Warhammer Red Thirst

by Warhammer

The sailor turned around, hand on hip, sack slung over her shoulder.

  "I'm... sorry I woke you. I need to know if you know where I can find a Magrittan called Jorge."

  "What do you want Jorge for?" She looked wary.

  "Do you know him?" Ariel waited for her to laugh and say no, like the man in the tavern.

  "I might. Tell me why you want him first."

  "I can't."

  "Then I can't tell you, either." She turned and began walking.

  "Wait!" It rang out cold and arrogant. One or two heads turned but the sailor kept on walking. Ariel cursed under her breath and ran after her. "I mean, please, wait. My sister used some contaminated olla. She died." The woman slowed. "I think the olla came from Jorge."

  The sailor stopped and looked up and down the street. "Come in here," she said abruptly, and pulled Ariel into a tavern.

  "I knew he wasn't on the voyage for the sake of it," she said to Ariel over a cup of rough red wine, "I told Helseher. But no," she gulped thirstily at her cup, waved it in the air until a wineboy filled it, "Kapitan Helseher says to me, 'it doesn't matter what else he's up to, Marya, he's a good sailor and he'll do while Franz is sick in Brionne.' And now he's gone."

  "Gone? Where?"

  Marya shrugged. "Back down the river. All the way to Magritta maybe. Who knows."

  Ariel tried to think past her disappointment. "I don't suppose you knew his real name?" She sipped at her wine, put it aside with a grimace.

  "Well now, you suppose wrong. Here. No sense wasting good wine." She reached for Ariel's cup, tipped its contents into her own. "Jorge was his name all right."

  "You're sure?"

  "Ought to be. I took a look at his papers one day while he was on deck. No doubt he thought they were well hidden. According to the papers he was, or is, Jorge Martinez Castelltort, Officer of the Fleet no less, under Admiral Escribano himself."

  Ariel wondered how this woman had learned to read. Instead, she asked: "What would a Captain of the Magrittan fleet be doing posing as a sailor and selling poisoned olla?"

  Marya shrugged, had another drink.

  "It doesn't make sense," Ariel persisted.

  "Doesn't seem to, does it?" Marya waved her cup again. "The Rosamund sails in four hours and I need more to drink. Won't get the chance again till Brionne."

  "But it takes days to get to Brionne. Won't you be stopping along the way?"

  "Weeks," Marya corrected carefully, "Three weeks in the Rosamund. Fine ship. If we do stop, it'll be work work work, no fun."

  The wine boy came over. Marya paid for two jugs of wine.

  "Maybe you should get yourself closer to where the Rosamund is berthed before you drink yourself senseless." "Not far. On this bank, five minutes walk. Can do that even after twice as much as this." She picked up her cup, poured, reached for Ariel's. "Stay for a cup or two."

  The five minutes walk turned out to be nearer fifteen. Once, Ariel was sure someone was following her but the dockside was crowded and she could have been mistaken. A high-sided, three-masted ship stood at anchor. The Rosamund.

  Two men were fastening hatches.

  "Captain Helseher?" she called up.

  One of them peered down at her. "He's busy. We sail in half an hour."

  "It's important. Mademoiselle Marya is unconscious in a tavern."

  He laughed. "It's the first time I've heard her called M'selle."

  "But it's not the first time she's been senseless in a tavern, eh Rudi?" the other said. "Tell us where, girl, and we'll bring her on board."

  "No. I want to speak to Captain Helseher."

  A small, round man with greying hair came on deck. "I'm Helseher."

  "I need to speak to you. About passage to Brionne."

  "We don't carry passengers. Not normally." He squinted down. "But I'll take you for two hundred francs."

  "I only have sixty here. I can get the rest if you wait."

  "We sail in half an hour. With or without you."

  "Would you take me as crew?"

  Rudi laughed. Irritably, Helseher waved him to silence. "Don't waste my time, girl."

  "But I hear you're one short. And I can sail, climb, tie knots, row."

  "Wait there."

  For someone so round, Helseher made easy work of swinging himself down the rope ladder to shore. "You ever sail anything this size before?"

  "No. I could learn."

  "Um. You drink?" "No, except with dinner." Helseher raised an eyebrow. "That is, I mean..."

