Warhammer - [Brunner the Bounty Hunter 02] - Blood and Steel

by C L Werner (lit)

  The man was no less impressive in the flesh, what she could see of him at any rate. He was well built, without the grotesque overabundance of muscle favoured by many men who depended upon violence as their trade. The wary manner in which he carried himself, the cunning, calculating light in his eyes as though prepared for attack had made their impression upon her. Indeed, he was a man that she might have dallied with, maybe even allowing him to cross the threshold of Morr and become one of her thralls. But he was also possessed of an arrogant and disdainful manner. He seemed to lack deference to those of a loftier station than his own. True, he might be brought to heel, but Carlotta had a feeling that breaking the man might not be so easy. His will was strong; he had even resisted her attempt to beguile him into her service. Seldom had the ancient vampire encountered a mortal who could manage to deny her ethereal charms, her mastery of the art of seduction with the merest glance. Carlotta pondered whether she might be able to transfix the man, should she be forced to deal with him herself. Might he throw off her compelling gaze? Might he even be able to raise his hand against her?

  The vampiress considered the possibility. But it was just such an indomitable will that she was in need of. She needed a hero, a man who might stand against the most dire of horrors, and fight against beings that even the undead feared. He might even prevail against it.

  Carlotta shuddered as she pondered the creature she had sent the bounty hunter to destroy. She had spent the better part of her existence living in fear of the day when the thing might walk again. Even among the deathless, certain names still carried an awful power. Among these was that of Nehb-ka-menthu, priest-king of the ancient city of Khareops, the city of pillars.

  The memory of her first meeting with the priest-king was clearer to the ancient vampiress than any she had collected in her thousands of years of unlife. The great army of Alcadizaar the Conqueror had fallen upon Lahmia, crushing the city utterly and completely for Queen Neferata's partaking of the elixir of Nagash, the great necromancer. The vampires had fought with all the fury and wrath they could muster, but the army of Alcadizaar was driven by a religious frenzy. They had come to punish the city for adopting the heresies and blasphemies of the accursed Nagash. They had come to put to the torch all trace of the necromancers evil work. Or so Alcadizaar had supposed. Among his army was the host of Khareops, and leading that host was the priest-king of Khareops, Nehb-ka-menthu. He did not come to wash his soul in righteous slaughter. He had come to plunder, and steal the dark knowledge Lahmia had acquired. For the priest-king harboured his own hideous ambition: he hoped to elevate himself far beyond even the eternal life and supernatural might of the vampires. The insane priest-king hoped to become something much greater. He aspired to become nothing less than a second Nagash!

  So much became clear to Carlotta after she had been captured by a group of Khareopan soldiers during her attempt to flee the doomed city of Lahmia. Nor was she alone. Ten other vampires were locked in silver-lined boxes by the soldiers of Khareops, to be transported back to the city of pillars. Nehb-ka-menthu had protected his dark secret, ordering the death of all the surviving soldiers who had taken part in the siege of Lahmia as his force returned to Khareops. The hundreds-strong force had taken turns removing the heads of their comrades, the last of their number ripping open his belly with a flint knife. Then the priest-king had conducted his secret plunder into the heart of the pyramid that had been erected in preparation for his eventual death.

  There are torments that can break even the will of the undead, and Nehb-ka-menthu had discovered them all. Over many years, the other vampires gave up their secrets, as the insane priest-king probed their bodies with salt and silver and hawthorn. He bled them, drinking the vampiric ichor so that he might perpetuate his own life. One by one, Carlotta's fellow captives had been used up, their remains fed to wild dogs so they might never rise again. The vampiress herself had nearly succumbed before history conspired to set her free.

  The Great Ritual had struck all of Nehekhara as Nagash perpetuated his final blasphemy against his ancient homeland. The lands of Nehekhara had long been poisoned and plagued by the great necromancer, but now, the few who remained amongst the living had perished, and the ancient dead had been stirred. The Great Ritual struck the whole of the ancient kingdom, and Nagash's black magic did not spare the city of pillars. Those who still walked the streets of Khareops perished as the dark energy smothered them. In the dungeons of his pyramid, Nehb-ka-menthu had been drawing ichor once more from Carlotta's weak, withered form when the awful power of Nagashs spell struck him down. As life drained from the priest-king, Nehb-ka-menthu had not cried out in pain. Instead, he had declared, 'Such power shall be mine!'

