by C. L. Werner
Eventually the bounty hunter rose, dropping his dripping trophy into a small sack. Then he turned and strode over to Brega’s bound figure once more.
‘My name is Brunner, and this is your unlucky day,’ his icy voice rasped. Brega cried out just as the man’s gloved hand smashed into his face, but the smuggler was unconscious before the sound could fully be uttered.
Bruno Brega awoke slowly, moaning in pain. His first thought was infuriation that he should be feeling pain. The priests always said that there was no suffering in Morr’s realm, only eternal rest and silence. He tried to raise a hand to feel the lump he sensed bulging from his forehead where the bounty hunter had smashed him, but the bindings prevented him from doing so. For a moment, the smuggler was puzzled—he was clearly no longer stretched out on the ground between the stakes. As he opened his eyes, Brega realised that he was lying across the back of a horse, his wrists and ankles bound together underneath the animal’s belly. The motion he had sensed was now clear to him: he was being carried like a sack of goods by a pack animal. He tried to twist his wrists inside his bindings, but they were held securely.
Brega wondered if his luck could desert him any more completely. Everything had gone wrong for him since he had stolen the old clay pot from Altdorf. It was clearly an artefact of immense antiquity, some relic from the vast deserts of Araby. Even Brega had heard the old legends brought back by the crusaders about the daemons of the desert, the mythical djinn, who were imprisoned in sorcerous vessels long ago, so that they might be enslaved by the most reckless and power-mad of Araby’s mystics. When he had first seen the old clay pot, he had sensed its disturbing air of unnaturalness, and wondered what might lie within it. One of his fellow smugglers, well versed in antiquities, had claimed that the picture writing on the pot was older than the scratch-script of Araby, from before the birth of the Empire even. He had seen such picture writing before, in the curio shops of Luccini and Miragliano, where relics looted from the Land of the Dead sometimes found their way.
Other hands had stolen the jar from a private collection, but Brega and his band of smugglers had been given the duty of getting the ancient artefact out of the Empire. There was a man in the Tilean city-state of Remas who was prepared to pay a small fortune for the object. The agent of the Tilean had given Brega and his men a most handsome advance.
The journey, however, had gone badly. On the Reik, as they were making their way towards Marienburg, the smugglers had been attacked by river pirates of a most despicable cast. They were led by a bearded madman, a devotee of the terrible Blood God. Several of Brega’s mob died before their vessel finally eluded the pirates. Ironically they had taken protection from the imposing cannon of the infamous Reiksfang prison as the running battle drew close to its walls.
Further along the River Reik, a winged thing—some nightmare horror—had fallen upon their decks, wantonly slaughtering men before it was disposed of, and its foul corpse pushed overboard. In Marienburg, Brega’s ship had joined a small flotilla that was making its way to the southern ports of Tilea. This was the first good omen since leaving Altdorf, but it did not take long for the tide of ill fortune to catch up with them again. Norse raiders struck the fleet shortly after it left Marienburg, and seven ships were left burning as the fleet fled the fury of the Northmen. Off the shores of Bretonnia, some ghastly sea beast had plucked seven crewmen from the deck of the ship nearest Brega’s. Rounding the horn of Estalia, a thick fog had enshrouded the fleet. When the fog eventually lifted, the leading ship began to sail back towards the west, and its deck was not manned by human shapes…
Brega was certain that they would never reach Remas. He had even considered tossing the pot into the sea, certain that it was accursed. But the prospect of the gold awaiting him at the end of the journey stayed him. In the end, they did reach Remas, and Brega immediately set about meeting their mysterious employer. They met in a darkened back room of a dockside tavern. Brega could not get a decent look at the Tilean, such were the shadows in the chamber. He had presented the man with the clay jar, at which the Tilean had laughed—an unnerving, insane sound. Brega rose from the table, shocked by the mad laughter, just as the Tilean leapt to his feet, drawing a sword. Brega drew his own sword then, prepared to teach the cackling madman to honour his contracts.
