by Death
But then the pit master introduced the next fight and all of a sudden this wasn’t sport any more.
‘Who knows what vile pit of sorcerous depravity these things were spawned in?’ he asked the crowd, who murmured with superstitious dread. ‘Only the Ruinous Powers could have created such a hideous agglomeration of beast and man. And not just any beast either – the vilest and most foul. Sportsmen, I give you the duel between our own brave van Lundtdorf and the loathsome beastmen!’
So saying the pit master scuttled out of the pit, and van Lundtdorf descended once more. Another iron gate was opened, and his opponents loped out.
‘Freia’s virtue!’ Florin swore, all thought of sport gone.
‘It is them, isn’t it?’ Lorenzo asked, peering into the pit. ‘Skaven. By the Lady, they’re skaven. These people must be mad to toy with the things.’
‘Watch,’ Florin said. ‘See who’s toying with who.’
The gladiator, confident in his armour, took his eyes off the ragged-looking creatures who had stumbled into the pit and turned to salute the Provost Marshal’s box.
It was a mistake. To anybody who didn’t know the danger, the skaven had looked almost pitiable as they’d entered the ring. But they abandoned their feigned weakness as easily as a burglars casting off a disguise, and now they attacked, quickly closing in on the human.
Van Lundtdorf didn’t realise the danger until they were almost upon him. The first of the skaven, the fastest, was inside his guard before he even had the chance to raise his sword. He punched it instead, a good blow which smashed its snout and sent it tumbling back.
The crowd roared its approval. Their cheers turned to cries of horror as the second of the things leapt nimbly up. Its almost human hands gripped van Lundtdorf’s shoulder while the yellow chisels of its teeth bit down towards his neck.
Van Lundtdorf turned so that the creature’s fangs chinked on his shoulder guard, then swivelled back and hurled it to the sand. He drew his sword and, as the crowd bellowed its approval, he aimed a blow that would have cut the skaven in two had it landed.
But it never did.
As he swung the blade up, the flesh of his armpit was exposed between the heavy steel of his breastplate and the curved metal of his shoulder guard. Both of the other skaven shot towards the unguarded flesh, their wiry bodies arrowing forward with a whiplash of energy.
The first one landed on the warrior’s shoulders. Its tail curled around his neck and it grabbed his sword arm to hold it upraised. The second skaven, finding purchase on the man’s belt, threw back its head and then bit down with a vicious, unerring accuracy into the exposed flesh.
Van Lundtdorf roared with agony, and his assailants allowed themselves to be shaken off. By now pandemonium had broken out amongst the spectators, their cries a confusion of encouragement and horror.
‘They killed him,’ Lorenzo said, his voice lost in the uproar.
Now the three skaven were circling, patient and waiting. Van Lundtdorf was watching the blood that was jetting out from the severed artery beneath his arm. He dropped his sword and tried to press the wound closed with his mail fist, a hopeless effort. As the mob bellowed their encouragement he fell to his knees, an expression of incomprehension on his face as he watched his lifeblood spurting onto the sand.
When his face had been drained white he fell forward, and a heartbeat later the skaven were swarming all over him. One of them claimed the dagger from his belt and, with a graceful economy of movement, carved out his throat. Meanwhile the other two had snapped van Lundtdorf’s sword in two. One of them was wrapping shreds of clothing around the spare shard to form a handle on its improvised weapon.
Florin and Lorenzo watched in horrified fascination as the three skaven first stripped the gladiator of his clothes, then peeled off the rags that swathed their own hideous forms.
‘Stop them!’ Lorenzo bellowed as they started to fashion a rope out of the cloth. ‘They’re trying to escape.’
But even if anybody could have heard him, nobody would have listened. Nothing had ever escaped from the pit. Everybody knew that.
Now the skaven were testing the first of their knots.
‘They’re going to escape.’ Lorenzo turned to Florin, and was horrified to find that he was smiling.
‘No, my old friend,’ Florin said.
That was when Lorenzo noticed the expression that had crept across his old comrade’s face. He knew that expression from old, and he dreaded it.
