Bloodforged

by Nathan Long

  The guards charged in, slashing feverishly with their silvered long swords. Ulrika stepped back, parrying warily. Her man was a good blade, but no match for her – except for the silver. Without it, she would have dared a quick thrust and finished the fight as swiftly as possible, but one unlucky cut from his sword and it would be she who was finished.

  The cultist laughed. ‘Aye, fiend! We know your weakness!’

  He pressed in, slashing for her extended arm, but her hesitance had made him overconfident, and he left himself exposed. She bound his sword to the side with her dagger, then ran him through the heart with her rapier as he tried to retreat. Stefan dispatched his man at the same moment, ducking a wild slash and running him through the neck.

  Ulrika let out a sigh of relief, then frowned. ‘We neglected to question them.’

  Stefan shrugged. ‘With the violin in our possession, there is no need. Their plan is foiled.’

  Ulrika turned to where the mahogany violin case lay on the floor beside the dead warlock. It was covered in runic wards and seals, all apparently designed to imprison the violin, but despite them, the thing radiated eldritch power like a black sun, making her skin itch. ‘Let us destroy it here and now,’ she said, raising her rapier. ‘I can feel its vile influence through the box.’

  ‘No!’ said Stefan. ‘If it is truly possessed by a daemon, we would be in mortal danger. Smashing it might release it, and it could kill us both.’

  Ulrika looked at the case again, uneasy now. ‘But then what is to be done with it? If it remains whole, the cult will try to get it again.’

  Stefan frowned. ‘It is a pity Boyarina Evgena has added you to her blacklist. She is a great practitioner of the arts, I have heard, and would likely know a way to destroy it safely.’ He grunted angrily. ‘Well, we will find some way, but now is not the time to think on it. We will have to take it with us and decide later.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Ulrika.

  Her head swam as she reached for the case, and an almost uncontrollable urge to open it and take out the violin came over her. It begged her for release, promising her the fulfilment of all her desires, the vanquishing of all her enemies, the love of all whom she held dear. All she had to do was free it from its prison. She fought down the urge with difficulty, then slipped the case into a leather pack the dead warlock wore looped through his belt. Her spine shuddered as she slung the pack on her back. She could feel a burning that wasn’t heat sinking into her skin.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Quickly. I want to be rid of it as soon as possible.’

  Stefan nodded and they stepped onto the windowsill. Stefan started down immediately, but Ulrika stared to the east. The sky above the mountains was light grey. Dawn was coming. They would have to move swiftly if they were to make it back to the safety of her bakery basement before the sun rose. Ulrika steadied herself, then began to descend, forcing herself to move at a measured, moderate pace.

  As they reached the band of twisted stone, she braced, waiting for the visions and disorientation, but strangely, though they came, they were weaker, and did not overwhelm her. She didn’t need to close her eyes in order to find handholds this time. Was it because she had experienced the storm before? Was she used to it now? Had the warlock somehow damped them?

  Then she knew the cause. The violin was doing it. It wanted to escape, and was helping her get to the ground by suppressing the visions. The thought made her shiver. Was she doing the right thing taking it with her, or was it manipulating her mind? How could she know if she was in control of herself or if it was pulling her strings?

  They descended below the melted area and entered the spire again through a window. Ulrika worried about the vines and the bloodthirsty purple fruit, and wondered if they would have to return to the outside of the tower to avoid them, but when they reached the thicket, it was withered and dead, and all the pods lay motionless on the stairs, nothing more than little dried husks.

  ‘As I predicted,’ said Stefan as they ducked through the desiccated vines. ‘The warlock has cleared the way for us.’

  Ulrika was suddenly very glad they had killed him before he was able to utter his spell.

  From there on they hurried down the stairs almost at a run, passing without pausing at the strange scenes they had stared at on the way up. Then, just as they rounded the last turn before descending into the vaulted entry hall, Stefan jolted to a sudden stop. Ulrika stopped too, catching herself on the banister.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Heartbeats,’ he said. ‘Below us.’

  Ulrika extended her senses and felt them too. A dozen or so, at rest at the bottom of the stairs. ‘More cultists.’

