by Nathan Long
Ulrika smirked. He might be scared, but he was still a halfling. She moved her hand from her hilt to her belt pouch and withdrew a gold crown.
‘And that will not change today,’ she said, and flipped the coin towards him with her thumb. He snatched it out of the air as quick as a snake striking.
‘Much obliged,’ he said. ‘Now, what was yer question again?’
‘Disreputable hay merchants,’ she said. ‘Someone who would take an order of fodder for four hundred horses and not tell the authorities.’
The halfling stroked his clean-shaven chin and pursed his lips. ‘Well now, there’re plenty o’lads around these parts who’d do a deal no questions asked, but not so many who’d be able to provide the quantity. Hmmm.’ He shot a look over his shoulder, then all around the square. ‘I’ve two names for ye,’ he said, leaning in. ‘Lanval the Bretonnian, across the market, and Bull Klostermann, down the way. Both o’em have big operations, and both ain’t too particular about who they do business with. Give them a try.’
‘I will,’ said Ulrika, and took out a second crown. ‘And in the name of the countess, I thank you.’
The halfling snatched the coin out of her hand before she could flip it, then gave her a sly salute.
‘Anything for the army, fraulein,’ he said.
An hour later, with the eastern sky greying and time running short, Ulrika crouched in the topmost loft of Bull Klostermann’s tall, narrow warehouse, where the hay was winched up on pallets to lofts stacked one above the next like tenement flats.
Lanval the Bretonnian had been a washout. She’d heard him mention many less-than-scrupulous deals while eavesdropping on a rooftop near the window of his warehouse office, but no mention of any recent or upcoming large order. He seemed more interested in selling second-rate fodder at first-rate prices than dealing with shady customers.
Bull Klostermann, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any dirty business going at all. Despite running his place like an ill-tempered pirate, sending his cringing crew scurrying up into the lofts with foul-mouthed curses, all his sales seemed to be going to legitimate customers, and she had heard no whisperings of back-room deals or ‘special’ shipments.
After a dull half-hour watching the hay-monkeys winching down pallets and setting them in the carts of clients, Ulrika decided to give up and hurry back to the plague house before the sun rose, but just as she started for the roof, she heard Klostermann turn down a big order.
‘Sorry, mein herr,’ he boomed. ‘Haven’t got that much on hand. Try Sauerapfel down the street. That halfling grafter always has more than he can sell.’
Ulrika paused and looked around. The buyer had asked for two hundred bales, and there were more than two hundred bales here on the uppermost loft – many more. And now that she thought of it, none of Klostermann’s crew had climbed up this far since she had entered. Was this the Sylvanians’ hay? Had she been sitting in the middle of what she was looking for all along?
She looked back at the narrow slot of sky through the vent. If she hesitated another minute it would be too late. The sun would rise over the rooftops and she would be burned alive, but what if the Sylvanians’ human servants came for the hay during the day? She couldn’t follow them if they did, but she could at least see their faces. She could hear their voices. That would be a start.
Ulrika turned away from the roof vent with a sigh, resigned to waiting out the day in the dusty loft, then climbed up into the rafters to find a hidden perch to rest upon. Spying was boring work. She would rather be fighting, but as her father had said on more than one occasion, you can’t fight the enemy until you know where he is.
The slap of feet on ladder rungs brought Ulrika’s head up, and she looked around. The light coming through the roof vent was just as dim as it had been when she had retreated into her corner, but now it was the harsh red of twilight instead of the gentle pink of morning. She had slept the day away!
At least the hay on the top loft was still stacked below her, though apparently not for long. The hay-monkeys were coming up every ladder, hooks and ropes and storm lanterns slung on belts and over shoulders, while Klostermann urged them on with ear-blistering exhortations.
‘Move your scrawny arses, you whore-son inverts, or I’ll feed y’yer own wedding tackle! Them wagons ain’t gonna load themselves. If we’re caught at this I’ll sell yer daughters to the excise men for a bribe – not that the poxy sluts would be worth a Tilean groat. Now, move!’