It was that spark of happy fire that sometimes blossomed behind Florin’s eyes. That sudden aura of wild energy which burned away every ounce of his common sense. That suicidal joy of a man freed by his belief that nothing’s worth a damn.
Lorenzo had seen the mood come over him before. It never ended well.
‘No, those vermin aren’t going to escape,’ Florin assured him with a reckless certainty. ‘Got your cutlass?’
Lorenzo opened his mouth to reply but, before he could, Florin was standing on the balcony’s rail, as poised as an acrobat. He remained perfectly balanced while he turned and bowed towards the Provost Marshal’s box. When he was sure he had caught his lady’s eye he drew his sword, kissed the blade in salute, then leapt down into the fighting pit.
Lorenzo followed his comrade over the side. He hit the sand, buckled his knees and rolled, the momentum of his fall carrying him halfway across the pit.
When he sprang to his feet he saw that Florin was shouting something to him. The words were lost beneath the stamping feet of the delighted mob. It didn’t matter. Lorenzo didn’t need to hear Florin’s warning anyway. In the crystal clarity of his own adrenaline rush, he had already realised that he could only see two of the vermin. He turned, throwing himself to one side as his cutlass arced through the air in a defensive slash.
The skaven, who had been about to pounce, leapt back. Lorenzo bared his teeth in a snarl to match the ratman’s own, and closed in on the thing. He knew that behind him Florin was outnumbered, but he didn’t have time to worry about that now. Now all he had time for was killing.
His foe almost seemed to float as it bounced on the balls of its feet. It was armed with the lower part of the dead gladiator’s shattered sword. The clumsy weapon looked as light and as lethal as a rapier in its paw.
Lorenzo heard the crowd screaming at something that was happening behind him. He swore and decided to take a risk.
Lunging heavily forward with his blade, he kicked the back of his right heel with the toe of his left boot. He staggered back, and fell so heavily that he lost his sword.
Even though he had planned the feint, the skaven moved with such speed that it almost took him. Its claws were scrabbling for Lorenzo’s throat even as it drew back its blade. As it was, the creature’s murderous momentum helped Lorenzo to bury his knife into the thick muscle around its throat.
The skaven squealed, the reek of its breath hot on his face, and he stabbed again. And again. Blood blinded him. Staggering to his feet, he wiped it off of his face and turned to see Florin smiling.
He had dispatched his own opponents. The sodden tangles of their bodies lay behind him. He flashed Lorenzo a wink as he strode across the pit to punch him on the shoulder.
‘That showed them how Bretonnians fight, didn’t it?’ Florin said, his face murderously cheerful beneath the blood that spattered it. ‘They’ll be talking about it in this Empire of theirs for a generation. Ah, look here they come now,’ Florin gestured towards the ladders that heavily armoured guards were lowering into the pit. ‘Let me just pay my respects before we go.’
So saying he strode over to stand before the Provost Marshal’s box, waited for the cheers of the crowd to abate, and then bowed long and low and deep.
‘I dedicate this fight,’ he bellowed, enjoying the resonance the acoustics of the place lent his voice, ‘to beauty.’
The woman in the Provost Marshal’s box smiled, her doe eyes rising to meet his. She licked her full lips with a small pink tongue and curle
d a stray lock of golden hair around her finger.
Florin was trying to think of something else to say when a heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder.
‘If you’d like to come this way, mein herr.’
Florin turned, and found himself looking into a guard with a face like a clenched fist. Florin smiled at him. The guard did not smile back. Perhaps, thought Florin as he wiped his blade on his cloak, because he didn’t know how to.
‘Lead on,’ he said, and with a last look towards the blonde, he followed the guard towards the ladder that led out of the pit. He was so lost in the remembrance of the look she had given him that he didn’t realise how the audience’s mood had changed until they started throwing things.
‘Why are they booing?’ he asked Lorenzo as he turned to help his friend up and over the parapet.
‘Because,’ Lorenzo said, ‘we’re under arrest, you damn fool.’
