Warhammer Red Thirst

by Warhammer

  The Acolytes thought better of picking on Vukotich and dragged the poet away. The mercenary glowered at the vegetable merchant's wife. She was shoved forwards by the crowd, and Vukotich put out a hand to fend her off. She backhanded his arm out of the way, and he fell in the seat, his hand flailing down by the woman's skirts. Genevieve wondered what he was doing. He righted himself. The woman forced her way away from the wagon, tugging on her son's arm. Little Detlef smiled at Genevieve, and was gone.

  The moment was over, the frisson passed.

  A wheelbarrowload of books went into the fire, and the Acolytes pitched the barrow itself after them. There were no roars of approval, just a blank silence. Someone on a raised platform was preaching a sermon against wine, sensational literature, dancing and licentiousness.

  "Her," someone shouted, pointing at a young woman standing near them, "she makes up to all the men, leads good husbands astray..."

  The woman cringed, and turned to run, her long braids falling from her headscarf.

  "And Ralphus Mariposo," shouted another voice, "he is always singing, always dancing..."

  The accusations flew. Townsfolk turned on each other, branding their neighbours as degenerates, lechers, drunkards, gluttons, slackworkers, weirdroot-chewers, inverts, Chaos Cultists, adulterers, rumour-mongers, body-snatchers, abusers of the livestock, lycanthropes, changelings, subversive elements, free-thinkers, hobgoblins-in-disguise, traitors to the Empire. Some were hauled out by the Acolytes and beaten. Others fled, or were turned upon by the crowds.

  Genevieve nudged Vukotich and tried to get him to back the cart out of the crowd, but it was impossible. The people were packed in too tight, and the animal couldn't move. It strained in its harness.

  There was a near-riot now. Cobblestones had been pulled up and were flying through the air. One struck Genevieve in the head, doing no harm. The ox was down on its knees now, people fighting around it.

  "... perverter of children... imbiber of foul liquors... oblater at unclean altars... strangler of young goats... sourer of cream... giver of short measures..."

  "We have to get out of this," she told Vukotich.

  The ox's hide was bloody now. Someone had stabbed the animal. Two men were fighting with knives, each accusing the other of molesting a girl called Hilde Goetz. Someone was pushed into the fire, and ran screaming through the crowd. It was an immensely fat dwarf, and his oiled hair was burning like a lantern.

  Vukotich put his arm around her, wrapping the chain about her back, and got a good grip. He stepped down from the cart, helping her as if she were an invalid.

  "Out of my way," he said. "My wife is going to have a baby."

  The brawlers separated, and they were able to make their way out of the crowd. She was surprised at his presence of mind in coming up with a reasonable excuse for their behaviour.

  "You," he said to one of the knifemen. "Where's the nearest hostelry?"

  Vukotich towered over the man. His opponent stood off while he answered the mercenary.

  "Th-the Easeful Rest," he said. "It's on the Karak-Varn road, to the North."

  "Thank you, friend. My regards to Hilde Goetz."

  They walked away from the crowd, Vukotich supporting her as if her time were near. She moaned and groaned.

  The brawlers got back to their fight, knives flashing in the firelight.

  "We'll take refuge for the night," he said, "and be on our way early tomorrow."

  "We've no money, Vukotich."

  He grinned and produced a pouch of coins.

  "The goodwife with the moustache won't miss it."

  The Easeful Rest was the type of hostelry where all the previous customers appear to have been couples named either Schmidt or Braun. The Night Man was snoring, balanced against the wall in his chair, when Vukotich and Genevieve arrived, their blanket around their shoulders as if it were raining outside. With his left hand, which he was getting used to favouring, Vukotich rang the bell, and the Night Man fell out of his chair.

  "A room for the night," Vukotich said.

  The Night Man ambled over, and pulled out the great, leatherbound ledger and a quill. He opened its pages as if handling a sacred grimoire containing the secret whereabouts of Sigmar Heldenhammer, and wrote in the date.

  "Your name?" he asked.

  "Schmidt," Vukotich said. "Johann and Maria Schmidt."

  The Night Man's throat apple bobbed up and down.

  "We've stayed here before," Vukotich insisted.