  Carlotta had fled the dead city of pillars, and crawled into the desert like some vermin in human form. From the dead things that now walked the lands of Nehekhara, she could derive no nourishment. She was reduced to preying on the thin fluids of scorpions and scarabs the only creatures hardy enough to have survived Nagash's spell of doom.

  It had taken her months to finally make her way to the mountains, and to feed on the equally rancid blood of orcs and goblins. In this way she at last found her way to the north, to the domains carved out by those who had escaped the doomed city of Lahmia. It had been centuries since she had endured such privation. The taste of such noxious provender had been expulsed from her by countless feedings on the rich warm blood of hearty men and supple women. She had left the sands of Nehekhara as a wretched, almost animal thing, but she had been reborn in the north as an elegant and lethal predator, an angry goddess of the night whose displeasure was as certain as the vengeance of any deity.

  The final words of Nehb-ka-menthu still filled Carlotta with terror, a dread she had not known since she had become a vampire. She could still recall the nauseating horror that had filled her when she had been prowling the musty old museum in Magritta and seen the shard of pot bearing the glyph of Khareops. The sands of the desert had consumed the city of pillars, or so she had been told. Yet now it seemed that Khareops had been rediscovered, and that what should have remained lost had been found again. Carlotta knew fear again as she considered what might have been taken from the dead city.

  It had taken years to trace the relic in the Magritta curio-house back to its source. Carlotta had learned from the now elderly tomb robber how he had found the cursed city, and what he had found within it. The city, it seemed, was largely intact despite the sand and the centuries, unspoiled by time and tomb robber. She wondered if this could be true, if Khareops and that which it held had indeed survived the ages. She decided that she could not take the risk that it had. The vampiress had indeed organised an expedition to the tomb, but she did not send them to claim lost treasures. She sent them to destroy the remains of Nehb-ka-menthu.

  But her plan had backfired. Not wishing to endanger herself, Carlotta had sent a vampiric thrall with the expedition, and her surrogate had been destroyed by the faithless Arabyans. Worse, when she had finally caught up with some of the treacherous thieves in the city of Ka-Sabar, she discovered that they had found the lost city of Khareops, and had already penetrated the tomb of Nehb-ka-menthu.

  As Carlotta had suspected, the undying liche priests of Khareops had mummified the remains of their slain king in the wake of the Great Ritual. The Arabyans had seen the mummy with their own eyes. Recalling her orders, several of them had decided that some potent magic must lie within the priest-king's mouldering remains. They conspired to bear the mummy away to the coast and transport it to the Tilean city of Miragliano. One of the men was certain his contacts in the black market would enable them to dispose of the carrion at great profit.

  Carlotta did not like to think what the ancient priest-king might have become in death. The embalming arts of the liche priests would have prevented his spirit from abandoning his dead form. But what effect might the vampire blood he had so laboriously extracted from his Lahmian captives have had upon him? In life, it had held back the sands of tim
e, but in death? What sort of monster had the foolish Arabyans taken from the dry wastes of Nehekhara, and what might happen if the awful thing were to stir from its centuries of slumber? Nehb-ka-menthu's mummy might be nothing more than a wasted corpse, but could she take that risk?

  The black drapes parted and a pair of darkly handsome figures drifted across the onyx floor to stand beside their mistress. They were very alike in many ways, possessing the same pale skin, the same hungry cast to their lean faces and similar lustreless eyes. The vampire thralls had waited in hiding, to guard against any sudden aggression on the part of the bounty hunter. The contessa did not know whether her guest had been instructed in the detection of vampires by his literary chronicler. And she had learned that one could never be certain how the fragile living would react to the presence of the undead.

