Genevieve 04 - Silver Nails

by Jack Yeovil

  Something was wrong.

  The whore and the mercenary were shackled together, and the man held his arm up awkwardly, as if chained to the degenerate. But the Kislevite was pressing his hand to his forehead, an empty manacle dangling from his wrist.

  Two of the prisoners were loose from the chain.

  The mercenary looked him in the eyes, and Ch'ing saw defiance and hatred reflected at him.

  He had his hand on his scimitar-handle, but the mercenary was fast.

  Vukotich embraced the girl, lifting her up into his arms and threw himself off the road. The two of them became a ball and bounced into the woods. Their cries of pain sounded out as they vanished between the trees.

  Pavel Alexei, bewildered, tried to follow them, but he was still chained to the next prisoner, and he slipped, dangling from the wagon by his manacled left wrist.

  Ch'ing sliced with his scimitar and the Kislevite fell at his feet, leaving his neatly-severed hand in its iron cuff at the end of the chain.

  'Anyone else?' he asked mildly. 'No? Good.'

  The cries had stopped. The whore and the mercenary were probably dead down there, but Ch'ing could take no risks.

  'You, you and you,' he indicated three guards. 'Find them and bring them back.'

  They stepped off the road and began to edge their way downwards.

  'And take off those hoods,' Ch'ing added. 'You'll only slip and break your necks.'

  The guards pulled their hoods back and followed the path of broken bushes and scraped trees that marked the escapees' route down the mountain. Soon, they were gone.

  The Kislevite was whimpering, pressing fingers over his leaking stump.

  'Perhaps next time you won't be so keen to share the bed of another man's wife, Pavel Alexei,' Ch'ing said.

  The Kislevite spat at his shoes.

  Ch'ing shrugged, and the driver killed Pavel Alexei with his iron bar. The goblins expected a certain wastage along the road.

  Ch'ing pulled out his clay pipe and tamped in some opium from his pouch. He would travel to the Pagoda for a few moments, in search of further enlightenment.

  Then, when the guards brought back the whore and the mercenary, he would make sure they were dead, and then the coffle could be on its way again.

  Thank the gods, he had not broken any bones in the tumble down the mountainside. But his clothes were ragged, and great patches of skin were scraped from his back and shins. The girl didn't seem greatly hurt either. Too bad. It would have been easier if she were dead. Her silks were torn, her long hair was loose, and she had a few bruises, but she wasn't bleeding.

  He hauled her to her feet, pulling on the chain between them, and dragged her through the trees, away from the flattened bush that had broken their roll. It was important to get away from any trail that could be followed. They had gained some time on the guards by their dangerous, headlong descent, but there would be acolytes after them. A brief exchange of glances with the Celestial in charge of the coffle had convinced Vukotich this was not a man to expect much from in the way of mercy.

  'Keep quiet,' he told the girl. 'Do what I say. You understand?'

  She didn't look as panicked as he had expected. She simply nodded her head. He thought she was even smiling slightly. She was probably a weirdroot-chewer. A lot of whores were. They sold you their body but kept their dreams for themselves. It was much the same with swords-for-hire, he supposed.

  He picked their way through the trees, taking care with his footing. It was hard to keep a balance with their wrists chained together. The girl was agile and unfussy, and kept up with him easily. She had a lot of control. She was probably very good at what she did. He wondered whether she were more than a street harlot. More than one great assassin had found a career as a courtesan an efficient way to get close to their targets.

  They would be expected to keep going down, so Vukotich took them up, hoping to strike the roadledge a few miles behind the wagons. The Celestial was unlikely to send men back after them, and it would be impossible to turn the coffle round. They should be able to get away if they made it too much trouble to bring them in. Somewhere, there were slave-pits waiting for the convicts, and the Moral Guardians wouldn't want to have three wagonloads of prisoners stranded half-way up a mountain just to bring in a couple of minor carousers. Of course, you could never tell with fanatics

  The girl grabbed his wrist. Their chain rattled. She tugged.

  'That way,' she said. 'There are three men coming.'

