Hammer and Bolter 8

by Christian Dunn

  Most of the sailors were old hands who had made the voyage between Altdorf and Marienburg many times before. They didn’t need their officers to remind them of the danger the fog presented. The grey veil couldn’t have set upon them at a worse time, when the broad Reik slithered its way into the morass cartographers had condemned and cursed, branding it simply ‘the Wasteland’. The swampy maze of moors and fens stretched clear to the coast, surrounding the great port city of Marienburg on three sides. The muddy, treacherous ground would seep and slop its way into the Reik, choking the great river with mud and forcing the tight-fisted burghers of Marienburg to send barges out to dredge the river every fortnight to keep the Reik navigable.

  The periodic dredging wasn’t always enough, and ships always had to be wary of new mud flats and sand bars when they sailed into the Wasteland. Normally, a sharp-eyed lookout could spot such obstructions well in advance, but in the fog, a ship went blind. It was for this reason that Captain Piedersen had all hands at the rail, probing the river with iron-capped poles, seeking any warning that the Aemilia was entering shallow water.

  Perhaps if there had been a lookout in the crow’s nest, there would have been more warning. As it stood, Gustav only became aware of the ship’s peril was when the sailor beside him suddenly stopped probing the river bottom. The man stood slack-jawed, staring out into the fog. Gustav’s first instinct was to growl at his comrade, to get the man back to work before one of the officers came by with the lash.

  However, there was a look of such fright on the sailor’s face that Gustav couldn’t help but follow the direction of the man’s staring eyes. Gustav saw at once what had caused the other man’s alarm. It was impossible to miss the flickering green glow shining behind the fog. Swamp gas and will-o-the-wisps were a common enough sight for any Wastelander, yet these lights were different. Gustav had never seen their like before. There were over a dozen of them, lurching and weaving through the fog, and each of the green orbs seemed to possess a certain uniformity of shape and size.

  The sailor beside Gustav suddenly dropped his pole and dropped to his knees. His leathery hands curled awkwardly together, making the sign of Manann. The whispers of a prayer, half sea shanty and half orison, scraped past the sailor’s wizened lips.

  Gustav felt his body grow cold as he heard his comrade’s prayer. Other voices were raised now, shouting warning to the rest of the crew. The green lights had been spotted by others. Men dropped their poles, replacing them with axes and belaying pins. The mates vanished into the forecastle, reappearing with a half dozen crossbows cradled in their arms. Captain Piedersen brandished his sword, bellowing commands to his crew, enjoining them to repel boarders.

  River pirates. That was the first thought that raced through Gustav’s mind as he drew the long knife from his boot and glared down at the approaching lights. Pirates and wreckers were a common hazard on this stretch of the Reik, though it would be a bold or desperate brigand who would ply his trade in such hideous conditions. They had chosen poor prey. Captain Piedersen’s first ship had sailed the Sea of Claws, transporting goods between Marienburg and Erengrad. He was a man used to fending off the attentions of Norscan longships and had never gotten out of the habit of ensuring his crews were armed to the teeth. Any pirates who marked one of Piedersen’s ships for plunder soon regretted it.

  Even as such thoughts occurred to Gustav, he felt his stomach tighten and a cold chill run down his back. The more he watched the green lights, the less he felt they were anything made by man. Old stories, half-remembered myths from his childhood, rose up unbidden. The frantic prayers of the man kneeling on the deck beside him only added to Gustav’s mounting fear. In his mind, he hoped it was only wreckers or pirates who menaced the ship.

  The mates were still distributing the crossbows when the attack began. The only warning was a low ‘thump’ from somewhere out in the fog. A moment later, the sound of shattering glass sounded from the forecastle. Gustav turned away from the rail, following the direction of the noise. He saw a greenish haze settling across the top of the wheelhouse. Captain Piedersen and a pair of sailors collapsed in the midst of the cloud, coughing and grasping at their throats. Blood bubbled from their mouths and oozed from noses, eyes and ears. Before anyone could move to help them, the three men gasped their last.

