido was blocked by Caponsacci, who for a moment moved right, coming up at Girolo as he tried to recover, his beloved blue satin coat drenched red down one side.
Girolo’s sabre wasn’t fast enough. Luka sliced his throat and knocked him, choking and sucking for air, to the ground. The crowd gave a great roar.
“Choose your sides more wisely,” Luka panted at the dying man. Girolo gurgled, and expired so suddenly that his head hit the floor with a solid crack.
Guido and Caponsacci flew at Luka, who was bounding back under the awning on his toes. They came on like furies. Even with his speed, Luka couldn’t fend off the heavy, curved hanger and the long, straight tulwar simultaneously.
He scrambled in retreat and managed to pluck the cook’s long ribbing knife out of the tabletop as he passed. Then he turned, adopting the low, head-on stance of a sword-and-dagger fighter. He knocked back Guido’s sword with the sabre in his right hand, deflected Caponsacci’s broad-blade with the knife in his left, then scissored both blades, long and short, together to vice out Guido’s rally stroke.
At the back of the rowdy audience, the anonymous companion rummaged inside his cloak and pulled out an engraved wheel-lock pistol, a quality Arabyan piece. He cocked it and raised it. A hand sheathed in soft kidskin reached in and gently took it from his hand.
“Don’t,” said a voice.
The companion looked round with a start. A louche Estalian mariner in ostentatiously rich clothes stood beside him, carefully uncocking the pistol before handing it back. The man was unnecessarily handsome, his complexion dark, though not as dark as his eyes. His long, straight, black hair fell like a veil down the sides of his cheeks, framing a wolfish face.
“But—” the compani
on began.
“Silvaro won’t thank you for it. This duel is by the code. He has to fight alone, or there’ll be no honour in his victory.” The man’s voice was thick with the Estalian accent.
“There’ll be no victory at all!” the companion spluttered indignantly. “That Guido calls in his cronies. It’s not a fair fight!”
“No, senor,” admitted the Estalian with a grudging nod. “But it is the code. The challenger must be alone. If any of the crew choose to side with the master, then… so it goes.”
“Madness. It’s unfair!” snapped the companion.
“Ah yes, tut tut. But…” the Estalian shrugged. “It is the way. Put your fine pistol away before someone steals it.”
There was another braying howl from the crowd. Luka had glanced Guido’s weighty steel aside and now locked Caponsacci at the quillons with the ribbing knife. The thick-set yardsman tried to turn his wrist and plough the knife away, but Luka sank his sabre a hand’s span deep into the mariner’s chestbone. Caponsacci’s eyes turned up, and he crashed to his knees.
Before Caponsacci had even toppled nose-first onto the flags, Luka had twisted his sabre out and turned, blood flying from the blade-groove. His knife came up in a cross, and the flat of it stung away Guido’s down slash. Then the long, watered steel blade of Luka’s borrowed sabre was resting on Guido’s left shoulder, the edge pressed to the side of his neck. Guido froze.
“I suggest… you yield,” wheezed Luka.
Guido’s eyes flicked wildly from side to side. No one else was stepping forward to help him now. The Estalian blade bit gently into the flesh of Guido’s neck.
“Now,” Luka urged.
The hanger hit the flagstones with a clatter. Luka’s sword at his neck, Guido slowly sank to his knees.
“I yield,” he mumbled.
“Louder!” Luka snapped.
“I yield!”
“And?”
“I… I submit to you the ships and command that was previously yours, and lay no future claim on them. I say to the hearing of those here present that Luka Silvaro is captain and master of the Lightfingers company.”
