01 - Star of Erengrad

by Neil McIntosh - (ebook by Undead)

  Then he attacked. Lamplight shone off the steel blade as he plunged it towards Alexei’s body. The knife never reached its target. In an instant Zucharov had grabbed hold of Tomas’ arm and twisted, slamming him down face first upon the ground. With his other hand he snatched the knife from Tomas’ grip and brought the point of the blade against his throat. Tomas looked up at him, dazed.

  “Tracker?” Alexei sneered. “You couldn’t track a three-legged dog in your state.” He let go of Tomas, and threw the knife down on the ground by his side. “Go home and sleep it off.”

  Tomas stared at up first at Alexei, then at Stefan, his face red with shame and anger. “Go home, Tom,” Stefan counseled, softly. “This is no place for you.”

  Tomas glared back at him, then snatched up the knife. He clambered to his feet and stumbled away down the street without another word.

  “There was no need for that, Alexei,” Stefan said at last. “He was a fair soldier in his day, and a good scout, too.”

  “His day is long over,” Zucharov snapped. “Anyway, what was he doing lurking around back there? Maybe I should have finished the job—just killed him outright and be done with it.”

  “You’re over-reacting,” Stefan told him. “Tom Murer props up the bar in half the taverns in Altdorf. It was just coincidence, that’s all.”

  “Coincidence?” Alexei muttered. “There’s no such thing.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you kill him, Alexei,” Stefan said. “I wouldn’t have let you do that.”

  The two stood staring at each other in silence. The comforting warmth of the tavern seemed suddenly far behind them. Then Alexei’s mood seemed to lift. He clapped Stefan upon the shoulder and grinned. “Ah, you’re probably right,” he laughed. “He won’t even remember where he’s been in the morning. Now, let’s find us that ale house.”

  Stefan hesitated for a moment, his mind still mulling over the incident that had just passed. He decided to let it go. “The Cutlass might be open,” he said at last. “They’ve enough strong beer to blunt even a thirst like yours.”

  Zucharov laughed again. “I doubt that’s possible,” he said. “But I’m willing to give it a try.”

  The two men walked on, seeking some warmth in the cold hours of early morning.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Four Encounters

  The morning sun shone a bright, unforgiving light on the scattered remains of the feasting day. Shattered glass sparkled like diamonds strewn across the city streets, and the gutters ran dark with a stinking brew of beer, wine and worse. A good number of the revelers could be found where they had dropped the night before, lying curled outside doorways or sprawled, senseless on street corners.

  Of the few other townsfolk who were about, none seemed to pay much attention to the short, rotund figure stepping smartly through the Hauptmarktplatz towards the centre of Altdorf. For once, however, Otto Brandauer was taking no comfort from his apparent anonymity. Every few seconds he would check his pace and glance about him, scanning the faces of the work-bound clerks and merchants. He had taken Stefan’s concerns about being watched seriously. Perhaps the young man’s imagination had become over-active. Perhaps, and perhaps not. Either way, Otto found that now he, too, was watching his back.

  The sense that he was being followed had been with him since he left his house shortly after dawn and had not diminished. Brandauer was not a suspicious man, but a lifetime spent amongst shadows had nurtured instincts he had learned to trust.

  Perhaps he was letting his worrying get the better of him, but just lately there had been much to worry about. The darkness spreading like a disease, unseen but deadly, through the body of the Old World. The urgency of getting Elena Yevschenko back to Erengrad while there was still time to tip the scales of fortune back in their favour. Preparations were well advanced, but still, he feared, they were not moving fast enough.

  Could it really be possible that even the Palace of Justice could no longer be considered secure? Months, even weeks ago, the very idea would have seemed ridiculous. Now he couldn’t be so sure. Times grew less certain, almost, it seemed, by the day. This day had dawned bright, but night was coming. The shadows were drawing in around Altdorf.

  Brandauer shivered, and tried to shake the morbid thoughts from his mind. He quickened his step along Vollenstrasse.

