[Blood on the Reik 02] - Death's City

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  Gradually, the few remaining passers-by disappeared altogether, although he could still hear stealthy movement and muffled voices in some of the buildings that surrounded him. There were no more fires or torches to be seen either, just a faint glimmer of necrotic light from Moorsleib as it raised a sliver of itself over the surrounding rooftops. The feeble illumination was enough to allow him to see, despite a thin, freezing mist which began to flow through the streets, bringing with it the odour of water and rotting mud. Inhaling it, Rudi smiled. At least he knew the direction of the waterfront now.

  Ahead of him a large building loomed, blotting out the light of the Chaos moon like a block of solid darkness against the sky. As he moved closer, still guided by the unerring instinct which had drawn him this far, Rudi was able to make out gaps in the planking of the walls, through which faint yellow light flickered and danced. There were sounds too, voices raised in what sounded like a chant or a song of some kind, and he smiled again, remembering the revellers he’d encountered in the woods that night. Perhaps it was another celebration, like the one the beastmen had so brutally interrupted.

  “Barhum yu! Barhum yu!” The words were nonsense, but resonant somehow and curiously reassuring. Rudi picked up his pace and moved towards their source. Deep down in the recesses of his mind a faint voice urged caution and his pace slowed involuntarily. As it did so a surge of anger and frustration washed over him. Baffled by the storm of unprovoked emotions, Rudi checked his pace and took stock of the situation. Some nameless instinct spurred him on, just as it had that night in the woods, but now his conscious mind was back in control. When he resumed his progress it was slower, more cautious, using all the skill and stealth he’d learned growing up in the forest.

  The deep patches of shadow were helping him now and he flitted between them as carefully as if he were stalking game in the woods. Up close, the warehouse was clearly derelict, timbers rotted and sagging, planks missing from the walls. Whether they’d been scavenged by the denizens of this blighted quarter for reasons of their own or simply fallen out as the wood around the nails which held them had crumbled away he couldn’t tell, but one of the larger ones served him as an entrance. Guided by the flickering yellow radiance of the fire within, he slipped through the gap and into the building.

  His first impression was one of space, despite the sense of enclosure which came from being indoors. The warehouse was cavernous, larger than any building he’d ever seen, except for the ancient elven ruins where he and Hanna had fought the skaven. He advanced cautiously, the mould-softened planks beneath his feet giving faintly under him like springy turf, but they held his weight well enough. The firelight was brighter here, seeming to rise up from a pit in the floor ahead of him and he inched his way towards it. The voices were louder too, some still chanting the gibberish he’d heard before, while others provided a counterpoint in Reikspiel.

  “Hail the vessel! Hail the vessel!” Rudi felt his heart beating a little faster, recognising the phrase Magnus had used in the forest clearing. Perhaps these people knew the merchant and could tell him where to find his friend.

  Encouraged, Rudi moved a little more quickly, his confidence growing as his eyes adjusted to the greater level of light. Irregularities in the walls and floor hinted at long-gone walls and upper storeys, tumbled heaps of timber here and there giving clues as to their fates. What he’d taken for a pit in the floor was more than just a hole. As he drew closer to it, he could make out the straight edge marking its boundary and the top of a flight of steps leading down. Impelled by curiosity, and buoyed by the growing conviction that he was among friends, he made his way to the top of the stairway.

  About to descend, he glanced downwards and stood still for a moment, paralysed by shock and delighted surprise.

  The steps led down to a wharf, over which the ground level floor projected; in the days of this building’s prosperity, boats could be unloaded here and the cargoes they brought stored directly above them. Thick, oily water lapped at the pilings, pulsating like some vast living organism, red and yellow highlights reflecting the fire which had been kindled in a large brazier. Men and women were ranged about it in a rough semi-circle, their faces for the most part obscured by hooded robes of green and yellow, and many held offerings of offal and other waste which they cast into the flames whenever the chanting reached a particularly resonant phrase. In the centre of the group, his face bare and clearly recognisable, was Magnus.

