[Blood on the Reik 03] - Death's Legacy

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  “Maybe I could,” Rudi said. He supposed he’d have to find some way of earning a living while he was in Altdorf, but had no real desire to linger there once his business in the city was concluded. Hanna would be safe from the witch hunters as soon as a college took her in, but Gerhard would still be after him, of that much he was certain. Once again, he felt the woods and forests of the Empire calling him, and resolved to find refuge in the wilderness as soon as he could.

  As they drew nearer to the street that Hanna had selected, he realised that the sheer scale of the Koenigsplatz had fooled him. The thoroughfare was as wide as many of the ones he’d been familiar with in Marienburg. They were just as crowded as the other streets he’d seen in Altdorf, and just as cosmopolitan. Within a hundred yards, they passed a shop selling exotic rugs and tapestries, and a dark-skinned merchant pedalled pungent spices, the odour of which endured even through the all-pervading street stench of stale perspiration and ordure, and before which Hanna paused with an expression of deep interest. Further along was a blacksmith’s forge in which a sweat-slicked dwarf, stripped to the waist to reveal a plethora of peculiar tattoos, hammered at a lump of glowing iron with an expression of deep concentration.

  “I suppose we must be getting nearer,” Hanna said after a while. The streets had narrowed, the businesses becoming more mundane, and the houses thinner, though no less tall. Mindful of their progress from the docks, Rudi kept an eye out for passers-by who seemed to know Hanna for what she was, and noted an increasing number of people who turned to look at her with controlled and unobtrusive movements. More of the ones he noticed seemed to be in red or orange robes, and he began to wonder if her choice of dress was entirely coincidental. She certainly looked the part, he thought, even if she wasn’t actually a fire mage yet.

  “Look.” Hanna paused in the middle of a wide stone bridge. Unlike the ones Rudi had grown used to in Marienburg, it was edged for the most part with a simple parapet, rather than being choked by buildings. She leaned on the balustrade, and pointed. Beneath them, a broad stretch of river flowed, confined by stone embankments, but still wide enough for two riverboats to pass one another unimpeded with room to spare. “Shenk didn’t waste much time, did he?” Sure enough, the Reikmaiden was making her way slowly upstream, navigating cautiously between the piers of the bridges obstructing the route.

  “Evidently not,” Rudi said, quietly sympathising with the skipper’s desire to get out of town as quickly as possible. He shrugged. “Can’t really blame him though, can you? If I was him, I’d want to put as much distance as I could between myself and the Fog Walkers for a while, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Guess that’s why he’s heading up the Talabec,” Hanna said, waving. One of the figures on deck glanced up and returned the greeting, grinning with delighted recognition. It was Pieter, his arm still strapped up. Whether he was about to point their former passengers out to anyone else on board, Rudi would never know. As the deckhand turned to speak to someone, the Reikmaiden passed majestically between the pillars of the next bridge along, which, rather more conventionally, supported a townhouse or two, and vanished from sight. “By the time he’s been up to Kislev and back they’ll have forgotten all about him.” Rudi rather doubted that, but it wasn’t his problem, so he simply shrugged.

  “We’d better get moving,” he said. The shadows had lengthened noticeably, and the air was growing chill. He retrieved his woollen cap from his pack, and pulled it down over his ears gratefully. It was going to be cold tonight, he could tell, discerning the tang of frost in the air even over the reek of the sewage in the gutters.

  “I suppose so,” Hanna said, and began walking again. If he hadn’t known her so well, Rudi would probably have missed the faint hesitation in her voice, and the nervousness it betrayed.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said, reaching out to squeeze her hand for a moment. It felt warm to the touch, a little more so than he might have expected given the chill in the air, and he assumed she must be using her abilities to keep herself comfortable despite her relatively immodest attire. Perhaps it was intentional, a visible demonstration of her powers, he thought, or perhaps the trick had simply become so much second nature that she barely realised she was doing it. “They’re bound to see how talented you are.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Hanna said, returning the pressure for a moment before retrieving her hand. She seemed encouraged by his words, striding out a little more confidently, but her tone was still uncertain.

