03 - Death's Legacy

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  “The vampire counts—from Sylvania,” Fritz said. “They tried to take the city twice, oh, hundreds of years ago now.” He shrugged. “Although they’re believed to have fought against the Chaos hordes in the north last year, so who knows what their true agenda is.”

  “When did you start taking an interest in history?” Hanna asked, her voice tinged with surprise.

  Fritz coloured a little.

  “Mathilde’s been filling me in. She said that if I’m going to live here I ought to know a bit about the place.”

  “Well, that’s more than we do,” Rudi admitted. They were passing through the wall, and he caught a glimpse of batteries of cannon poised to pour thundering death down on any river-borne malefactor foolish enough to try running the gap. Giant windlasses were also visible on both banks, heavily protected by the massive stone fortifications, and he realised that if necessary the river could be blocked by heavy chains. Marienburg had taken similar precautions at the mouth of the Reik, although there he suspected the intention had been to prevent smugglers from departing rather than to guard the city from waterborne invasion.

  His first impression of the city proper was that it seemed almost like Marienburg in some respects, although in others it was disconcertingly different. It hardly resembled Carroburg at all, although he had to admit that his acquaintance with that particular city had been cursory at best.

  As in Marienburg, the houses fought for space within the encircling walls, building upwards rather than outwards to make as much use of the limited land at their disposal as possible. Not one of the buildings he could see was less than four storeys in height, and most were even taller, rising in some cases to six or seven. Unlike the bustling port, however, there had been room to expand outwards to some extent, and the relatively open farmlands beyond the city had been able to take some of the pressure from inside the fortifications, so they seemed squatter and more solid than those he was used to.

  “Well, it’s less soggy than Marienburg,” Hanna said. Instead of the intricate network of bridges and canals that had stitched the islands of the Reikmouth together, Altdorf was a city of roads, although many of the streets he could see on the bank barely qualified for the term, being closer to alleyways, or possibly open sewers. Rudi took a deep breath, and almost gagged.

  “It smells even worse, though. I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “They don’t call it the Great Reek for nothing,” Shenk said, wandering past. They were approaching the docks, at the confluence of the Reik and the Talabec, and the river traffic was growing denser. More riverboats than Rudi could count were scudding out on the water, riding low with the cargoes they were bringing in or had just taken on board, and smaller craft wove between them with casual indifference to the threat of collision. He hadn’t seen such a dense concentration of watercraft since leaving Marienburg.

  “Cosmopolitan sort of place,” he commented casually, spotting an ungainly Kislevite barge and an elegant vessel crewed by elves within moments of each other. He thought briefly of drawing Fritz’s attention to the latter, with some good-natured reminder of his excitement at his first sight of an elf vessel entering the harbour as they’d first approached Marienburg, but before he could speak, his voice was drowned out by an unearthly shriek that echoed across the water and left his ears ringing. “Sigmar preserve us, what the hell’s that?” It looked like a boat of some kind, but it was thrashing through the water without any sign of a sail, churning up a thick white soup of froth in its wake. Choking black smoke poured from a stovepipe in the superstructure, and a crew of grimy dwarfs ran back and forth on its deck, growling at one another in their incomprehensible tongue.

  “A steamboat.” Shenk’s voice was suffused with disgust. “Don’t often see them this far downriver. The hairbarrels seem to like them well enough, but you wouldn’t get a real sailor aboard one at any price.”

  “It’s made of metal,” Fritz said, his voice tinged with awe. “Why doesn’t it sink?”

  “Probably too pig-headed to,” Shenk said, “like its crew. Bullying your way through the water instead of using the wind and the tide might be all right for stumpies, but it’s no way for a human to travel.”

  Rudi was inclined to agree. The strange vessel was like nothing he’d ever seen before. He watched it go, heading upstream with a cavalier disregard for everything else on the water, and braced himself against the rail as the backwash threw the Reikmaiden through a series of vertiginous lurches. As it diminished in the distance, trailed by the profanity of the crews left bobbing in its wake, he blinked his eyes clear of the acrid smoke that had drifted across the deck. The dockside loomed up through it, surprisingly close, and he hefted his pack, feeling it settle into place across his back with a welcome sense of familiarity.

