by Warhammer
The mention of the sewers and of their outlaw status reminded Felix of the encounter they had had with the watch under the Gunnery School earlier that day. He turned to Malakai. ‘Did you get a visit from the watch today about us?’
‘Oh, aye,’ said Malakai. ‘I told Gurnisson o’ it already. They came asking after ye.’
‘And?’
Malakai shrugged. ‘I told ’em I didnae know where ye wis, which was the truth. And I told them I’d tell ye, if ye returned, no’ tae dae it again.’ He grinned. ‘So, dinnae dae it again. And dinnae tell me who this rich laddie is, or where his house is, neither. A dwarf niver lies.’
Felix gave a half-hearted chuckle, then groaned and pressed his ribs.
Malakai clucked his tongue. ‘Ye shouldnae be goin’ anywhere, laddie, except to yer bed.’
‘I’ll sleep when this is over,’ said Felix, and turned after Gotrek. If I’m still alive, he thought.
Felix walked beside Gotrek as they travelled again through the stinking brick tunnels towards the Altestadt district, his head down and his mind churning like a stew on the boil. A thought would come to the surface like a mushy onion or a bit of meat or carrot, and then sink back down into the depths as another one roiled up, demanding his attention – his culpability in his brother’s danger, his responsibility for the fire in the Maze, the threats of the countess and her even more vicious rivals, the doom that would come upon the Gunnery School if they failed to find the powder, the fact that, not two weeks back in the Empire and they were once again outlaws.
He looked over at Gotrek, striding along with his beard jutting forward, his brow lowered, a picture of unwavering determination. Did he ever have doubts or second thoughts? Did he ever have regrets? Then he recalled the Slayer hunched over the body of his friend Hamnir, whom he had just killed. Of course he did – more than Felix would ever know of, no doubt.
Felix shook himself and tried to clear his mind for the task ahead. ‘So,’ he said at last. ‘When we get there, is your plan to beat this Gephardt until he tells us where the powder is and who his leaders are?’
‘Aye,’ said Gotrek. ‘What else?’
‘I don’t think it will work.’ said Felix. ‘The orator we captured in Shantytown yesterday cut his own throat on your axe rather than talk. And the leader of the men who attacked my brother’s coach did the same thing when I tried to question him tonight. He threw himself on my sword and died laughing at me.’
Gotrek grunted. ‘They’re not cowards, at least,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Felix. ‘They’re mad.’ He hissed as the cut over his ribs flared again. ‘I think our best bet is to watch Gephardt, and follow him until he brings us to the leaders of the cult.’
Gotrek shrugged. ‘All right. But if he doesn’t lead us to them before the Spirit of Grungni is ready to leave, we’ll try it my way.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Felix.
They walked on, the flow of sludge in the sewer channel was higher and quicker than usual from the rain, and in every direction Felix heard the rush and splash of water pouring down through iron gratings. The brick walls were slick with moisture.
A little further on, Felix slowed and looked around as a familiar foetid smell reached his nostrils. He inhaled deeper, trying to separate it from the pungent background odour of the sewer. Was it? Yes it was. There was no mistaking it – the rancid musky reek of ratman – faint but unmistakable. Was it some old spoor he and Gotrek had stumbled over, or had the skaven returned to Nuln?
Gotrek was turning his head back and forth like a dog sniffing the wind. He caught Felix’s eye. ‘Aye, manling. I smell it too. But we’ve no time for diversions.’
He strode on. Felix shook his head as he followed. Only Gotrek could call those horrific abominations a ‘diversion’.
A few tunnels on, Felix remembered what Malakai had said on the roof, and his heart thudded in his chest. ‘Ah, Gotrek, did you tell Makaisson about our alliance with Ulrika?’
‘Of course not,’ said Gotrek. ‘I might kill her, but I’d not betray her.’
Felix flushed. ‘I didn’t think so, but when he said you had told him about the pendant…’
‘I kept her out of it.’
‘Good.’ Felix was relieved. That was one lump in his roiling stew of fears that could subside. He could confidently tell the countess and her compatriots that he and Gotrek had kept their existence a secret. Though whether that would matter to Lady Hermione and Mistress Wither he could not say. Their mistrust of men seemed to run too deep.