  This side of the Talabec, the streets had grown even narrower, the shops replaced mainly by taverns or rooming houses, and the few that remained stocking little more than staple foodstuffs and other items of basic utility. Orange robes were still prevalent among the passers-by, so Rudi remained confident that they hadn’t strayed from the route that they ought to be following.

  “It can’t be much further,” he said, and then stopped, staring ahead in sudden disbelief. For the last few minutes the ever-present crowd around them had been thinning out, but preoccupied as he was the significance of that hadn’t really registered, other than as a vague sense of relief that he didn’t have to keep using his elbows to make a reasonable amount of headway. A few yards in front of him, the street had simply ended. Instead of cobbles and buildings, a vast open space, carpeted with ash and littered with the remains of burned-out structures, stretched away in front of them. Far in the distance, the jumble of houses and businesses resumed, and beyond them, the city wall loomed, but in between, and stretching for hundreds of yards in every direction, there was nothing but desolation.

  “I think we’ve arrived,” Hanna said dryly, leading the way confidently into the gently smouldering ruins. Her feet left deep prints in the carpet of ash, and as he followed her, Rudi felt his boots sinking almost to his ankles with every step, but when he turned to check his bearings, the thick grey blanket lay pristine and unmarked behind them. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck beginning to stir.

  “Well it was here,” Rudi said hesitantly. He glanced around, uncomfortably reminded of the burning farm cottage that he’d stumbled across outside Kohlstadt. Some of the beams of the collapsed houses around them still smoked lazily, as if they hadn’t quite been extinguished, and little pockets of glowing embers rippled the air around them like dancing phantoms, testament to their residual heat. “Do you think it’s been destroyed?”

  “No,” Hanna said decisively. “Come on, this way.” The deeper they ventured into the zone of desolation, the more confident she seemed to become. At a loss for anything else to do, Rudi followed on behind her, beginning to wonder what he was doing here at all. What little he’d seen of sorcery so far left him inclined to avoid it, not head straight towards one of the biggest concentrations of mystical energy in the whole of the Empire. If it hadn’t been for the loyalty he felt to Hanna, and the desire to see her safe, he would probably have turned and run. “There you are. What did I tell you?”

  Hanna’s voice was triumphant, and for a moment, Rudi couldn’t understand her euphoria. Then he took another step himself, and suddenly the College was right there in front of them, shimmering into existence like a solidifying heat haze.

  “Sigmar preserve us,” he whispered. The building was vast, larger than almost anything he’d ever seen in his life. Perhaps the facade of Baron Hendryk’s College in Marienburg or the staadholder’s palace there, rivalled it in size, but in form, it exuded a simplicity and power that made them both look like peasants’ huts. Huge towers rose into the smoke-blackened sky, vivid roaring flames apparently bursting from their summits to tint the whole area around the college the colour of perpetual sunset. A wall of stone, the colour of the iron the dwarf had been hammering, soared overhead, at least to the height of the ramparts protecting the city itself, and a gate of dully-glowing metal stood squarely in the centre of it. “What do we do now?”

  “Ask to see someone,” Hanna said, striding forwards, her confidence apparently growing with every step.
Rudi followed, feeling the heat beating back at him from the vast portal in the wall ahead. “Do you think we should knock?”

  “There’s no point in disturbing the gatekeeper unnecessarily,” a new voice said. A man stepped out from behind a tumbled heap of masonry, which had presumably once been a house. He was dressed in red and orange robes, and his hair and beard were both the colour of flickering flames. “I happened to be on my way into the city when I noticed your approach. State your business.”

  “I want to study with the Bright College,” Hanna said. “I was a licensed student of magic in Marienburg, and…”

  “I see.” The Bright wizard took a step forward, and stared at the girl intently. Determined not to seem intimidated, Hanna gazed levelly back, although Rudi was sure the mage was studying her with something more than normal sight. After a moment, the man shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Application denied.”

  “Now wait just a minute!” Hanna said, her voice rising. “I’ve travelled all the way from Marienburg for this. If you think I’m just going to turn around and take my chances with the witch hunters because you can’t be bothered to wake up your porter, you’ve got another think coming! I demand to see someone in authority!”