  More thumps sounded from the fog. The crackle of breaking glass rose from every quarter of the deck now. Aware that the green haze brought death, the sailors screamed and howled in terror, scrambling to and fro in their desperate efforts to avoid destruction. There was no escape, however, for as soon as the men reached a clear part of the ship a glass globe would come hurtling down and shatter against the deck. The deathly cloud would rise from the broken fragments, destroying all who inhaled its lethal fumes.

  Fear kept Gustav frozen in place beside the rail. It kept him from joining the mad, hopeless dash across the decks. It was fear which again saved him when the half-crazed sailor beside him suddenly lunged to his feet. Screaming at the top of his lungs, the sailor hurled himself over the rail. The man’s flailing arms smashed into Gustav, knocking him over the side to join his comrade’s plunge into the murky river.

  The cold water revived Gustav’s wits, if not his courage. After fighting his way to the surface, he was careful to keep quiet. He could hear his crazed companion sputtering and coughing, thrashing about in the water as he struggled to reach the marshy shore. Gustav felt a pang of guilt as he decided against trying to restrain his shipmate. There was nothing he could do. The sailor was making too much noise. Pirates or ghosts, whatever was out there in the fog had heard the commotion. Trying to help him now would only cause Gustav to share the wretch’s fate.

  Treading water with as much silence as he could manage, Gustav found it easy to follow his crazed comrade’s progress. By now there were no more screams rising from the decks of the Aemilia; the barque was as silent as a grave. Only the sailor’s gibbering moans broke the quiet. He could hear the man swimming towards the marsh. Following the sound, he could also see a half-dozen of the green lights moving to converge upon the sailor.

  Soon, the lights closed upon the moans and all was silent in the fog.

  It was some little time before Gustav became aware of soft, furtive sounds rising from the river. Straining his eyes, he watched as more of the green lights bobbed into view. He could tell from the way they rolled and shivered that the lights were floating across the river, drawing near to the Aemilia.

  Gustav ducked his body into the river, keeping only his eyes and nose above the cold water. Steadily the lights came nearer.

  Then Gustav saw a dark shape loom out from the fog. It was a long, narrow skiff of the sort used by the Wastelanders to navigate their swampy home. Gustav had seen the same sort of boat thousands of times, had even owned one himself before forsaking the marsh for the river. Yet the very ordinariness of the skiff only magnified the horror he felt when he saw the creatures paddling it towards the Aemilia, for they were anything but ordinary.

  Things ripped from nightmare and the darkest imaginings of childhood, the fiends leered out of the fog and mist. There were at least a dozen of the things on the skiff. Each was roughly the size of a man, with a semblance of the human shape about it, but there was little real similarity. The things had great, bloated bodies, warty and shapeless after the fashion of a toad. Their hands were flabby claws, their skin was green and slimy with an oily sheen about it. A long, whiplike tail coiled behind their bodies and lashing about with serpentine undulations.

  The faces of the fiends were the most ghastly. They stretched away from the skull in long floppy beaks with no suggestion of lips or chin. Two enormous flaring nostrils rose above the beak, glistening with a moist blackness against the slimy green skin. Above the nostrils rose the most hideous aspect of the creatures, the crowning horror of their inhuman physiognomy. A single great glaring eye, blazing with eerie green fire. The source of the sinister lights Gustav had seen glowing inside the fog.


  All the old stories of marsh daemons came back to Gustav as he watched in mounting terror while the grotesque monsters assaulted the Aemilia. The creatures drew long hooks and stout cords from the bottom of the skiff, swinging the grapples until they caught upon the ship’s rail. Then, with scuttling, skittering movements that belied their grotesque bulks, the monsters swarmed up the cables and boarded the ship.

  Teeth chattering, his body numb with a cold that had nothing to do with the river, Gustav waited until the last of the marsh daemons left the skiff before daring to move. Praying the monsters would be occupied with whatever hellish purpose moved them, Gustav started to swim for shore.

  He was the sole survivor. It was his duty to get back to Marienburg and tell the Aemilia’s owners what had befallen their ship.

  Even if no one would believe him when he told them marsh daemons had emerged from the fog to claim the souls of the Aemilia’s crew.

  ‘Mad as a marsh hare.’