The two of them were locked into a storeroom while the guards had rushed off to clear the balconies. They had sat in silence and listened to the sounds above them. A small war seemed to have broken out.
Slowly, the distant sounds of combat were replaced by the noise of hundreds of boots clattering out of the building. Almost another hour passed before the sergeant of the guard finally returned. He had a bruised cheek and a new look of resentment.
‘If you needed a hand,’ Florin told him, ‘you should have asked.’
The sergeant, whose men were peering angrily over his shoulder, just pointed to a chair.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
Florin sat.
‘Right,’ the sergeant said. ‘Somebody wants to speak to you. We’ll be outside the door, so don’t get any clever ideas.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Florin told him.
‘He’s right,’ Lorenzo said, ‘he wouldn’t.’
The sergeant grunted with disgust, then turned and shooed his men back down the hallway. A moment later the door opened again, and when their visitor stepped into the room Florin was instantly on his feet.
It was her.
‘Madame,’ he said, and executed a deep bow. ‘I am Florin D’Artaud, a merchant of Bordeleaux’.
‘And I am Lady Adora Gerber Klumpenstein,’ the lady from the Provost Marshal’s box said, and offered him her hand to kiss.
‘What a beautiful name,’ Florin said as he brushed his lips across the warmth of her hand.
‘Thank you,’ Adora said, and caressed his cheek in a gesture that might have been an accident. ‘And tell me, Mein Herr d’Artaud, who is your companion?’
Florin was too distracted by the softness of her skin on his cheek to answer.
‘I’m Lorenzo,’ Lorenzo said. ‘A friend of his wife’s.’
Florin smiled as he lifted his lips from her hand and stood up straight.
‘You must forgive Le Comte his little jokes, madame,’ He said, and cast a warning look at Lorenzo. ‘He is always lighthearted after facing danger.’
Lorenzo snorted, then grew silent beneath the woman’s suddenly predatory gaze. She was examining him with a cold appraisal.
‘Le Comte,’ she said at length. ‘Enchante.’
Lorenzo grunted and scratched with the insouciance of the true aristocrat.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ Adora said. ‘I hope that I have come to the right people. I am in such trouble and there has been nobody to turn to. But
no, it hardly seems fair to ask it of you.’
Her perfectly composed features crumpled into a sorrowful expression, and the sapphire blue of her eyes glistened with tears.
‘Madame, we are at your service,’ Florin said, leading her to sit on a packing crate. ‘The problem is that we are slightly inconvenienced at the moment. It would appear that we inadvertently broke some law by saving you from those creatures.’
‘Oh, if only you had saved us!’ she cried, and buried her face in her hands. When she looked up her golden tresses fell forward to frame her face perfectly. ‘But I don’t think anybody can.’
‘Why don’t you tell us the whole story,’ Florin said, sitting down beside her and slipping an arm around her shoulders. So she leaned into him, and told him.
‘It’s because of my fiance, really,’ she admitted. ‘He’s a philanthropist who cares about this city. That’s why he bought the Lord Provostship from the Elector Count in the first place. The problem is that he’s so kind that he can’t see how anybody could have committed a crime as vile as the Baron Vistein’s’.
‘Tell me more,’ Florin said, enjoying the softness of her curves moulded against the muscle of his body.
‘It was one of my servants who told me. He had found out that the vicious old man had been plotting against us all. He has been working with the creatures you so valiantly slew in the pit tonight. It is those beastmen who are responsible for poisoning the crops.’
Adora shuddered, and moved a little closer to Florin, making sure that no part of the gesture was wasted.
‘We’d always know that the Baron was jealous of my fiance’s appointment to Provost Marshal. You know, what with him being only a merchant and so on,’ Adora looked up, and Florin found himself shaking his head at the injustice of the world as she continued. ‘But to have stooped to such depths to destabilise him
Why, it’s inhuman.’
‘Awful.’ Florin’s expression matched the sadness of her own, and even Lorenzo looked sympathetic.