  "Yes," the Night Man agreed, "before... before was, I'm afraid, a different matter. The Moral Crusade, you understand..."

  Vukotich glowered, trying to look as intimidating as possible.

  "... without a certificate of marriage, I'm sorry, but we have no rooms available..."

  With his left hand, Vukotich reached out and grasped a handful of the Night Man's shirt.

  "We're good customers. Mrs Schmidt and I have always enjoyed the hospitality of the Easeful Rest."

  "... um... er... certainly. It's a pleasure to see you again, Mr Schmidt... I hope you and your lovely wife enjoy your stay with us."

  Vukotich grunted. The Night Man held out the quill, and Vukotich reached for it.

  Genevieve grabbed his wrist and kept his right hand by his side, and took the quill herself.

  "I'll sign, shall I, dear?" she said. "Johann has hurt his hand."

  Embarrassed at having nearly made such a blunder, Vukotich kept quiet as Genevieve neatly scribbled their aliases in the register.

  The Night Man found a candle and a key, and gave them instructions to find their room. It was off the first floor landing, with a commanding view of the pigpens and, alas, the fragrance to go with it.

  "I could do with a bath," Genevieve said.

  "No chance in a filth-hole like this," Vukotich replied, stamping on a many-legged creature that scuttled out from under the large bed. "Besides, we'd have to cut ourselves out of our clothes."

  "You could do with a bath, too. A couple of days in that outfit hasn't perfumed you too much."

  She wandered around the room, looking in the drawers of the chests and opening the cupboards, and he, of necessity, trailed with her. Finally satisfied she had the measure of the room - a mixture of curiosity and caution, she tugged him over to the bed, sat down, and unlaced her torn and grimy slippers.

  He was ready to drop on the bed and die, but Genevieve, the night creature, was more awake than ever.

  Her clothes had stood up even less well than his to the exertions of the last few days. Flimsy in the first place, they were now indecent enough to give Claes Glinka apoplexy. She slipped the blanket off and dropped it on a floor, then stretched like a cat. Almost playfully, she pulled their chain, and raised her sharp nails to brush his cheek.

  Vukotich would never understand women, much less vampire women.

  "How old... ?" he asked.

  She pouted slightly. "Very."

  They were both on the bed now, their chain curled daintily between them. Vukotich wasn't tired any more.

  Genevieve unfastened her chemise, and exposed her slim white body to the light of two moons. Her chest rose and fell. She still breathed.

  That was important to Vukotich, to know she was not really dead, just different. He'd been with women who were different before, and never caught a trace of the warpstone.

  He rolled over, and kissed her harshly. She didn't struggle, but he could tell she thought he tasted bad. With both hands, her arm and the chain in the way, he unfastened his britches.

  She didn't fight him. She held him patiently, and responded pleasantly, but he could tell she wasn't caught up in their love-making. A lesser whore would have counterfeited a reaction, cajoled and flattered him. The chain got caught between them and left red link-marks on their bodies.

  It was over quickly.

  Exhausted, sweat-damp, Vukotich pulled himself from her, and crawled under the coverlet. A chain's-length away, he lapsed into sleep.

  Her touch came o
n his face, cool and pointed.

  "Satisfied?" she asked. It was a traditional whore's question.

  He breathed a "yes", hoping he would not dream of the Battle tonight.

  "Good." She kissed him gently, and slipped beside him, curving her body against his.

  She kissed him again. Half-asleep, he could not respond.

  She kissed his shoulder, and his neck.

  He felt a brief prick of pain as her mouthknives parted his skin, and then drifted into a daze.

  He was emptying, slowly, deliciously...

  The waterbowl showed a town across the Blackwater. Chloesti. Dien Ch'ing had never been there, but he knew where it was. There was a hostelry. The Easeful Rest. A most apt name. Most apt.

  Venerable Xhou had proved a disappointment, and would be bound by Tsien-Tsin in the Netherhells beneath the Pagoda for a century or so as a punishment for failure.

  The vampire and the mercenary would require a sterner lesson.