  That was the decision voiced by Doctor Anton Kettmann as the physician turned his back on the dingy little cell. It was a decision that brought a frown to the white-robed women standing in the narrow brick hallway. The oldest of them, a silver pendant in the shape of a dove adorning her neck, shook her head and gave the physician a stern look.

  ‘There is always hope if you have faith in the goddess,’ she reproached the doctor.

  Kettmann dropped his instruments into his satchel and tied the bag close. ‘Tell me, Sister Agatha, what kind of faith do you think that mad thing in there has?’ He jabbed his thumb back towards the door of the cell. ‘He’s been screaming about swamp devils for three days. The least Shallya could do is shut him up.’

  ‘That may be, but given that this is a hospice of Shallya, I advise you to apologize for your impious remarks.’ The threat came not from Sister Agatha or any of the other priestesses, but from a tall, grim-faced man dressed in light armour and with the band of a riverwarden tied around his arm. As a concession to the goddess of peace and mercy, the scabbard at his side was empty, the sword checked in the weaponhouse outside the temple grounds, but even without a sword, he looked ready for violence.

  ‘Please, Master Visscher, let there be no bloodshed,’ implored Sister Agatha, imposing herself between the riverwarden and the doctor. Kettmann hastily donned his hat and scrambled off down the hall before waiting to see if his antagonist would circle around the priestess.

  ‘You should listen to Sister Agatha.’ The advice came from a thin, wiry middle-aged man, his hair swept back in a widow’s peak, his prominent cheekbones and deep set eyes giving his face an almost cadaverous quality. A fine black cloak trimmed with martin hung from his shoulders, a black-work doublet and matching long breeches and fustian gloves about his slender hands. His appearance was one of refinement and elegance beside the rough crudity of the riverwarden. Yet there was something about Hein van Seeckt that suggested an air of menace more potent than all of Tjarda Visscher’s swords and armour.

  ‘That man in there is the only witness that has turned up!’ Visscher snarled. ‘Ten ships lost in the marsh and this madman is the only survivor!’

  Seeckt closed his eyes and nodded. It was true what the riverwarden said. Ten ships had been lost over the past three months. Lost with all hands. It had been something of a miracle that this lone survivor had been found, rescued from the Wasteland by a frogcatcher who, by some whim of the gods, both knew how to read and had seen the reward posters offering five guilders for any information about the fate of the Aemilia.

  Yes, Seeckt could understand the riverwarden’s frustration that this miracle might prove worthless. The loss of the ships, at first just a minor inconvenience, had escalated to the level of international incident, straining relations between the breakaway Free City of Marienburg and the Empire they had once been a part of. As the situation grew more tense, as the threat of war became more real with each vanished ship, the burghers of Marienburg increased their demands on the riverwardens.

  Find out what was going on and put a stop to it, or find themselves languishing on Rijker’s Island. That had been the decision of the burghers. And, as the most esteemed and decorated officer among the riverwardens, Captain Visscher had been given the unenviable duty of accomplishing the seemingly impossible.

  ‘Gustav Mertens will tell us exactly what we want to know,’ Seeckt stated.

  Anger drained from Visscher’s eyes, replaced with confusion. Though he didn’t want to admit it, he was well aware that his witness was a babbling lunatic. ‘He’s out of his mind! How can he tell us anything?’

  Seeckt smoothed his expensive doublet and glanced at the brick walls around him. ‘In here, he can’t tell us anything,’ he said. ‘That’s why we’re taking him with us.’

  ‘You cannot!’ protested Sister Agatha. ‘This man has been entrusted into the care of Shallya’s mercy!’

  Seeckt fixed the outraged priestess with a withering stare. ‘I am an agent of the Freeholders themselves,’ he told her, his voice dripping with the arrogance of authority. ‘If I say Gustav Mertens leaves with me, then he leaves with me.’ His voice became an audible sneer as he saw Sister Agatha’s jaw clench. ‘Consider how much your charitable efforts would be diminished if the burghers ceased to donate to your cause. Ask yourself which is more important: helping the many, or sacrificing them for a single man? Shallya is a merciful goddess, but I believe she is also a practical one.’

  Seeckt stalked past the silent priestess. ‘Visscher, bring Mertens with you. I want to sail before nightfall.’