Gotrek looked up. ‘We’re under the Altestadt now. This way.’
He led Felix to a side tunnel with an iron ladder as if it had been yesterday that he had used it, not twenty years ago. Felix’s wounded side ached as he pulled himself up. The rungs were wet, and a steady stream of drips rattled on their heads as they climbed. At the top of the ladder, Gotrek shouldered up an iron grate and helped Felix out into an alley behind a row of shops. The rain had finally started in earnest. It was pouring. They were wet in seconds.
Felix sighed. ‘A perfect night for spying.’
The Gephardt house stood in the middle of a row of elegant town homes: a four storey granite mansion with tall, narrow windows at each floor and a balcony over the front door. It was nearing midnight when Gotrek and Felix found the place, an hour when most honest Nulners were abed – and the sane ones were out of the rain, thought Felix miserably, as a drip ran down his nose – but there was a light behind one of the windows on the ground floor, and when they looked in, they could see young Nikolas pacing before a huge fireplace, and drinking deeply from a wine bottle. There didn’t appear to be anyone with him.
The young man was nervous, but what about? Had his thugs reported that Felix and Otto escaped them? Was he frightened that he was going to be exposed? Had he sent his men back out to find Felix? Had they regrouped and gone after Otto? The thought made Felix want to run back to his brother’s house and defend it, but Otto had said he didn’t want him there and, truth be told, the best way of saving him and his family from the threat of the Cleansing Flame was to find the cultists and wipe them out. Felix just hoped that was possible.
They could not stay too long at the window. Unlike Shantytown and the Neuestadt, the Kaufman district was well patrolled. Gotrek and Felix heard the tap of the watch’s spear butts striking the cobbles further down the block before they saw them, and retreated into a service alley, then watched as the men passed, looking wet and out of sorts, their captain carrying a lantern on a long pole before them.
After the watchmen had turned a corner and vanished again into the night, they returned to Gephardt’s window. Nikolas was gone, and an old servant was covering the fire and tidying up the wine bottle.
‘Around the back,’ said Gotrek.
They circled the block. The alley behind the houses was not as neatly cobbled as the street in front and they splashed through puddles and muddy ruts until they came to the right gate. The back of the property was large, and divided into coach yard and garden. As they craned their necks to see over the wall, a light went out in a window on the top floor.
‘Gone to sleep,’ said Felix.
‘Perhaps,’ said Gotrek. ‘Perhaps not.’ He looked around. The coach house of the mansion across the alley from Gephardt’s butted up against the alley. Gotrek crossed to it and started climbing the wall to the roof, which was low and partially screened by yew trees. ‘I’ll watch from here,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You go back to where we were. If he leaves from the front, strike your sword against stone. I’ll hear it.’
‘And if he leaves from the back?’ asked Felix. ‘I don’t have your hearing.’
Gotrek pulled himself up onto the roof and drew his axe. He held it up and grinned. ‘You won’t need it.’
Felix shrugged. ‘All right. Let’s hope he leaves quickly, though. I think I’m catching a chill.’
Gotrek snorted. ‘Humans are soft.’ He settled himself in a valley between th
e peaks of the carriage house roof.
Felix rolled his eyes, then trudged down the alley and back to the street.
It seemed Nikolas might never leave. Felix stood shivering and sniffing in the service alley across the street from the Gephardt mansion for hours while the rain beat down on his head and his wound ached and itched as if imps were clawing at it from the inside. Nothing happened. Once every hour the watch walked by and Felix stepped further back into the shadows of the alley, but other than that, all was quiet. The rain rained, cats and rats prowled, very occasionally a coach rolled by or deposited someone at one of the grand houses – once even to the house he was hunched against – but none stopped at Gephardt’s house.
After a time Felix’s legs grew tired and he squatted on his haunches, but then his new boots cut off the circulation in his legs and he stood again, stomping away the pins and needles. At last he sat down on the driest cobbles he could find and tried to keep his eyes open while his seat got wetter and colder. Won’t be long now, he thought. Any minute Gephardt’s front door will open, or the clash of Gotrek’s axe will ring out, and we’ll be off and running. Any minute now.
Any minute now.