  They crept silently down the stairs until they descended through the roof of the great chamber, then stopped at the wide gap where the stairs had broken away, and peered over the edge into the murk below. In the light of a few lanterns, a group of cultists in cloaks and masks waited amongst the rubble. Some paced, some sat, some murmured together.

  One of the pacers turned to a man who reclined on the stairs, quietly reading a book. ‘What takes so long? Where are they?’

  The man with the book spoke without looking up. ‘The climb is difficult and the vault may take some time to open, brother. Be patient.’

  Ulrika’s lips curled. She knew this voice too. It was the crook-backed sorcerer she and Raiza had observed leading the ceremony in the temple of Salyak – the man who had trapped the innocent girl’s soul in a bottle.

  Another cultist looked up at the pacer and laughed. ‘Do you fear this place, little one? When the queen comes, it will be a shrine!’ The voice was harsh and foreign, and sounded like two people talking at once.

  Stefan pointed to the hole in the bricked-up front door and whispered in her ear. ‘If we can cross this gap silently, we can descend low enough that we will be able to gain the hole in the door before they can react.’

  Ulrika looked at him, disappointed. ‘But the crooked man is here. The one who got away from me before.’

  Stefan eyed her levelly. ‘Do you want vengeance, or do you want to save Praag?’

  Ulrika hung her head. ‘You are right. Forgive me.’

  Stefan shrugged, then, with infinite care, he took up one of the ropes that dangled from the broken banister and lowered himself over the edge of the last step. Ulrika selected another rope and did the same, slipping slowly down it hand under hand so she did not make it creak with her swaying.

  At last her feet touched the top step and she planted them with care, making sure not to nudge any of the tools still scattered there. Stefan landed with equal silence beside her, and together they began to tiptoe down the curving stair towards the oblivious cultists.

  It was then that the violin decided to play a tune.

  Ulrika froze with shock as the cultists sprang to their feet and looked up towards the wild melody. Stefan glared at the pack on her back.

  ‘Treacherous thing!’ he hissed. ‘Down! Quickly!’

  He pounded down the stairs and Ulrika sprinted after him, the violin shrieking its fevered song in her ears as it slapped against her spine.

  ‘Stop them!’ cried the leader. ‘They have the Fieromonte!’

  The cultists swarmed up the stairs, drawing swords and daggers and howling barbaric battle cries as the violin sawed out a wild dance. Ulrika and Stefan met them two-thirds of the way down the spiral – and cut through them like so much chaff, their rapiers and daggers licking like lightning among them, blocking clumsy strikes and impaling chests, necks and groins.

  But as they broke through them, three more – one small and two huge – charged up to block their way. Ulrika and Stefan attacked them negligently, but these cultists were different, and slashed back at them with unnatural speed and strength – and silver. One of the giants wielded a huge silvered axe that nearly knocked Ulrika’s rapier from her hand. The little one whirled two silvered long-knives, and Ulrika had to lurch back as one flashed an inch from her eye
s. Beside her, Stefan barely dodged the second giant’s axe – identical to that of the first.

  ‘Defilers!’ snarled the smaller cultist, raising a voice like two voices over the wail of the still-screaming violin. ‘Give us the vessel!’

  Higher up the stairs, the cultists Ulrika and Stefan had pricked in passing were recovering and edging down towards them.

  ‘Across!’ called Stefan.

  He kicked back one of the giants and vaulted from their staircase to the other. Ulrika laughed and did the same, fanning back her attackers and bounding across the gap to the second spiral as they slashed futilely after her.

  The weight of the violin case slapped against her back and made her stumble as she landed. Stefan steadied her, and they turned to descend, but before they took a step, the little cultist and the two giants landed in front of them, blocking their way. Ulrika gaped as she went on guard. What manner of men could make such a leap?

  ‘Do you think your night-born strength will save you?’ shrilled the little one in its strange double voice. ‘We are stronger! We are blessed!’

  And with that, the three cultists ripped off their cloaks and flung them aside, revealing themselves to be entirely naked, and not entirely human. Ulrika recoiled, repulsed. Stefan grunted a curse.

