[Marienburg 02] - A Massacre in Marienburg

by David Bishop - (ebook by Undead)

Kurt silenced them with a curse, spat out at the militiamen like poison. “I couldn’t care less where any of you came from, or what you did before today. All that matters to me is what you do while you’re under my command. Judging by the amount of levity, nobody’s told you where we’re heading is a suicide mission—at best. We’ll be lucky if half of us make it back across the Rijksweg alive. So, who wants to make a joke about that?”

  Nobody did, silence proving far more than eloquent as a response.

  “That’s better,” Kurt said. “Get yourselves together into units of eight, and make sure each unit contains at least one man with maritime experience and one man with combat experience. We move out on the hour, so make whatever preparations you need between now and then. Make peace with whatever deity you worship now, while you have the chance. There won’t be time for prayers when the fighting starts. Dismissed!”

  He strode back into the station, followed by Sandler. “Nice speech,” the Goudberg captain commented. “Inspirational stuff—I can see why your men are so loyal to you.”

  “Save it, you sanctimonious sausage-sucker,” Kurt snarled.

  It was nightfall that saved Holismus and the surviving Black Caps from Suiddock stuck south of the Rijksweg. They’d fled eastwards from the tavern after the insidious corpse flies consumed Kramer where he stood. The watchmen lost one of their comrades crossing the bridge from Doodkanaal into the halfling district, and another while leaving Kleinmoot. A third fell as they entered the Tilean ghetto of Noord Miragliano in the Kruiersmuur district. The Black Caps hammered on doors as they ran, but there was no answer from within any of the homes. The watchmen couldn’t tell if the houses had been evacuated, or those inside were simply too terrified to offer anyone sanctuary. Whatever the truth, the streets were empty and abandoned, lifeless.

  Fortunately for the watchmen, the setting sun threw an inky blackness across Marienburg’s southern archipelago, at least until the moon rose. Seeing anything might be all but impossible in the gloaming, but the same was true for the swarm of corpse flies pursuing the four Black Caps. Holismus, Acco, Ormston and Bescheiden groped their way along the streets until they found a Temple of Manann, its doors wide open and lighting spilling out into the street from welcoming candles burning within. They dove into the church, slamming shut the doors after them. An aged priest emerged from one of the side chapels, summoned by the sudden cacophony of their arrival.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked. “I don’t normally expect visitors after dark, but I like to keep my doors open, offering sanctuary to those who might need it. My policy must be paying off. You’re the second group of strangers I’ve had in here today.”

  “Thank you,” Holismus gasped. “You’re a life saver!”

  “I am?” The priest smiled. “Well, that’s very kind of you to say so.”

  “Water,” Bescheiden gasped. “Have you any water?”

  The priest bumbled away to fetch some refreshments, leaving the watchmen to catch their breath. “We have to get a message across the Rijksweg, tell them what’s happening on this side of the canal,” Holismus decided.

  “You saw those things in Suiddock,” Acco said. “There’s no going through them.”

  “So we go around,” Ormston suggested. “Take a boat over the canal. The Rijksweg is at its narrowest here, between Noord Miragliano and Luigistad.”

  “I’m not sure you want to do that,” a woman’s voice interjected. The watchmen were amazed to see Molly and her girls approaching, carrying earthenware jugs and pewter tankards. “Local fishermen have seen strange shapes in the water that they can’t explain. Nobody from these parts has gone out on the canal and come back alive all day.”

  “Molly? Astrid? W-What are you doing here?” Holismus spluttered.

  “Same as you, I’d guess,” the Three Penny Bridge madam replied. “We’ve been headed east all day, and this was the only place willing to take in our kind. Just about the only open door we’ve seen since crossing the Draaienbrug.” Molly surveyed the faces of the Black Caps. “Where are Kramer, and the others?”

  Bescheiden told them about the plague of flesh-eating flies.

  The flame-haired madam shook her head. “Thought I’d seen everything there was to see from my line of work. Guess I was wrong.”

  The kindly priest returned. “Everything all right?”

  “It is here,” Holismus said, “but I wouldn’t want to speak for anywhere else.”