  On the flagstones, warmed by the light of the early morning sun, Ch'ing laid out scraps from his trunk. A dried piece of bamboo from the Forbidden Fields of Wu-Fan-Xu. An empty ivory vessel from Jackal Province. A phial of soil from the Eternal Gardens of the Monkey-King. A sealed bauble of water from the Great River of Cathay. A smear of eternally-burning sulphur from the Dragon's Tongue Slopes.

  Wood. Air. Earth. Water. Fire.

  Ch'ing conjured up the Five Element Masters, the chief subject daemons of Tsien-Tsin.

  The Masters would bar the interlopers' path.

  Ch'ing pulled on his robes. He must meditate for a day and a night. For tomorrow, his magic would be needed in the service of Tsien-Tsin.

  Tomorrow, Claes Glinka would die.

  Vukotich woke up to an intense awareness of his hurts. He felt every wound he had ever sustained, as if they were open and bleeding again. His limbs were anvil-heavy. The sunlight was a hammerblow.

  "Don't worry," she said. "It'll wear off."

  He sat up, and lunged for her. The sudden movement triggered a series of hitherto-unnoticed pains, and, seized up, he sank gently back onto the pillow. His rage still burned.

  "You bled me, you bitch!"

  She was fully dressed, some of the bedclothes converted into a practical skirt and shawl.

  She looked at him, unreadably.

  "It was only fair. You took your pleasure of me."

  He fingered the wounds on his throat. They still itched.

  "What have you done to me? The light hurts."

  She took a physician's look into his eyes.

  "You'll be a little sensitive for a few days. Nothing more. You won't be my get. Not that you'd have any right to complain if you did. How many girls have you left pregnant on your campaigns, eh?"

  "That's..."

  "Not the same? I know. Come on, get up. We've a day and a night to get to Zhufbar."

  Vukotich remembered it all. The assassination. His bargain with the leech. He'd had some unsavoury masters and mistresses in his years as a sword-for-hire, but this one was the crowning glory of a murky career. No one was ever going to sing songs about him.

  She helped him dress. It was humiliating, but his movements were slow, as if he had all the physical symptoms of drunkenness without the exhilaration, and hers were deft. They were getting used to managing the chain, and it vanished without much fuss up his sleeve and under her new shawl.

  Downstairs, the Night Man was still on duty. At least, he was still there. And there were others waiting for them. A couple of local bullyboys with the symbols of the Moral Crusade pinned to their sleeves, a steeple-hooded Acolyte of Purity, and a timid, spinsterish Cleric of Verena.

  The Night Man pointed at them. "That's Mr and Mrs Schmidt," he said, trembling.

  Vukotich's heart slumped in his chest.

  "Made quite a night of it, by the looks of them," said the Acolyte.

  Vukotich wished he had thought last night to steal a weapon.

  "Married, are you, then?" asked the Acolyte.

  "For three years, now," replied Genevieve. "We've two children, left with their grandmother in Zhufbar."

  The Acolyte laughed nastily. "Pull the other one, it's got Taal's antlers on it."

  "Marriage," began the Cleric, "is a sacred thing. Its name should not be abused and sullied for the furtherance of base carnal lusts."

  Vukotich thought the Worshipper of Learning and Wisdom would have been truly upset to learn what had actually happened in their room last night. His blood, what little of it was left, started to race again.

  "If you're married," said the Acolyte, "then you won't mind taking a few vows before the Goddess of Truth, would you?"

  The Cleric pulled out a sacred text from under her cloak, and started looking through it for the marriage ceremony. There must be a condensed version for urgent occasions.

  The bullies were smirking. Vukotich knew this charade had more to do with the universal desire to poke into everybody's business than with any notion of spiritual purity. He remembered that Claes Glinka's idea of just punishment for fornication was a thorough stoning.

  "Do you, Johann Schmidt, take this woman..."

  Suddenly, every scrap of furniture in the room burst into splinters. The chairs, the desks, the low table loaded with religious tracts, even the beams in the ceiling. Everything made of wood. One of the bullies had false teeth, which leaped out of his mouth. The staircase beneath Vukotich and Genevieve collapsed.

  Instinctively, he covered her with his body, and his back was lashed by innumerable needles.

  The wooden fragments danced in the air.

