“The houses seem to get bigger towards the top,” Rudi said, and Pieter nodded.
“That’s right. The richer you are, the higher up the hill you live.” He laughed. “Riff-raff like us, we stick to the bottom. There’re plenty of taverns around the docks anyway, so why work up a sweat looking for a drink?”
“Sound advice,” Rudi said. He pointed to a cluster of ramshackle huts clinging to the shoreline, and spreading back into the woods. The stumps of trees and the harsh white of newly cut timber showed that the clearings around the city wall were recent. “Who lives there?”
“Refugees,” Pieter said. His voice took on a faintly pitying tone. “Pretty much everything north of Middenheim’s destroyed, they say, and what’s left of it’s crawling with Chaos scum. These are the lucky ones. They got out in time. Some of them talk about going home, but I can’t see it happening any time soon.” He shook his head mournfully, and wandered off to attend to whatever duties Busch had decided he was still able to cope with.
Rudi watched the city grow, as the sturdy little riverboat drew closer and closer to it, until the rising tangle of streets and buildings completely filled his vision. Individual structures began to be distinguishable: large ornate houses looking down on the teeming masses below, the unmistakable bulk of temples and the wealthier guild houses, and, closer at hand, the warehouses around the docks.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Hanna asked dryly at his shoulder. Rudi shrugged.
“They might have a decent tavern or two,” he conceded, determined to seem no less cosmopolitan than she did. After all, they were both experienced urbanites. Shenk ambled over to join them as Yullis and Berta manhandled the gangplank into place.
“Going ashore?” he asked casually, unable to keep a flicker of relief from his eyes as Rudi nodded in the affirmative.
“We’ve got some errands to run,” Rudi assured him. “We won’t be cluttering up the deck while you’re trying to move your cargo.”
“Glad to hear it,” Shenk said. “Try to get back here before we’re about to sail this time, eh?”
“We’ll do our best,” Hanna assured him and led the way down the gangplank.
Despite the bulk of the city looming above them like a thundercloud of stone, Rudi felt surprisingly at home in the cramped and narrow streets surrounding the harbour. In all but scale, it reminded him of the Suiddock back in Marienburg: the same air of purposeful activity, the ever-present carts and sweating labourers transferring barrels and bundles from boat holds to warehouses and back again, and through it all, the never-ending flow of local citizens pursuing their trades, honest or otherwise.
Surrounded by people again, he found his old watchman’s instincts surfacing, and amused himself picking out the local bawds and cutpurses from the throng. Once, he saw a halfling pickpocket making off with the contents of a well-dressed gentleman’s purse, and had to suppress the impulse to shout a challenge and give chase. Not his problem here, he reminded himself. The last thing he and Hanna needed to do was draw unnecessary attention to themselves.
The halfling wasn’t the only non-human he noticed as they made their way through the streets towards a local square that Pieter had assured him held enough clothier’s shops to satisfy Hanna’s most exacting requirements in a dress, and a couple of reasonable taverns besides, which Rudi would probably need after she’d completed her shopping. By the time they reached their destination, he’d seen a couple of dwarfs snoring loudly in a gutter outside a tavern while a third stood over them, swaying slightly, his negligently-hefted axe effectively deterring anyone from attempting to relieve them of their personal effects; a solitary elf; and almost a dozen halflings, who, for the most part, appeared to be vending foodstuffs of dubious palatability from small wheeled carts.
“Cosmopolitan, isn’t it?” Hanna remarked, although Rudi wasn’t sure how sarcastic she was being. He was saved from having to answer, as she stopped suddenly beside a market stall selling a wide variety of women’s clothing. “Ooh, this is nice. What do you think?” She held up a dress, which, to Rudi’s eye, looked little different to the one she had on, apart from a lack of accumulated grime.
“It’s your colour,” he hazarded, and Hanna laughed.
“Never mind.” She seemed to take his incomprehension for granted, and find it amusing. “I’ve already got two blue ones.” Her only change of clothing, still back in her bag aboard the Reikmaiden, was almost identical to the dress she wore now, although even more patched and stained. They were almost the only things she still possessed that she’d brought with her from Kohlstadt. Rudi suspected that it was the only reason she hadn’t discarded them.