  The Shakerlo sailed upriver after taking on cargo in Carroburg. There was a palpable feeling of fear hovering about the decks of the ship. Ten other vessels had made the same voyage only to vanish in the marshes. That thought was foremost in the minds of the crew.

  It was also foremost in the minds of her passengers. Seeckt and Visscher paced the decks like two hunters scenting prey. Gustav Mertens simply huddled next to the mainmast, gibbering and drooling, his madness doing little to quieten the fears of the crew.

  The riverwarden fingered the strange mask Seeckt had given him, a curious contraption of waxed leather that extended outward into a slender, birdlike bill. It reminded Visscher of old woodcuts he’d once seen showing Westerland during the Black Death, gangs of plague doctors fleecing the sick and the dying. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why Seeckt had distributed these weird masks to every man aboard the Shakerlo or why he had ordered everyone to keep the masks with them at all times. Indeed, three crewmen had been discharged and put ashore at the little fishing village of Mierdorf for violating the agent’s orders.

  Everything about the voyage was strange. It made sense to Visscher that they would engage extra crew in case they ran into trouble and had to make a fight of things, but Seeckt had taken his preparedness to the next level, hiring the services of a dozen Carroburg swordsmen and a scruffy mob of Tilean crossbows. It seemed a colossal waste of gold should their journey back to Marienburg prove uneventful.

  Visscher had a suspicion that Seeckt knew more about the vanished ships than he admitted. The agent was just a bit too certain they would encounter trouble. His assurance had to stem from something more substantial than Gustav’s deranged mutterings. There was something, some link between the missing ships that the riverwardens had missed, a connection between them which Seeckt had uncovered and which the agent had ensured the Shakerlo would share. When he challenged the agent about his suspicions, however, the only reply Visscher got was a wry smile and a warning not to meddle in the affairs of the burghers.

  The tension became a palpable thing when the grassy banks of the Upper Reik gave way to the muck and mire of the Wasteland. The crew murmured uneasily among themselves as fog began to settle across the river, forming a grey veil across the horizon. Prayers to Manann, Handrich and even Sigmar became common as the sailors watched their vessel draw ever closer to the fog.

  Seeckt held a speedy conference with the Shakerlo’s captain and of
ficers. When he dismissed them, the men circled among their crew, making sure that each man was armed and had his weird mask ready. Seeckt watched the officers go about their errand, then turned and made his way to where Visscher stood just below the forecastle.

  ‘Have your mask ready,’ the agent hissed. ‘I think you will need it before much longer.’

  Visscher removed the ugly mask from where he had tied it to his belt-sash. He grimaced at the long, beaked face and the dull, glassy eyes. ‘You’re more superstitious than any seaman if you think this will ward off marsh bogies,’ the riverwarden grumbled.

  ‘Humour me,’ Seeckt said, his voice thin and mirthless.

  Visscher glowered at him, his pride bristling at the agent’s condescending manner. ‘You really think we’re going to run into trouble?’

  ‘I’m counting on it,’ Seeckt said. ‘I’ve done everything to ensure this ship matches the Aemilia in every way. What happened to her should happen to us.’

  ‘Now you can predict the ways of marsh daemons!’ Visscher scoffed.

  Seeckt fixed the riverwarden with a cold gaze. He didn’t deign to respond to Visscher’s baiting, but instead jerked a thumb towards the mainmast. ‘Keep close to Mertens,’ he ordered. ‘Watch his every move. If he does anything unusual, don’t wait but shout the alarm at once.’ Seeckt prodded Visscher’s chest with the tip of his finger. ‘At once. You understand?’

  ‘Your madman is chained,’ Visscher snarled. ‘He’s not going to cause any trouble, however agitated he gets.’

  ‘I’m not worried about him,’ Seeckt said. ‘I’m worried about what might upset him.’

  As though responding to Seeckt’s words, Gustav began thrashing about in his chains, an incoherent stream of moans and shrieks rising from his ashen face. The crew turned with undisguised horror as the madman’s wails became more crazed with each passing breath. A few of the sailors closed their hands about their knives, fear goading them to advance upon the chained lunatic.