The villain had rounded the table, emerging into the feeble light that filtered into the room from the gaps between the planks of the door. Brega could see that the man was dressed well, a fashionable black cloak fell from his shoulders and a gaudy gold buckle gleamed from his belt. Of the man’s face, however, he could see nothing, for it was covered by a glistening red mask, such as might be worn to a masque ball, shaped like a fang-mouthed skull. From the deep pits of the grotesque mask’s sockets, crazed eyes blazed with maniacal emotion—exhilaration mixed with bloodlust to form a psychopathic frenzy. Brega had not seen such insanity, even in the eyes of Chaos-worshipping pirates.
For a brief second Brega was able to study his duplicitous employer. But as he rounded the table, the man had brought his sword slashing toward Brega who barely managed to turn it aside with his own weapon. The madman’s stroke had not been skilful; it was too wild and bloodthirsty to belong to any school of swordsmanship. But what it lacked in skill, it made up for in strength. As Brega met the man’s blow, his body shuddered with the force. The madman’s sabre deflected toward the table, and crunched through it like a hot knife through cheese. As the table fell apart, and his attacker recovered from his failed strike, Brega brought his own sword upward to a guarding position. It was then that he saw how deeply the lunatic’s hit had bitten into his own blade. There was a deep notch in the smuggler’s sword, so deep that barely an inch of steel held the two halves together.
Dread bubbled up within the smuggler. Even a madman should not have such strength; no mere human foe could call upon such immense power. Brega cast his ruined sword into the face of the ruby mask and turned, fleeing from the tiny dark room and the bloodthirsty horror that lusted after his life.
For what seemed like hours, the smuggler fled through the streets of Remas, trying to lose his maniacal pursuer. There was something evil in that jar, he was sure, and he had unwittingly delivered it to someone who would put it to some dreadful purpose.
In a heroic tale, Brega would have tried to find and undo the terrible evil he had unwittingly brought to the city, but he was too sensible to be a hero. He stole a horse and fled Remas at the first opportunity. He had ridden first for Miragliano and the company of his mistress, retrieving a small cache of money he had left in her care. Then he had ridden for this old hideout, to recover still more loot. But he had been too slow. Nuccio and some of his former comrades had been waiting for him, mistaking the reason for his flight from Remas. They were determined to get their share of the money that Brega had never collected.
Now he was free of his murderous comrades, but he had traded them for someone worse. Brega had never set eyes upon the bounty killer called Brunner, but he had heard enough tales whispered about him in thieves’ dens across the Old World to know that he did not want to.
Brega looked about him. He could see the grim figure of the bounty hunter, mounted upon a massive bay horse, scabbards dangling from the steed’s harness. Behind the bay was a smaller grey packhorse, laden down with numerous sacks and equipment, and a few small wooden kegs. A rope connected the packhorse’s bridle to the bounty hunter’s steed, and another rope connected Brega’s mount to the packhorse.
Not only had Brega’s situation changed, his surroundings had as well. The cabin and its clearing, indeed the entire forest, were no small distance behind them. Brega could see the monstrous slopes of the Vaults towering before him. The terrain was hilly and rocky, the path upon which their animals marched little more than a game trail. Brega could see traces of worked stone lying toppled among the raw boulders scattered along the side of the trail. They were half-formed columns and unfinished faces, abandoned long ago to the mercy of rain and wind
.
The bounty hunter turned his head and stared at his prisoner. The black steel of his helmet nodded in satisfaction.
‘Good to see you’re coming around,’ the cold voice said. ‘I was afraid that I might have hit you too hard. You’re no good to me dead.’
The chill manner in which the bounty hunter voiced this twisted parody of concern caused Brega’s heart to skip a beat. The smuggler mumbled a feeble prayer to Ranald under his breath. More loudly he said: ‘I have done nothing! I was set upon by bandits and thought you to be my rescuer! My family is poor, they cannot afford to pay you a ransom.’
Brunner laughed, a dry chuckle that was as menacing as the snarl of a rabid wolf. ‘Perhaps, but Judge Vaulkberg has deep pockets. Deep enough to satisfy me.’