  In a few minutes he had reached the gates of the Jaegerspark. The palace was visible in the distance, its gilded towers reflecting the morning sun. Brandauer stopped before the gates. Each day he would walk to the Palace of Retribution, taking the shortest route through the Jaegerspark. It had become habit, part of his routine. He took a step towards the open gates, then hesitated. Perhaps today was a day to break with routine.

  Imagination, he told himself, too many shadows. Yet something prevented him from continuing on through the gates, following the course of his normal route. The lonely expanse of the Jaegerspark lay before him, beckoning. Five minutes’ stride across the hard ground and he would have reached the marble towers of the palace. Five minutes only.

  But not today. On impulse, Otto Brandauer turned suddenly sharp left, away from the Jaegerspark and into the warren of tiny interweaving streets that lay between Vollenstrasse and the docks. Even as he set off, he was chastising himself for being a superstitious fool.

  You’re getting too old, Brandauer, he told himself. You’re seeing shadows everywhere now. Yet he quickened his pace rather than lessening it. He came to a point where the street divided. He took the right fork and immediately stepped within the recess of a doorway, from where he could take stock of the street behind.

  For a few moments he truly believed he had gone mad. Without the sound of his own footfall upon the flagstones, the street was silent save for the distant whisper of traffic in the port. You idiot, Brandauer. How long are you going to hide here like a cowardly fool?

  Just at the point when he’d convinced himself his imagination really had got the better of him, the silence in the street was broken. The sound of footsteps approaching, keeping up a brisk pace.

  Just a clerk, late for work, or a student, clutching his books as he hastened towards the Ostfuhr College. Or could it be someone else? Someone searching, looking for him. The footsteps slowed as they neared the fork in the street.

  Brandauer reached inside the lining of his cape, and drew out the slender rapier he kept concealed within. Whoever it was had stopped, close enough for Brandauer to hear the sound of breathing. He held his own breath, and waited. His heart was pounding inside his chest, so loud, he imagined, that it might give him away.

  A shadow fell across the doorway in front of him as the figure crept forward. Otto Brandauer braced himself and, keeping firm hold of the rapier, stepped out into the street. The figure had passed the doorway where he had been hiding: took a few steps on, and then turned back. In that instant he felt a delicious fear pump through him. The delicate sword was cold and slippery in his hand. But as he looked into the face of the potential assassin, his grip on the rapier loosened and his body relaxed.

  Otto Brandauer swapped sword for handkerchief, and wiped a line of sweat away from his brow.

  Surprise mingled with relief in his voice. “So!” he exclaimed. “It’s you.”

  Alexei Zucharov lifted the helmet down from the oak shelf and turned it between his hands. On his instructions it had been left as it was; the blood had not even been cleaned away. The smell of orc was still strong upon the tarnished metal. Alexei set the helm back in its place amongst the other trophies. It was a handsome piece, and would serve as a fair memento of his night’s sport, but it paled against some of his finer prizes: a Tilean hunter’s knife, inscribed with a chieftain’s name; a bowed blade snatched from a pirate prince of Araby; the skull of a skaven, pared nearly in two across its low forehead; a breastplate ripped from the body of a monstrous Chaos knight, inlaid with carvings paying homage to the Blood God.

  Alexei ran a hand across them all, savouring the feel of metal and bone, an
d the sweet memory of conquest held within each. The orc helm added yet one more jewel to his collection, but he knew it would not be the last. Whilst he lived and breathed a warrior, there would always be one more battle to fight, one more trophy to be won.

  He closed the doors to the cabinet and turned the key in the lock. As he did so, he sensed the movement in the room behind him, sensed it as clearly as he could smell the blood of the slain orc. Before he could turn round, he felt the hands go about his neck.

  “You’re getting careless,” the girl’s voice said. “Letting just anyone creep up on you like that.”

  “If you were just anyone,” Alexei responded, “you’d be dead by now.” He twisted his face to one side in time for his sister Natalia to place a playful kiss upon his cheek. “Anyway,” he went on, laughing now. “Shouldn’t you be at your studies, instead of creeping about the house?”