  "I know exactly what you mean. You're hired. It'll take you two weeks to learn the ropes, so all you'll get is food, three cups of wine a day and passage to Brionne in exchange for working so hard you'll wish you'd never been born. Acceptable? Good. Now, where's Marya?"

  Marya was heavier than she looked.

  "Help me get her up."

  The way Marya flopped reminded Ariel of dragging Bel out of the forest.

  "I said help me, dammit."

  Ariel jerked at Marya.

  "Careful. She's not a sack of turnips."

  "Sorry."

  Between them, they trundled Marya through the door.

  "Wa... happening?"

  "You're drunk again and it's time to sail. We..." He looked at Ariel. "What's your name, girl?"

  "Ariel."

  "...Ariel and I are lugging your pickled carcass to the Rosamund. So keep quiet and move your legs."

  Marya stopped abruptly, leaned forward and threw up.

  "Hold her steady."

  Ariel did as she was told while the captain pulled a square of white cotton from his pocket and wiped at Marya's mouth. "No one should have to walk through the streets with vomit on their face."

  A crowd coming out of another tavern jeered as they passed. Helseher ignored them.

  Ariel's arms were aching with the strain by the time they reached the Rosamund.

  "Here." They eased her down onto the stones. "You go aboard. Tell them to let down the cradle. She'll never make it up the ladder like this."

  By the time Ariel scrambled to the top of the ladder, Rudi and Hugner were already unshipping the cradle. Ariel looked down at the dock. From the height of the raised foredeck, everything looked different: she could see Helseher holding Marya's hand and talking quietly; over there, behind one of the netting sheds, a boy was relieving himself into the river and, closer to the ship, a man wearing a woollen cap was... Ariel frowned and leaned as far over the rail as she dared: he was nowhere in sight. He must have dodged behind that stack of barrels.

  "Let's get out of here," Helseher shouted once everyone was aboard. He turned to Ariel. "You, in my cabin."

  "But what about Marya?"

  "Uti knows what to do."

  She followed the captain below.

  "Now tell me," Helseher said when they were in his cabin, "why has a woman been following you?"

  "A woman?"

  "Yes," he said irritably, "all the way from the tavern."

  Ariel pondered that. A woman. But it had been a man she saw earlier.

  Helseher gave her a long look. "I'll get to the bottom of this when there's time. For now, get yourself on deck and do what Jean-Luc tells you."

  The captain turned to the charts on his table and Ariel realized she had been dismissed. It was something she would have to get used to.

  The Rosamund moved slowly into midstream, tacking around smaller fishing craft and the occasional rowing boat. Ariel watched Quenelles and all that was familiar to her slip away in their wake. Above her, a sail snapped as it caught the wind. For the next three weeks, this would be her world.

  Jean-Luc turned out to be the first mate, a small-boned man who was slightly balding and never spoke more loudly than he had to. He set Ariel to coiling ropes - thick as her arm and rough as freshly sawn wood - and stowing them in lockers. She was surprised at how cramped everything was; the Rosamund had looked to be such a big ship. She asked Jean-Luc about it.

  "The Rosamund is an ocean-going vessel. Not a river
boat. We've sailed her through the South Sea, the Black Gulf, even across the Middle Sea as far north as Albion."

  "Don't let him get on to the subject of Albion," said a rough Empire voice behind her. "He hates everything about that island. Especially the people."

  Ariel turned. "Shouldn't you be sleeping it off?"

  Marya shook her head. "With something to do I'll be sober before we've gone another league."

  "So take her below and show her her berth," Jean-Luc said. "Then bring her back up here and show her the ropes." He looked at Ariel. "I'll assign you to a watch tomorrow. Make sure you know what you're doing by then."

  Marya laughed and took her below.

  "Here."

  It was dark and cramped. She was supposed to sleep between what looked like the ribs of the ship.

  "Everyone sleeps here except Helseher, Jean-Luc and Gerber, the cook."

  Ariel counted the bundles of clothes. There were four. "Only seven of us for a ship this size?"

  "Eight. There's you, too. We'll find you a bit of sailcloth to pad out your bunk, otherwise you'll bruise when we hit weather. Not that we're likely to have any weather to speak of on a journey like this. And eight is plenty for a river run."

