Hammer and Bolter: Issue 21

by Christian Dunn

  Dubnitz grabbed Lomax’s hand and stretched it out to swat playfully at the drunken merchant’s shoulder even as he grabbed the back of Lomax’s head and made it nod. Piet glared at him, but Dubnitz jerked his head towards the merchant and shrugged.

  The merchant blinked again. ‘Shay, Bernie you look sort of peaked. I know thish wonnerful cure– ack!’ He reached up to swat his neck and Dubnitz saw a tiny feathered dart pop free of his third chin and bounce into his palm. The man blinked a third time, his eyes out of synch. ‘Down I go,’ he said mournfully, sinking to the street, where he was swiftly swallowed up by the crowd. Dubnitz heard a ‘tink’ and saw another dart rattle off of his cuirass, leaving a tiny trail of fluid in its wake.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said, using Lomax’s cane to open a path. Piet staggered after him with a strangled curse.

  ‘What happened?’ the other knight barked. ‘What was that?’

  ‘Poison dart!’ Dubnitz replied. ‘They use them in the Southlands, I’m told.’

  ‘I thought the Khaine-lovers only used knives!’

  ‘They do,’ Dubnitz said. ‘That was someone else.’

  ‘How many assassins did Lomax’s relatives hire?’ Piet nearly shouted.

  ‘My guess would be all of them,’ Dubnitz said. ‘Duck!’

  ‘What?’ Piet said as Dubnitz sank down. Piet, unprepared, was jerked directly into the path of a blow from a pair of iron-shod knuckles. He swayed and tripped over his own feet, pulling Lomax down and forcing Dubnitz to stand. Dubnitz twisted, lashing out with the cane to strike the scar-faced bruiser who’d lunged from the crowd. The weighted knob of the cane bounced off the big man’s brow, and the latter staggered, shaking his head like a fly-stung ox.

  ‘Get him, Bull!’ a smaller, thinner man dressed in a stylish outfit that had seen better months shouted. ‘I’ll get Lomax.’ The little man had a thin moustache in the style of Estalian duellists and a dagger sprouted from his hand as he dove towards his prey.

  ‘Piet,’ Dubnitz said, thwacking the big man again. ‘Shake it off Piet! Duty calls!’

  Piet, jaw already purpling, reached out with his free hand, grabbing the little assassin’s wrist and slamming it against Lomax’s knee. ‘Middenheim! Get this fool!’ the little man yelled, struggling with Piet. A thick rope dropped over Piet’s free hand with alacrity, and he was jerked around. A lanky Middenheimer who was dressed in wolf skins and wielding a hunting lasso, pulled on the rope, pulling Piet towards him. He frowned as the bonds holding Piet to Lomax and Dubnitz held. ‘He’s stuck, Danzig!’ he shouted.

  ‘Not for long,’ Danzig snarled, another knife appearing in his hand as if by magic. Dubnitz gave the big man another whack with the cane and the ivory shattered on his broad head, revealing a hidden blade. Dubnitz’s eyes widened and then he whirled, parrying the little man’s blow. Danzig stared in shock and then back-pedalled as Dubnitz swiped at him. Dubnitz jabbed the tip of the blade just beneath Danzig’s chin. ‘Fancy Danzig, as I live and breathe,’ Dubnitz said. ‘And this must be Bull Murkowski and Middenheim Oscar, who’s from Talabheim, if I remember correctly.’

  ‘Erkhart,’ Middenheim said, still holding Piet’s arm trapped in his lasso.

  ‘If I recall correctly, there’s a warrant out for all three of you,’ Dubnitz said. The crowd swirled around their island of deadly calm. If anyone noticed the five men and the corpse, no one gave any sign. Fire-eaters belched nearby, filling the air with heat and the smell of sulphur.

  ‘Just give us the merchant, Dubnitz,’ Danzig growled.

  ‘He hit me,’ Bull grunted, rubbing his face.

  ‘I did, and several times at that,’ Dubnitz said, nodding. ‘And I’ll do worse than that if you three jackals don’t scarper.’ He hugged Lomax’s stiffening body close. ‘Bernard Lomax is under the protection of the Order of Manann.’

  ‘You–’ Danzig began. Whatever he’d been about to say was cut off abruptly by a wave of boiling heat as a tongue of flame shot between them. All of them turned to see a fire-eater gesture with his fire-stick. Then he let loose with another belch of fire. Middenheim cursed as his lasso curled and fried, snapping and sending him tumbling. Piet, free, grabbed for his sword.

  ‘Dubnitz,’ he snapped. Dubnitz turned from the fire-eater to see the black shapes of the murder-brothers of Khaine prowling through the crowd like sharks.