  Kurt’s men marched south-east from Goudberg, passing through Indierswijk and Rijkspoort on their way to Luigistad. The twelve boats chosen for the crossing had already been assembled, carried overland from a nearby builder’s yard. Each had room for eight men, though they could take double that number before the boats risked capsizing. At midnight the dozen wooden craft went into the water and the militia took their places.

  Kurt chose to keep all the Black Caps with him—Ganz and Potts, Burke and Denkers. The captain’s boat had an ex-River Watch sailor called Dretsky at the helm, while heavyset militiaman Auteuil and his bulky colleague Willis were chosen to man the oars. Manann knows what kind of fighters they are, Kurt thought, but they’ve got enough heft to make certain we cross the Rijksweg in good time. If Belladonna was right about the undead creatures lurking below the surface, he didn’t want to spend a moment longer out on the water than was absolutely necessary.

  No sooner had he thought about her than she appeared, running towards the jetty where the boats were moored, a small, oblong bundle in her grasp. She beckoned Kurt over to her, out of earshot from the leering militiamen. “I wanted to give you this,” Belladonna explained, handing him the bundle. Kurt undid the waterproof cloth wrapping to reveal a clutch of crossbow bolts, the sharpened end coated with a glittering, purple substance. “That’s a special kind of flash-powder I’ve been experimenting with. Scratch it across a rough surface, like a cobble or a wall, and the bolt will catch fire no matter how damp the conditions. Fire the bolt into the sky and it will cast a flare of purple light into the air, visible from anywhere—even the thickest of fogs. I will come find you.”

  Kurt arched an eyebrow at her. “You think I’ll need rescuing?”

  “I hope not, but in case of emergency…”

  “Thank you.” He rewrapped the bolts and tucked the slender bundle into a pouch slung over one shoulder. “I’d better head off. Places to go, necromancers to slay.”

  “Just another day in Suiddock,” Belladonna smiled.

  “Something like that.”

  “I’d better go, Brother Nathaniel’s waiting for me.”

  “The witch hunter?”

  She nodded, smiling at Kurt’s bemusement. “He’s helping me search for other survivors from the River Watch blockade. I think he feels guilty about what happened.” Belladonna studied the captain a moment, before darting forwards and kissing him on the lips. “For luck,” she whispered in his ear, before hurrying away. Kurt watched her go, inhaling the whiff of perfume she left behind. He couldn’t help wondering if they’d ever see each other again. Ganz made a show of clearing his throat.

  “We’re ready whenever you are, captain,” he muttered from the boat.

  Kurt strode across and stepped into the Black Caps’ vessel. He gave a strong, clear signal for all the boats to slip their moorings and head out across the river. Auteuil and Willis strained at the oars, sending the craft forwards into the expanse of water that cut Marienburg in half. Kurt couldn’t help looking at the black, bleak surface of the Rijksweg, wondering what horror was lurking below it.

  Farrak clenched his left hand into a fist, the dry and wrinkled skin rasping against itself. The corpse of Captain Ruben Damphoost twitched and flinched in the sky, old wounds splitting open to let fresh blood flow from within. The crimson liquid cascaded down into a pool that hung in the air, defying gravity. Farrak preened in the scarlet reflection, before muttering a sinister incantation. The blood’s surface shimmered, transforming from a mirror into a window upon events elsewhere in the ci
ty.

  Skeletons marched across the bottom of the Rijksweg clambering over debris left by centuries of trade and trauma, boats broken in battle or scuttled by smugglers. Above them ghouls floated north on the water’s surface, their debased bodies still needing breath to survive. As the undead passed each sunken vessel, the remnants of those who had once crewed the ships rose up to join them. Some were little more than skeletons themselves, their bones picked clean by sea creatures. Others were encrusted with barnacles and coral, a few with fish living inside their skulls and ribcages. The rest were more recent arrivals in the Rijksweg—corpses dumped from the Hoogbrug during the dead of night, or lost overboard from death barges transporting the bodies south to the crematoria at Doodkanaal. All of them were long dead, and all had been resurrected by Farrak’s dark magic, his spells and invocations.