  She was sharp. At first he couldn't hear anything, but then her words were confirmed by clumping feet and huffing breaths.

  'They've split up,' she said. 'One will be here soon.'

  She looked around.

  'Can you climb that tree?' she asked, indicating a thick trunk.

  Vukotich snorted. 'Of course.'

  He must be staring at her.

  'Now,' she said. 'Quickly.'

  He snapped to and obeyed her as if she were a sergeant-at-arms. It was awkward, but there was a stout branch within reach, and he was able to chin himself one-handed. She dangled from the chain, and swung herself up like an acrobat, then hauled him onto the branch. They were both securely perched. He was breathing hard, but she kept her wind.

  'Don't be amazed,' she said. 'I've done this sort of thing before. Lots of times.'

  He had been staring at her again. She pulled a branch, and they were hidden behind the thick leaves.

  'Now,' she said. 'Be quiet.'

  They could hear the acolyte now, blundering around below. He wasn't tracking them properly, just looking at random. They must have found the bush where their tumble ended, and split up in three directions. These bullies were city boys, unused to following people through trails of broken twigs and trampled grass.

  Vukotich and the girl both had their hands against the trunk, steadying themselves. He saw the chain hanging between their wrists, and noticed something odd about their shackles. His manacle was plain iron, flecked with odd lumps of some other stuff that sparkled. Hers was different, a padded ring of leather sewn around the metal. He had never seen that before. It looked as if their captors wanted to spare her the discomfort of a chafed wrist, but he couldn't believe Glinka would wish to treat a whore so lightly. More likely, the cuff was designed to prevent her slipping free by dislocating her thumb and pulling her slender hand out of the metal grip.

  He guessed her age at sixteen or seventeen. She was slim, but not delicate. She was perfectly balanced on the branch, with an almost catlike ease. In the sunlight, her harlot's paint made her look like a child's doll: white face, red lips, blue-shadowed eyes. She had spoken Old Worlder with a slight accent. Bretonnian, he thought. Like him, she was far from home.

  It was a shame, but he would have to get rid of her at the first opportunity. No matter how competent she seemed, chained to him as she was she was as useful to him as an anvil.

  The unhooded acolyte was directly below them now, robes swishing as he looked about. He had a wicked curved sword in one hand, and his bar in the other. He didn't seem to be guarding anyone's purity. He let loose a very un-moral stream of blasphemous oaths. Vukotich could have sworn that the lumps on the acolyte's forehead were the buds of daemon horns.

  Not for the first time, Vukotich wondered if there was something extremely sinister behind Glinka's crusade.

  The girl laid her hand over his and nodded sharply. He was a beat behind her thinking, but caught up.

  Together, they leaped from the branch and onto the acolyte. He cried out, but she got her free right hand over his mouth and stifled him. Vukotich looped their chain around his throat and they both pulled. The acolyte struggled, but he had dropped his weapons. His hand groped for Vukotich's face, but he pushed it away. All three fell to the sloping ground and the acolyte was pressed beneath them into the mulchy soil.

  Vukotich's wrist hurt, but he kept up the pressure. The girl was pulling equally hard. The chain bit into the acolyte's neck and his face was red with blood. Nois
es gargled in his throat. The whore took her hand away from the man's mouth and Vukotich saw the teeth-bruises in the heel of her palm. She made a fist and punched the guard's face.

  The acolyte's tongue had expanded to fill his mouth. Blood gushed from his nose. His eyes rolled upwards and showed only white.

  The girl drew her forefinger across her throat. Vukotich nodded. The acolyte was dead.

  They disentangled their chain from his throat and stood up. Vukotich gave a silent prayer to his family totem. Let the blood I have spilled be not innocent. He looked around and picked up the curved sword. It felt natural in his hand. He had been naked without a weapon.

  As he admired the blade, he felt the tug of the manacle, and stuck out his arm, directed by the girl. The swordpoint sank into the chest of the acolyte who was rushing at them. His was the force behind the killing stroke, but she had provided the aim. He should not have been distracted in the first place. He should have been ready himself to react.

