by Nathan Long
‘The ward on the door,’ she said. ‘Can you unlock it?’
Famke hesitated. Ulrika sympathised. It was one thing to let Ulrika go. It was another to assist her. Finally she nodded.
‘Come.’
Ulrika followed Famke to the door and watched anxiously while she mumbled the unlocking spell and waved her hand over it.
A maid with a serving tray came around a corner and saw the fallen guards just as Famke opened the door. She squeaked and ran for Gabriella’s quarters, shouting, ‘Mistress! Mistress, there is trouble!’
Famke threw her arms around Ulrika and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Go, sister! My heart goes with you.’
‘I’ll come back with our enemies’ hearts in a box,’ said Ulrika. ‘They’ll have to thank me if I end their war for them, won’t they?’
Shouted orders and thudding footsteps came from down the hall. Famke pushed Ulrika through the door.
‘I hope so, sister,’ she said. ‘But, go! Go!’
Ulrika went, pounding down the stairs as sounds of pursuit came from behind and shouts came through the walls at each floor. At the bottom, she faced the door to the entry hall. It was locked – and not only locked but warded, just as above. She could feel the tingle of the spell’s shimmer as she threw her shoulder into it. It didn’t budge, and she could hear movement and urgent whispers behind it. She cursed. She was trapped, and the men were coming quickly down the stairs above her.
Ulrika looked around. There was a dark space under the stairs, cluttered with piled chairs. She ducked into it and backed into the shadows, then pulled her doublet up over her head to hide her white hair. She tried to think like a shadow, tried to blend with the dark.
The men thundered to the bottom of the steps and tried the door.
‘Locked!’ said one.
‘Did she go through?’ asked another.
‘She can’t have,’ said the first. ‘We’d hear fighting.’
‘Well, we didn’t pass her,’ said a third.
The men started looking around the bottom of the stairwell. Ulrika held perfectly still as one of them looked directly at her. He even dragged some of the chairs out from under the flight and looked behind them.
‘She’s not here,’ he said. ‘She must have gone through.’
‘But she can’t have,’ said the first man again.
‘We’d better check anyway,’ said the second. ‘Maybe they’re all dead at the door.’
The first guard cursed, then took a key from his belt. It shimmered the same colour as the ward. He turned it, and the door opened.
Ulrika launched herself from her hiding place as the guards started through, and smashed past them into the entry. The auburn-haired madam was there, trying to hurry a crowd of lavishly dressed young men out the front door as the Lahmian, Astrid, and the two liveried behemoths turned towards Ulrika.
‘Really, Madam Reme,’ one of the young noblemen was saying. ‘We will not be shooed out like relatives. This is highly unsatisfactory.’
‘It is only for your safety, my lords,’ said the woman. ‘An agitator has–’
She broke off as Ulrika dodged past Astrid, then ducked between the lunging tackles of the huge guards and ran for the alcove where she had put her weapons. The little room was filled with swords and daggers hung on pegs, but she found hers readily enough. They were the only ones that had seen any use.
Ulrika whipped her blade out and turned, fanning back Astrid, the two behemoths and the three upstairs guards as they surrounded the alcove, weapons drawn. Astrid had sharp silver cupped in her palm.
‘Was that the agitator?’ asked a young lord. ‘Is there going to be a fight?’
‘Very likely, my lord,’ said Madam Reme. ‘Now if you please–’
But the young men were drawing their weapons.
‘Oh no!’ said the one who had spoken. ‘We’ll not abandon our girls in the face of danger. Come on, lads!’
Ulrika smiled as the lordlings started crowding in behind the line of guards, hallooing like they were after a fox. This was perfect. Onlookers were just the weapon she needed.
‘Stop this, sister!’ whispered Astrid as Ulrika swiped at her again and stepped forwards. ‘You can’t escape! Surrender or it will be the worse for you.’
Ulrika grinned, showing just a hint of extended fang. ‘You will let me escape,’ she murmured. ‘Or it will be the worse for you. Shall I show these gentles my true nature? Do you want the Chalice of Caronne closed by the witch hunters?’