  'Mistress.' spoke the vampire who had emerged from the left side of the room. He was a tall, well-built man. Two hundred years ago, before Carlotta had taken a fancy to him, he had been the premier duellist in Miragliano. He still wore his heavy duelling cloak, and still bore the light duelling rapier at his side. Carlotta reflected how even after hundreds of years, her kind were very much creatures of habit. 'Why engage the mortal? You do not need him.' The vampire's voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper. 'I can find this carrion you so greatly fear.' He drew his sword, letting the exposed steel gleam in the candlelight. 'Time has not dulled my skills. I am still the greatest blade in all Tilea!'

  'Do you think that mere swordplay is enough? It would take more than a sword to strike down anything my lady fears,' scoffed the other thrall. He was shorter than the other vampire, but no less handsome. He wore a set of elegant clothes with large frilled cuffs. His elaborately trimmed tunic resembled those that might be worn to the elaborate balls held by the wealthiest of Tilea's merchant princes when they were not making war against one another. Indeed, Torici had once been a fixture at such functions: a dashing, witty rogue who had a reputation for making even the coldest heart warm to him. Carlotta had been amused by his wit, by his clever observations on the world, and she had taken him, that he might continue to entertain her into the long night. While Relotto was her brawn, Torici was her brain. The two thralls naturally complemented each another.

  Relotto scowled back at his rival, baring his elongated fangs. Torici ignored him and continued to speak. 'I must observe, with all deference my lady, that I am also at a loss to understand why you hired a vulgar bounty killer instead of sending one of us to deal with this matter.'

  Carlotta fixed her slave with a withering look. 'Because I do not wish there to be any trail that might lead back to me. If what I fear is true, if he walks again, I want no chance that he might find me!'

  'If I sent you, he would know I was behind the attack, because he would taste me in the blood that courses through your carcasses. But the bounty hunter is a different matter. There is nothing in him that will lead my enemy back here.'

  'Do you really think the warm-blood has any chance?' Relotto remarked. 'If the Vile One has not awoken, he might be able to destroy it, but if the Vile One walks again?'

  'Yes,' replied the contessa. 'You are quite right. I must keep an eye on my bounty hunter. I must know if he succeeds or fails.' The vampiress lifted the animal nestled in her lap, and turned it so that she might whisper in its ear. She stood and gently set the animal on the floor. The cat swiftly scurried away and was soon lost in the deepening shadows of the corridor beyond the black room.

  The cat shared some of Carlotta's unlife; it was itself a thing removed from the living. By concentration and exertion of her will, the vampiress could see through the feline's jade eyes. Her familiar would follow the bounty hunter. When Brunner found the hiding place of the priest-king, Carlotta would know. And if he found the mummy still locked in its ancient rest, and if he put the abomination to the torch, Carlotta would be close at hand to reward the villain for the boundless effrontery he had shown her.

  Carlotta looked again at her devoted minions. 'Notify the servants that we are leaving,' she said. 'In the event that the bounty hunter does fail, I want to be ready to quit the city immediately.'

  The vampiress settled back in her chair as her minions returned to the shadows to carry out her orders. She reached a slender, pale hand for the crystal decanter, poured the rich red liquor into a small glass and daintily sipped. She held the blood on her tongue, savouring its salty, vibrant taste. And as she drank, she found herself hoping that Brunner would survive his task.

  She was curious to know what his blood would taste like.

  THE DINGY CELLAR was dark and cool, like the hole of some rodent. Brunner strode through the darkness, dodging the wet strips of cloth dangling from the wooden supports, and heading toward the rearmost corner of the underground room below the tannery. The stink of garbage and rotten vegetables assailed his senses as he pushed aside the damp rags. A faint light beckoned from the shadows.

  'Ah, my old friend!' a frail-sounding voice coughed from somewhere near the light. 'You've come to visit me once more and relieve my loneliness!'

  Brunner advanced on the speaker. The man was spindly and old, his bones wrapped in wrinkled skin. The man's skull-like face bore ghastly tooth-like projections. One of the hands that protruded from the sleeve of his thin nightshirt was malformed; it resembled a set of boneless tentacles. The human wreckage lay upon a rickety cot, with a small wooden chair set before it. An old lantern hung from a hook set into the beam above his feeble figure.

  'Tessari,' Brunner said, as he seated himself in the old wooden chair. The mutant smiled as he heard his name, and his large, watery eyes misted with emotion.

