[Daemon Gates 01] - Day of the Daemon

by Aaron Rosenberg - (ebook by Undead)

  Fastred secured rooms for the night while Adelrich saw to the horses and Kristoff inquired about ferries farther down the Reik. That left Dietz, Alaric, and Kleiber to find supplies. They spent the rest of the day examining, tasting, haggling, buying and carrying back various packages, forcing themselves to concentrate on these everyday activities. By evening, when they gathered in the common room of the inn where they were staying, Adelrich had found a boat leaving two days later for Nuln and booked them passage.

  The next day was far too idle for anyone’s good. Left to their own devices, no one could help thinking about Renke and his death, and the maps he would never finish. These thoughts haunted Dietz and Alaric in particular. Someone had killed Renke, someone in their own party, but why?

  “He didn’t have anything of value,” Alaric pointed out the second night, when he and Dietz were checking on the horses, “or anything to steal. So why kill him?”

  “No disputes with the others?” Dietz wondered aloud, and sighed when his employer shook his head. “I know. I am only trying to figure this out. Why kill Renke?”

  “He must have learned something,” Alaric decided. “Something too dangerous to risk getting out. So whoever it was killed him to keep him quiet.”

  “That could be, but who?” Dietz ran through the other party members in his head. “Kleiber? He’d simply execute anyone who stood in his way and call it righteous. Kristoff? I cannot see him resorting to such methods. Fastred? He’s so free with his stories I cannot imagine he has anything to hide? Adelrich?” Dietz’s mind shied away from the notion of his friend as a killer. “No, he wouldn’t do that. Holst? What could a guard captain say or do that would be worth killing a man like Renke?”

  “It makes no sense, I agree.” Alaric shook his head. “But someone did this. We’ll have to be careful.”

  They boarded the barge the next morning, and it was all Alaric could do not to stare at each of his companions in turn. Dietz had an easier time pretending unconcern—he had grown up hard and had often been forced to play at friendship with people he detested or even feared. If the others noticed their new distance no one mentioned it—they all concentrated on boarding and stowing gear and getting out of the sailors’ way. Everyone particularly avoided the barge pilot, fully aware that Renke would have been there pestering him for a look at his river maps and a description of their intended route.

  It should have been a pleasant journey. The Reik was smooth and quick, the weather pleasant, the barge not too cramped, the food fresh and mostly edible, the crew boisterous. They should have enjoyed the chance to sit and relax and watch the banks slide past. Instead, Kleiber spent his time polishing his weapons or praying, Kristoff and Fastred alternated sleeping, drinking and playing cards, Holst drilled his remaining men without pause and Adelrich whittled fixedly on a chunk of wood. Dietz took up a similar practice just to keep busy, carving a block into some shape he could not yet see, which left Alaric to pace and think, and brood.

  Three days later they docked at Nuln and clambered out onto the weathered pier. Alaric paid the barge captain the rest of his fee and the others stretched their legs and walked the horses down to the shipyard proper, glad to be back on solid ground. Their respite was brief, however.

  “I’ve found us another boat,” Adelrich told them over dinner that night in one of the quieter, cleaner inns. “This one heads along the Upper Reik and then around. They can get us within a day’s ride of Grenzstadt.” Everyone nodded—even without Renke they knew Grenzstadt guarded the western end of the Black Fire Pass.

  The second barge ride was less pleasant than the first. Everyone staked out a space alone and stayed there throughout the trip, barely acknowledging the others. Finally Alaric had had enough.

  “All right!” he shouted, getting everyone’s attention. “This is pathetic! Look at us, huddling in our corners like sulking children! Is this what Renke would have wanted?” He hated to use their dead friend’s name so brusquely, but knew it was the only thing that might work. “Would he have approved? This is no longer just about doing what’s right, or about protecting the Empire—now it’s about making Renke’s death mean something!”

  Everyone stared at him, shocked, until finally Fastred nodded. “You are right,” the big man agreed. “We are all behaving poorly out of grief and frustration, but that is the last thing we should let govern us.”