  “I am in authority,” the wizard said. “Like all magisters, I’m empowered to speak for the order to which I belong, and I would be grossly derelict in my duty if I let a Chaos-tainted witch set foot inside the college.” Hanna’s fists clenched, and her jaw tightened.

  “I’m not a witch!” she said, her voice tight with anger, clearly fighting the impulse to shout. “I’m a pyromancer like you! I need training to control my gift, that’s all!”

  The wizard shook his head, a trace of regret entering his voice for the first time.

  “The red wind blows strongly around you, that’s true, but so does something else. I can quite clearly see the stain of dhar in your aura, and it’s gone far too deep to control or eradicate.”

  “You can see what?” Rudi asked, more in the hope of keeping the conversation reasonable than because he expected an answer he could hope to understand. Hollobach had implied that this was the only college that Hanna might be qualified for, and if they refused to take her, she was surely doomed. If she lost her temper now, it would all be over. The fire mage looked at him curiously, as if he’d only just registered his presence. Perhaps he had.

  “The dark wind of magic.” The man’s voice softened a little more. “Your friend has a strong natural affinity for pyromancy, it’s true, and to anyone with the sight from a different college, the strength of the red wind around her would tend to obscure anything else, but for one of the Bright Order, it’s all too obvious.” He turned back to Hanna. “If you’d come to us earlier, we might have been able to help you, but I’m afraid the taint goes too deep for that now.”

  “I see.” Hanna nodded tightly. Rudi expected her to argue, grow angry, and even threaten the man. The old Hanna might have done, but the changes that the last few months had wrought in her evidently went further than he suspected. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” She turned. “Come on, Rudi, we’re going.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” the wizard said. His posture shifted subtly, and Rudi felt the hairs on the back of his head begin to rise, his scalp tingling as if a thunderstorm was imminent.

  “You can’t stop me,” Hanna replied, her voice level. To Rudi’s horror, a seething ball of red flame appeared in the air in front of her, hissing and spitting as it hovered in the space between them and the mage.

  The wizard’s expression hardened.

  “You dare to call on the power of the Changer here? You’re more corrupted than I thought.” He muttered something under his breath, and the flames vanished. A moment later, a sword materialised in his hand, apparently composed of fire itself, and he took a step towards Hanna, raising the supernatural weapon.

  “Leave her alone!” Rudi shouted, drawing his own sword by reflex. A part of his mind watched in wonderment as he interposed himself between the mage and the girl, feeling the heat of the blazing blade against his skin. An expression of irritated surprise crossed the wizard’s face.

  “Out of the way, boy.” He struck, a lazy blow, clearly not expecting Rudi to stand his ground. Rudi countered reflexively, expecting the flames to sweep around the thin strip of steel and across him, but the parry connected with something that felt physical, redirecting the strike in the nick of time. A blast of heat seared past his face, and he kicked out, taking the wizard in the back of the knee as he stepped around him to avoid the blow. With a bellow of hurt surprise, the man fell, the impact raising a cloud of ash that hung in the air between them, coating Rudi’s throat, and leaving his eyes stinging from the choking grit.

  “Hanna, run!” He turned, expecting the girl to have taken advantage of the momentary distraction to escape, but she was holding her ground, her face tense. The bronze gate was opening, and, in the distance, other orange-robed figures could be seen running through the ashes towards them, bobbing and weaving like living flames. Clearly, despite her jibe to the magister, the gatekeeper hadn’t been neglecting his duty after all.

  “I’ve done with running,” she said flatly. Rudi took a step back to stand by her shoulder, his blade raised to fend off the wizard, who was clambering to his feet. The man’s face was contorted with rage, his robes mottled with grey powder, and his insubstantial sword hissed gently as he brought it up to a guard position. He clearly knew something of swordplay, and wasn’t about to make the mistake of underestimating Rudi for a second time.

  “Then die where you stand, witch.” He moved into the attack again, a little more warily, but sure of the support of his approaching colleagues.