  'It is so nice to hear my name spoken by another voice,' Tessari confessed, tears slithering down his malformed face. 'Sometimes I almost forget what it sounds like.' He closed his eyes, his wasted body heaving with dry sobs. 'Sometimes I almost forget what it is. I have to recite it to myself in the night so that I will remember.'

  Brunner sighed, adjusting his position on the chair. 'If you could delay the onset of madness for a few minutes, I have some questions for you, old man.'

  Tessari's eyes snapped open, the tentacles of his hand writhing and twitching. He contorted his features into a grimace of distaste. 'I was forgetting myself. Forgetting who I was talking to. Tell me, Brunner, is there even a trace of pity in that stone heart of yours?'

  'None,' the bounty hunter replied. 'And since you seem so forgetful, I think I'll just take my questions somewhere else.' Brunner rose to leave. Tessari waved him to sit down again with his still-human hand.

  'There are many things I still remember,' Tessari said, his tone sullen. He tapped his forehead with one of the worm-like digits of his altered hand. 'There are still a few things in this skull of mine.'

  'Let's just hope that what I need is in there,' Brunner commented as he sat back down.

  'Perhaps,' Tessari responded. 'But this time I want my fee paid in advance.' The mutant's tentacles clenched in a macabre parody of a closing fist. 'And no tricks this time,' he warned.

  'Of course not,' assured Brunner. He lifted his helmed head to consider the hanging lantern. 'After all, I see that you put your previous fee to a good purpose.'

  'Just so we understand one another,' wheezed Tessari, settling himself back into his cot. 'Who are you hunting this time?'

  'Not "who",' the bounty hunter corrected. 'I am paid to find a "what" this time. A relic stolen from an expedition in Araby. My patron has reason to believe it is here in Miragliano.'

  Tessari made a disgusted groaning noise. 'Stolen property in Miragliano,' the mutant laughed. 'You might as well seek an individual snowflake on the ice fields of Kislev!'

  Brunner favoured Tessari with a knowing smile. 'I imagine that this particular item might be unusual enough to be remarkable. What was stolen was the mummified body of a Nehekharan priestking.'

  Tessari's wormy digits convulsed as they tried to make the signs of Shallya and Morr together. 'Gods preserve
us!' he exclaimed.

  'I imagine that would be most people's reaction,' Brunner stated. 'There can't be too many men in Miragliano willing to deal in such wares. Even fewer who would have ties to thieves from Araby.'

  'There is only one whom I can think of,' Tessari said after a moment's consideration. 'Abdul-Qaadir bin Shereef. Normally, he deals chiefly in Crimson Shade and other narcotic herbs from the South Lands, but he is not above dabbling in slaving and the black market. He is an Arabyan, but has lived in Miragliano for the past ten years. He is a ruthless and cruel man, utterly without morals. It is said he fears neither god nor man. I should think he would be just the sort of person who would buy or sell this thing you seek.'

  'This Abdul-Qaadir does indeed sound like the man I am looking for,' Brunner agreed, tossing a set of silver coins onto the edge of Tessari's cot. 'Where can I find him?'

  'Abdul-Qaadir maintains a warehouse off La Strada di Falco,' Tessari answered, lifting his body so that he might retrieve the coins. 'But be warned, he keeps much of his illegal merchandise there, and the warehouse is always guarded. Abdul-Qaadir is not like Ennio Volonte. He knows when and where to spend his money. His guards won't be the usual gutter-trash.'

  Brunner rose. 'Good,' he said, 'I was getting worried that this job wasn't going to be interesting.'

  'It might be more interesting than you can handle,' cautioned Tessari. 'You have given thought to the possibility that Abdul-Qaadir has already sold the mummy? Ask yourself what sort of man would want such a thing? Ask yourself what he might hope to do with it?'

  'I've already been warned of those possibilities, old man,' Brunner retorted, caressing the pistol holstered across his belt. Tessari shook his head.

  'Once, when I was still young, the caravan I led happened upon a barrow mound just off one of the back trails to Monte Castello. Trust me when I tell you that guns and swords are no proof against the restless dead.'