  ‘Them again,’ Dubnitz said. ‘They’re like a bloody rash.’

  The fire-eater had been joined by a tumbler, clad in silk and humorous pantaloons. The tumbler bobbed and bounced and sent a slipper-clad foot elegantly crunching into Bull’s dumb features. The big man backed away, puzzled, as the tumbler continued to kick, punch and prod him. ‘Lomax is ours Danzig,’ a man clad in a Tilean carnival mask said, levelling a repeating pistol that was so intricately engineered that it qualified as a work of art. The pistol burped and Danzig scrambled away, hands raised as the cobbles beneath his feet were chewed to dust by the pistol.

  ‘We’re going to be killed by jugglers!’ Piet said. ‘I don’t want to be killed by jugglers!’

  Dubnitz didn’t reply. The repeating pistol was swinging towards him, smoke curling from the barrel. The eyes behind the carnival mask were dark and eager. Then, abruptly, they widened. Carnival-mask slumped, a wavy-bladed dagger jutting from his back. A murder-brother vaulted over him, plucking the dagger free as he did so. Dubnitz lunged, spitting the cultist on Lomax’s sword-cane. The move pulled Piet and Lomax out of the path of the fire-eater, who unleashed a titanic flume of heat. A nearby drunkard burst into flame and suddenly the crowd noticed the pandemonium going on in their midst.

  Screams mingled with music and prayers as the crowd thrashed in sudden panic. People fell into the canal. Others scrambled for the safety of doorways or open windows. Dubnitz jerked the sword-cane free of the murder-cultist’s chest and narrowly parried a thrust harpoon. A man with the look of a Norscan whale-hunter jabbed the harpoon again, trying to pin Dubnitz to the cobbles. ‘Piet, I need some help here!’ Dubnitz shouted.

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ Piet said. He’d lost his sword, and now held a broken cobblestone, which he brought across the jaw of a mime that drew too close with a satisfying crunch. ‘I hate mimes.’

  ‘Was that mime an assassin?’ Dubnitz grunted, the tip of the harpoon nearing his face.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Piet said, bouncing the cobble on his palm before throwing it at the fire-eater, who unleashed another plume of flame. The cobble bounced off the man’s tattooed skull and he instinctively took a breath, inhaling the fire he should have been spewing. The fire-eater’s screams were cut short as he was cooked inside out.

  ‘Bad show, monsieur,’ a purple clad Bretonnian snarled, driving his foot into Piet’s armoured chest. Off-balance, he fell, dragging Lomax and Dubnitz with him. ‘The ancient art of mummery is sacred,’ the Bretonnian continued, as the two knights flailed helplessly, trying to get to their feet. Lomax’s dead weight, however, made that difficult. ‘It seems I, Bartok of Bastonne, master of the mystical art of the Athel-Loren war-dance, am granted the honour of collecting the bounty on Monsieur Lomax.’ Bartok blinked. ‘Why are the three of you tied together?’

  The harpooner jabbed at Dubnitz while the Bretonnian spoke, and the knight, having lost Lomax’s cane, grabbed the harpoon as it stabbed at him. With a convulsive shove he rammed the handle into its wielder’s face, busting lips and freeing teeth. As the harpooner reeled, Dubnitz swung the harpoon at the Bretonnian who was preparing to launch a kick at Lomax’s wobbling head. The haft of the harpoon caught the assassin on the knee, and he fell with a cry. As he hit the ground, Dubnitz hit him again and again, battering the master of the mystical art of the Athel-Loren war-dance into bloody unconsciousness.

  ‘Piet, let’s go, up and at them, can’t spend all evening in the gutter,’ Dubnitz roared, using the harpoon to pull himself to his feet and to simultaneously drag Piet up. Lomax bobbed between them like a cork on water. The body was already going stiff an
d further hampering their movements.

  ‘I want to go home now,’ Piet said, punching an Estalian knife-man wearing too much green and yellow to be wholly sane. The Estalian staggered back into the crowd and was trampled by yelling drunks.

  ‘The night’s young yet,’ Dubnitz said. A murder-cultist darted from the screaming, pushing, crowd, twin daggers raised high. Two miniature crossbow bolts caught him and sent him spinning into the canal. A killer in a featureless helm and a red hauberk calmly reloaded the small crossbows attached to his armoured forearms as he stood on the bundle-board of an abandoned wagon. ‘On second thought, you’re right, it’s time to go!’

  The Spring Tide crowd around the central canal had thinned as the realization that attempted murder was being committed on a grand scale set in. Outside of the immediate area, however, the party was still in full swing. Dubnitz and Piet lurched towards the crowd. Crossbows twanged and Piet glanced over his shoulder, cursing. ‘He’s got arrows in him,’ he said.