  Relief and delight robbed Rudi of his breath for a moment and he hesitated, reluctant to interrupt the ritual. The merchant was holding a book. Its leather cover was spotted with mould and several pages were loose. As Rudi watched, Magnus stepped forwards and began to read from it in a firm, resonant voice.

  “Grandfather, we ask of you a boon. As our bodies reap the bounty of your gifts, so our hearts burn to spread the glory of your word. Guide your vessel to us, so your herald may be free to do your work. Hail the vessel!”

  “Hail the vessel!” Magnus’ companions echoed his words in a great shout, which echoed around the cavernous building. A deep sense of peace and contentment settled across Rudi and he reached out a foot to descend the stairs. Somehow, he felt, he belonged with these people. All he had to do was get to Magnus and the answers to the questions which had tormented him ever since he’d heard the dying words of his adoptive father in the forest clearing outside Kohlstadt would be made clear.

  Magnus and his friends hesitated, the echoes of their cry fading slowly into the foetid air around them. The air of expectation in the ruined wharf was palpable, and Rudi half expected the boat they were evidently waiting for to be putting into the dock beside them even as he moved.

  “You really don’t want to go down there.” A hand, inhumanly strong, clamped itself around Rudi’s bicep, yanking him back into the shadows. Unable to draw his sword he turned, pulling the knife from his belt with the other hand, and prepared to defend himself. Three eyes gazed down at him, taking in the blade he held with sardonic amusement. “Nice to see you again too.”

  The thing which had once been Hans Katzenjammer let him go, batting the blade from his hand with a careless flick of the wrist. It fell point first, sticking into the rotten planks like a steel reed.

  “I’ll go where I like!” Rudi snarled, all rational thought swept aside by a torrent of rage which roared up from nowhere to leave him shaking with the strength of it. He drew his sword and struck at the mutant with a speed and strength which would have gutted any mortal man. Hans simply parried the blow with the bony ridge along his forearm and shook his head reprovingly.

  “Temper, temper,” he said, the familiar malicious grin beginning to spread across his face. He deflected another couple of sallies and retaliated, backhanding Rudi on the side of the head. The young forester fell, pain flaring through his skull, his sword skittering off into the darkness. “I’m supposed to keep you alive, but she didn’t say anything about undamaged.”

  “Who didn’t?” Rudi spat, clambering awkwardly to his feet. By way of an answer, Hans jerked a talon-tipped thumb in the direction of the bonfire.

  Rudi turned his head and gazed down at the derelict wharf. The people there were turning to look at something as well, becoming aware of it one by one, and he craned his neck to see what it might be.

  “This is an unexpected pleasure,” Magnus said, in tones which made it clear that it was anything but. “I heard you were dead.”

  “You know how these stories get exaggerated,” a feminine voice responded. There was something familiar about it, and after a moment a lithe figure stepped out of the shadows into the circle of firelight. Her back was to Rudi, but there was no mistaking her identity—the hood of her travelling cloak was drawn back and highlights gleamed from the tips of the horns protruding through the blonde hair covering her head. “I’d hoped the same about you.”

  “A mistake I’m sure we can correct,” Magnus said, tilting his head almost imperceptibly towards her. As the sorceress walked unhurrie
dly forwards, a couple of the people at the ends of the line began closing in behind her, their hands reaching under their robes. When they emerged, bright steel reflected the firelight as though they were holding blades of gold.

  “I doubt it.” The sorceress gestured idly with her left hand and the nimbus of blue fire which had consumed the soldiers back at the camp on the moors erupted around her would-be attackers. They screamed and writhed for a moment as the flames consumed them, then slumped to the decking of the wharf as charred, hissing corpses. The familiar stink of burned flesh filled Rudi’s nostrils and with it the realisation that Magnus was in danger. Without thought, he hurled himself at the stairway, filled only with the compulsion to defend his friend. If Magnus died, he might never discover the secret of his origins.

  “You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.” Hans intercepted him, blocking his path. Rudi swung a punch, which jarred his hand and wrist painfully, but the mutant seemed not even to feel it. He seized Rudi by the upper arm and jerked him back. Rudi kicked out at his groin, but even this failed to loosen Hans’ grip. “Just watch.”