  The Acolyte dropped to his knees, a chairleg protruding from his heart. He tore at his hood, pulling it away from an open, ordinary face. One of the bullies was bleeding and moaning on the floor, the other had been thrown out of the hostelry. The Night Man made a dash for the window, but the sill and the crossbars reached out for him. The cleric looked for the rite of exorcism.

  This must be some cursed Celestial magic.

  The wooden whirlwind was assembling into a manshape.

  Vukotich dragged Genevieve out of the Easeful Rest through a new-made hole in the wall. She was lucky not to have suffered the Acolyte's fate. A length of oak or ash through her heart would have ended her eternity.

  The wood daemon erupted from the ruins of the inn, pursued by the chanting priestess. It had a face, and its face looked angry. The streets were full of panicking people.

  The Moral Crusaders had come in a carriage, which stood waiting at the kerb. Vukotich hauled Genevieve, who was picking bits and pieces out of her clothes, up onto the seat, and grabbed the reins.

  "Hang on tight."

  He whipped the horses, and the carriage tottered away from the Easeful Rest. People got out of the way, fast. The wooden creature loped after them, but it wasn't used yet to physical form, and they outdistanced it. It was hampered by its size and the buildings in its way, but it kept steady on their trail, smashing whatever got in its way.

  "What was that?" Vukotich asked as they cleared Chloesti, and followed the beaten-earth Blackwater Road. The horses had had enough of a fright to give them added speed. The carriage rattled as it jumped in and out of the wheelruts.

  "A Cathayan Wood Master," Genevieve breathed. "I hoped I'd never see one of those things again. It's an Elemental."

  "Wood? That's not an element."

  "It is in Cathay. Along with the usual ones... Air..."

  A wind blew up, knocking the horses over, tilting the carriage. Two of the wheels spun backwards in mid-air. Vukotich hauled on the reins, but felt himself slipping...

  "... Earth..."

  The road in front of them erupted like a volcano, spewing muddy soil into the sky...

  "... Water..."

  A small pond rose out of the ground, shaping itself as it twisted. The carriage was on its side now, and they were sprawled, feeling the movements in the road as the Elementals formed.

  "... and Fire!"

  Ther
e was a terrific explosion.

  Genevieve tried to remember the tales Master Po had told her in Cathay. One of them had some relevance to their current situation. The Monkey-King, when he was a Monkey-Prince, had faced all five Masters, and bested them through trickery.

  They were under the carriage now, with the Masters standing over them, more-or-less in oversize human form. The Wood Master exchanged a ferocious look with the Fire Master, and Genevieve remembered the fable.

  It was ridiculous, but it was the only thing she had that might work.

  "It's like the dragon swallowing its tail," she muttered, "or the scissors-paper-stone game."

  She crawled out from under the wrecked vehicle, dragging Vukotich on his chain.

  She bowed in the Cathayan fashion, and addressed the elementals in their own language.

  "Masters, I recognize that my time has come to pass beyond the gates of life. I grant you an honourable victory. However, in view of my many years I would request that my death be solely the responsibility of the mightiest of the mighty. May I enquire which of you is the most powerful, the most terrible, the most feared?"

  She thought she had the Monkey-Prince's speech down to the last word.

  The Tales of Master Po were evidently prohibited on the Pagoda, for the five giants looked, bewildered, at one another.

  "Come now, one of you must be mightier than the others. It is to him I would offer my surrender."

  The Fire Master roared. The Air Master blew a hurricane. The Earth Master rumbled like a tremor. The Wood Master creaked like an aged tree. The Water Master showered them with rain.

  "Surely, all of you cannot be the mightiest? One of you must be Lord of All Others. Each must have his place on the Pagoda."

  Vukotich was open-mouthed, unable to understand.

  The Masters clamoured again, each insisting on his superiority over all the others.

  "This, I do not believe," Genevieve said. "Five Masters, all of equal mightiness. Truly, my death will be quintuply honoured."

  The Fire Master lashed out a tentacle of flame, and Genevieve flinched. But she need not have, the Water Master had knocked the flame aside. The Fire Master shrank away from the Water Master, causing the Wood Master to take a few steps backwards to avoid the Fire Master's burning body.