  Natalia Zucharov frowned, then kissed her brother again. “Even students of magic need rest,” she said. “In any case, my studies are going very well. You can ask anyone at the college how good I am.”

  “For which our father will be eternally grateful,” Alexei commented, “having mortgaged his inheritance to pay your fees.”

  His younger sister snorted derisively. “I’m the one who’s grateful,” Natalia said. “Grateful to you for twisting the old man’s arm. He’d have me married off to some half-wit count with a hundred acres in Ostmark by now, not studying at the Imperial College of Magic.”

  Alexei held his sister at arm’s length and looked at her. “Mind you repay our trust,” he said. “Father’s and mine. Don’t just be good. Be the best.”

  “Like you?” Natalia asked, teasingly.

  “Yes,” Alexei replied. “Exactly like me. I’ll want a full account of your new skills when I get back to Altdorf.”

  “It’s true then,” Natalia said quietly. “You’re leaving again?”

  Alexei nodded. “There’s some travelers making a long journey out to the east,” he explained. “The road can be dangerous. I’m needed as escort for their safe passage. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Simple?” Natalia said, her eyes widening. “Dangerous doesn’t sound quite the same as simple to me.”

  “I can take care of myself, you know that.” He placed his arms protectively around his sister. “We’re alike, you and I. We weren’t born to sit on our backsides in merchant houses, nor to wed half-wit counts.”

  He kissed her forehead again. “But I won’t always be around to look after you, so you must take care as much as I.”

  Natalia took her brother’s arm as they walked side by side. “You’re wrong, you know. You will always be around. Here, in my heart, you’ll be with me, always.”

  She walked to the window and pulled back the long curtain. A figure on horseback was sitting waiting outside the gates of the house.

  “We have a visitor,” she said excitedly. “Who could that be? The mysterious Stefan Kumansky, perhaps? I’ve been looking forward to meeting him.”

  Alexei joined her at the window and looked down onto the long driveway fronting the Zucharov house. “No,” he said. “Not him, I think.”

  “Who is it, then?”

  “Another comrade.”

  “Another mystery man? Shall I go down and bid him come in?”

  “No,” Alexei said, quietly. “No need. I’ll go down myself. I fancy we’ll want to ride a little.”

  Alexei Zucharov emerged from the house and strolled across the courtyard towards the waiting rider. He reached up a hand in greeting to the man seated astride the grey mare. The rider took his hand and shook it formally, without enthusiasm.

  “Your note said this was urgent,” Bruno said, stiffly. “I thought it best to ride here directly.”

  Alexei looked up at him, a grin playing on his face.

  “What sort of greeting is that?” he demanded. “I thought at the very least it would be ‘Good to see you, Alexei! It’s been too long!’”

  “It has been a long time,” the other man agreed, soberly. “Your note said it was urgent, otherwise it might have been longer still!”

  Alexei stepped back and appraised the rider. A look of concern passed over his features. “You look pale,” he said. “Have you been ill?”

  “I’ve been sleeping badly, that’s all,” said the other man. “It will pass.”

  Alexei nodded, and patted the flank of the mare. “Well then,” he said. “I thought we’d both enjoy a brisk ride out. If you wait here a moment I’ll have my horse saddled.” He fixed a firm gaze upon the rider. “You see, we ought to talk. I know something that I think you should hear.”

  “If this is about Stefan, forget it.” Bruno told him, sharply. “I’ve already said all that I have to say to him.”

  “Quite so,” Alexei agreed. “But you haven’t heard all that I have to say,” he continued. “And I really think it would be in your best interests if you did.”

  Zucharov turned in the direction of the stable block, then paused. “You know what, though,” he added, brightly. “Shop keeping can’t be all bad. I do declare, Bruno, you’ve put on weight!”

  Stefan Kumansky walked through the doors of the Helmsman just after noon. The usual corner table, he noted with satisfaction, was still empty. He wasn’t in any sense a creature of habit, but in this one ritual there was perhaps an exception. He bought a large pitcher of beer and two mugs from the serving girl and sat down at the table. Today of all days it seemed right that sentiment prevailed, because he was here to bid a farewell. A farewell, gods willing, that would be only temporary.