Astrid’s face fell, and she looked back at the young men, still trying to squeeze to the front. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘I have little left to lose,’ said Ulrika.
‘Let her go,’ said a new voice, and Ulrika looked to the right.
Countess Gabriella was gliding down the brothel’s gilded stair with a handful of guards behind her. Her face was composed in a mask of amused condescension, but Ulrika could see the cold fury behind her eyes, and the ice of it froze her guts.
‘If the dirty little drake only wants to leave, why stop her?’ she asked, then curtseyed to the young noblemen. ‘Gentlemen, your chivalry does you credit, but don’t besmirch your blades on trash. Step aside and she will make no trouble, will she?’
Ulrika swallowed as Gabriella’s glittering gaze pierced her to the quick. ‘No trouble at all, madame,’ she said.
The young lords grumbled and complained, but the behemoths and upstairs guards moved them gently back and gave Ulrika a clear path to the open door. Ulrika squeezed out and backed towards it, keeping her blade up and her eyes moving, ready for any last-minute attack. It didn’t come. Gabriella and Astrid and Madam Reme merely watched as she edged out onto the front steps.
Gabriella saluted from the gilded stair. ‘Be careful, drake,’ she said sweetly. ‘The night is full of dangers.’
Ulrika shivered. That was a threat if ever there was. ‘Thank you, madame,’ she said, bowing. ‘I will.’
And with that, she turned and fled down the street. They would be coming, but in what guise, and how soon, she didn’t know. Gabriella had only let her escape the brothel to move the fight away from her clientele and keep up appearances, but the hounds had been loosed, of that Ulrika was in no doubt.
Ulrika needed to get to the lights and the crowds of the Handelstrasse. The Lahmians wouldn’t be able to attack openly there for fear of exposing themselves, and she might be able to lose them in the confusion, but there was a grid of dark, empty blocks between here and there – blocks of stolid townhouses, battened and shuttered against the night. If they struck here–
A white shape flashed in the corner of her eye. She turned, raising her rapier, and the figure slammed into her chest, knocking her flat. Ulrika’s head cracked the cobbles and the world broke into shards – a white hand grabbing her shirt front, cobbles scraping her back as she was dragged, the dark walls of an alley hemming in the night sky, angry eyes and fangs snarling down at her.
‘With this you have signed your death warrant, stray. There will be no prison for you.’
chapter four
DANGEROUS GAME
The shards of Ulrika’s consciousness fell back together to reveal Hermione crouching over her, naked as a cat, and reaching claws for her throat. Ulrika threw up her hands and caught Hermione’s wrists, but the petite beauty was impossibly strong, and Ulrika’s arms shook with the effort of keeping her away.
‘Did you think you were the only one who could fight?’ hissed Hermione, pressing harder. ‘Did you think because I wear petticoats and lace that I am weak? There is a beast within me as well, girl!’
‘A beast, aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘But not a warrior.’
She let go of both Hermione’s wrists at once, and, with all resistance suddenly removed, the vampiress fell forwards, off balance. Ulrika thrust her head forwards and bucked at the
same time, head-butting Hermione and throwing her off with her long legs, then grabbed her sword and rolled to her feet.
Hermione was up as well, blinking but crouched to spring, and Ulrika could hear the clatter of hooves getting closer behind her. The swains from the brothel were coming.
‘Stand aside, mistress,’ said Ulrika. ‘I have no wish to hurt you.’
‘But I share no such wish,’ said Hermione, and leapt, claws and fangs bared.
For all her strength and speed, however, the Lahmian was tiny – a foot shorter than Ulrika and delicately built. Ulrika caught her in mid-air and slammed her into the alley wall, caving in the plaster and splintering the lathing behind it. Hermione flopped to the ground in a rain of rubble, stunned, and Ulrika ran.
At the other end of the alley, another naked form dropped from the roof to a crouch – Gabriella.
‘Daughter,’ she said, ‘listen to me.’
Ulrika dodged right and vaulted a high fence into a dingy garden. She knew better than to hear her out. Gabriella’s weapons were words. She would weave a honeyed net that would leave Ulrika trapped and helpless, and surrounded by her swains.