  Suddenly the tension was gone. Everyone gathered by the barge’s low prow and shared food, ale and water, talking and joking again. A pallor still hung about them, but it had thinned, and Alaric thought he could sense Renke nearby, nodding his approval. The last thing the little cartographer would have wanted was to jeopardise their mission.

  The day after, the barge reached a fork in the river. One branch continued south while the other curved back to the north-east. They followed the latter, skirting the base of the mountains as the landscape turned more bleak, steeper and filled with rock instead of grass and earth. Two days later the barge put in at a small town and they stepped off. This was as far as it would go—past this point the river rose dramatically, narrowing and becoming much quicker, with no room to manoeuvre. The river barge would never survive such a journey.

  “Still, it got us here,” Adelrich pointed out as they watched the boatmen poling the barge back into the current. “That’s saved us a week or more.”

  “Aye, and the horses are well-rested,” Dietz added. “They’ve had a hard journey already, no sense making matters worse by overworking them.”

  After buying salted meat, flat bread and dried fish to replenish their stores, the travellers rode out. They followed the river around, moving quickly, but not at breakneck speed, and after two days in the saddle they spotted a large, solidly built town up above, set before the lowest of the mountain peaks.

  “Grenzstadt,” Adelrich confirmed, looking up at it. “Behind it lies the Black Fire Pass.”

  As it turned out, they did not even enter the town. Grenzstadt was set below the entrance to the pass and a wide, rough path led around it to the guard post there. They took the more direct route and walked their horses up to the guards, who had seen them coming and were waiting for them by the heavy wooden barricade. Kleiber’s status as a witch hunter, combined with Holst’s military papers and Kristoff’s trading privileges, got them past the barricade and into the pass itself. They also asked the guards if a heavily laden wagon had passed this way two or more months ago, and the captain confirmed the presence of such a vehicle. They were heading in the right direction.

  The Black Fire Pass proved very different from their expectations. Dietz knew the stories, that here Sigmar had held back the final attack of his enemies and forced them back beyond the mountains, protecting the lands that became his Empire. He had assumed the pass was merely that, a narrow channel cut through the mountains. Instead they passed beyond Grenzstadt to the mountain itself, up a wide path, and into a small valley worn between two cliffs. The ground was uneven, forming small hills of solid rock in many places, with other passages branching off on either side. The cliffs above were not smooth either and bore ledges and crevasses all along their lengths.

  “You could hide an entire army in here,” Holst remarked as they rode, which did nothing to increase their comfort. As soon as they reached the valley he deployed his soldiers around the others, with Adelrich in front and several guards on either side and behind. Swords were kept loose in their scabbards and spears in hands, and Dietz knew they were all thinking the same thing. This was an ideal place for an ambush.

  A few moments later they topped a rise to find Adelrich waiting, sword in hand. The reason for his unsheathed weapon was readily apparent as they glanced beyond him. The path narrowed below them, flattening into a small ledge at the bottom before rising again on the far side of the valley. High walls loomed alongside, chipped and notched by many caves, nooks and trails. This spot was ideal for an ambush, and judging from the corpses they saw littering the ground below, one had already occ
urred.

  “Soldiers,” Adelrich confirmed as they rode down the slope and threaded their way between the bodies there. “Dead less than a day.” He gestured towards one man who had been cut almost in half. “An orc axe, by the looks of it.” His hand tightened on his sword hilt. “A warband did this.”

  Holst’s men tightened around the others, spears raised as everyone glanced about: an orc war party here? No wonder the Grenzstadt captain had not wanted to let them pass. How long had he been blocking this pass against the invaders? And why hadn’t he warned them of the danger?

  While everyone looked this way and that, Adelrich was still, eyes distant as he listened intently to the sounds beyond their own horses. “Someone is coming,” he declared finally, leaping into his saddle. “A great many someones.”