  Ariel heard the bitterness. "Marya, if this is an ocean-going ship, why isn't it at sea?"

  "It's not profitable to follow the old trade routes any more, we get taxed out of existence by people like Jorge and his friends. The Magrittans."

  "But what right do they have?"

  "The oldest one in the world. Might." She reached for one of the bundles of clothes and pulled out a map. She traced the outline of the Horn of Araby. There was dirt under her fingernail. "Anyone wanting to move goods from here to anywhere past the Estalian coast - Bretonnia, Marienburg, Erengrad, anywhere - has to pass here." She tapped the southern tip of Estalia. "And that's where the Magrittan fleet has been manoeuvring for the past four or five months. Nothing gets through without paying taxes. They even dared tax an Elven ship that stopped over on the horn on its way from Lustria."

  Ariel absorbed the information: the resources they would need to seal off the whole of that coastal route must be enormous. How did they sustain it?

  "The Magrittans have gone crazy."

  "That might literally be true. I've heard..." Marya stopped, and her forehead tightened. Ariel could not decide whether from fear or hatred.

  "What?"

  "Nothing you need to know, girl."

  Ariel waited. It was plain that Marya wanted to tell her.

  The sailor stared at the bulkhead. "Escribano has allied himself to a Power." Her mouth stretched in an attempt at a smile. Ariel was not sure that she had heard right. "Cat got your tongue?"

  "Which..." Ariel cleared her throat. "Which one?"

  "The Blood God."

  Khorne. The Destroyer. And Escribano had allied himself to this Chaos Power. Deliberately, she let her grief overwhelm her fear: Escribano had at least one more death to offer his God. That was what she had to think about.

  She looked at the map again, trying to understand the enormity of the Magrittan's corporeal influence.

  "Why didn't I know about all this?"

  Marya shrugged. "People tend to know only what affects them. When the price of Tilean glass goes up or you can't get your Cathay silks any more because nobody'll risk that journey only to have their profits taxed to nothing, then you'd know about it."

  Ariel wondered if her father knew all this. Not yet. Most of the family business was centred around river trade. It occurred to her that the Rosamund might be carrying de Courtivron goods.

  "What are we carrying?"

  "I'll show you in a minute." She stowed the map in her bundle, pulled something else out, She weighed it in her hands a moment then held it towards Ariel. It was a knife. The handle was plain wood, well polished. The blade was twice the length of her hand. "Might be useful."

  Ariel accepted it silently.

  "There's a loop on the sheath. Put it on your belt."

  Ariel did, settling it comfortably on her right hip. Marya nodded. "I'll take you to the hold."

  To Ariel's unpractised eye, the cargo seemed haphazardly arranged. Huge crates were stowed forward of smaller cases, while timber obviously from the same lumber merchant lay stacked in different piles. One corner of the hold was full of empty trays stacked one atop the other.

  Marya patted them. "These are for the Cixous paté. Captain Helseher will work us half to death getting it to Laguiller. Paté doesn't last too long away from ice. The fresher it is when we get it there, the more it'll sell for. And for that cargo, we get a percentage of the profit."

  "We?"

  "Helseher. But if he doesn't make much then it's one less hired next voyage. But there's no real worry this time, it's downstream all the way. Means we can take the short route through white water. On the way up we carried Cixous paté to Quenelles. Upstream. We had to come through the slow curve of the river. Helseher nearly had us in the boat, towing."

  "How many stops are we making?"

  "Eight. Cixous, then Brusse, then through the gorge to Laguiller. After that it's Aubenas, Muret, Ferignac, Sibourne and Brionne."

  "Then back to Quenelles?"

  "If we must." Marya shrugged. "Let's find you some proper clothes, then I'll take you on deck."

  The Rosamund nosed its way into Cixous past floating pieces of dead fish and old netting. It smelled worse than Quenelles. Jean-Luc and Gerber the cook had taken the boat and rowed into harbour earlier to arrange for their onward cargo to be waiting when they docked. Ariel stood on deck, holding the bundle of rope ladder ready. The muscles in her shoulders and back burned with the strain of hauling her own weight up and down the masts. Her face was red and peeling. Sweat ran down her arms and soaked through the strips of cloth wound around her hands. Her raw palms began to itch.

