“A witch?” Shenk’s voice was disbelieving. “I’ve seen a lot of strange things on the river over the years, but I’ve never known one of their kind turn pirate.”
“He had this,” Hanna said, holding out the bundle of rags in her hand at arms length, “and it’s definitely magical.” Even through its wrapping of bloodstained cloth, the light it emitted could still be seen, pulsing obscenely. Shenk nodded.
“Is it worth much?”
“Probably.” Hanna locked eyes with the captain for a moment. “He said it could sink us too. If you want to keep it on board while you search for a buyer…”
“It’s only a few more days to Altdorf, skipper,” Busch coughed nervously. “You could probably find a wizard there who’d buy it.”
“Or a witch hunter who’d burn us just for having touched the damn thing.” Shenk recoiled from the bundle. “I don’t trust magic, never have, never will. Chuck it over the side.”
“With pleasure,” Hanna said, and did so. Rudi watched the little object sink, half expecting the sinister glow to follow them through the water, but it simply sank out of sight with a faint plop! as if it had been nothing more inimical than an ordinary pebble. As it hit the water, Rudi thought he heard Hanna sigh, as if with relief, but the gurgling of the water against the hull and the snap of the wind in the sails made it hard to be sure.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“What was that thing?” Rudi asked, the first time he was sure that he and Hanna were alone and unlikely to be overheard. The Reikmaiden was tied up at another of the riverside settlements, on a wharf identical to most of the others he’d seen on their progress up the river, and the familiar huddle of huts surrounded it. The only difference was that this one was deep in the heart of the forest, its inhabitants apparently scratching a living by logging, and the presence of the trees so close at hand lifted his spirits more than he would have believed possible. Impatient to go ashore, he’d returned to their improvised quarters in the boat’s hold to stow his bow and arrows, and found Hanna sitting pensively in her hammock, her legs swinging. She shrugged.
“A talisman: nothing special, just a basic enchantment on an old symbol of Mannan. You can buy something similar anywhere there are wizards with time on their hands and a hole in their purses. Crude, but they do the job they’re made for.”
“What job is that?” Rudi asked again. Hanna hopped out of the hammock.
“There are all sorts. Ones like that detect the aura of magic,” she said. Rudi felt his blood run cold.
“You mean they were witch hunters?” That didn’t make sense. There had been no sign of Gerhard or any of his associates on the vessel that had attacked them, and surely witch hunters would have ordered the Reikmaiden to heave to before boarding, relying on the authority of their office to enforce compliance, rather than simply attacking without warning. Hanna shook her head.
“I don’t think so. They were looking for something hidden among the cargo.” She pointed. “There’s a hollow space in that bulkhead there, behind the fish barrels. There’s something magical inside it; powerful, too.”
“How do you know?” Rudi asked, and Hanna looked at him scornfully.
“I’ve got the sight, remember?”
Rudi recalled how she’d been able to recognise Alwyn and Kris as fellow mages the first time she’d seen them, and read the marks on the enchanted cards in Tilman’s gambling den. “I noticed it as soon as I woke up in here.”
“So that’s what Shenk’s up to,” Rudi said. He’d been certain that the riverboat captain was smuggling something, ever since their encounter in the rooming house the Black Caps had been raiding back in Marienburg, and this seemed to confirm it. “Do you think he knows his contraband is magical?”
“I doubt it.” Hanna shrugged. “You saw how skittish he was with that gewgaw I threw over the side. He wouldn’t go within a league of what’s hidden back there if he knew how powerful it is.” Her tone became speculative. “Unless he’s being paid an enormous amount of money for shifting it, of course.”
“Maybe.” Rudi felt the good mood that the scent of the surrounding woodlands had kindled in him begin to evaporate, displaced by a formless sense of unease. Once again he was surrounded by secrets, which could get him killed without even knowing the reason why, or finding the answers to the questions that continued to plague him. He’d had enough of that back in Marienburg. “I’ll talk to him if I get the chance, see what I can find out.”
“Be careful,” Hanna counselled. “You might not like what you uncover.”
Rudi nodded, certain that she was right.