  “Got everything?” he asked. Beside him, Hanna nodded. She was wearing her new dress, and the headscarf she’d purchased in Carroburg, everything else she owned stuffed into the satchel she habitually carried.

  The bright colours made her look different, Rudi thought, harder and more assertive, if that was possible. He tried to keep his attention on her face, instead of letting it drift lower to the expanse of cleavage that the dress exposed, and ignore the disturbing memories of the night on the banks of the Reik last summer that the sight evoked. Meeting his gaze, she grinned, as if she could read his thoughts, and he flushed despite himself.

  “If this frock has the effect on the wizards that it seems to have on you, it was money well spent,” she said. Rudi was by no means sure that the senior mages of the Colleges of Magic would be swayed by something so simple, but if it increased her confidence it was no bad thing. He shrugged.

  “Assuming you can find any,” he said.

  “I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble,” Hanna said, and anyone who knew her less well than Rudi did would probably have thought she was as confident as she sounded. “The city’s supposed to be crawling with mages, remember?”

  “Well, here we are,” Shenk said. “Altdorf, as promised. Good luck.” He stood aside as the three travellers filed up the gangplank, and turned away before Rudi could say a farewell. “Look alive for Mannan’s sake, I want those pots unloaded before a week next Koenigstag!”

  “Well,” Rudi said, as his boots hit the cobbles, “where to?” The bustle of the docks was almost comforting in its familiarity, but daunting nevertheless. It was beginning to dawn on him that, once again, he and his companions were alone in a huge and unknown city. At least in Marienburg they’d had Artemus as a guide, and had found food and shelter for the night. Here they had no one…

  A piercing whistle interrupted his gloomy thoughts, and Fritz looked up in response to it, reminding Rudi incongruously for a moment of an eager puppy. A cheery grin spread across the simpleton’s face, and he waved a greeting in response.

  “There you are. About time too, I’ve been freezing hanging about here waiting for you.” Mathilde wove her way through the hurrying dockhands, and kissed him affectionately on the cheek. “Let’s find somewhere with good food and some halfway decent ale, and thaw ourselves out for an hour or two. I can always tell the boss the tide was out or something.” Fritz blushed, pulling away, and for the first time the red-haired woman noticed that her fellow bodyguard wasn’t alone. The insouciant grin Rudi remembered so vividly quirked her mouth as she took in his and Hanna’s presence. “Well, this is a surprise.”

  “I could say the same,” Hanna said, raising an eyebrow. “I see you and Fritz are still getting along all right.”

  “You could say that,” Mathilde agreed. “Are you planning to stay in Altdorf long?”

  Hanna nodded. “I hope so,” she said.

  Mathilde’s expression softened. “Good. We could do with some more guests at the wedding.”

  “Who’s getting married?” Rudi asked, before the penny dropped, and he stared at Fritz in astonishment. The muscular youth blushed even more furiously than before.

  “Who do you think?�
� he said, a little defensively.

  Noting Rudi’s dumbfounded expression, Hanna stepped into the breach. “Congratulations,” she said. “When did this happen?”

  “It sort of snuck up on us,” Mathilde said happily. “We spend most of our time together anyway, and it just occurred to me one evening that he scrubbed up pretty well for a yokel from the back of beyond. One thing just sort of led to another.”

  Fritz shrugged, looking oddly embarrassed.

  “You’d had a lot to drink, though,” he said. Mathilde punched him affectionately on the arm.

  “You hadn’t, though, which I suppose was just as well.” She raised an eyebrow at Hanna. “So you see how desperate I am, flinging myself at the sort of lowlife who’d take advantage of a helpless young maiden in her cups.”

  “Scandalous,” Hanna agreed, keeping a straight face with difficulty.

  “You’re about as helpless as an orc,” Fritz riposted, clearly playing a long-established game, “and what sort of heartless harridan would toy with the affections of an innocent country lad in the first place?”