‘What’s all this?’ said a voice in Felix’s ear. ‘Are you well, m’lord?’
Felix flinched awake, blinking around in confusion. Booted legs and spear shafts ringed him like a fence. A square face with a broken nose was inches from his, and a loud voice buffeted his eardrums, accompanied by a gust of onions and beer and cheap meat pie. It was still raining.
‘Lost yer way home from the club, hey, m’lord?’ said the watchman, not unkindly. He offered Felix his arm. Felix took it, and the man hauled him to his feet. ‘Upsy daisy, m’lord. That’s it.’ He dusted Felix down and smiled at him, revealing rotten teeth. ‘Best to find your own bed then, hey? You’ll catch your death out here in this wet.’
‘Thank you,’ said Felix, still trying to clear his head. It appeared to be dawn, or almost dawn. How long had he been asleep? Had he missed Nikolas leaving? Had he missed Gotrek’s signal? At least with his new clothes they seemed to have mistaken him for a nobleman and weren’t suspicious of his being here. ‘I… Well, I guess I’ll be going.’
But where, he wondered? He pulled his sodden cloak around his shoulders. Would they follow him if he went around the block to find Gotrek? And what if Nikolas slipped out before he could get back in position?
As he started towards the street one of the watchmen stepped to the sergeant and whispered in his ear. Felix saw this and picked up his pace.
It was no good.
‘Just a minute, m’lord,’ said the sergeant from behind him.
Felix turned at the mouth of the alley. ‘Yes?’
‘Begging your pardon,’ said the sergeant, ‘but could you tell me your name? And where you live, exactly?’
‘My name?’ said Felix, panic rising in his throat. He tried an aristocratic sneer. ‘And what business is it of yours what my name is?’
‘Well, er, ye see, yer lordship,’ said the sergeant, looking uncomfortable. ‘Edard here thinks you look like a fellow what’s supposed to be under house arrest in the College of Engineering. That one were described as having a sword with a dragon hilt, just like the one you’re wearing, and, well…’
‘Oh, sergeant,’ came a silvery voice from above them.
Everyone looked up. A beautiful woman in green, with long auburn hair trailing out from beneath a shawl, was leaning out of a window of the townhouse beside the alley. She smiled down at them.
Felix stared.
It was Ulrika.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The sergeant touched his fingers to his cap. ‘Morning, m’lady. Terrible sorry if we woke you.’
‘Not at all, sergeant,’ she said sweetly, and without a trace of Kislev accent. ‘But I must ask you to release this man, ruffian though he may be. I threw him out last night after we had a little lover’s quarrel. He has pined beneath my window ever since, but I believe he has suffered enough, and I have forgiven him. Let him go and I will open the door for him.’
‘Aye, lady,’ said the sergeant, uncertainly. ‘It’s just that we have reason to believe he might be–’
‘Nonsense,’ said Ulrika, even more sweetly. ‘He couldn’t possibly be anyone you had any interest in. He is merely my poor, sweet, bedraggled lover, heartsick in the rain.’ Her voice was as syrupy and cloying as honey, and her eyes seemed to have gotten very large and very deep. ‘My poor, sweet, bedraggled lover,’ she repeated. ‘Heartsick in the rain.’
‘Aye, lady,’ the sergeant mumbled. ‘Heartsick in the rain. Aye, of course. Thank ye. And we’ll be going now.’
‘Yes, you will,’ agreed Ulrika. ‘Goodbye.’
The watchmen turned and shuffled off down the street like sleepwalkers. Felix watched them go, then looked up at Ulrika again.
‘How are you here…?’
Ulrika put a finger to her lips and motioned to the front of the house, then closed the window.
Felix walked around to the front door, giving the befuddled watchmen a wide berth. After a short wait, the door opened, and a grave looking butler bowed him in. As he was taking Felix’s dripping cloak, Ulrika appeared at the top of a curved mahogany staircase and smiled sourly down at him.
‘You see how much nicer things could have been if you and Gotrek had honoured your promise?’ she said. ‘Come up and I will find you some dry clothes.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Felix crossly, starting up the stairs. It was deliciously warm in here, and dry. The smell of eggs and bacon and spiced tea wafting from the back of the house was making his stomach growl. To think he had spent the whole night getting soaked in the alley, while right behind the wall he had slumped against, Ulrika was sitting in the lap of luxury. ‘What promise did I not honour? And how do you come to be in this house?’