“So it was just bad luck, the thing flaring up when you got close to it,” he said.
Hanna echoed the gesture. “That’s right. It picked up on my aura instead of that thing behind the barrels. Luckily, I was close enough to shut him up before he cried witch on me.”
“No one seems to have noticed, anyway,” Rudi said, while a small part of his mind watched appalled at the casual way they were both accepting the killing of another human being as a regrettable necessity. “Pieter was well out of it the whole time, and Berta thinks you saved the boat from a hell-raising necromancer.”
“Good,” Hanna said. “That avoids any more difficulties.”
Her matter-of-fact tone sent another shiver down Rudi’s spine. Would she really have been willing to murder their friends to keep her secret if she’d had to? He forced the thought away. Life on the run was changing both of them, he knew, but he couldn’t believe that Hanna would kill in cold blood simply because it was expedient. She looked at him, an odd expression on her face. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Rudi assured her, hoping that it was true.
Night had fallen completely by the time Rudi returned to the deck, and flaring torches lit the wharf, picking out golden highlights from the rippling darkness beneath the gangplank. It was the first time Rudi had seen such a display at any of the riverside settlements the boat had put in at, and after a moment’s thought he recognised the resinous branches in the crudely-made sconces as by-products of the local timber trade.
“That’s right,” Shenk confirmed when he voiced the thought aloud. “Nothing gets wasted out here.” He glanced at Rudi. “Finally put your toy away?” Rudi nodded. The pleasantry had been delivered in a tone, which, if no warmer than before, seemed a little more relaxed than Shenk had been around him hitherto.
“I don’t think I’ll be needing it now,” he said. Despite the fact that the pirates, if that was what they really were, had clearly been driven off, he’d kept his bow handy until the Reikmaiden was safely tied up at the quay. No one aboard had objected. After the ease with which he’d apparently dispatched the majority of their attackers, the crew had taken to watching him with wary respect, and even Busch and Ansbach spoke to him with a little more warmth in their voices. “Not tonight, anyway.”
“We’ll have seen the last of them,” Shenk said. “Scum like that won’t risk another savaging. They’ll wait for an easier target to come along.”
“Maybe,” Rudi said, following the riverboat captain to the gangplank. “If they really were pirates, of course.”
“What else would they be?” Shenk asked. Rudi shrugged.
“Fog Walkers?” he suggested, using the common nickname for the covert agents of the ruling council of Marienburg. He couldn’t be sure in the guttering light cast by the torches on the wharf, but for a moment he thought a flicker of surprise and apprehension appeared on the captain’s face. Then it was gone, and Shenk’s expression became studiedly neutral.
“You’ve got an imagination, I’ll say that,” he said. Rudi shrugged.
“If you say so. But if they were just ordinary pirates, why didn’t we hear of them at any of the settlements we’ve put into? News like that travels fast.” Shenk shrugged.
“Maybe we were just the first boat they jumped,” he suggested.
“Perhaps we were.” Rudi led the way onto the gangplank. As he gained th
e rough timbers of the wharf, his gait changed a little, his sense of balance thrown subtly off-kilter by the motionlessness of the solid footing. Shenk followed. “Do river pirates usually have guns?”
“First time I’ve ever seen it,” Shenk admitted. Firearms were rare and precious, and to find so many in the hands of mere bandits would be almost unprecedented. He caught Rudi by the upper arm, and swung him round so the two of them were standing close together under the orange glow of a crudely made torch. In the sudden silence, Rudi could hear the hissing of it, and smell the unmistakable odour of burning resin. He tensed, wondering if Shenk was going to attack him, and then relaxed, dismissing the thought. After seeing his fighting abilities, that was the last thing the little man would do. The captain glanced around, certain that no one else was within earshot, and lowered his voice. “Why would the Fog Walkers be interested in my boat?”
Rudi shrugged.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he said honestly, “so long as it doesn’t stop Hanna and me from getting to Altdorf. I might take a guess, though.”
“I see.” Shenk nodded. “And your guess would be?” Rudi shrugged.
