by David Guymer
Sigmar, he prayed, don’t let me be too late.
‘Please, if I could just take your sw–’
Felix pushed past the priestess, weaving around, and on one occasion jumping over, the bodies of sleeping men that were scattered like dead leaves over the hall until he stumbled, spent, into the backmost of the wooden benches. The thing gave a cacophonous snarl as it scraped over the flagstones, but Kat didn’t react. Her eyes were glazed as if she’d been drugged. Ulrika however glanced up and smiled a welcome. She was on one knee, as though in the act of proposing. Her body shimmered in the colours cast onto her back by Shallya’s stained glass.
‘The old outfit suits you, Felix. You look yourself again.’
Felix spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. His tatty and oft-mended cloak of red Sudenland wool – all that Fritz could find at short notice – fell from his arms. ‘Just let Kat go. Leave her be and I’ll go with you gladly.’
Ulrika snorted angrily. ‘She is not a hostage, you idiot. I am trying to help you.’
Slowly, Felix edged around the benches that separated him from the two women. Ulrika followed him with her eyes, a lioness guarding her kill from some scruffy scavenger. Felix resisted the impulse to draw his sword. Ulrika had one too, and the last thing he needed was an armed confrontation with a vampire in the house of the Bleeding Heart. He remembered how utterly she had been able to dominate him in the Wilhelmplatz and forced his hands flat against his thighs. If Ulrika chose to do something to Kat then Felix knew there was precious little he would be able to do about it.
Besides appeal to her better nature, and whatever she had become, she was still Ulrika.
‘She wouldn’t thank you for it, and neither would I. You were changed against your will. Don’t you remember how that felt?’
Ulrika’s lips parted into a scowl. ‘I tried to destroy myself many times. Did you know that? But how hard did I really try when all I needed to do was step out into the light?’ Her scowl narrowed into a sneer as she returned her attention to Kat. ‘My mistress tried to tell me that I would adapt and – guess what? – she was right. So will Katerina.’
‘No!’
Felix rounded the row of benches and hurried forwards, then stopped in his tracks as though physically tackled. As if one more step into that blue pool of watery light would cause the woman he still knew as Ulrika to go under and be replaced with the monster that could do this thing she offered. ‘Please, Ulrika. I know you’re trying to be kind, but don’t. Don’t try to help her like this.’
‘Ul… rika?’
Drowsily, Kat came to, syllables spilling from her mouth like a drunk’s. Her head lolled from Ulrika to Felix and back. She blinked, confused. ‘But she’s dead?’
Ulrika laughed as if they were three old friends at a feast. ‘My dear Felix! You lied to your wife about me.’
Felix groaned and looked up into the faces of the doves depicted in the window. What little he had got away with telling Kat about Ulrika had not strictly been a lie, but right now it felt like the axe of betrayal in his hands. Kat fixed her unsteady gaze on Ulrika. She didn’t need to say anything. Ulrika was the daughter of a March Boyar, looked it in every proud line of her face, whereas Kat was a peasant who had never even known her father. Kat’s face was scarred, still pretty, but pewter next to platinum when compared to the cold, callous beauty of the Kislevite noblewoman. Ulrika’s pale skin glowed with the perfection of immortality, the undimmed memory of days forever tinted rose.
There was no comparison.
‘You want me to say that I still think of you sometimes?’ Felix hissed. ‘Fine. I’ll admit to that. You think I miss running around with Gotrek?’ He shook his head and laughed. ‘I miss a lot of things, but do you think I could have kept up with Gotrek forever? Look at me.’ Felix spread his arms and did a turn, showing off his scars and wear and the grey growing through his long blond hair.
He sighed, feeling suddenly ancient. Ulrika, despite her years, would be young forever. Kat had been aged far beyond her youth. Only Felix, it seemed to him, could look and feel exactly as old as he was. He knelt and took Kat’s hand. It was thin and parchment dry, like that of a mummy. ‘Ulrika came to ask for my help. Max is in trouble.’
The slap caught him entirely unprepared.