“You’re in luck, missy. I’ve got one just like that in green.” The stallholder, a ruddy-faced man with an easy manner, held up the garment in question. Hanna looked at it dubiously. “Eighteen shillings to you, and cheap at half the price.”
“I don’t know.” Hanna made a show of considering it. “Green doesn’t really go with my eyes, and besides, it’s a spring colour. I want something warm for the winter.”
“Warm, you say?” The stallholder was clearly enjoying the game. “How about this?” He held up a red dress, trimmed with yellow. “Real Middenland wool, best in the Empire, and just the colour to warm the heart as well, eh laddie?” The last remark was directed at Rudi, who just nodded, unsure of how to respond. Hanna was holding the garment up in front of her, cocking a quizzical head at him, waiting for his response. Rudi nodded again, and swallowed the obstruction that had suddenly appeared in his throat.
“It, ah, suits you,” he said. “It really does.” The yellow trim set off her blonde hair almost perfectly, and brighter colour seemed to infuse her with life and energy. “But isn’t it a bit, you know, draughty?”
“Low necklines are the fashion, laddie.” The stallholder grinned. “Good thing too, I say.” He smiled at Hanna. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it, that’s what I say. Bring a bit of sunshine into the life of a sad old man like me.”
“I could always wear a shawl if it gets too cold,” Hanna said, smiling at Rudi’s discomfiture. Of course, she could always shield herself from the chill by magical means, although saying so out loud would be foolish in the extreme. “Eighteen shillings, you said?” The stallholder sighed regretfully, and shook his head.
“That was the plain one. This one’s a crown two and six.” Hanna hesitated. “Tell you what, we’ll forget the sixpence, seeing as it looks so good on you, and I’ll throw in a scarf to match.” He picked up a yellow headscarf, with a pattern of crimson thread worked into it. “That’s worth two shillings alone, if it’s worth a farthing.”
“It’s lovely,” Hanna said, running it between her fingers, the pattern in the fabric seeming to ripple like flames as she did so. She handed both garments back to the stallholder, who grinned happily as he began to fold them with expert precision, and took three coins from her purse. The stallholder frowned at the sight of the Marienburg guilder.
“Got any crowns? You never know with those foreign coins. If they haven’t been clipped like a ewe they’re probably counterfeit.”
“Sorry.” Hanna shook her head. “We’re straight off the boat from Marienburg. If you won’t take guilders…” She began to turn away, as if about to leave.
“No, hang about. I’ll risk it, seeing as you’ve got an honest face. Gold’s gold, wherever it comes from.” He sighed, and bit the coin suspiciously. “Seems all right, anyway.”
“Thank you.” Hanna smiled sweetly at the man, and accepted the package he held out.
“Well, that was easy.” Rudi watched while Hanna stowed the neat parcel in her shoulder bag, and started to look for a tavern. “What do you want to do now?” Hanna shook her head.
“I haven’t finished looking at clothes yet,” she explained, heading for the nearest shop. “I could still do with another dress. That way I’ll have something new to wash and one to wear, once we get to Altdorf. I can’t go around looking respectable one day a
nd like this the next.”
Rudi sighed, not seeing anything wrong with the way she looked now, and started after her. Clearly, it was going to be a long day.
Hanna was still glancing back over her shoulder to talk to him, and his attention was still on her, so neither noticed that the door to the shop was opening as they approached it. A couple emerged, chatting amiably.
“I’m not saying you don’t look stunning in it,” the man said. “I’m just wondering when you think you’re ever going to get the chance to wear it.”
“I’ll make the chance,” the woman said, flicking her head back to talk to her companion. “It’s not as if we’re tramping around the wilderness all the time.” A flash of bright red hair accompanied the movement. Almost paralysed with astonishment, Rudi stopped dead in his tracks, and began reaching for his sword.
“Oops, sorry.” Before his horrified gaze, Hanna bumped into the couple, and began to turn towards them, an apologetic smile on her face.