  ‘He’s got more than that,’ Dubnitz said. ‘I think the harpoon nicked him; he’s leaking all over my armour.’ He snagged a flagon of ale from a tipsy bawd bellowing out a hymn to Manann and knocked it back. ‘Piet, this wasn’t one of your better ideas I must say,’ he said, slopping foam on the street.

  ‘My idea,’ Piet nearly shrieked, glaring at him. ‘I– pigeon!’

  ‘I think you mean “duck”,’ Dubnitz said. Piet dove for the ground, yanking Lomax and Dubnitz atop him as a pigeon hurtled through the space occupied by their heads only seconds previously. The pigeon struck the sign of a tavern and exploded in a ball of fire and feathers. Dubnitz gazed at the charred spot that marked the unfortunate avian’s final impact and said in shock, ‘By Manann’s scaly nethers that was a Herstel-Wenckler pigeon bomb.’

  ‘It’s a swarm!’ Piet yowled, trying to crawl away, his armour clattering. Dubnitz, on his side atop Lomax’s corpse, stared up in horror at the feathered shapes descending towards him like verminous avenging angels. Only a fool or a madman would release pigeon bombs into streets this closely packed.

  ‘Death by pigeon,’ he murmured, suddenly calm as he faced his imminent doom. ‘Who’d have thought such a thing possible in these civilised times?’

  ‘Shut up and help me run,’ Piet screamed, shoving Dubnitz off. Lomax flopping between them, the two knights stumble-ran into the safety of the crowd as the first pigeons struck the street and fire erupted. Dubnitz’s foot skidded as he stepped in a cuttlefish. The high priest of the Cult of Manann was flinging the creatures from his altar-barge as it passed along the canal.

  ‘Get to the barge!’ Dubnitz said, forcing them a path to the canal with the harpoon.

  ‘But–’ Piet began.

  ‘Go, go, go,’ Dubnitz said, bashing a set of stilts aside and sending a man dressed as an Arabyan schooner staggering into a low hanging sign. He sensed more than saw the assassins following them. Lomax’s relatives had seemingly spent their inheritance before they’d even gotten it. Every killer in Marienburg was after them and some few from farther afield.

  ‘Dubnitz, to your left,’ Piet said.

  Dubnitz twisted as a man wearing a bronze mask crafted in the shape of a snarling tiger’s head lunged out of the crowd, clawed gauntlets scraping off Dubnitz’s chainmail sleeve. He thrust the harpoon between the assassin’s legs, tripping him up. But even as he fell, a hard-faced killer wielding a notched axe took his place, chopping at Dubnitz. Dubnitz swatted him with the harpoon and as the axe-man stepped back, a pigeon alighted on his shoulder. He had time for a single expression of panic before the pigeon bomb blew him into gory bits. Dubnitz blinked blood out of his eyes as overhead, Cathayan fireworks went off, lighting up the night sky. Somewhere, the great Tidal Bell in the Temple of Manann was ringing.

  ‘Hear that? It’s almost morning,’ Piet said. ‘We made it, I can’t believe we–’

  The crowd thinned at the edge of the canal. They had gotten ahead of the barge, but not of the assassins.

  ‘Bernard Lomax, you are marked for death,’ an oily duellist said, gesturing with his rapier. ‘Meet it manfully.’

  ‘Give us the merchant and you can go free,’ a sinister halfling with a dagger spinning between his pudgy fingers said. Around he and the duellist, a half-dozen other would-be bounty killers had eased forward. Like as not, half of them hadn’t even been hired to do the deed and were simply opportunists. Dubnitz could hear sword fights breaking out throughout the crowd as other assassins, too far back to join the fun, turned on one another either in frustration or optimism.

  ‘I’d be happy to,’ Dubnitz said, keeping the harpoon extended. ‘And I will, as soon as you tell me which of you lot was throwing the pigeons.’

  ‘What pigeons?’ one of a pair of twin beauties wearing little more than scars and armour said. She and her companion looked up. ‘Oh,’ the other one said softly.

  All eyes swivelled upwards as flapping sounds filled the air. Dozens of pigeons swooped over the street, beady eyes looking for perches. ‘Pigeons; thousands of them,’ Piet muttered.

  ‘Run!’ Dubnitz said, stumbling forward.

  Bird droppings and explosions rocked the street and a body pin-wheeled through the air. The explosions weren’t large, but then, neither were halflings, Dubnitz reflected as he loped towards the canal with Piet. Those assassins not caught in the airborne conflagration hurried after them.