Kat’s left palm struck him a stinging blow across the jaw. She was as frail as an old woman, but it was the shock of it that hurt. That and a ring of twenty-four-carat dwarf gold that left a dent in his cheek. ‘Max? What of me?’ Felix clutched his jaw. The dwarf gold on Kat’s thumb glinted jealously. ‘You wouldn’t break your oath to Gotrek for me, and yet you would break ours for–’ her voice caught, and she glared at Ulrika. ‘For whatever she is?’
‘Try to understand,’ said Felix. His cheek stung, his heart felt like it had started pumping air, and he was arguing Ulrika’s side. Why was he doing that? That wasn’t why he had burst a lung trying to get here. ‘He’s saved my life more times than I can mention. He saved Ulrika’s. He saved yours.’
‘That’s cheap, Felix.’
‘Don’t you think you are being a little selfish?’ said Ulrika. ‘Would you not want to go if you could?’
‘He’s my husband,’ Kat spat. ‘I’ll be selfish if I want.’
‘I told her I didn’t want to go,’ Felix hastened to add, afraid for a moment that Kat was going to swing for Ulrika too and not at all sure how the vampiress would react. ‘Because of you.’
Kat laughed blackly. ‘So you send your dead lover to add me to your vampire harem?’
‘What?’ Felix spluttered, goaded into anger. This wasn’t about Kat at all, and it certainly wasn’t some kind of competition between her and Ulrika. No one was asking him to choose between them.
‘We are married, Felix. Do those vows mean nothing to you?’
‘Married?’ Now it was Felix’s turn to laugh, twelve months of pent-up energy and frustration shaking out of his chest. He remembered the day. He was quite famous in dwarfish circles, the human who had wielded the Hammer of Fate, and that and the novelty of a human couple being wed in Grimnir’s shrine had brought quite the crowd. It had been cold. He remembered shivering through the entire arduous ceremony because Snorri had pointed out that his cloak was too shabby for the occasion. He remembered the smell of incense, the gruff whispers of dwarfs trying to be respectful. Then Gotrek had presented Kat to him. Their rings had been his parting gift. He glanced at the band on his own finger. A squat dwarfish rune winked in the coloured light. ‘We were married in Karak Kadrin by a priest of the Slayer cult. How did either of us think that was going to end well?’
Kat stared at him. She was shaking with weakness and anger. ‘Are you saying you regret it?’
I don’t know, Felix thought.
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘Hah! Go then if that’s the best you can do.’
‘Kat–’
‘Don’t argue, just go. We all know it’s what you want.’ She glanced at Ulrika. There was fear in her expression, but not for herself. ‘But promise me you won’t trust her. She’s not who you remember.’
‘I know what she is,’ Felix began, but Kat cut him off with an impatient shake of the head.
‘Just promise me. Promise me that when you find Max you’ll both come home.’ To Felix’s surprise, Kat’s eyes began to moisten. She took Felix’s hand in hers and pressed it to her belly. Felix didn’t understand. ‘Come back for us, Felix.’
And suddenly there it was: the loss of appetite, the annoying sensitivity to the scent of his unwashed body. His mouth hung open. His heart beat for three. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? Was she? Could she even?
‘How? When did we last…?’ Felix caught himself in the middle of a ridiculous mime, then extricated his hand to bury his face in. There had been far too many nights – days for that matter – where his memory ended s
omewhere between his third pint and the long walk home. Kat smiled sadly and almost broke Felix’s heart.
A pit seemed to be opening up around him.
He couldn’t be a father. He’d hated his father. And since siring Gustav, Otto had turned out to be just like the old man. What hope then for a feckless wanderer like Felix?
The prospect of going to war had never sounded so appealing.
Ulrika nodded, smiled, then rose as Felix swallowed the butterflies that were flapping up his throat and retook Kat’s hand. His fingers were shaking.
‘I’ll be back. I promise.’