“Don’t mention it,” Alwyn said. Then recognition sparked between everyone present. “Conrad, it’s them!”
Even before she’d finished speaking, the two mercenaries had drawn their swords and moved in to attack.
CHAPTER NINE
“Hanna, duck!” Rudi yelled, fearing that Alwyn’s blade would strike her in the face as it emerged from the scabbard, but Hanna had already moved, hurling herself at the other woman’s waist. Too close to step away without making herself an easy target for the sword-wielding mage, she grappled with her assailant instead, hoping to remain inside her reach. It was a smart move, Rudi thought, exactly the right thing to do under the circumstances, although he would have followed up on the initial attack. Lacking his experience of street fighting, hard won in the back alleys of Marienburg during his days as a Black Cap, Hanna simply hung on grimly to her opponent, shrieking like a scalded cat, ducking under Alwyn’s sword arm just in time to avoid a vicious downward blow from the hilt of the weapon.
Before Rudi could intervene, Conrad was on him, and he blocked a sword-cut to his leg before he even realised that his hand was in motion.
“You’ve improved,” Conrad said, his habitual easygoing tone sounding almost approving. He parried Rudi’s counter strike, and gave ground a little.
I’ve got an advantage, Rudi thought, remembering that Gerhard’s bounty on his head was conditional on bringing him in alive. He didn’t want to kill the man he’d once thought of as a friend, but he was willing to do so if he had to, and that gave him the edge in the contest. At least until Conrad decided that his own life was worth more than the thirty crowns he’d lose by taking Rudi’s.
“I’ve been practising,” he said, pressing home his attack. The crowd around them had scattered at the first clash of steel, to reform in a tightly packed ring of fascinated spectators at what most of them seemed to consider a safe distance. That ought to delay the watch a little at least, while they forced their way through the crush of onlookers, several of whom appeared to be placing bets on the outcome, although probably not for long. Pieter had told him that the influx of refugees had led to rising tensions within the city, and sporadic outbreaks of civil disorder, which meant that the local watch houses would be ready to respond to any reports of trouble at a moment’s notice. He had to finish this quickly.
“Hanna.” He risked a glance at his companion. It only lasted an instant, but Conrad took advantage of it nevertheless. Disengaging from the melee, Conrad kicked out at a barrel that had been abandoned outside a nearby tavern by a carter, who was now shouting encouragement along with everyone else in the vicinity, although to which combatant Rudi couldn’t tell. It rolled towards him, picking up speed on the downward slope. He saw it coming just in time, and hurdled it, landing in front of the astonished mercenary. Ignoring the yells of approbation from the baying crowd, he pressed home his advantage in a flurry of blows that Conrad was barely able to deflect in time. Behind them the barrel began to move faster, scattering spectators like skittles before smashing into the masonry frontage of a chapel of Mannan at the corner of the street leading down to the harbour, apparently set up for the spiritual refreshment of the riverboat crews heading into town for more earthly recreations.
“I’m fine,” Hanna assured him. Alwyn was trying to throw her over her hip with a wrestler’s move, but the blonde girl had transferred her grip to the mercenary’s sword hand and was clinging to it with even greater determination than before, remaining on her feet apparently by sheer willpower. Both women seemed too intent on their physical struggle to think of attempting to settle it by magical means, which was probably just as well, Rudi thought. In a city full of refugees from the ravages of the minions of Chaos, any display of sorcery would probably spark a riot. Giving up the attempt to throw Hanna or use her sword, Alwyn drew a dagger from her boot with her left hand and thrust it hard at Hanna’s gut.
“You bitch!” Hanna stared at the hilt of the knife, protruding from the bulging satchel at her waist. “I haven’t even worn that yet!” Her teeth closed on Alwyn’s wrist, and the mercenary’s sword clattered to the cobbles with a shriek of outrage and pain.