  Their hands were entwined around the sword-hilt now. They withdrew it from the dying acolyte and stood over the bodies. The first had latent horns, the second wolfish teeth. Under the hoods, things were not so pure.

  'One more,' she said. 'No. He's sensed what's happened, and is running away, back up to the road. He'll get help.'

  Vukotich had to agree with her.

  'Downwards,' she said. 'If there's no pass in the crotch of this valley, there must be a stream. We can follow it.'

  Vukotich had another priority. He took the sword into his left hand and looked around. There was a fallen tree. That would do for a chopping block.

  He dragged her over, and laid the chain on the wood.

  'That's useless,' she said. 'The chain is tempered iron. You'll just blunt the sword.'

  Nevertheless, he chopped down. The blade turned aside, kinked where it had met the iron links. The chain showed a scratch of clean metal, but wasn't broken.

  It was a shame, but

  He pulled her hand and slipped her sleeve away from her wrist. He looked her in her face.

  'I'm a swordsman and you're a whore,' he said. 'You can practise your trade without your left hand, but I need my right'

  Red rage sparked in her eyes.

  'That won't'

  He struck the blow and felt a shock that jarred his arm from wrist to elbow. The sword bounced and scraped against her padded manacle.

  'work.'

  Incredulous, he looked at her wrist. There was a purple bruise where he had struck, but the skin wasn't even broken. He should have sheared her hand clean off.

  She sighed, as if with impatience.

  'I told you. You should have listened, fool swordsman.'

  His left hand felt as if it had been struck with a stone. She took the bent sword out of it as if she were taking a toy from a child, and threw it away. She shook her left hand, trying to get the pain out of her wrist.

  Vukotich noticed he had torn the leather around her shackle. The exposed metal core caught the light and shone silver.

  Silver!

  Her eyes were almost completely red now. She smiled, revealing sharp white teeth, needle canines delicately scraping her lower lip.

  Iron for him, silver for her. Their captors had known what they were about.

  The leech thing took his throat with an unbreakable grip and leaned across to kiss him.

  Genevieve knew she should kill Vukotich, wrench his arm off, and have done with it.

  But, vampire or not, she wasn't that sort of girl.

  In six hundred and thirty-nine years of more-or-less life, she had been and done a lot of things. Including plenty she wasn't proud of. But she had never been, and wasn't now, a casual murderess.

  She'd killed for sustenance, she'd assassinated several people without whom the world was a better place, and she'd killed in combat×the two dead acolytes lying back there beneath the trees bore witness to that×but she'd never just slaughtered someone because it was the easiest course to take.

  Not that she hadn't been severely tempted on many occasions.

  Her grip on Vukotich's neck relaxed and she pushed him away.

  'Come on,' she told the startled mercenary, her eyeteeth receding into their gumsheaths. 'We have to move quickly.'

  The anger subsided and her eyes cleared. She still felt the red thirst. But there was no time to bleed the fallen. Drinking from the newly dead wasn't pleasant, but she had done it before. She would have been more worried that there would be warpstone in the acolytes'

  blood. She was immune to most diseases, but the caress of Chaos wasn't like plague or the fevers. Her natural defences might not be enough to keep her whole with that stuff inside her.

  She jerked him to his feet and led him downwards. Unlike the traditional melodrama heroine, she was highly unlikely to twist her ankle and become a nuisance for her big, brave protector. She was able to sense the root-holes and low shrubs that might trip them up.

  She had been right. They came to a shallow stream that ran fast downwards. It must eventually feed into the Blackwater. If they followed it, they would find a settlement. She hoped it would be one with a blacksmith who held a very low opinion of Claes Glinka's Moral Crusade. If not, it would mean resorting to force and terror, and she was tired of that. She had come to Zhufbar to get away from her reputation for great deeds and she did not relish another brush with the makings of songs and folktales.

  She tugged the chain and her padded manacle shifted. She felt a sharp sting as the exposed silver pressed against her flesh and let out a pained hiss. She twisted the manacle and the burning stopped, but the metal still gleamed white.

  She took a handful of mud from the stream and gave it to Vukotich.