The warehouse men scampered to the top loft like terrified squirrels and began fixing ropes to hay pallets and then hooking them to the winches, which lowered them down to the ground floor with a constant creaking.
Ulrika slipped silently through the rafters to look down over the edge of the loft. On the ground floor, a line of wagons tailed out through the back door into the back yard while a pallet of hay was being lowered into the bed of the first in the train. She strained her senses towards the driver, who stood by Klostermann while an assistant at a table counted coins dumped from a bulging purse.
The driver was human – she could sense his heart-fire burning in his chest – but though he was dressed like a carter, his face was hard and scarred, and his muscle and posture were those of a professional soldier. The other drivers were the same. The question was, were they the soldiers she was looking for?
‘All correct?’ asked Klostermann.
His assistant finished counting the coins and nodded. ‘Aye, boss. It’s all there.’
Klostermann nodded to the driver. ‘Thank ye, mein herr. And if y’want to inspect the goods, yer welcome to have a look.’
‘No need,’ said the man, climbing up to his bench. ‘If you’ve cheated us, we’ll find another dealer, and you’ll find your head missing one night.’
Klostermann paled and babbled some response, but Ulrika didn’t hear it. She had her confirmation at last. The driver had a thick Stirlander accent, the same accent Roche and all of her sire Krieger’s servants had had. He was from Sylvania. These were men of the vanished cavalry. All she had to do was follow them and she would find the Sylvanian camp.
She looked up. A leap and a quick climb through the roof vent and she was gone. All she needed was something to draw the men’s attention while she did it. She looked around. Ah. Perfect. The withered corpse of a dead rat lay upon her rafter, not two paces away. She reached out and flicked it off and it dropped towards the ground floor.
‘Who threw that?’ roared Klostermann a second later. ‘Which one of you threw a dead rat at my head? I’ll flay the mangey hide off ye!’
The hay-monkeys all froze and stared down towards their fulminating boss, and Ulrika climbed silently out into purple twilight, Klostermann’s bellowings following her like a poisonous cloud. The first hay wagon was just starting south towards the Handelstrasse as she padded to the front of the warehouse.
‘Lead on, Stirlander,’ she said, grinning. ‘Lead on.’
She sprang to the roof of the next warehouse and then the next after that, following the progress of the wagon and the others that followed it like a circling hawk tracking the futile scampering of a rabbit.
They turned right on the Handelstrasse, and Ulrika gathered herself and jumped after them, aiming for a flat-roofed building across the wide street. It was a leap that tested the limits of her abilities, and she knew as soon as she kicked off that she was barely going to make it. She stretched her feet for the crenellations of the roof’s coping, but just before she landed, something dark flashed by above her and kicked her hard in the back, changing her trajectory and smashing her chest-first into the low wall instead.
Gasping with pain and shock, Ulrika scrabbled feebly at the slates as she slid backwards towards the drop. What had hit her? Where had it come from?
A booted foot stepped on her wrist, stopping her backwards slide.
‘I know you,’ said a deep
voice above her.
She tipped back her spinning head. Standing at the edge of the roof where she should have landed was an indistinct figure. That he was tall and male and powerfully built she could see, but despite her night vision and unnatural senses, she could make out little else about him. He was silhouetted as if standing in front of the bright sun, his face strangely blurred and shadowed. All she could see of it was a pair of red eyes, glinting as if they reflected the bloody light of the twilight sky. Ulrika could be certain of only one thing about him. His heart did not beat.
‘You are the Lahmian who knows something of the art of war,’ he continued, in a voice as calm and certain as a king’s. ‘That is a dangerous combination. Too dangerous, I’m afraid.’
And with that he drew a long sword and raised it high.
chapter seven
THE OFFER
Ulrika wrenched her arm from under the vampire’s boot as the sword swept for her neck. She dropped backwards off the roof and the blade missed, which was a relief, but the street was four storeys below and closing fast.