Rudi stepped in towards Conrad, who’d half-turned towards his wife, clearly alarmed at her sudden scream, and struck at his head with the flat of his sword. The mercenary saw it coming and ducked, lashing out with his foot at Rudi’s groin as he did so. Rudi flinched, riding the blow, and grinned as Conrad hopped backwards, favouring his uninjured foot—he’d spent the first week’s wages he’d earned as a watchman on an armoured codpiece, and not for the first time, blessed his foresight. Pivoting, he returned the favour before Conrad could recover his balance, and watched the bounty hunter fold with an unmistakable sense of satisfaction.
“Hanna!” He leapt to intervene in the women’s struggle, laying Alwyn out with the flat of the sword as he’d intended to do with her husband, and helped Hanna to her feet. Ignoring the faint sigh of disappointment from the crowd, which began to disperse about its interrupted business, now that the entertainment was over, the girl glared at the prostrate form of the redheaded mage, breathing hard, and then bent down to snatch the purse from her belt. “Hanna! What in Taal’s name do you think you’re doing?”
“She owes me a new dress.” Hanna took a crown and a handful of silver out of the little bag, and dropped it carelessly back on top of its feebly-twitching owner. The mercer she’d dealt with before was returning to his stall, and watched warily while she rummaged through the stock, picking out a dress almost identical to the one she’d chosen before. “This’ll do. Same price as the other one?”
“Near enough,” the stallholder said, slipping the money out of sight with a quick glance at Alwyn, who was too busy trying to sit up to notice, and Conrad, who was still retching noisily in the gutter. He forced a grin. “Even if it wasn’t, I don’t think I’d argue.” The grin stretched and became a little more sincere. “You might talk like a pair of Reikland fops, but you’ve Middenland blood right enough.”
“Come on.” Hanna acknowledged the peculiar compliment with a tilt of her head, and turned away, the garment slung casually across her shoulder.
“I’m right behind you,” Rudi assured her. Conrad was still in no fit state to fight, if he was any judge, and seemed more interested in checking his wife’s injuries now that he’d managed to regain his own feet in any case, but he had no desire to hang around any longer than they needed to. He had no doubt that both mercenaries would recover rapidly, and the watch would probably be there at any moment.
“I wonder where the others are?” Hanna said, as they jogged down the hill towards the docks. By way of an answer, Rudi pointed to the mouth of a nearby alleyway.
“Over there,” he said. Bodun the dwarf was trotting into the square, glancing around to talk to someone behind him, his axe held ready for use.
“Just because there’s trouble in the direction they went off in, it doesn’t have to mean they’re mixed up in it,” Rudi heard, in the dwarf’s famili
ar rumbling tone, before Bodun turned to face where he was going. His eyes widened with shock as he recognised Rudi, and then narrowed with all the pent-up anger of a dwarf with a grudge, and he bellowed a challenge that echoed from the surrounding buildings like a thunderclap. “Stand and fight, skavenslayer!” He broke into a ponderous run, like a boulder beginning to roll down a mountainside, barging a couple of townsfolk out of the way as he did so. A moment later Theo and Bruno rounded the corner behind him, and charged, overtaking the short-legged warrior as they did so.
“It is him!” Bruno’s eyes glittered with malice, his sword already drawn, and Rudi knew that the youth wouldn’t think or care about the bounty, the way Conrad had. He clearly wanted blood, and mere money wouldn’t satisfy his lust for vengeance. Theo Krieger drew his own blade, angling across the front of the impetuous youth, forestalling him from making the first attack. That was something at any rate, the captain of the mercenary band clearly still valued coin above retribution.
“Run!” Rudi shoved Hanna in the small of the back, impelling her towards the docks. “I’ll hold them off!”
“Still think you’re Konrad from the ballads?” Hanna asked rhetorically, turning to face the charging mercenaries. Her gaze flickered past them, resting for a moment on their recently vanquished comrades as the crowd parted again, no one in their right minds wanting to be caught in the middle of what looked like becoming an ugly brawl. A few of the gamblers were exchanging coins once more, in anticipation of the sport to come, and a halfling sausage-seller seemed to be doing brisk business among the consolidating ring of putative spectators. “Oh no you don’t, you henna-haired sow.”
[Blood on the Reik 03] - Death's Legacy Page 10