02 - Death's City

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  “So, my young friend, what brings you here?” Magnus asked, as though they were still sitting in the cosy parlour of his home in Kohlstadt. Now he’d finally found the man he’d been searching for all this time, he wasn’t quite sure where to begin.

  “You do,” he began. “After that night in the woods…”

  “Ah yes.” Magnus nodded gravely. “A great disappointment to us all. The beastmen could hardly have chosen a less opportune time to intervene. Which was, no doubt, the point. We have enemies, Rudi, powerful ones, who would stop at nothing to cheat you of your destiny.”

  “You mentioned that,” Rudi said. “Just before they attacked, you said my destiny was foretold. What were you talking about?” The merchant reached across the table to grip Rudi’s arm with astonishing strength, his eyes sparkling in his ruined face with an intensity which made the young watchman flinch.

  “You are the vessel of all our hopes, Rudi. The one whose way we prepared for years. But, as I say, we have powerful enemies and they chose their time to strike well.”

  “You mean the sorceress,” Rudi said. In so far as it was possible for him to register an expression at all now, Magnus looked surprised.

  “You know about her?” he asked, glancing towards the door. “Then you’re playing a very dangerous game, it seems to me.”

  “I know she’s been trying to kill you,” Rudi said. “But I don’t understand. Who is she? And why does she hate you so much?”

  “We serve different masters,” Magnus said. “I suspected her true allegiance for some time and she made it clear that she suspected mine, but neither of us really knew for sure until that night in the Blessed Grove. They were her creatures that attacked us, you can be sure of that.”

  “I know,” Rudi said. “I saw her with them. And Hans Katzenjammer. What he became, I mean.”

  “A remarkable transformation,” Magnus said. “They came to my house a few nights ago and I barely escaped with my life. Again.” He chuckled throatily, hawking up a gobbet of phlegm. “I’m harder to kill than she bargained for, it seems.” He shrugged. “Fortunately I had this refuge already prepared, against just such a contingency.”

  “I know. I found a map in van Crackenmeer’s office,” Rudi said. He paused, unsure quite how to break the news. “They’d already been there, but they missed it.”

  “Then Cornelius is dead,” Magnus concluded, and Rudi nodded soberly. “And the map?”

  “I destroyed it,” Rudi said. “Just in time, too. Gerhard found the office just after I did.”

  “The witch hunter?” Magnus shook his head, apparently amused. “He’s certainly persistent, isn’t he?”

  “He’s dangerous,” Rudi insisted, surprised by the merchant’s levity. “He killed Greta Reifenstahl, and Sigmar knows how many others. He’s been on our trail ever since we left Kohlstadt, and since he reached Marienburg he’s been after you as well.”

  “Then we must work fast,” Magnus said. “Our preparations here have been far more hurried than in Kohlstadt, and on a much smaller scale, but they should prove adequate.” He stood, fast and decisive. “Morrsleib is full tonight. There’s no time to lose.”

  “Wait,” Rudi said. Things were beginning to make sense now, but there was still so much he didn’t understand. “My father…” The words caught in his throat for a moment and he felt as if he was choking. The image of the last sight he’d had of the man who’d raised him, blood pouring from the terrible wounds inflicted by the leader of the beastmen, gasping out his last words, rose up in his mind, blotting out everything else. “He said you knew my family. Where I came from.” His voice rose, his desperation for answers palpable in the tone of it. “I have to know! Am I von Karien?”

  “You are the heir,” Magnus said slowly, “and the vessel. Your father and I…” He hesitated. “Gunther Walder and I were charged with your protection. Even now there are those who would stop at nothing to prevent you from coming into your legacy.” He strode decisively towards the door of the ramshackle hut. “And if we are to frustrate them we have to act tonight.”

  His head spinning, Rudi tried to make sense of everything he’d heard. The answers he’d sought so desperately were in his hand at last, but he was as confused as ever. It seemed he really was the missing heir to the von Karien estates, and that shadowy enemies were stalking him to prevent him from claiming his birthright. But if Hans and the horned sorceress were working for them, why had they intervened to save him from harm so many times before? Was there someone else out there he needed to be wary of, whose existence he’d never even suspected? He turned back to Magnus, determined not to move until everything had been laid out before him.