“I found you in a rooming house owned by a notorious smuggler, whose business had attracted a lot of official attention. Enough attention for the authorities to risk annoying the elves to close down, which they wouldn’t do just to claw back a bit of evaded duty on a cargo of wine or cheese. The next thing I know, you’re heading back upriver.”
“We go up and down the river all the time,” Shenk said. “That’s why they call it a river boat.”
“True,” Rudi said. “But I was a Cap for long enough to develop a nasty suspicious mind, especially when there was an Imperial agent in town, who I know for a fact the Walkers were taking an interest in.”
“Do you now?” Shenk’s voice was guarded. “And how would a simple watchman know something like that?”
“A friend of mine works for him,” Rudi said, “and Sam Warble asked me to find something out about what he was up to.” As he’d expected, Shenk nodded at the name of the halfling information broker. Everyone in Marienburg with a secret to sell or protect knew Sam.
“He told you he was working for the Fog Walkers,” Shenk said.
Rudi shrugged again. “Not in so many words,” he said. “But the way he didn’t tell me was pretty convincing.”
“I see.” The riverboat captain’s face and voice had turned grim. “What conclusion does your nasty suspicious mind draw from all this?”
“That I don’t want to draw any conclusions,” Rudi said. “Boats like yours carry messages and packets all the time, don’t they?”
“Yes.” Shenk nodded. “And what’s in them is none of my business.”
“Even if delivering them looks like getting you killed?” Rudi asked.
“Especially then,” Shenk said. He might have been about to say something else, but was interrupted by a bail from the gangplank. Ansbach and Berta were clattering onto the wharf, apparently in high spirits.
“Skipper, Rudi.” Ansbach looked at Rudi with more warmth than he’d ever done, albeit tempered with an air of wariness, like someone putting out a hand to pat a dog he thought might bite. “We’re off to the Floating Log for a celebration drink. Reckon we owe you at least one for this afternoon’s work. Coming?”
“Thanks,” Rudi said, surprised almost as much by the man’s relative affability as the news that the settlement was apparently prosperous enough to support an inn. “This place has a real tavern?”
“Not as such,” Shenk said, clearly relieved at the change of subject. “But they do have ale, and some stuff that’ll make you go blind, but takes paint off really well.” He glanced back at the gangplank. “Where’s Kurt?”
“Staying on board with Yullis,” Berta said. “He thought doubling the watches would be a good idea, at least as far as Carroburg.” Shenk nodded.
“Can’t hurt,” he said, with a sideways glance at Rudi. Evidently the mate, at least, was also aware that the real target of the raid had been whatever lay hidden in the hold. “Where’s Hanna?”
“She’s staying aboard too,” Rudi told him. “She doesn’t want to leave Pieter until she’s sure he’ll be all right.”
“That’s good of her,” Shenk said. Then he nodded, relieved. “Probably just as well, this isn’t really the sort of place for a young lady.”
Berta snorted. “Sounds like the right place for me, then,” she said.
* * *
On closer inspection, Rudi had to concede that Shenk was right. The logging camp was populated almost entirely by men, and the few exceptions were clearly either there with a husband, or intent on making money from the lumberjacks in one of the traditional ancillary professions. From their manner of dress, or lack of it, most of the younger ones were evidently not cooks or laundresses. Hanna would undoubtedly have attracted unwelcome attention, and Rudi tried not to picture the likely consequences.
In contrast to the rude huts Rudi had been used to seeing in the settlements they’d stopped at before, the buildings seemed sturdier, constructed for the most part of logs or freshly-sawn timber. They seemed extravagantly large, too, until Shenk explained that most of them were communal dormitory blocks, or warehouses for the supplies that the flourishing community needed. Everything, it seemed, came in by boat, either casual visitors like the Reikmaiden, or the regularly-scheduled barges that arrived every week or so, laden with tools and food, and departed weighed down with timber.
“There’s still a bit of room for some private enterprise, though,” Shenk assured Rudi.
Rudi wasn’t surprised. He was beginning to suspect that the riverboat captain could find a profit pretty much anywhere.