  “I can see you were made for each other,” Rudi said, while the two lovers grinned inanely. He wondered if Conrad and Alwyn had been like that at first, and whether they were alive at all now. Such speculation was fruitless, though, so he forced the thought away, and tried to be happy for his friends.

  “Come on,” Mathilde said, linking her arm with Fritz’s and leading the way out of the docks. “I’m cold and hungry, and the boss won’t wait forever.” Rudi and Hanna fell in behind them, exchanging glances of amused perplexity.

  “Well,” Rudi said, “Altdorf is certainly full of surprises.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Mathilde assured him, glancing back to speak to them over her shoulder. Rudi could well believe it. As they left the waterfront and entered the city, he could see several men and women dressed in the clothing of lands far from the Empire, a common enough sight in the great port of Marienburg, but one he’d hardly expected to see this far inland. Kislevite and Tilean mercenaries were common enough everywhere, of course, but within a score of paces he’d seen the robes of Araby and heard a couple of passers-by arguing loudly in Bretonnian. Several times they passed dwarfs and halflings.

  “Stick close,” Mathilde advised. “If you lose your way in Altdorf, you might never find it again.”

  Rudi eyed the narrow strip of sky visible far above them, and nodded. With nothing familiar to go on, and even the sun out of sight, his innate sense of direction would be of little help. At least in Marienburg there had been the occasional break between the buildings, usually where the street crossed one of the innumerable waterways, but here, it seemed, there was no such respite from the masonry that loomed on every side.

  “I can believe that,” he said. Mathilde shook her head.

  “No, I mean that literally. The Colleges of Magic bend the world around themselves. Streets don’t always go where they should, at least in some quarters, and sometimes they don’t go to the same place twice.” She shrugged. “You get used to it. The trick’s just to go where you’re going, and not worry too much about how you got there.”

  “I see.” Rudi didn’t, quite, but he thought he should try to stay positive. “And you’ve been here long enough to pick up the trick?”

  “I should hope so.” Mathilde shot another grin over her shoulder. “I’m a ’dorfer, born and bred. I can find my way anywhere.”

  “Would that include one of the colleges?” Hanna asked. Mathilde shrugged.

  “Anywhere I’d want to go, that is.” Her voice became elaborately casual. “You won’t find anything interesting there.”

  Hanna looked as if she was about to argue the point, but subsided, looking grim.

  “Seen any wizards yet?” Rudi asked her, lowering his voice.

  Hanna nodded, looking a trifle unhappy.

  “Plenty.” She indicated a couple of passers-by. “Those two, and that man over there.” They all looked surprisingly ordinary to Rudi, who had been expecting mages to wear the robes of their college or display some overt symbol of power, but he trusted Hanna’s gift of perception. As he began to take more notice of the people thronging the streets around them, he noticed several glancing at Hanna in a faintly guarded manner. Others with the gift of witchsight, he supposed. “There’s one in that alley up ahead, too, but he doesn’t seem to be moving.” She indicated the mouth of the thoroughfare that Fritz and Mathilde were just beginning to turn down.

  “Are you sure?” Moved by an impulse he couldn’t quite explain, Rudi dropped his hand to his sword hilt. Hanna nodded, and they followed their friends into the narrow side street.

  At first, he thought his suspicions were unfounded. Then he noticed the small knot of people standing casually in the middle of the thoroughfare, apparently talking to one another. They were spaced just a little too evenly. Mathilde had obviously noticed them too. She detached her arm from her fiancé’s, and shifted her weight on to the balls of her feet.

  “Ah, there he is.” Hanna glanced behind them. A shadowy figure stepped out of the doorway of a ramshackle tenement, shrouded in a cloak. “Remind you of anyone?”

  Rudi nodded. The man’s arm was strapped up beneath the cloak, hanging awkwardly. This just had to be the wizard he’d shot the previous night. A moment later, the man confirmed it.