  “Rudi!” Before he could speak again Hanna’s voice echoed through the tiny hovel, shrill with panic. “Rudi, help!”

  “Hanna!” He leapt for the door, his hand reaching for the sword at his belt, but before he could grasp it Magnus was there, barring his way.

  “Leaving already?” the merchant asked, moving with the speed of a striking serpent.

  “Get out of the way!” Rudi cried, trying to dodge past him.

  “I don’t think so.” The pose of affability was shrugged off like a garment, and an inhumanly strong hand reached out to grab the young watchman by the throat. Choking and kicking, Rudi found himself being lifted clear of the foetid floor. He tried to draw his sword, but Magnus clamped his other hand around his wrist, stilling it easily. “We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Gasping and choking, Rudi was hauled outside. The whole shanty town seemed to be in an uproar, although how much of that was due to the pounding of his own blood in his ears he couldn’t be sure. Voices were raised, harsh guttural tones barely recognisable as human, echoing the chant he’d heard in the warehouse the first time he’d seen Magnus.

  “Barhum yu! Barhum yu!” There was a terrible power in that sound and Rudi felt his bones vibrate with it.

  “Hanna!” he choked out, trying to twist his head to look for her, but the fingers holding his neck were like bands of iron and he was unable to catch more than a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye. She was still fighting, but it was a losing battle, he could tell. “Run!”

  “I’m trying to!” she snapped back, a trace of her old asperity beginning to assert itself. She punched one hunched figure hard in the face and it fell back. No sooner was it down than another stepped in to take its place, and then another. In moments she would be overwhelmed by the sheer force of numbers.

  Before that could be put to the test, however, the girl was wracked by another seizure, the worst he’d seen so far. She fell to the ground and lay there, spasming, foam dribbling though her tightly clenched teeth. Blood began to trickle from her nose. Clearly, once again, the dammed power within her had burst its bounds under the impetus of anger and fear.

  “Help her!” Rudi croaked, and Magnus laughed, a harsh sound devoid of any trace of fellowship or goodwill.

  “And why would I do that?” He half-dragged, half-carried Rudi away from the prostrate girl, who by now was lying almost inert, the only signs of life remaining an occasional moan or twitch. “Meat’s hard to come by in the Doodkanal.”

  In the moonlight, Rudi caught fleeting glimpses of the faces of the people surrounding them, although perhaps calling them people was no longer entirely accurate, and a mounting sense of horror swept over him. Beneath the bundles of rags which swathed them all he could make out features as ravaged as those of the man he’d once thought of as a friend; diseased, necrotic, rotting away, yet somehow imbued with a vitality which went beyond mere health. Their bodies too, what little he could discern of them, were equally twisted and misshapen, as though they’d been made of wax and been left too close to the fire.

  “Hail the vessel!” Magnus cried, just as he had that fateful night in the forest outside the village they’d both called home, and the diseased congregation echoed his call.

  “What the hell do you think
you’re doing?” Rudi demanded, trying to pry the merchant’s fingers away from his throat, but the effort was completely futile. Magnus laughed again, and with a shiver Rudi recognised the edge of insanity in it.

  “Fulfilling your destiny! Hail the vessel!”

  “Hail the vessel!” the damned things surrounding him echoed, and several more hands took hold of him. Completely immobilised, Rudi struggled in their grasp, and Magnus finally let go of his throat.

  “The wards!” The charred figure gestured peremptorily and a couple of the misshapen acolytes began to scratch strange symbols in the mud of the ground. They seemed to be making hard work of it, the harsh frost having solidified it to the consistency of brick, but they kept at it grimly, heedless of the traces of blood and other substances their ripped and tattered hands left on the rime hardened surface.

  Rudi craned his neck, trying to see what they were doing, but the details of the strange designs eluded him. Nevertheless they seemed hauntingly familiar, like the time he’d walked the pattern of furrows in Altman’s field and felt his very sense of his own identity shifting, slipping away.