She looked down. A sign, jutting out from the wall on an iron bracket, rushed up at her. She threw out her arms and caught it, badly. The bracket hit her in the ribs, folding her in half and stunning her, but her weight and momentum bent it and she began to slip off as the sign swung wildly beneath her.
With a dazed hand she clutched the bracket, then looked up through blurry eyes. The vampire at the edge of the roof was reaching down with his hands, and the darkness that obscured him was extending towards her like intertwining serpents. She looked around. It was still too far to drop, even for her, but there was a window in the wall beside her, shuttered tight.
Ulrika pushed up on the bent bracket, set her feet on the swinging sign, and kicked hard towards the window, punching with a gloved fist. The snaking darkness caught her as she launched, and her limbs went loose at its touch, but she had enough momentum to crack the shutters, and fell halfway through them. She scrabbled weakly through broken slats like a rat squirming into its nest to escape a cat, then fell into a dark, book-lined room and lay there, panting and prodding her ribs to see if they were broken.
The vampire’s footsteps creaked on the roof above her, then came a heavy impact outside the window. He had jumped to the bracket! Ulrika forced herself up, groaning, as he widened the hole in the shutters with his claws. The strength and sensation were returning to her limbs, but not fast enough. He would kill her if he caught her.
There was a table with fetters and leather straps in the centre of the room, and a door in the far wall. She vaulted to the door and kicked through into a narrow corridor, lined on either side with gold-inscribed doors – Dr Hironius Gatt: Physician. Professor Aelbert Olsonsson: Dentist and Bloodletter. It was a building full of leeches. Appropriate.
The vampire’s footsteps thudded in the surgery behind her as she ran. The dark hall ended at a central stair. She hurried up it, heading for the roof. She needed to elude her pursuer and return to following the wagons.
No. No she didn’t.
She slowed as a thought came to her. Why follow the wagons when she had a Sylvanian to question? Well, he might kill her, of course, but not if she struck first. She ran on and shouldered through the door at the top of the stairs. The rooftop was a grid of filthy pigeon coops. She raced through them, heading for the far edge, as the vampire’s muffled footsteps pounded up the stairs behind her.
At the end of the roof, she put a foot on the coping, but instead of leaping to the next building, she sprang left behind the last of the coops and backed into the shadows, trying not to sneeze or cough as the stink of pigeon droppings filled her nose.
The stairwell door slammed open and she heard the vampire stride out onto the roof, then slow to a cautious creep.
‘Have you gone, daughter of Lahmia?’ he asked. ‘Or do you hide from me?’
Ulrika edged silently behind the pigeon coop, peering through the wicker lattice as the birds ruffled and muttered in their sleep. He was following her footsteps in the dust, but though he studied the roof, his eyes never stopped flicking to the sides and his sword remained at the ready. At the edge, however, he stopped and searched the nearby roofs without glancing behind. Ulrika smiled, then stepped around the coop and charged his back, her arm bent in preparation for a thrust.
He dodged right with incredible speed, and she had to backpedal desperately to avoid sailing over the edge. His sword was in her face before she recovered, the blade slicing her cheek. A second cut came immediately after the first and she beat it aside with her dagger an inch from her breast, then crashed back into the last coop, waking the birds into squeaking fright.
‘A cat among the pigeons,’ purred the vampire as he advanced, his face still impossibly shadowed. ‘And with an alley cat’s claws.’
He slashed again, but she had recovered, and turned it with ease, then jabbed for his side with her dagger. He jerked back only just in time, then dropped into a more formal guard.
Ulrika smiled. She had surprised him. ‘I learned the blade on the oblast, Sylvanian, not in the alley.’
‘I know very well who you are, Ulrika Magdova Straghov,’ he said, circling. ‘You are she who killed poor crippled Murnau and foiled his vengeance on your sisters. I thought you had left the nest.’