  “You should have let me take it without waking you,” he said, in an unmistakable Marienburg accent. “Now we’ll just have to do this the hard way.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “The hard way’s fine by me,” Mathilde said, drawing her sword. She took a step towards the young wizard, who raised his uninjured arm in what was clearly intended to be a threatening gesture. Rudi flinched, expecting an onslaught of phantom knives, like the ones Alwyn had unleashed, or the cobbles to vanish beneath his feet, but it seemed that the shadow mage had something else in mind. Mathilde’s charge faltered suddenly, a dazed expression entering her eyes, and she looked at her surroundings with an air of vague bewilderment. “Sorry, what was the other thing?”

  “Protect Fritz!” Rudi yelled, hoping that her feelings for the simpleton would overcome whatever sorcery was befuddling her mind. He realised, too late, that he’d just revealed who was carrying the package of artefacts. The wizard would know anyway, of course, because he’d be able to see the mystical energy it gave off in the same way that Hanna had done, but the thugs bearing down on them wouldn’t have had a clue who their target was, and would probably have split up to tackle everyone in the party individually. As it was, they all targeted the young bodyguard, running towards him with murder in their eyes. Cursing under his breath, Rudi leapt to intervene.

  As the sword left his scabbard, he found the street fighting instincts he’d learned as a city watchman kicking in, and assessed their assailants with a cool-headed detachment that vaguely surprised him. There were five of them, all rough-looking fellows, armed for the most part with clubs and daggers. Only one carried a sword, and he seemed to be the leader of the rag-tag band.

  Despite the odds against them, Rudi felt confident. He knew the type: a local gang of petty criminals recruited in a hurry with the promise of quick and easy cash. The Fog Walkers must be getting desperate, he thought to himself, recruiting street scum like this to do their dirty work, but no doubt most of their more competent operatives had been left at the bottom of the Reik after their ill-fated venture into piracy, leaving them no option but to take whatever help they could get.

  Fritz had his sword out too, and the two erstwhile enemies stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the onrushing thugs. Rudi had hoped that the sight of drawn steel would make them think twice, but they came on regardless. No doubt they were counting on their superior numbers, and were more afraid of losing face in front of their friends than they were of anything Rudi and Fritz might do. Rudi smiled grimly to himself. That could be the last mistake some of them would ever make.

  He struck out at the first ma
n on his right, ducking under a descending club, and opening up an ugly gash along the fellow’s leg. The man screamed, trying to hop backwards, and Rudi followed up, spinning around to smash the hilt of his sword into the thug’s face. The man went down hard, howling as he clapped a hand to the wreckage of his nose.

  Once again, Rudi’s old street brawling skills had served him well. By targeting the man at the end of the line, he’d opened up a significant gap in their ranks, keeping the fellow with the club between him and the rest of the mob, so he could pick off his chosen target at leisure without having to worry about interference from the others.

  Stepping into the space he’d created, he turned, finding himself behind the main group, and hoping that Fritz had had the common sense to duplicate the move on their other flank. No such luck, of course. True to form, Fritz had simply charged at the nearest foe, and was now surrounded. He was giving a good account of himself, though, Rudi had to admit. The dagger-wielding bandit he’d tackled was kneeling on the filthy cobbles, hugging his belly fresh blood seeping from beneath his arms, and the young bodyguard was engaged in a furious duel with the swordsman apparently leading the ragged band. Stepping in again to engage another bandit, whose knife was flashing towards Fritz’s kidneys, Rudi glanced up over the milling heads to see what was happening to Hanna and Mathilde.

  “Snap out of it!” Hanna said, slapping the swordswoman hard around the face. The vacant look fled from Mathilde’s eyes, and her muscles twitched as she overrode the instinctive counterblow that she’d been about to launch. Comprehension dawned across her visage.

  “He’s using magic,” she said, as if such a thing was both an everyday occurrence and the direst form of personal insult, and raised her sword as if to attack the shadow mage again.

  “I know.” Hanna pushed the red-headed woman towards the melee. “Go and help the boys. I’ll take care of this jumped-up little sneak thief.”