  'Smear this on the tear,' she said. 'Please.'

  He took the mud and, without questioning her, applied it to the manacle like a healer putting a poultice on a wound.

  'Thank you,' she said. She took a large leaf and stuck it over the mud, tightening it around the leather. It would dry and fall off eventually, but for now it would protect her.

  'Don't worry,' she told him. 'I'm not going to drain you dry at a draught. Not that I wouldn't be justified after your amateur attempt at surgery.'

  She rubbed her wrist. The bruise was already fading. He had nothing to say. He wasn't even sheepish.

  'Come on,' she tugged again. They jogged along the stream, feet splashing in the water. He was wearing heavy marauder's boots, while she only had dancer's slippers.

  'But' he began.

  She was ahead of him. 'Yes, I know. Running water. Vampires aren't supposed to be able to cross it.'

  He nodded, exerting himself to keep apace with her.

  'That holds true only for the Truly Dead. They're the ones who can't stand religious symbols or garlic or direct sunlight. I'm not one of those. I never got around to dying.'

  He wasn't the only one who didn't know much about vampires. Glinka's vigilante squad had come for her with wreaths of garlic around their necks, bearing enough medals of Shallya and Verena to slow them down considerably. One of her 'clients' must have informed on her. They came to her room in the East Wall Hostelry just after sun-up, when she would normally be sinking into her daytime doze, and found her with Molotov, an official from the Kislevite delegation to the Festival of Ulric, delicately tapping his throat. They had silver scythes and hawthorn switches, and soon had her bound and helpless. She had expected to feel the prick of a stake against her ribs, and for it all to be over.

  Six hundred and thirty-nine years wasn't a bad run for her coin×it was more than Chandagnac, her father-in-darkness, had managed×and she had at least the feeling, since the death of Drachenfels, that she had done something worthwhile with the length of her life. But they had just chained her and kept her.

  Vukotich was coughing and spluttering now, his human lungs exhausted by their pace, and she slowed down. She could not help but be amused at seeing the warrior so helpless, so easily outstripped by someone who must seem to hi
m like a little girl. This would pay him back for her wrist, and prompt him to go less by appearances in the future. He was in his thirties, she supposed, solidly built and with a good crop of battle-scars. There was a simple strength to him. She could feel it in his aura. If there was time, she would like to bleed him, to take some of his strength.

  The tsarina's man had been dissolute, his blood too sauced with stinging vodka and weirdroot juice. Molotov had been a poor lover too, a disappointment all round. She had been working the festival, paid by Wulfric, Master of the Temple of Ulric, to go with visiting dignitaries the cult wished to sweeten up. She was being paid a little extra for any sensitive military information she might happen upon in the course of her duties, but so far the diplomats and generals from outside the Empire had been more interested in boasting of their achievements on the battlefield or in the boudoir than in talking about fortifications and siege engines. Whore-cum-spy wasn't the most noble of her many professions, but it was better than being a barmaid. Or a heroine.

  The stream was rushing swift about their feet now. They would have to watch out for waterfalls. They had descended to the foothills. As far as she could tell, there were no acolytes on their track. She hoped that Dien Ch'ing had given up on them, but somehow she knew that was too much to ask the gods.

  She had seen the Celestial before. At the opening ceremony of the festival, when the acolytes of the Moral Crusade doffed their hoods for the singing of the sacred songs of Ulric. She had travelled in the Orient, spending a century sailing between Great Cathay and the islands of Nippon, and knew more about the East than most of the inward-looking citizens of the Old World. Yellow faces were unusual in the Empire, and Ch'ing's must be unique among the followers of Glinka. She had planned to mention him to Wulfric when next she gave her report. She could sense powerful magics about him. Not the familiar enchantments of the Empire's wizards, but the subtler, more insidious spells she had learned to fear in the East. Master Po, with whom she had shared three decades, had taught her a little of the magic of Cathay. She barely had her foot on the Pagoda, but she could recognise one advanced many levels towards the apex. Ch'ing was a dangerous man×and he was no Moral Crusader.