The bounty hunter’s words caused Brega to moan with despair. Judge Vaulkberg! The most notorious magistrate in the Empire, infamous for his harsh judgements and wanton cruelty. There was a tale that he had once ordered that a priestess of Verena’s lips be branded with a heated iron for speaking out against the execution of a man who failed to doff his cap in Vaulkberg’s courtroom. And that had been one of Vaulkberg’s more lenient judgements. More often he set his ogre executioner to cause limbs to bend in unusual ways.
‘You are mistaken!’ Brega declared.
The bounty hunter twisted about in his saddle, fixing him with a cold stare.
‘I don’t make mistakes,’ Brunner said. ‘You are Bruno Brega, a petty smuggler. You usually operate moving black lotus on the Upper Reik, when you are not sneaking grain past the Emperor’s excise men in Altdorf.’
The smuggler’s head sagged back down against the side of his horse. He knew that any feeble attempt to convince the bounty hunter that he had the wrong man would not work. Ahead of him, the hired killer chuckled.
‘I know all about you, Brega,’ Brunner stated. ‘I came all the way from Altdorf to look for you.’ The bounty hunter laughed again. ‘Ordinarily I wouldn’t cross a county for a reptile like you, but Vaulkberg’s put a very pretty price on your head, a very pretty price. It seems that last cargo of beef you smuggled into the capital was tainted, corrupt. It also seems that Vaulkberg’s mistress ate some of it and died. The judge has spent quite a few lonely nights thinking about what he wants to do to you.’
Brega stifled a sob of horror. Judge Vaulkberg was a cruel, sadistic fiend when he was in good humour. The smuggler didn’t even want to think what he would be like angry.
‘I have hidden quite a bit of money,’ Brega let the words hastily slip from his lips. ‘I can pay you well!’ The bounty hunter shot the smuggler a withering glare from behind his visor.
‘When I accept a commission, I see it through,’ he snarled. ‘If you offer me money again before we get to the Reikland, I’ll stuff a gag in that scheming mouth of yours. And that might make eating a bit difficult.’
Brega bit down any reply. He didn’t really want to find out whether the bounty hunter was bluffing. Instead he looked past Brunner, casting his gaze toward the towering peaks of the Vaults. Unlike most of the teeming masses of humanity, Brega could read a map, and had seen them on many occasions. Knowing where one was and where one was going was vital for a smuggler. But that knowledge brought home a frightening realisation. Brunner meant to take him back to the Empire, to the Reikland. There was only one problem with that, and Brega was looking at it.
The Old World was divided by a series of mighty mountain ranges. The Apuccinis formed the eastern boundary of Tilea, separating the merchant princes and their holdings from the lawless Borderlands. The Irranas, marking the northern limit of Tilea, acted as a barrier between the city states and the kingdom of Bretonnia. Running northward, the legend-haunted Grey Mountains, the fence between the Empire and Bretonnia.
The Black Mountains formed the southern border of the domain of Karl-Franz; it was the Empire’s rocky wall that kept out the orcs of the Badlands. Each of these ranges stretched for hundreds of miles, uncrossable save for a handful of closely guarded passes.
All four of these massive formations met in the north-east corner of Tilea, crashing together in a vast, titanic upland known as the Vaults. It was an impenetrable region of towering rock larger than the entire Plain of Luccini. Some of the Irranas and the Apuccinis reached heights of ten thousand feet and more. Amidst the Black and Grey Mountains, there were peaks that exceeded fifteen thousand feet. Even the tallest of these was a mere hill compared to the peaks of the Vaults. They loomed above the converging ranges like giants, the smallest of their number near the twenty thousand foot mark. The tallest were nearly five thousand feet higher still. Only the World’s Edge range could boast loftier heights in all the Old World.
The peaks of the Vaults were perpetually shrouded in snow. Even in the most sweltering Tilean summer, the ice held its grip upon the uppermost slopes. The mountains were steep, jagged and twisted like the fangs of some gargantuan rock daemon. Deep crevices wormed their way amongst them, their depths unknown and unknowable. Even the most reckless of mountain explorers had not dared the inner reaches of the Vaults, for they understood that the giant formations of stone and earth did not offer adventure and discovery, only the promise of a lonely death.