  He had to stay focussed. He forced the sensation down, feeling something stir in the depths of his mind, and a strange kaleidoscope of emotions washed over him. Resentment, anticipation and a gloating sense of impending triumph. A faint voice whispered in the back of his mind, urging him to relax, let go…

  The breath was driven abruptly from his body as the twisted monstrosities holding him threw him to the ground, the impact snapping him back to himself and the wood of his bow digging deeply and uncomfortably into his back. He struggled desperately against the hands immobilising him, trying to reach his sword, or the knife concealed in his boot, but the effort was futile.

  “Hail the vessel! Hail the vessel!” Magnus was chanting the meaningless phrase over and over again, looming over him, blotting out the cool, silver light of Mannsleib. The diseased light of the Chaos moon shone fully on his face, however, turning it into something less than human. Sickly green light flashed from the blade of a rusted knife as his former friend raised it high above his head and gripped it with both hands. “In our Grandfather’s name…” Rudi flinched, anticipating the downward plunge of the filthy blade and powerless to prevent it.

  Thwip! An arrow appeared suddenly in Magnus’ throat. An almost comical expression of surprise followed the impact, then the light went out of his eyes and he toppled slowly to the ground. The grips restraining him slackened, misshapen heads turning to react to the threat, and Rudi surged to his feet, drawing his sword. Moonlight flashed on the blade, silver and green, and he lashed out at the nearest mutant. It fell back, shrieking, blood fountaining black in the colourless light.

  “Remember, he must be taken alive!” Rudi whirled, the familiar voice already betraying the identity of its speaker. Gerhard was standing a few yards away, his own weapon drawn, something dark and rectangular in his other hand. He tucked it inside his cloak as he moved forwards and Rudi belatedly recognised the warped remains of the notebook he’d thrown into the canal. It must have floated near enough to the landing stage for Gerhard or one of his mercenaries to have noticed it and fished it out, leading him straight to Magnus’ last hiding place.

  “You’re welcome to try,” Rudi said grimly.

  Gerhard took up a guard position, advancing cautiously towards him.

  “It should be obvious even to you by now that I’m not your enemy,” the witch hunter said, his voice as matter-of fact as ever. As if to emphasise the point, one of the diseased monstrosities charged in between them, flinging itself at Gerhard with a shriek no human throat should have been able to produce. The man in black parried its attack easily, opening up a wound which left its entrails spilling out onto the ground.

  The distraction was all that Rudi needed. While Gerhard dealt with the mutant, he turned and ran, trying to orientate himself. A scene of pure pandemonium met his eyes.

  Gerhard was not alone, as he’d already surmised, the band of mercenaries fanning out to engage the warped inhabitants of the festering slum. The once-human creatures were everywhere, swarming from their hovels with whatever makeshift weapons they could lay their hands on, their sheer weight of numbers going at least part of the way to counterbalance the superior fighting ability of the bounty hunters.

  As he’d expected, Conrad was hovering on the fringes of the battle, dropping one mutant after another with well-placed arrows, relieving the pressure on the others as best he could. Alwyn had her sword out, but appeared to be relying on her mystical abilities rather than her fencing skills. A nimbus of deeper darkness seemed to surround her, coalescing around her hand, and wherever she pointed it would flow, enveloping one mutant at a time. As the shadows surrounded their victim they seemed to thicken and the unfortunate monstrosity would collapse as though borne to the ground by their weight. None rose again, at least where Rudi could see.

  “Khazahai!” A gleeful battle-cry attracted his attention for a moment, to where Bodun’s battleaxe was cleaving its way through the densest group of the degenerate creatures the dwarf had been able to find. Theo stood close to him, almost back to back, fending off any incautious enough to try flanking them and cursing monotonously under his breath.

  “Sometimes I wonder why you don’t just become a trollslayer and have done with it,” the mercenary captain grumbled. “If you’ve got a bloody deathwish anyway…”

  “Oh come on,” Bodun riposted, neatly bisecting a cudgel wielding mutant. “Where’s the fun in picking on the easy ones?”