  Unable to do anything else, Rudi watched.

  “You’ve learned some new tricks, I see.” Magnus was trying to sound calm, but his body betrayed him, his muscles tensing even as he spoke. His companions didn’t even try to pretend, falling back from the sorceress with every sign of acute fear. Rudi couldn’t blame them for that.

  “Not really.” The horned woman sounded amused. “I just didn’t reveal all I could do.”

  “You revealed enough for the witch hunter to find you out,” Magnus said.

  The sorceress laughed. “I revealed enough for him to react the way he was supposed to,” she replied. “No doubt the Changer will reward him for his assistance in due course.” She shook her head in a parody of sympathy. “Your plans, on the other hand, he disrupted quite thoroughly.”

  “Not everything’s lost,” Magnus said venomously. “We can still recover the vessel.”

  “And do what?” An edge of contempt entered the woman’s voice. “The time has come and gone. All you can do is release what it holds, and what purpose will that serve?”

  “What it always would,” Magnus said angrily. “Spreading the Grandfather’s gifts throughout the known world.”

  “In a random and undirected fashion,” the sorceress said. “Far less than you’d hoped to achieve.” She shrugged. “But I’m afraid we can’t allow you even that minor victory.” She turned suddenly, unleashing another hail of blue fire, which struck a knot of the hovering bystanders. As they burned, the others turned and fled, their cries of panic all but drowning out the shrieks of the dying. Rudi gasped in horror.

  “Why’s she doing this? She didn’t have to kill them!” He made another futile attempt to break free of Hans’ grip and the mutant’s throaty, inhuman chuckle resounded in his ear.

  “She’s making sure there aren’t enough of them left to repeat the ritual,” he explained, the words rasping though his altered throat. Rudi glanced back at the tableau below. Left alone now, Magnus tried to stare the sorceress down.

  “This won’t stop us,” the merchant said. “Sooner or later everything comes to the Grandfather. It’s simply a matter of time.”

  “Time you no longer have,” the sorceress said, raising her hand again. Rudi drew in his breath to shout a warning, but there was no need; Magnus had turned and run for the edge of the dock. He jumped, his form suspended in the air for a long, slow moment, the first faint azure nimbus beginning to flicker around him, but before the magical fire could coalesce he disappeared into the water with a loud splash. Steam rose for a moment and the sorceress shrugged. How disappointed she was at failing to kill the merchant Rudi could only guess.

  Despite the danger he was in, a sudden surge of elation buoyed Rudi up. Magnus was alive and in Marienburg and all he had to do was find him again. If he got out of here in one piece.

  Down below, the sorceress stepped back into the shadows and was gone. As soon as she disappeared, Hans released his grip and Rudi backed away, looking around for the weapons he’d dropped, or something else he could use to defend himself. But to his surprise, the mutant remained standing where he was.

  “You want to go back up the street you came down,” he said. “Turn right just past the second bridge. Keep going until you get to the statue, take the left-hand exit from the square facing you as you enter it, third left, second right and if you can’t find your own way from there you’re even stupider than I’ve always taken you for.” Before Rudi could react he turned and loped away.

  Dazed, Rudi retrieved his fallen weapons and followed his old enemy out into the pale, diseased light of the Chaos moon. The mist was thicker now and he could see no sign of the mutant, the horned sorceress, or any of the people who’d been down on the wharf.

  One thing was clear though—he now knew for certain that Magnus was here in the city, and that he was getting closer to the answers he sought. It was with a lighter heart that he set out to retrace his steps along the street which had led him here and to such a bizarre encounter with the people from his past.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  To Rudi’s vague surprise Hans’ directions proved accurate. Even despite the steadily thickening mist, he had no trouble following them, and shortly after leaving the square with the statue he found himself back on a street he recognised. At the sight of the first familiar landmark he breathed a faint sigh of relief. He had no reason to trust the mutant, even though for reasons he still couldn’t fathom his old enemy had intervened to keep him from harm on several occasions, and he wouldn’t have put it past Hans to have steered him into even greater trouble for no better reason than the sheer joy of malice. Certainly the old Hans Katzenjammer he remembered from Kohlstadt, before the beastman’s blood had wrought its terrible transformation, would have done so with alacrity.