  Piet was muttering prayers to Manann as he ran. Dubnitz simply cursed, letting flow a shower of creative invective. He cursed Lomax and his relatives, Ogg and his grandiose designs, and Marienburg with its proliferation of professional murderists. He’d always suspected he’d die at the end of a hired blade, the victim of a jealous husband or scorned woman. Possibly a city official with a grudge, or an old enemy, free of prison, or even Grandmaster Ogg, once he figured out what Dubnitz had done with his missing hand. In fairness, it made a lovely candelabrum and the Duchess had been quite appreciative, but Ogg wouldn’t understand. He had no sense of proportion, that man.

  But, mostly, Dubnitz cursed Manann, because once again the sea god had given him no luck but bad. Even as he settled into a quiet, snarling rhythm of curses, however, the holy altar-barge of Manann hove into view ahead of him and cuttlefish slapped the stone, hurled by the high priest. ‘Haha! There it is Piet! Get to the barge! It’s our only chance,’ Dubnitz said, trying to hurry them along.

  ‘The barge? But–’ Piet began.

  ‘No time for buts, Piet,’ Dubnitz said. The stones were slick near the canal and he had to stop himself from falling head over heels. ‘It’s the barge or the blades.’

  ‘Maybe we should think about this,’ Piet said.

  ‘What sort of knight are you? Just jump,’ Dubnitz shouted, grabbing a handful of Lomax’s jerkin and leaping. Piet, despite his protestations, jumped along with him. The barge wasn’t far from the edge of the canal, being as wide a craft as the temple could afford.

  A moment of vertigo stretched across eternity before Dubnitz’s foot found the edge of the barge. The altar attendants reached out automatically to grab the knights as they swayed back and forth on the edge of the deck. Dubnitz and Piet staggered forward, nearly knocking over the votive candles and sending an iron pot of blessed seawater spilling across the deck. Priests slipped and slid as the water sloshed around their feet. The high priest turned, mouth open in mid-bellow. His hands were full of cuttlefish and words of benediction died on his lips. He looked at Dubnitz, who grinned sheepishly. ‘Bless a trio of pilgrims, your supremacy?’ he asked.

  ‘Aren’t you one of Ogg’s bully-boys?’ the high priest said, flinging a cuttlefish over his shoulder. ‘You are! You’re Dubnitz, the one who let that goat–’

  ‘May I present Bernard Lomax, your excellency,’ Dubnitz interjected. ‘He is a humble merchant and follower of His Most Salty Majesty, Manann.’ He glanced at Lomax’s dangling head. ‘He’s overcome with emotion, your benevolence.’

  The high priest waved a hand in fron
t of his nose. ‘He’s overcome with something, I’d say.’ He squinted. ‘Is that a–?’

  ‘What dagger?’ Piet said, hastily plucking the errant blade out of Lomax’s back and flinging it over the side of the barge.

  ‘Are those crossbow bolts?’

  ‘You know how it gets during Spring Tide, your most tidal excellency,’ Dubnitz said swiftly. ‘People go wild. They let their hair down. Sometimes crossbows are involved.’

  ‘Are you sure he’s–’ the high priest began dubiously.

  ‘Oh Mighty Manann, Bless Us Your Servants!’ Dubnitz bellowed, falling to his knees and causing the barge to rock as Piet and Lomax followed suit. The latter’s stiffening limbs and joints gave forth a plaintive series of cracks and pops as abused ligaments split. ‘He’s too afraid to ask it of you himself, your saintliness,’ Dubnitz said, cracking one eye open. ‘Could you bless him, perhaps? Let the crowd see that he has your favour?’

  ‘I–’

  ‘Oh Mighty Manann, Absolve Us of the Sins of Dry Land!’ Dubnitz shouted, gesturing wildly, making sure to jerk one of Lomax’s hands so that it flopped beseechingly at the high priest’s robe. The crowd was cheering now, every eye on the barge. Seagulls squawked and horns blew. The high priest leaned close.

  ‘What are you up to, Dubnitz?’ he said.

  ‘I assure you, it’s for the greater glory of Manann, your pristine parsimoniousness,’ Dubnitz said. The high priest frowned, but straightened and raised his hands in benediction.

  ‘I expect we’ll be getting a nice donation this week from the Order,’ he muttered before launching into the words of Manann’s Blessing. The noise of the crowd surged in volume, hammering at the ears of those aboard the barge. It was only by the slightest of chances that Dubnitz heard the whine of a bullet. He leapt to his feet, yanking Piet and Lomax up. The bullet punched into Lomax’s back and sent them stumbling forward, into the high priest, who squawked in sudden fear as the corpse lurched into him.