Ulrika stared. ‘You know–?’ Then she understood. ‘You were behind it! You were the one who made Murnau attack us! The “voice” that whispered in his ear!’
She lunged at him, rapier thrusting for his heart. This was the leader of the plot! The true murderer of all the Lahmians in Nuln! If she could bring him to Gabriella, all would be forgiven. ‘Who are you? Where are you hiding your troops?’
The vampire knocked her thrust aside with a stinging block and parried her dagger with his hilt. ‘Isn’t asking questions pointless without your blade to my throat?’
‘It will be,’ Ulrika growled, and drove at him again, rapier and dagger darting like angry hawks.
He fell back before her blurring blades and she herded him between two of the coops. Now she had him! His long sword was a cutting weapon, and there was no room to slash in the narrow space. Every time he tried, wicker and feathers flew as it chopped into the cages. Her rapier, on the other hand, was made for point play, and she thrust it past his guard again and again, forcing him back and back.
Enraged, he swung all the harder, and caught his sword in the frame of a coop, sending a cloud of frightened pigeons flapping all around them. An opening! Ulrika skip-lunged through the wings and found flesh. Though the shadows that surrounded him hid the strike, she felt the resistance and heard him gasp, and when she drew her blade back, it was red.
The vampire broke for the roof’s edge. Ulrika batted aside pigeons and sprinted after him. At the north edge, he leapt, clearing an alley, and landed on the shingles of a peaked roof on the far side. She leapt too, then scrambled up the incline, slashing at his ankles as he clambered ahead of her.
He turned at the peak and chopped down. She veered aside and the blade bit into the shingles as she gained the peak too. They faced each other on the narrow ridge and went on guard. He pressed his hand to his side where she had pinked him.
‘You are wasted with the Lahmians, girl,’ he said. ‘A warrior should stand with other warriors and a Sylvanian should stand with other Sylvanians. Your sire was one of us. So should you be.’
‘My sire was an honourless coward,’ spat Ulrika. ‘And a warrior would not send a mad monster against his enemies instead of facing them himself.’
‘War is rarely fought by honourable means,’ said the vampire. ‘But it took strength and courage to defeat Murnau, and I admire you for it. More so than your “mistress” ever has.’
Ulrika snarled and sprang at him. ‘Leave my mistress out of this!’
He met her attack and their swords rang and glinted in the light of Morrs
lieb, which hung over the city like a diseased fruit. Free of the confining space between the coops, the vampire’s strength and speed were almost unassailable. No matter how quick and subtle Ulrika’s attacks, his long sword was there to block them, and struck out from the shadows that surrounded him like lightning from a black cloud. But she too was quick, and though his strikes hit so hard they numbed her hands, she turned them and maintained her guard.
Back and forth along the roof line they fought, neither able to gain advantage, and Ulrika found she was enjoying herself. Not since Raiza had she faced so skilled an opponent, but as thrilling as it was, it was also in deadly earnest, and she had to find a way to finish him before his strength wore her down.
Thinking of Raiza reminded her of the ruse the swordswoman had used against her when they had fought at Boyarina Evgena’s mansion. Would it work here? When the vampire beat aside her blade again, she let her point stray the tiniest bit out of line, as if she were growing tired and sloppy. When he struck a second time the blade strayed further, and a third time even further, before she recovered clumsily at his next lunge.
With his shadowed face and pupil-less red eyes there was no way to read his expression, but Ulrika thought she saw a shift in his shoulders that spoke of eagerness as he came in again. She obliged him by repeating the sequence, throwing her blade out of line more and more with each stinging parry, and at last he took the bait. As her point drifted to the right, he lunged at full extension, stabbing for her seemingly unprotected flank. Her blade snapped back into line in an instant, tipping the thrust aside just enough so that it passed her by, and she punched forwards, aiming straight for his neck.
He twitched to the right at the last second, and her point pierced his trapezius instead. It still hurt him. He fell back, cursing and trailing shadows, and rolled down the roof towards the low wall that separated it from the next building.