“I think we’re attracting some attention,” he said. Several of the men they’d passed were armed, carrying bows or spears, and most of them glanced in his direction, their expressions far from friendly. Shenk waved.
“It’s your sword,” he explained. “Most people around here don’t carry one.”
Berta snorted with amusement. “Why bother when you’ve got a big chopper to play with?” she said, sniggering at her own wit.
“Good point,” Rudi said, and studied the guards again with open curiosity. The wall enclosing the encampment was higher than the others he’d seen along the river, almost as large as the one that surrounded Kohlstadt, the village he’d grown up in, and a stout timber gate protected the stockade. “So what are they carrying weapons for?”
Ansbach laughed. “It’s a forest out there,” he explained. “Who knows what’s lurking in it? Beastmen, goblins, covens of witches, you name it.”
“Trees?” Rudi suggested. “Rabbits?” He grinned, draining the remark of any perceived belligerence. “I grew up in a forest. It’s not as bad as all that.”
“Not south of the river, maybe,” Ansbach conceded, with an obvious effort to be civil, “but this side’s Middenland. The greatest battle of the war was fought at Middenheim, and not all the Chaos scum went north again afterwards. Anything might have gone to ground in the Drakwald.”
“You’re right about that.” Rudi nodded his agreement, and Ansbach looked surprised for a moment. “We even saw beastmen in the Reikland last summer.” Suddenly conscious that he’d said too much about his past, and that Shenk was looking at him with a curiously speculative expression, he searched for a change of subject. A burst of raucous laughter attracted his attention at just the right moment, and he turned his head to look at the strange structure in the middle of the makeshift village. “Is that it?”
“Looks like it to me,” Berta confirmed, picking up her pace. The tavern looked more like a tent than a building, although the floor was composed of planks, none of them were quite the same size or shape as any of its neighbours, and three of the walls were made of reasonably straight tree branches and off-cuts from the saw pits. Evidently, whoever owned it had scavenged whatever scrap timber they could to put the place together. The roof was a shee
t of canvas, which could be extended to the ground on the open side to keep out the wind and rain.
Conscious of the way his breath misted in front of him, Rudi found himself wondering why it had been left open on a night that his woodsman’s instincts told him would probably bring frost.
As the little party of mariners reached it, however, he had his answer. A blast of body heat, mingled with the smells of sweat, sour ale, old vomit and flatulence, rolled out over him, sparking incongruous memories of some of the less salubrious establishments of Marienburg he’d visited on official business. The ramshackle tavern was packed with men, for the most part muscular, and almost all drunk. The noise was almost as bad as the smell, and Ansbach had to raise his voice as he pushed his way to the bar and dropped a few coins onto it.
“Four ales!” he shouted, and turned back to Rudi and Shenk. An expression of puzzlement crossed his features. “Where’s Berta?”
“Over there.” Shenk pointed to a table in the middle of the throng, where his missing deckhand was joining in enthusiastically with some kind of drinking game. Ansbach shrugged.
“Oh well.” He drained one of the mugs in a couple of swallows, and distributed the other three. “Pity to waste it.” After a cautious sip, Rudi decided he was right. It wasn’t the best drink he’d ever tasted, but it was far more palatable than he’d feared. He swallowed appreciatively.
“Not bad,” he said. “Thanks.”
Ansbach coloured a little, and took a swallow of his own drink. “Well, I reckon I owed you,” he said awkwardly. “We’d probably all have been fish bait if it hadn’t been for you.” Rudi shrugged.
“Well, I couldn’t let that happen. It’s a long walk to Altdorf.” He grinned, pleasantly surprised to see a matching smile on Ansbach’s face. “Fancy another?”
“Thought you’d never ask.” Ansbach grinned a little more widely, and drained his tankard. “Same again for you, skipper?”
“You two enjoy yourselves,” Shenk said, his eyes scanning the throng, and sparking with sudden recognition. “I’ve got a bit of business to attend to.” He raised a hand in greeting, and slipped through the crowd of lumberjacks. A moment later Rudi saw him chatting to a man dressed rather better than the labourers, who he assumed must therefore be someone in authority.
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