‘Anyway, you were so very brave tonight,’ Adora cooed, now leaning close enough for him to feel the beat of her heart beneath her bodice. ‘That’s why I decided to risk it all and ask for your help. My fiance refuses to believe it, but I know that it’s true. The fact is, the Baron Vistein has been using these creatures to bring down our whole city, and he must be stopped.’
‘But you’ve only just met,’ Lorenzo said.
Adora, her eyes locked on Florin’s, ignored him.
‘Will you do it, monsieur? Will you execute the Baron and free us all?’
Florin, who had been only half-listening, sat up so suddenly that she fell back with a bump.
‘Murder a nobleman?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Oh, I wish it weren’t so,’ Adora brushed her hair back in a gesture of despair. ‘But what else can we do? The wicked man has been using those monsters to destroy our crops and our grain stores. He wants our people to starve so that they’ll follow him in a revolt against the Provost Marshal, and then he can claim his old title back.’
Florin pursed his lips.
‘It sounds incredible,’ he said.
‘It is incredible that a man could stoop so low,’ Adora’s eyes smouldered as she placed her hand on Florin’s stomach, and all of a sudden her words seemed not so much a condemnation as a promise.
‘Our aristocrats aren’t like your Le Comte here.’ She looked at him warmly. Then, seeing that the expression was wasted, she turned back to Florin. ‘They are ruthless and dishonourable men. That is why we need a hero. Somebody who isn’t afraid. Somebody who will execute this vile traitor before it is too late.’
‘Murder an Empire nobleman,’ Lorenzo repeated, if only for the novelty of hearing such madness on his own lips.
‘Yes,’ Adora turned her gaze back to him. ‘It was the only way I could persuade my fiance to save you from execution.’
‘Execution?’ the two Bretonnians yelped, and Adora deigned to look surprised at their exclamation.
‘Of course. For your wonderful, courageous act in the Pit. It’s the custom in Vistein to execute all who violate the Pit’s sanctity. That’s what made your courage so splendid.’
‘Even so, an Empire nobleman
’ Florin pursed his lips.
‘And the only way,’ Adora added, her eyes as innocent as a child’s but her timing as perfect as any merchant’s, ‘that I could get my fiance to agree to return your ship.’
Florin and Lorenzo’s eyes met in silent, unspoken agreement.
‘Where does this Baron live?’ Florin asked.
‘Oh, you will do it. You’re so, so brave,’ Adora said and moved so that her body was pressed against Florin’s once more. ‘I knew you would. It sounds silly, but I had a dream that your Lady would send me her Knight Errant.’
‘We are hardly Knights Errant,’ Florin said with an unusual modesty. ‘Our honour and courage don’t depend upon vows.’
‘I know,’ Adora said with a lascivious smile, and her hand slipped lower.
Florin swallowed. Lorenzo just shrugged.
‘What choice do we have?’ Lorenzo asked.
‘What indeed,’ Florin agreed. ‘Lady Adora, we are at your service.’
‘Good. You can start now,’ she said, springing to her feet, ‘before it’s too late. I have a servant, one of the few I trust, who will take you to the Baron’s lair. He lives in the old watchtower on the north spur. Tells everybody he’s a hermit. Do you need horses? How about weapons? Tell me what you need, and you shall have it.’
‘How about our ship?’ Lorenzo asked, but Adora seemed not to hear.
It was after midnight by the time Florin and Lorenzo had followed their guide out of the city gates. Despite the late hour, the Lady Adora had provided them with everything they needed. What’s more, she had provided it with a consummate skill that left Florin speechless.
Where he would have needed a hefty bribe to unlock a gate, she opened it with the softest whisper. What he and Lorenzo could have only achieved by knocking a man down, she did by lightly brushing her fingers across his shoulder. And once, when the Provost Marshal’s stable master refused to give horses to criminals, she had broken his will by displaying the most pitiable expression of disappointment Florin had ever seen.
Now she stood on the city wall, waving her assassins a silent goodbye as they rode out into the moonlit night. Much to Florin’s delight, Lorenzo waved back.
‘Well, well,’ Florin whispered, eyebrow raised at his friends show of affection. ‘I had no idea you were so gallant, Le Comte.’