  The little one was a woman, red-haired and sun-bronzed, with twisting Norse tattoos all over her wiry, slim-hipped body. She was brutally attractive, with sultry eyes that looked out from under snakelike dreadlocks, but she was repellent as well, for the mouth on her face was not the only one she bore. A fat goitre grew from her neck, as if she were birthing a second head, and a drooling mouth distended from it and licked its plump lips with a long pink tongue.

  Her monolithic companions were just as disturbing, for though they were identical twins – hard-muscled, barbarically beautiful giants with braided blond hair and blue eyes – one was emphatically male, while the other was abundantly female, and the skin of both gleamed with the hard white lustre of porcelain.

  ‘Foolish corpses!’ said the little woman from her mouths. ‘You stand before Jodis the Unsated, handmaiden to Sirena Amberhair, she who will soon be Queen of Praag. In her name, I shall be your doom. In her name, I shall–’

  ‘Get on with it,’ sneered Ulrika, and lunged at her while she was still in mid-sentence.

  If the woman was caught off guard she didn’t show it. She parried Ulrika’s stroke with ease and pressed back, her long-knives blurring, as her companions charged Stefan, chopping with their axes and ululating like banshees. Ulrika could not stand against Jodis’s attack – it was too fast, and she feared the silver too much. Just one touch of those knives could cripple her. She backed away, parrying and dodging, looking for a hole in the shining web the Norsewoman wove around herself while the violin shrilled and sawed in her ears. If only it would shut up.

  Beside her, Stefan too was backing up. His sword was striking the twin giants repeatedly, but it only chimed off them as if they were made of marble, and each time, their silvered axes sliced perilously close to his head and neck.

  Beyond their fights, the remaining cultists were stumbling down the other stairway and coming for the one she and Stefan had leapt to. They would be surrounded again in moments, and couldn’t hope to survive it.

  Ulrika blocked Jodis’s blades, but the mutant woman kicked her in the chest with a bare foot and she crashed against the banister, jamming the violin case painfully into her spine and making the instrument howl with anger. As she stopped herself from pitching headlong over the rail, Ulrika saw the crook-backed sorcerer staring up at the fight from the floor below and waiting, shimmering purple energy wreathing his hands.

  Jodis attacked again and Ulrika ducked away, an idea forming – a way to remove at least one threat. She blocked the Norsewoman’s blades again, knocking them to the sides. Jodis took the bait and kicked her in the stomach as she had before. Ulrika threw herself back and deliberately flipped backwards over the banister, dropping right towards the crooked man.

  He dived aside with a cry, the energy in his hands dissipating in his surprise. Ulrika twisted in mid-air and landed in a crouch, then sprang instantly at him, aiming her rapier at his heart, but the unaccustomed weight of the violin case threw her off and she ran him through the guts instead. He shrieked and collapsed in the rubble, clutching his torn middle.

  Ulrika rose to finish him off, but Jodis dropped down and blocked her way. Behind her, three lesser cultists were racing to join her.

  ‘Cease your struggles, puppet,’ the Norsewoman laughed, with both her mouths. ‘Don’t you see that Slaanesh pulls your strings?’

  Ulrika lunged at her, hoping to kill her before her help arrived, but the violin case again threw her off balance, and Jodis’s silver blades turned the attack. Ulrika cursed, frustrated, as the violin laughed and the three cultists swarmed in. Damn the violin. It was hitting her and bumping her arms with every move, and its constant shrilling melody was making it hard to concentrate.

  Ulrika killed a cultist, then glanced up at the stairs, drawn by a horrible squeal echoing from above. The male giant was reeling back, crashing through a mob of lesser cultists, his silver axe buried in his beautiful face, as his female twin lashed out at Stefan with berserk fury.

  Jodis came at Ulrika again, long-knives flashing. Ulrika parried the left blade, but the violin case knocked her dagger arm out of position and the second knife slid across the back of her wrist. Ulrika jumped back, hissing, as sickening pain shot up her arm to her shoulder. The silvered knife had made only the shallowest of cuts, but already the skin around the scratch was peeling back and blackening.