Ulrika jumped another wall then careened onto a side street, the sound of pursuit loud in her ears. The lights of the Handelstrasse were only a block and half ahead. She sprinted for them, grinning. Gabriella and Hermione couldn’t very well chase her there naked. If only they wore sensible breeches and doublets instead of floor-length dresses, they wouldn’t have to strip to fight.
Ulrika ran past a strolling couple and the open door of an ale house and heard the slap of bare feet slowing behind her. She looked back. Hermione glared at her from behind a low wall, but Gabriella had not given up. She was climbing the half-timbered front of a building, as agile as a monkey. A second later, Hermione vaulted after her. Behind them, Gabriella’s swains galloped closer.
Ulrika ran into the Handelstrasse and stumbled against the flanks of a surging mob – students, shopkeeps and ironworkers with torches and clubs and stakes in their hands, all shouting and going the same direction.
‘Burn the fiends! Show them for what they are!’
Ulrika pulled up, skin prickling. Ursun’s teeth! She’d run into a lynch mob! She glanced back, thinking to try another way, but Gabriella’s riders were spreading out to block the street behind her, and white shadows were flashing across the rooftops. Ulrika plunged into the flow. Terrifying as it was to be among the enemy, she could at least be certain Hermione and Gabriella wouldn’t attack her in the middle of such a crowd.
The swains were another matter. They pushed their horses into the human stream, trying to keep their eye on her and letting the current take them after her. She hunched lower, and hid behind a group of fanatics who carried towering straw effigies, crudely dressed to resemble vampires.
The mob swept north into the Reik Platz to join the great swarm of humanity that filled it nearly to bursting. Ulrika gagged as they packed close around her. The summer night was already as close as a sweaty blanket, but in the midst of the unwashed and all their torches, she felt as if she were in an oven full of dirty clothes.
Under the spreading branches of the ancient Deutz Elm, a man dressed all in black stood upon a barrel and raised a blazing wooden stake in the air. He was whom the fanatics had come to see.
‘They hide among us, friends!’ he cried in a clear, carrying voice. ‘Women of high estate, women of easy virtue, women of the gutter, they mask as all these things, seducing the weak, whispering in the ears of the powerful and recruiting the low to be their slaves.’
Ulrika eyed the speaker warily. He was a cut above the usual street-corner demagogue – a tall, fierce-eyed man of perhaps forty, with a rough-hewn but intelligent face and grey in his neatly trimmed black beard. He was outfitted something like a witch hunter, but without the hat, and with a bandoleer of stakes in place of the usual pistols, while a sledgehammer was slung through his belt instead of a sword.
‘Now they have cast off the mask!’ he continued. ‘Now they have revealed their schemes at last. They want us for slaves, friends! They want our Empire for their own!’ He pointed north. ‘In Wolfenburg the she-fiends killed the mayor and made the lord their swain! In Middenheim, the undercity crawls with their spawn!’ His finger swung to the underlit towers of Countess von Liebowitz’s palace, on the far side of the Altestadt wall. ‘And here in Nuln, the court is riddled with them! Painted jades who try to lure our beloved countess to their dark depravities!’
He drew his sledgehammer and raised it above his head beside the burning stake he held. ‘Well, I say they must be stopped! I say we must breach the Altestadt gate and drag the sluts from their perfumed beds! I say–’
‘There’s one now!’ shrieked a woman’s voice. ‘The drake with the short white hair! She’s a vampire, I’m sure of it!’
Ulrika spun, looking for the source of the shriek, and saw Hermione peering out from behind a chimney on a nearby rooftop, her hands cupped like a trumpet around her mouth.
‘Kill her!’ she cried from her hiding place. ‘Burn her! Show her a mirror!’
Rage burned in Ulrika’s breast at her words. Hermione was doing the very thing she had accused Mathilda and Gabriella of during the murders. She was revealing a sister to the mob.