  Rudi had taken in all this in a matter of seconds and moved to defend himself from another pair of mutants even as he did so. His sword deflected a cut from what looked like the rusted remains of a kitchen knife, snapping it in two, and plunged into the torso of the creature next to the one wielding it. As it went down, he kicked out at the first one, breaking its kneecap, and it sprawled on the ground, shrieking. He watched it thrashing around for a moment, savouring its agony, then finished it off with a thrust through the heart.

  A berserker rage had him in its grip, a fury of disappointment and anger boiling up from somewhere deep within his mind. Magnus had betrayed him and now he couldn’t even trust the memory of his father any more. Had Gunther been a part of whatever strange and twisted agenda the merchant had been pursuing, or had he been another innocent dupe like himself? The only way to find out was to go to Altdorf and confront the von Kariens, but before then he could at least vent his frustration in bloodletting.

  Gerhard was engaging a whole swarm of the things, hacking away grimly as he tried to force his way through to get to Rudi, and the young watchman started cutting his way back towards the witch hunter. With him dead, at least he could continue his quest without the fear of pursuit and discovery which had dogged him throughout his sojourn in Marienburg.

  “Not so fast.” Rudi turned, just in time to parry a stroke aimed at his head. “He might want you alive, but I don’t.” Blades clashed, the stroke was deflected, and he found himself staring at Bruno. The youth glared back at him, hatred in his eyes, and renewed the attack. That was fine with Rudi. He’d never liked the young adventurer anyway and he’d kill him just as easily as one of the mutants.

  “You won’t be popular,” Rudi sneered. “Cheating your friends out of thirty crowns.”

  “It’ll be worth it.” Bruno thrust at his chest. Rudi stepped aside, turning, and tried to take him down with a kick to the back of the knee. Bruno was too quick and spun to face him, deflecting the attack with the flat of his blade. “That one was old when Sigmar was in swaddling. Is that the best you can do?”

  “You tell me.” Rudi countered, letting the momentum of the blow keep him moving, and struck out with his sword again. Bruno jumped back just in time to avoid being disembowelled. “I’m the one who moves like a ruptured duck, remember? Surely no match for an expert like you.”

  “Sneer while you can, Chaos-lover.” Bruno drove in furiously, forcing Rudi to give ground
, and would probably have killed him if a mutant hadn’t leapt on his back at the crucial moment. Rudi laughed, spun round behind his opponent, and slashed the creature’s throat.

  “Get off him, he’s mine.” He laughed exultantly, high on the rush of combat. Around him, the melee continued, but the bounty hunters were getting the upper hand by now. Pretty soon there would be no more mutants standing between them. No matter, he could kill them all and Gerhard too.

  “Don’t laugh at me!” Bruno howled, returning to the attack like a madman. “That’s all you were doing, wasn’t it, you and your slut. Pretending she was your sister, letting me feel… And all the time you were laughing at me!”

  So that was it. His pride had been hurt by the ruse Rudi and Hanna had used to conceal their identities while they were on the run. Evading the clumsy rush, Rudi rammed his elbow into the young mercenary’s chest, driving the breath out of him. Bruno folded and Rudi raised his sword for the killing stroke. He’d known the youth had been smitten with the girl, but he hadn’t realised…

  “Hanna.” The thought of her snapped him back to himself abruptly and he stilled the blow just on the point of delivering it. She was in danger, possibly dying. He had to help her. The killing rage drained out of him as though it had never been.

  Leaving Bruno gasping and retching on the frozen ground, heedless of the skirmish raging about him, Rudi ran back towards Magnus’ hut.

  Hanna was still lying where he’d left her, stirring feebly. Her eyes were open at least, and she seemed to be trying to speak. Rudi ran as hard as he could, shoulder charging a mutant out of the way, driving the hilt of his sword into its throat with a crunch of breaking cartilage, and hurdling its falling body as he did so. A grim foreboding took hold of him. He was going to be too late, he just knew it.

  “No!” he howled, as a cloaked and hooded figure stepped out of the shadows and walked unhurriedly towards the supine girl. “Leave her alone!” Another group of degenerate acolytes got between them and he hacked and slashed frantically with his sword, desperate to break through. The figure knelt next to Hanna, who stirred feebly.