  The anchor rattled and she threw the bundle over the side. It unwound with a wooden clacking and bumped gently against the side. Marya and the thick-armed Rudi took one rope, Hugner and Uti the other as they swung the cradle into position and began lowering it. Helseher paced. The stacked lumber shifted slightly. Uti cursed and staggered.

  "Ariel, you're the lightest." Helseher gestured at the cradle. "Get that wood balanced."

  Ariel used Rudi as a mounting block, fitting her bare feet first on his bunched thigh, then his shoulder. The hilt of her knife dug into her side. She gritted her teeth as she pulled herself up by her hands. Marya grunted with the strain of the extra weight. She worked quickly, efficiently, then let herself down by her hands, not letting go until she was sure her weight was firm on the deck and would not set the cradle swinging again. Hugner managed a brief nod of approval.

  "Well done, girl," Helseher muttered. He leaned over the side, looking down at the cobbles. There was no sign of Jean-Luc. "Where in the name of the gods is he?" He wiped his forehead. "Damn this heat."

  The cradle reached the dock safely. Ariel climbed down the ladder with the others to help unload. She found that if she swore very softly under her breath as she and Marya stacked plank after plank, she did not notice the pain in her hands so much.

  The owners of the timber were already supervising its removal when Jean-Luc and Gerber arrived on an ox cart driven by a patient young woman. Jean-Luc scrambled down and strode over to Helseher, where he started talking in a quiet voice. Ariel helped the driver unlace the leather sheet covering her wagon. Jean-Luc paused and Helseher looked over at Ariel for a moment, then turned back to his first mate. Ariel wondered what they were talking about.

  "Girl!" Helseher's voice was sharp. "Get back on the Rosamund and go below."

  Ariel blinked, uncertain.

  "Hurry it up. I want Gerber to take a look at your hands. And stay below out of the sun, hear? I don't want you getting feverish in this heat."

  Ariel did as she was told, wondering.

  She was sitting on her bundle of clothes, her hands freshly bandaged and still stinging from Gerb
er's attentions, when she felt the anchor come up. A few minutes later, Marya put her head through the hatch.

  "Helseher wants you." She withdrew, then put her head back through. "That story you told me about your sister. Was it true?"

  Ariel nodded.

  "Well, that's something."

  Helseher's cabin was crowded with the captain, Jean-Luc and Marya. They were all standing.

  "I don't want this to take too long, girl. We've a ship to get to Laguiller and a cargo to sell. But I want the truth from you and I want it now. Marya here tells me you've been asking questions about a man I hired to Quenelles, that he's mixed up somehow in your sister's death."

  "I have reason to believe that he sold some deliberately contaminated olla to a man who gave it to my sister. She died as a result."

  "And?"

  "And now I'm trying to find Jorge and ask why. If I can't find him then I'll go to Magritta and find someone who can tell me."

  "Magritta. That's interesting. Perhaps that explains why Magrittans have been asking about you all over Cixous."

  Ariel could find nothing to say.

  Jean-Luc cleared his throat. "The paté seller told me that a Magrittan woman who made port earlier in the day has been asking around to see if the Rosamund had docked and if one woman in particular - tall, pale, long blonde hair, icy eyes - had been seen. Apparently she was most anxious, offered the paté seller a great deal of money for information and to keep his silence. He told me anyhow. Doesn't like Magrittans, he said."

  Helseher nodded then gestured for Marya to speak.

  "When I was in the tavern, the innkeeper told me a story: last night a strange man, very tall, very thin, was asking questions about the crew of the Rosamund and what our ports of call were likely to be. According to the innkeeper, the man wasn't Magrittan."

  Helseher turned to Ariel. "I want to know what they want of you and why, and whether they're likely to harm the Rosamund."

  "I don't know." She laid her hand on her knife.

  "Is it your family?"

  "No. They wouldn't do it like this."

  "So who?" Helseher sat behind a table and tapped at a chart in irritation. "I don't like this sneaking about."

  "Nor does the girl, Captain," Marya said softly, nodding at Ariel's hand on the knife. With an effort, Ariel put her hands behind her back.