  The necromancer fluttered his eyelids and the window of blood showed the Rijksweg from above, bathed in moonlight. From this viewpoint he could just discern a dark mass moving across the bottom of the river, like a black cloud beneath the surface. The leading edge of that dark mass had already reached the northern archipelago of Marienburg, and parts of his undead army were marching along the cuts and other waterways that honeycombed districts like Schattinwaard and Rijkspoort. They kept themselves below the surface, a secret army unseen by blithe mortals who could not imagine any fighting force could remain underwater for more than mere moments.

  Two areas remained unmolested. The elf enclave of Sith Rionnasc’namishathir was unsullied by Farrak’s undead army, driven off by powerful spells of protection. The other district still free from infiltration by the living dead was Goudberg. For reasons known only to the necromancer, his minions were bypassing that part of Marienburg. Farrak smiled, but on his taut and ancient features the expression best resembled a hideous leer. He had other plans for Goudberg, plans that needed more than brute strength and overwhelming weight of numbers. Finesse could be just as powerful a weapon in the right hands. The necromancer clenched his fist once more, squeezing a fresh torrent of crimson from Damphoost’s corpse, as if he was extracting the juice from a blood orange.

  A flotilla of small craft was creeping across the Rijksweg, moving from north to south, seeking to hide beneath the cover of a passing cloud’s shadow. Farrak considered letting them pass unhindered, as whoever was on board could pose no meaningful threat to the empire of death he was sculpting from Suiddock and surrounding districts. But the audacity of those who sent the boats deserved punishment, not reward. Crush the vessels and all who sailed in them, so their fate might be an example to all who dared defy him.

  Farrak licked his dry, wizened lips in hungry anticipation. Without another living soul left alive in Suiddock to torment, he felt the need for some sport. The fools on the canal should provide ample amusement until the rest of the undead army was in position. “Let the fun begin,” the necromancer murmured to himself.

  The boats were two-thirds of the way across the Rijksweg when the attack came. Kurt could see lights along the shore of Noord Miragliano, and even make out the stained-glass windows of a temple, the black silhouette of its steeple the highest point on the district’s skyline. But all thoughts of reaching Marienburg’s southern archipelago were torn away when the boat on Kurt’s left broke apart, tipping its passengers into the cold, black water. The militiamen cursed and swore, complaining about shoddy workmanship by the builders, not realising the danger fast approaching.

  “Quick, help them into other boats,” Kurt commanded. He leant over the side and extended a hand towards a militiaman. “Come on, we need to get you out of the water.”

  “Thanks, it’s freezing in—”

  But the militiaman’s words were cut off as unseen hands pulled him beneath the surface. One moment he was talking to Kurt, the next he was gone, a few bubbles and ripples on the water’s surface the sole evidence of his disappearance.

  “Taal’s teeth,” the captain hissed. “It’s happening again, just like Belladonna said!”

  “What’s happening?” Ganz demanded.

  Another of the spilled militiamen vanished below the surface, followed by another and another. Four down, four to go. By now the others in the water had seen what was happening to their brothers-in-arms. They kicked and thrashed their way towards the nearest boats, desperate to reach safety. But each of them was plucked from below, taken one at a time to some unknown, underwater torment. The last man had made it to Kurt’s boat, where Ganz and Potts had hold of his arms. They were dragging him aboard when the monsters below the surface came to claim him. It became a brutal tug of war, with the militiaman being almost torn in two. Such was the strength of those dragging him down, it was threatening to capsize the watchmen’s boat, tipping them all into the sea.

  “Let him go,” Kurt snarled.

  “We can save him!” Potts protested.

  “No, you can’t. You’ll get us all killed,” the captain hissed. “Let him go.”

  “He’s right,” Ganz told the new recruit, releasing his own hold on the terrified militiaman. “Let him go, you fool.” Potts shook his head, refusing to give in, but without the help of Ganz he couldn’t match whatever was beneath the river’s surface. The militiaman sank beneath the water, until his screaming face was swallowed by it.

  Finally, Potts let go, tumbling over backwards in the boat. His head hit against the wooden hull with a dull crack, and he didn’t move again. Kurt spat out a curse, climbing over Burke and Auteuil to reach Potts.