  He had to wait a few minutes before his drinking companion arrived, ruddy-faced and breathless from running, through the door of the tavern. The man was Stefan’s junior by a couple of years, lightly built, with the straw-blond complexion typical of those born north of the Empire. Stefan pushed back a chair for his brother to sit down.

  “Sorry I’m so late, Stefan,” Mikhal apologised. Stefan grinned up at him.

  “Business or pleasure?” he asked.

  “Business,” Mikhal said, emphatically. “A trading ship’s just in from Cathay—would you believe it? And she’s laden down with enough fine silk to carpet the Hauptmarktplatz. As for the prices, well!” Mikhal paused, embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t want to hear all of this nonsense. It’s deadly boring to a fellow like you.”

  Stefan pushed a mug of beer into his brother’s hand. “Not a bit of it,” he said, and meant it. Since they had arrived in Altdorf as orphans, the two brothers’ lives had taken quite different paths. Stefan, the poor scholar and indifferent guardsman, who found his road as errand boy for the mercenaries who had lit his imagination with tales of heroism and adventure. Now those tales were about him. Mikhal had been the avid student of commerce, the apprentice who was a match for the shrewdest market trader at fifteen, and a merchant in his own right at twenty.

  Each brother had found his own adventure, and Stefan was no less proud of Mikhal than he hoped his brother was of him. Proud, and glad that his brother had chosen a path that would keep him from harm’s way.

  “Here’s to carpeting the Hauptmarktplatz,” Stefan said, toasting his brother. They drank, and talked for a while of everyday things. Then Mikhal set down his mug and looked at Stefan.

  “So,” he said. “You’re off on your travels again?”

  “Yes,” Stefan replied. “Only this is different. I’m going back to Kislev. To Erengrad.”

  Mikhal sat silent for a moment. “I see,” he said at last. “Erengrad, though. It can’t be far from—I mean, how do you feel about going back there after all this time?”

  “I don’t know,” Stefan said. It was true. The last few days had passed so quickly he had found himself with little time to ponder what it would mean to be returning so close to the place of his childhood. A place that, in more ways than one, was now truly another country. But that morning, thinking about his meeting with Mikhal in the Helmsman, the memories o
f that other place had flooded back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Mikhal, pulling himself back from his thoughts. “I know those memories are painful for you too.”

  Mikhal sipped at his beer, thoughtfully. “If it wasn’t for you,” he said, “I doubt I’d still be here to have memories of any sort. The Norscan would have killed me, for sure. I’ll never forget that.”

  “Nor I,” Stefan replied. That was one memory that was seared upon his very soul, a permanent reminder of the past. Even as Mikhal spoke the words, Stefan was back in Odensk, watching the village bum. Darkness and torchlight. The smell of dead fires in the morning, clinging to the charred skeleton of the village. The dead eyes of their father, staring back up at him, and the other face too: the face of the Norscan raider bearing down upon Mikhal as he lay, paralysed by fear, by the road. Then the feel of the knife in his hand as he swung it, full force, into that cruel, milk-white face. Seeing the blade gouge deep into the man’s eye, the blood spraying with astonishing force from the wound. And hearing, for the first time, the sound of an enemy screaming as his blade found its mark.

  “I should have killed him,” Stefan said, quietly. “Killed that murdering scum, just as his kind killed our father. The thought that he might still live haunts me to this day.”

  “We were children, Stefan,” Mikhal reminded him. “Just boys, that’s all.”

  “Aye,” Stefan agreed. “But childhood ended that day.” He took a long draught of ale and sat for a moment, lost within his thoughts.

  “So, you’re going back,” Mikhal said at last, pulling his brother back. “How many are you taking with you?”

  “Not many,” Stefan said. “We have to avoid drawing attention to ourselves.”

  “So, then,” Mikhal went on. “Is Bruno with you?”