A rising susurrus of whispers brought Ulrika’s attention back to the square. The crowd had drawn back, forming a circle of open space around her, everyone staring and murmuring, their weapons gripped tight in their fists.
She raised her hands. ‘Please, friends. I’m no vampire. I’m here like you, ready to storm the Altestadt. I–’
‘Kill her!’ roared the man in black, pointing his sledgehammer at Ulrika. ‘I can smell her foetid breath from here! She reeks of the grave!’
Ulrika locked eyes with him for the briefest of seconds, and saw blazing triumph in them, almost glee. Does he know, she wondered? Or does he only leap upon opportunity?
Now was not the time to dwell on it, for the mob was responding to his goad and surging in at her from all sides. Ulrika drew her rapier and dagger and flashed them around, driving them back, but cobbles and bricks flew at her from behind, cracking her on the head and shoulders, and the vampire hunter was shoving towards her, stake and hammer ready. She spun, looking for a way out, and saw Gabriella’s swains spurring their chargers through the crowd. Ulrika laughed. The fools would be the saving of her.
Ulrika plunged towards the first rider, stabbing into the crowd with a flurry of thrusts, and as he raised his sword over her, she pulled him from his horse by the belt and vaulted into the saddle before he had hit the ground.
‘Bring her down!’ roared the man in black, crashing ahead. ‘Bring her down!’
Ulrika lashed about her with her rapier and stabbed her heels into the horse’s flanks, making it kick as it surged forwards. The crowd fell back at the barrage of steel and hooves and moving horseflesh, but the man in black came on, stepping into her path and swinging his hammer. She parried the blow with her blade, and nearly dropped it. His strike had been so hard it stung her hand. He had the strength of a fanatic!
In the next second, however, she was past him and Gabriella’s swains rode him down as they gave chase, though even that didn’t quiet him. Ulrika still heard him crying for someone to bring her down as she spurred for the north side of the square with the swains angling after her. A quick look behind showed her Gabriella and Hermione leaping from roof to roof to do the same, and there was a third form with them – Mathilda bounding after them like a buxom wolf. Ulrika cursed. She had traded one problem for another. If she stayed with the crowd she would be torn apart for being a vampire. If she broke from them, she would be torn apart by vampires. She needed to hide. She needed to cover her white hair.
She turned the horse into a street that ran along the southern edge of the University of Nuln and sped on. The riders clattered in behind h
er, shouting at her to stop. The streets were quieter here, but not empty. Students in hooded robes walked in ones and twos, hurrying to cross in front of her on their way to the taverns and coffee houses on the south side of the street.
Robes? Perfect. But how to get one undetected? She needed a moment – even a second – with no eyes on her.
There was an alley on the left, a pitch-black slot between a tavern and a used book shop. It looked too tight to ride into, but she aimed for it anyway. Her knees cleared the walls with inches to spare and the horse floundered in a heap of rubbish, then cleared it and sped on. Ulrika did not go with it. As soon as she was out of sight of the street she slipped off its rump, then threw herself behind a stack of empty beer kegs as it thundered on.
Gabriella’s swains blurred past in single file, an arm’s length from her face, striving after her horse in the dark, and then they were gone. She breathed a sigh of relief. Now for a robe. A tavern full of drunk students should provide, but she couldn’t go back to the street and enter from the front. The roar of the mob was getting closer, and the three Lahmians would be watching from the rooftops.
She looked at the tavern. There was no door, but there was a fence around the yard behind it. She ran and vaulted it, and landed in a reeking puddle that had leaked from under the wooden walls of the privies. With a grimace she stepped to dry ground and wiped her feet. The back gate was beyond the privies to her right, and the back door to the tavern to the left. Did she enter the tavern, or–?
A painful retching came from the privies. Some poor fellow was returning his beer to the earth, and it sounded as if it was killing him. Her decision was made. She stepped to the door, grimacing. She hoped he hadn’t got any on himself.
With the heel of her hand, she snapped the wooden latch and the door flew open. A student knelt before the bench, his head over the hole, whimpering to Sigmar as he heaved and spat.
‘Occupied, curse you–’ he said, raising his head.