  “Leave him,” Ganz snarled, “the young fool’s not worth bothering about.”

  “Unfortunately, he is,” Kurt replied. “Potts is the watch commander’s nephew.” He pressed an ear to the raw recruit’s chest and listened. “He’s just out cold.”

  Cries for help from further across the water rang out, followed by another set of shouts and screams. Ganz stood up in the boat. “We just lost two more crews. I don’t know what’s doing this, but we need to reach dry land—now.”

  “Get rowing, all of you!” Kurt bellowed at the other boats. “Double time!”

  Auteuil and Willis were still regaining their momentum when the first barnacle-covered corpse burst from the water and landed inside the boat. “Sweet Shallya! Now they’re throwing dead bodies at us,” Willis shrieked, dropping his oar into the water.

  The corpse rolled over and opened its eyes, glaring at the militiaman. “Look who’s talking,” it hissed, before sinking a mouthful of fangs deep into Willis’ neck.

  Andries and Wijk had spent their afternoon rolling barrels of gunpowder to the northern end of the Hoogbrug. The fact neither watchman knew anything about fuses spared them the dangerous task of rigging the mighty bridge to explode. Instead they were reassigned to the Paleisbuurt wharf, where they helped Brother Nathaniel make a private boat ready to sail. The witch hunter had commandeered a vessel owned by Anton van Raemerswijk, heir of the House van Raemerswijk and scion for one of the Ten. The family crest of a gold coin over a ship on a black shield was emblazoned on every possible surface.

  The watchmen wanted to know how the witch hunter had secured the sleek, elegant vessel from the foppish youth, but didn’t dare ask. Instead they set about loading the vessel with weapons and provisions, careful to follow every instruction Nathanial gave. Things improved with the appearance of a beautiful young woman, incongruously clad in River Watch garb. Andries sidled over to her and made a few suggestions about what they could do below deck, while the witch hunter was looking the other way.

  The woman slapped his face, the blow making a resounding smack and leaving a telltale hand print on the Black Cap’s left cheek. “You’ve already had your hands on me once today,” she hissed, “and that was once too often. Try it on again and I’ll tell the witch hunter all about your guilty secrets.”

  “I don’t have any guilty secrets,” Andries protested.

  “Everyone has guilty secrets,” Belladonna replied. She shivered and coughed, still suffering the effects of her recent o
rdeals.

  “You’re the woman Andries pulled out of the canal earlier,” Wijk realised.

  “Now he tells me,” his partner muttered.

  Nathaniel returned to the vessel, bringing blankets and dry clothes. “That’s all of it. If we find anyone still alive out on the water, we’ll be able to keep them alive until a healer and apothecary can treat them.” He peered at Belladonna beneath the lanterns and moonlight that illuminated the wharf. “Sure you want to do this?”

  She nodded. “Anyone who’s still alive out there won’t survive until morning. If we’re going to save them, it has to be now.”

  The two of them clambered into the sleek boat, Nathaniel ordering the Black Caps to cast off the lines linking it to the wharf. Andries and Wijk used boat hooks to push the vessel towards open water, where tidal currents drew it further away, out into the canal. The watchmen didn’t notice the three figures climbing out of the water, all clad in crimson cloaks that glistened like wet blood, or hear the blades slide from within sheaths made of human skin. Andries was still thinking of Belladonna’s beauty as his throat was slit from side to side. Wijk had a moment longer of life, enough to see his partner die, before he too was dancing with Morr. The bodies of both Black Caps were slid into the water, where grabbing hands spirited them away for hungry mouths. Farrak’s acolytes nodded to one another before melting into the shadows.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Burke was first to react in the boat laden with watchmen. He pulled his short sword from its scabbard and decapitated the barnacle-encrusted creature attacking Willis in a single, swift motion. The body toppled over the side of the boat, but the head remained attached to its victim, a death spasm locking the jaws tight round his neck. Blood gouted from the wound while Willis screamed out in pain and horror. Ganz glanced at Kurt: “Overboard?”

  The captain nodded. Willis was already good as dead, better to get rid of him as soon as possible, so he couldn’t impede their progress. “Cut off his head first.”