  Hanna screamed something incomprehensible, which seemed to vibrate through every bone in Rudi’s skeleton, and he was barely able to deflect the blazing weapon once more. Had it not been for his extensive experience of street fighting, which allowed instinct to take over, he knew he wouldn’t have made it at all. Exploiting the opening he’d made, he kicked out again, driving the wizard back with a boot to the midriff.

  Abruptly, the man was enveloped in a nimbus of emerald fire. Rudi flinched, expecting him to immolate, like the skaven that Hanna had killed, or the soldiers that Greta had struck down on the moors, but the wizard seemed completely unharmed. It appeared that Bright wizards were immune to pyromancy, which now he came to think about it wasn’t all that surprising. With a nervous glance at the approaching mages, who seemed to have closed the distance far more quickly than he would have thought possible, he shifted his stance, and prepared for his opponent’s next onslaught.

  “Get out of here. I’ll hold them off.” To Rudi’s astonishment, the wizard turned to face his approaching colleagues. The flaming sword vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, and a sheet of flame burst into existence, cutting off the reinforcements from the college, snapping and twisting like a banner in the wind.

  “Thanks,” Hanna said, with a feral grin. She grabbed Rudi’s arm, and tugged him into motion. “Come on, we haven’t got much time.” His head reeling, Rudi began to run back the way they’d come.

  “What did you do?” he asked. For a moment, Hanna looked confused.

  “I’m not really sure,” she said at last, their footfalls stumbling through the carpet of ash. “It was like when the skaven attacked us, and I found I could do the fireball spell. It just appeared in my head, and I knew I could cast it. I’ve affected his mind, so he thinks his friends are enemies, and we’re on his side.”

  “I see.” Rudi stole a glance back behind them. From the flashes in the distance, the deluded mage was still making a fight of it. “Will it last long?”

  “I don’t know,” Hanna said, as their footsteps began to clatter on cobbles again. Somehow, in the handful of minutes that Rudi could have sworn was all they’d spent in the wilderness of ash, night had fallen, the streets in the distance illuminated by flaring sconces, and the slivers of light leaking ar
ound the edges of doors and shutters. She shrugged, a malicious smile appearing on her face. “I don’t suppose he will, though.”

  “What will you do now?” Rudi asked, slowing their pace to a more normal one as they approached the inhabited area again, hoping to blend into the ever-present crowd. Raucous laughter drifted from a couple of nearby taverns, mocking the ruination of Hanna’s hopes. He could barely imagine the disappointment that the girl must be feeling. Instead of a refuge, she had only found more enemies. “Where will you go?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Hanna said, with a resolution that surprised him. “I pretty much expected this to happen anyway.”

  “You did?” Rudi fought to keep the astonishment from his voice. Hanna nodded.

  “I spoke to Gofrey on the boat. He warned me that the colleges might be afraid of anyone showing real talent. They want dutiful little apprentices who do what they’re told, not powerful mages with minds of their own.”

  “What did he suggest you do?” Rudi asked. “He seemed to be part of a group of some kind, but he didn’t want to say much about it.”

  “In case he was wrong. I know.” Hanna nodded again. “But he did say that the college would be watched. If something like this happened, the Silver Wheel would know, and take steps to help me.”

  “What kind of steps?” Rudi asked. Hanna shrugged, looking slightly nonplussed.

  “I don’t know. Send someone to get in touch, I suppose.”

  “I see.” Rudi nodded, scanning the sea of faces around them for any sign of recognition or complicity. “Any idea how we’re supposed to recognise them?”

  “I don’t think you’ll have much trouble with that,” a new voice said quietly from the shadows of an alley mouth. It was soft and feminine, and vaguely familiar. Turning, his hand already on his sword hilt, Rudi struggled to identify it.

  Hanna had no such difficulty, breaking into a run towards the half-obscured figure, wrapped in a hooded cloak against the evening chill. As Rudi followed, the lurking woman was briefly illuminated by a shaft of light that burst momentarily from an opening door. It only lasted an instant, but that was all it took. Then the alley mouth plunged back into darkness, obscuring the familiar face of Greta Reifenstahl once again.