‘You’re taking me to the Reikland?’ Brega asked, a new tone of horror creeping into his voice.
‘Worked that out on your own, did you?’ Brunner replied, without turning to look at his prisoner.
‘But the Vaults!’ exclaimed the smuggler. ‘Surely you can’t mean to cross the Vaults?’ The bounty killer did not reply. Terror welled up within Brega. ‘You can’t cross the mountains! Even if we don’t get eaten by beasts or orcs, there isn’t a path through them! We’d freeze on the high slopes, or plummet into a crevasse! You can’t go over the mountains!’
Brunner twisted around in the saddle. ‘Who said that we are going over them?’
Four grimy men sat in the darkened interior of a long unused cabin. Two of them pulled heavy cloaks tighter about their bodies as the cold night wind slithered between the gaps in the log walls. One of them despondently tended the small fire that had been made in the shallow pit at the centre of the cabin.
‘Such valiant scum I keep company with,’ snorted Sollima. He cast a surly look at his comrades. ‘Let that vermin just swoop in and steal Brega right out from under us!’ He placed a finger against his gruesome nose. ‘From right under our very noses!’
‘I didn’t see you standing your ground after he killed Nuccio!’ snarled the man tending the fire.
‘I was too busy chasing the coat tails of my very brave friends!’ spat Sollima.
‘Call me a coward again, you rat, and I’ll take the rest of your nose!’ grumbled the fire-stoker, his grimy hand falling to the sword at his side.
The other two smugglers shrugged free of their cloaks to draw their swords. The older of the two, whose head was encased in a steel helmet, moved between the arguing men.
‘Settle down, both of you!’ he ordered. ‘We should be thinking how to get Brega back, not trying to kill one another!’
‘And who elected you boss?’ snapped Sollima. The smuggler beside the fire pulled his sword free from its sheath.
‘I’ve had my fill of the lot of you!’ the fire-stoker growled through his beard. ‘I’ll get him on my own, and I can guarantee Brega will spill what he knows when I get my hands on him!’
‘And you think you’ll be able to kill that bounty hunter on your own, do you?’ scoffed the helmeted smuggler. ‘Think a bit of slink and strike will work on his sort?’
The companion of the helmeted smuggler worked his grimy hand toward the hilt of the dagger on his belt, prepared to back whatever play for leadership his friend was about to make. As he did so, he noticed a peculiar and foul odour. He glanced toward the open doorway of the cabin, grimacing at the thick animal stench coming from that direction. He wondered what sort of animal had slunk its way past the thin curtain of hide covering the doorway, and hoped that it was not a rat or s
ome equally noxious creature. The growing ire of the other smugglers, however, quickly drew his attention from the vile smell and whatever bore it.
‘I suppose you have a better idea?’ hissed Sollima.
‘As a matter of fact—’ the smuggler began to reply. But his words trailed off into a dry rasp as a shaft of wood blossomed from his breast, red feathers turning a deeper shade of crimson as the smuggler’s lifeblood engulfed them. The man fell, dropping his sword from nerveless fingers. His helmet rolled away as his body struck the earthen floor.
The other rogues sprang into action. The smuggler at the fire sprang away from the pit, seeking the safety of the shadows. Sollima dived for his gear, hastily retrieving a small wooden shield. No sooner had he gained the shield than an arrow thudded into it, the force of the impact causing him to fall onto his back.
The last smuggler ran for the door of the cabin, sparing no thought for his comrades. All he wanted was to put as much distance as he could between himself and the thing that had set upon them. His cowardice marked him as the second to die. As he ran for the door, a figure rose from the shadows near the portal. It was indistinct, with only a vague suggestion of a human form. The smuggler could see a bow gripped in one of its hands. The other struck out at him. He had a moment to feel fingers of steel close about his throat. His remaining seconds of life were nothing but pain.
The stricken smuggler stumbled back into the centre of the cabin, hands clamped about the gory weeping hole beneath his jaw, torn tissue trying to give voice to his silent scream. The dying man stumbled into the pit, toppling into the flames. For a moment, he tried to pull himself out, but didn’t have enough strength to do so. His clutching fingers finally grew still as the life faded from his body.