  Ulrika’s dagger fell from her fingers and the world swam around her. She fought not to faint, backing and lashing wildly with her rapier to keep Jodis and the last cultists at bay. The violin laughed in her ears, its weight tugging at her, making her stumble. She couldn’t fight like this! With a curse, she shrugged the straps of the pack off her shoulders and tossed it and the violin aside, then went on guard again, holding her throbbing wrist behind her.

  ‘Now,’ Ulrika growled. ‘Now I will kill you.’

  She lunged, stabbing savagely, and Jodis fell back, barely turning the rapier’s point aside in time. Ulrika feinted at her, then slashed to the side and cut down the last two cultists before following up with another thrust at Jodis. The Norsewoman retreated in confusion, dancing away from Ulrika’s questing point and grunting with effort. Ulrika grinned. Now she was fighting like she should! Without the weight of the violin and its incessant yammering, she was light as air, she could think. She would end this in seconds.

  But in the next instant, Jodis recovered her composure, and was suddenly blocking all her attacks with ease. She laughed as she forced Ulrika back. ‘Did I not say Slaanesh pulled your strings?’

  Ulrika didn’t know what she meant until, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the crook-backed sorcerer limping quickly towards the door, her pack clutched to his bleeding stomach.

  From over the sounds of battle above she heard Stefan curse. ‘Fool of a girl! What have you done?’

  Ulrika’s guts shrivelled. What mad impulse had made her throw aside the violin? What had she been thinking? But it hadn’t been her, had it? The violin had made a dupe of her, just as she’d feared.

  With a snarl of rage she dodged around Jodis, trying to catch the hunchback before he reached the door, but the Norsewoman skipped back, staying in front of her and slashing with her knives.

  ‘What?’ she laughed with both mouths. ‘Will you take back what you have given?’

  A cry of pain shrilled from above and Stefan blurred down the stairs, racing after the sorcerer as the female twin toppled over the banister behind him.

  Jodis looked towards him, crying out. ‘No! Stop!’

  Ulrika took advantage of the Norsewoman’s distraction and stabbed her through the ribs, then shouldered her down and ran for the sorcerer as well. Daylight shone through the hole at the base of the door. Th
ey had to stop him before he got out or they wouldn’t be able to follow.

  The crooked man yelped as he saw them converging on him, then raised his free hand. It coruscated with shimmering power. Ulrika and Stefan sprinted faster, hoping to strike before he attacked, but when he released the boiling energy, it wasn’t at them, but at the door.

  A near-invisible eruption of power smashed like a fist into the bricks that walled it up, and they burst outwards in a thunderous explosion of dust and rubble.

  Ulrika and Stefan back-pedalled desperately as the sorcerer ran out of the tower and morning sunlight stabbed into the darkness like a blazing spear-tip, but Ulrika couldn’t stop in time and sprawled into the searing shaft, throwing out her hands and dropping her sword as she slammed to the sunlit floor. The skin of her knuckles blistered and smoked. Her face felt as if it were on fire.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  RED PASSION

  Ulrika screamed and rolled as the fiery rays lanced her body. A firm hand pulled her into the shadows. She looked up through eyes half-blind with agony. Stefan stood above her, apparently unhurt.

  ‘Cover up,’ he said. ‘Quickly. We must go.’

  ‘G-go? But–’

  ‘I cannot fight them all! Hurry!’

  Ulrika looked past him and saw Jodis standing and starting towards them, blood streaming down her naked torso from where Ulrika had stabbed through the ribs. The giant female was also still alive, rising from the rubble at the base of the stairs with strange wounds all over her body that looked like star-shaped cracks in thick glass. Behind them, a few cultists lurched forwards too.

  ‘What’s wrong, corpses?’ laughed Jodis. ‘Why don’t you run?’

  Dizzy with pain, Ulrika fumbled gloves from her belt and hissed as she pulled them on over her blistered fingers. The Norsewomen and the cultists were spreading out to surround them. She threw her cape over her throbbing head, then looked up. Stefan had pulled up the hood of his scholar’s cloak, but was otherwise unprotected.