  “Defensive positions!” snapped Holst, and his men surrounded the travellers, spears bristling outward. Fastred raised his crossbow, Kleiber his pistol, and Adelrich his bow, while Alaric and Kristoff drew their swords and Dietz his knives. For a moment nothing moved save the wind whistling through the rocks above. Then they all heard what Adelrich had, the clump of many feet marching closer.

  The sound grew and they tensed, ready to fight. Then, not ten feet away, shadows appeared from a small passage in one wall. The shadows stretched towards them as the figures casting them grew closer, reaching the valley itself.

  The entire group sighed in relief at the sight of men in Empire armour, soldiers, much like the ones at their feet.

  “Stand down!” a voice bellowed, and Holst nodded to his men, who raised their spears and set the butts against the ground. Weapons were lowered as more soldiers appeared, surrounding them.

  “Identify yourselves!” the man shouted again, and now Dietz could distinguish a man among the soldiers wearing a plume in his helmet, a sergeant like Holst.

  “Alaric von Jungfreud—” Alaric began, but was interrupted, by Holst, surprisingly.

  “Farlun Holst, Sergeant, Middenheim Count’s Guard,” he declared crisply, stepping forward to confront the other sergeant, “escorting important personages into Black Fire Pass on vital business of the elector count and the Empire. Request permission to meet with your commanding officer!”

  The other sergeant nodded. “Follow me!” His men formed up around him, and at a gesture Holst’s did the same for him and the travellers. They followed the Empire soldiers down the narrow pass from which they had emerged, two separate groups close together. Adelrich eased his horse up beside Alaric as they rode.

  “He didn’t intend it as a slight,” Dietz heard the scout say softly. “Holst figured the other sergeant would respond better to him, that’s all.”

  Alaric laughed lightly. “I took no offence, I assure you,” he replied. “If I thought it would help I’d happily let Holst do all the talking all the time!”

  “No you wouldn’t,” Dietz commented from behind them, chuckling at the look on his employer’s face. “I know you—after half an hour you’d start lecturing on something, anything.”

  Alaric laughed with him, a touch ruefully. “Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted. “I have such an excellent voice it’s hard not to use it often.” They all laughed, and the mountains suddenly seemed less overwhelming.

  The Empire commander, Meinard Haas, was a short, stocky man with thick red-brown hair and a short bushy beard. His camp sat in a wide clearing at the end of the pass and the tents were laid out with proper military precision, arrayed around his own command tent. The sergeant escorted Alaric and the others to the front flap, announced them, and then stepped aside to let them enter. He had confiscated their weapons upon entering the clearing, however, and had detained Holst and his men by the outermost tents.

  “Commander,” Alaric began, stepping inside and bowing. “Alaric von Jungfreud, at your service. We are here on urgent business from Elector Count Boris Todbringer of Middenheim.”

  Haas nodded back. “Captain Verten allowed you entrance to the pass, so I assume you have legitimate business here. What can I do for you?” He remained standing and did not offer them places to sit, or anything to eat or drink.

  “We seek a wagon,” Alaric explained. “It came from Middenheim some months ago and was heading here, bearing a single large, heavy, covered object. Captain Verten remembers allowing it through.”

  “I’ve not seen anything like that,” Haas replied, “nor do I care. I have other concerns.”

  “The battle we stumbled upon?” Fastred asked, and introduced himself when Haas glanced his way.

  “Yes, that,” the commander admitted, “and more, if you had gone over the next rise you would have found battle for yourself. Sergeant Druber informs me an orc war party was waiting just beyond for a second ambush.” He laughed at Alaric’s involuntary shudder. “Hardly a pleasant outing, is it, lad? This is war you’ve stumbled across.”

  “War?” Kristoff spoke up from one side. “I thought the Empire held this pass?”