  That led to another disturbing idea. It was clear that Hans was acting as an agent for the horned sorceress, although perhaps not entirely willingly, and now it appeared that she and Magnus were bitter enemies. A sudden, terrible thought struck him, with all the power of a blow to the stomach, and he stumbled as it hit home with almost physical force. He’d seen her with the beastmen in the woods before they killed all the villagers at the gathering in the clearing. Could she have sent them there, out of the enmity she held for the merchant? If so, she was responsible for his father’s death, at least indirectly.

  Still reeling from the notion, Rudi shook his head, trying to make sense of the conversation he’d overheard. Magnus clearly knew the woman well, but he couldn’t imagine how their paths had initially crossed. It must have been in Marienburg, he assumed, because he’d known everyone in and around Kohlstadt at least by sight. At that thought a faint sense of familiarity tried to force its way to the surface of his mind, but it refused to come into focus and he dismissed it angrily. Speculation was futile, he knew, the thing to do was find Magnus. Once he did that and asked the questions consuming him, everything was bound to make sense.

  His mind occupied by a maelstrom of speculation, he was barely aware of his surroundings, until the sudden scrape of shoe leather against cobbles warned him he wasn’t alone.

  Shocked back to the present, Rudi glanced around, trying to orientate himself. The mist had closed in with a vengeance, reducing visibility to a handful of yards, the guttering of torches outside businesses and homes further along the narrow street doing little more than imparting an eerie yellow glow to the fog. Perhaps because of it, the constant bustle of people he’d grown used to since his arrival in the city was now absent, the thoroughfares strangely deserted.

  Almost. A shadow in the mist thickened and solidified, taking on the form of one of the largest men Rudi had ever seen. Bare-chested in spite of the chill, he had long, greasy blond hair and a bushy, unkempt beard. A large hammer swung at his side, held easily in a hamlike fist.

  “Is this the one?” he asked, elongating his vowels in a curious sing-
song manner.

  “One of them.” The new voice belonged to Tilman, although tonight the cobbler was dressed in well-cut clothing far more expensive than an artisan would normally be expected to wear. He had a knife in his hand and an ugly expression on his face. “You cost me a lot of money, boy.”

  “I could say the same,” Rudi riposted, drawing his sword. The pair of them clearly meant business. “But I didn’t cheat you out of yours.”

  “You see, that’s the problem.” Tilman’s eyes flickered past Rudi’s shoulder. “All my games are honest. My reputation’s my fortune, you might say and you and your friends have damaged it. Nothing personal, but I need to be seen to do something about an accusation like that, or people might start believing it.”

  Forewarned by the cobbler’s involuntary glance behind him, Rudi turned, bringing up the sword just in time to deflect a vicious blow to the back of his head with what looked like a short club studded with iron nails. The man wielding it seemed vaguely familiar, and after a moment he recognised Cheap-suit from the gambling den. Rudi pivoted on the balls of his feet, keeping the weapons locked together and continuing the downward momentum of his assailant’s strike. Cheap-suit kept going with it, until his face met Rudi’s rising knee with a resonant crack. Flailing his arms, he fell backwards, blood streaming from his nose, just in time to get caught up in the legs of another thug rushing to the attack a pace or two behind him. They both went down in a tangle of limbs and profanity and Rudi turned to face the blond giant, who was bearing down on him with a yell which echoed from every surface in the street.

  It was almost too easy, Rudi thought, stepping aside and ramming the pommel of his sword into the fellow’s stomach. He had no wish to kill anyone if he could avoid it, although having done so once in self-defence he was under no illusions that he couldn’t if he had to. To his surprise and consternation, though, instead of folding as he’d expected, the giant shrugged off the blow, which had felt to Rudi like he was hitting stone, and laughed.