‘You broke one promise, and Gotrek broke another.’ said Ulrika, as she led him along the hall. ‘You did not return to the countess and tell her what you had discovered.’
Felix scowled. ‘Was there any need? Her besotted knight – what was his name? Captain Reingelt? He was there. He saw it all. As did one of Lady Hermione’s dandies. They must have told their mistresses, else you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Aye, they did, but you forget what I said of the countess’s nature of late. She would take even so small a lapse as a deliberate slight.’ She opened the door to a bedroom and stood aside to let him enter. It was a comfortable room, with a large canopied bed on one side and a crackling fire on the other. ‘But that is by the by. It is Gotrek whose treachery is unforgiveable.’
‘Oh come,’ said Felix. ‘Gotrek has never broken a promise in his life!’
‘Indeed he has,’ said Ulrika, closing the door behind him and turning, her eyes suddenly as cold and hard as sapphires. ‘And you know it.’
‘What?’
‘Mistress Wither followed you from Wulf’s last night, at Lady Hermione’s bidding. She was on the roof when you spoke to Gotrek and Malakai. She heard Malakai say, just as you heard him, that Gotrek had revealed my existence to him.’
Felix blinked, confused. ‘What? He didn’t.’
‘Do you lie now too, Felix?’ she asked, advancing on him. All her former humour had drained away as if it had never been. ‘The Slayer speaks much about honour and keeping vows. Apparently he doesn’t hold himself to so high a standard.’
Felix took an involuntary step backwards. She was terrifying. ‘Wait! You have it wrong. It must be Mistress Wither that lied.’
‘Did she?’ she said, still coming forward. ‘She reported to us that Makaisson said Gotrek had told him all about the pendant, and the whole truth about the fight with the Cleansing Flame.’ She reached out and grasped his collar. ‘And the whole truth includes me.’
Felix backed into the bed, banging his head against one of the posts. ‘Wait! Listen! I can see how she might have construed Malakai’s words that way. But she doesn’t know Gotrek
. He did not give you away. He told Malakai all of it but your part. He left you out.’
Ulrika was inches from him. Her sharp teeth glinted in the firelight. ‘And how do you know this?’
‘I asked!’ Felix swallowed. She was going to kill him! ‘It… it troubled me too! Gotrek doesn’t do things like that, but knowing how he feels about you and your mistress, I thought perhaps…’
‘You thought?’
‘I was wrong!’ cried Felix. ‘He said he might kill you, but he would never betray you.’
Ulrika glared at him, her ice-blue eyes boring into his as if she could dissect his soul with them. Then after a long moment she sighed and backed away, shaking her head and chuckling. ‘He might kill me but he wouldn’t betray me? Ha! That does sound like the Slayer.’
‘You believe me, then?’ asked Felix, barely daring to breathe.
‘Aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘I believe you.’ Then she frowned. ‘But this is unfortunate.’
‘What is?’
Ulrika looked up at him apologetically. ‘The countess believed Mistress Wither’s story, as I did. Therefore she believes that you and Gotrek betrayed me. She is not pleased. In fact, she gave Mistress Wither, Lady Hermione and myself permission to kill you both if we found you.’
‘Sigmar!’ Felix’s heart hammered. Three ancient, powerful, insane, vampiresses, all out for his blood! Could it get any worse? ‘You have to tell them! You have to call them off!’
‘Have no fear, Felix,’ said Ulrika. ‘I will repair the damage. I will tell the countess what you have said. All will be well.’
Felix swallowed and tried to calm his breathing. ‘I hope so.’
‘Worry not,’ she said smiling reassuringly. ‘I am her favourite, and Mistress Wither is a rival. She will believe me.’ Her eyes dropped to Felix’s clothes. ‘But look at you! You’re dripping on the carpet. What sort of hostess am I?’ She crossed to a wardrobe. ‘Let’s see what we can find for you.’
Felix blinked at this quick change of subject and mood. Ulrika seemed to have dismissed the countess’s death sentence without another thought, but he was having a hard time imagining that all would go as well as she seemed to think.