  Haas shook his head. “We did—until the Storm of Chaos. Orcs flooded through here and down into the Empire beyond. After the war many fled back this way.” His face wrinkled in disgust. “Grenzstadt couldn’t hold them off, not enough men.” The last three words were said with a snarl, and Alaric realised the disgust was not aimed at the town and its soldiers, but at the rulers who had left it too weak to defend itself. “We’ve been sent to clean up,” Haas added heavily, “but too late. The orcs have had time to organize. The various bands are united now under one leader—he must have killed his rivals. Now he’s got a proper warband behind him and they hold the pass. We’ve been picking away at them, but they’re strong and they’ve had time to entrench.” He paused and glanced up at them again, a strange look fleeting across his face. It was almost embarrassed, and Alaric realised the commander had said more than he’d intended. The moment passed and Haas was all business again as he walked right up to Alaric, his voice gruffer than before.

  “Now,” he demanded, glaring up at Alaric. “Why are you really here?”

  “I told you, we’re after a wagon—” Alaric began, but the commander cut him off.

  “So you say, but I’ve not seen anything like that here.” His eyes narrowed. “We’ve had looting, though, someone prowling among the dead, stripping their valuables.” He eyed Alaric and the others. “You lot are a motley crew—look like you’ve been living hard. Are you scavenging among what’s left of my men?”

  “How dare you?” Kleiber began, red-faced, but Dietz and Fastred grabbed his arms and kept the witch hunter from launching himself at the Empire commander.

  “I understand your outrage, commander,” Alaric said carefully, keeping his face and voice calm, “but I can assure you we did no such thing. You are welcome to search our belongings if you like. You can also send a man down to Captain Verten, who can confirm that we rode through Grenzstadt yesterday morning. We came from Nuln by river barge, and that too can be confirmed. We are here for that wagon, not to desecrate the dead.”

  Haas continued to glare at him for a moment, and then stepped back. “Aye, it’s easy enough to prove what you say,” he admitted. “I apologize. My men are dying about me and even their bodies are not safe.” He suddenly looked very tired, and gestured them towards the rough stools scattered about his tent, no doubt for strategy sessions. After they’d all sat down, Haas sank onto one himself and, producing a wineskin from a small table, offered it around.

  “How important is this wagon?” he asked finally.

  “Very,” Alaric replied, and the others nodded.

  “The fate of the Empire itself may rest upon our mission,” Kleiber intoned, and Haas glanced at Alaric for confirmation.

  “That may be overstating it a little,” he admitted, “but only a little. We have to locate that cargo and destroy it, commander.”

  Haas grimaced. “That might not be so easy. This entire pass is riddled with hidey holes. We’ll never be able to find it.”

  “It will be somewhere bloody,” Dietz
pointed out, and Alaric nodded.

  “That’s right,” Fastred agreed. “They’re placed to receive sacrifices. Most likely it will be near the site of a battle, or perhaps in the orc camp itself.”

  “My scouts have not seen anything unusual in the orcs’ camp,” Haas said, “but they weren’t looking for much beyond the enemy’s numbers and placement.”

  “I can scout it,” Adelrich offered, rising to his feet. “If your men can direct me, I’ll go at once. I know what we seek.”

  “They’ll kill you if they find you,” Haas warned, but the scout shrugged.

  “Every mission is like that,” he pointed out.

  Alaric did not like the idea of sending Adelrich alone, but he knew better than to argue. The scout had demonstrated time and again his speed and stealth—no one else could keep up with him, and one man stood a better chance of evading notice than three or four.

  “All right, go,” he decided finally, “but be careful, and do not venture any closer than you have to.”

  Adelrich laughed. “What, I’m not to wander among the orcs without good reason? Don’t worry. I’ll stay as far back as I can.”

  Haas stood and joined him at the tent flap. “Druber!” The sergeant appeared at once. “Guide this man towards the orc camp,” he instructed, “and give these men back their weapons.” The sergeant saluted and marched off, Adelrich right behind him.

  “Now,” Haas continued as he returned to his stool and accepted the wineskin back from Fastred, “while we wait, tell me what transpires in the world beyond.”

  It was hours before Adelrich returned. Haas had proven a decent host once convinced of their sincerity, and had provided them with plain but decent food, cold mountain water, and several tents whose former owners no longer needed them. Most of the party had taken the opportunity to get some rest, but Dietz sat outside, watching for his friend’s return, Glouste curled in his lap.