Night was closing in on the borders of the day as the black coach rumbled off the barge and onto the militarised bustle of Pilgrim’s Harbour. Longshoremen and day-labourers waded waist-deep into the Reik, men-at-arms barking orders from the bank as the men hauled their goods ashore and loaded them onto waiting wagons. Arquebusiers in long black tunics and leather baldrics that gleamed with brass cartridges stood with firearms half-cocked upon the deck of a long barge recently arrived from Nuln. She lay heavy in the water, longshoremen crawling over her and bearing away bags of blackpowder while, on the shore, a windlass was manoeuvred into position to winch a pair of Helblasters from the vessel’s hold. More boats jostled prow to stern to get into the harbour before dusk. Their lanterns twinkled across the water. At every mooring, wool from Solland, lowing livestock and grain from Averland, timber from the forests of the Stir, and armaments from the great foundries of Reikland poured from the river and on towards Pilgrim’s Gate, then down into the great funnel of war.
Felix was the son of a merchant and an Altdorfer. He was no stranger to commercial wharfs and market towns. Trade was in his blood whether he approved of it or not. And yet even he was amazed by the sheer industry that was going into the business of war. It felt as if the productivity of half of the Empire was being channelled through this harbour, as if by organisation, endeavour, and the staggering volume of men and materiel being carted north they might hold the hordes of Chaos at bay.
If only it could ever be that simple.
From the darkened glass of Ulrika’s coach, Felix watched the soldiers patrol the shoreline. They were out in force. Swordsmen in padded britches and steel breastplates moved amongst the longshoremen, opening up containers, challenging drivers and searching their wagons. This was war, after all, and the Reiksmarshal was right to be wary of the enemy within. The coach slowed to a halt, taking its place in a queue of carts and carriages that were being held at a checkpoint before being allowed to leave the harbour. Felix pressed his face against the window and looked down the line.
Doors hung open, merchants and drivers remonstrating with bored-looking halberdiers while sergeants checked their manifests against the wagoners’ documents, then double-checked both against the contents of the carts. It was clear they had orders to be thorough. No one moved until the officers were satisfied. Felix had a bad feeling about this. He was only a commissioned member of Helborg’s staff, after all, and it wasn’t as if he was doing anything more treasonable than deserting north in the company of a vampire.
What had he been thinking? Most sensible people were trying to get away from Ostermark. To no great surprise, he found that his palms were sweating. What a fabulous way to remind himself what life had been like before he and Kat had got married. He glanced past Ulrika and through her window to the ruddy band of the western horizon.
What had it been, two hours?
‘Relax,’ said Ulrika. ‘I can hear your heart race from here.’ With the onset of twilight, she had removed her veil and her face seemed to give off its own pearlescent lustre, like an earthbound vision of Mannslieb itself. A slender scar ran from the corner of her left eye to her temple, but despite that, the likeness to the woman he had loved was aching.
‘Not being dragged from this coach in irons in the next ten minutes will calm me immeasurably.’
Ulrika patted his knee indulgently. ‘You were always such a worrier.’
‘We live in worrying times.’
‘I wish you would stop it. It’s distracting.’ With a smile that gave Felix palpitations, she drew out the top laces of her jerkin. ‘I will deal with the soldiers.’
Leaning salaciously over Felix’s lap, she dropped the door handle and pushed open the door. A six-foot-tall officer in blue and red livery, breastplate, and a feather-plumed sallet held the door open while, behind him, the sight of a smiling noblewomen spilling from her carriage brought redoubled attitudes of attention from a previously taxed pair of halberdiers. Felix, rather late in the day, realised that he was not cut out for this sort of thing. The innocuous problem of where to put his hands suddenly seemed of terrific import. Even pressing against Ulrika’s chest through the simple, mechanical sin of breathing in felt like an inappropriate level of contact.
‘Good evening,’ said Ulrika, in the most syrupy Kislevite accent Felix had ever heard. ‘How we help brave men of Empire this day?’
‘Orders, my lady,’ stated the officer, simply, and to Felix’s eternal gratitude.
‘Of course,’ said Ulrika, her smile lingering on the man as though she was admiring herself in the mirrored shine on his breastplate. Felix took pains to look anywhere else. Was he really the only one to notice her complete absence of a reflection in that surface? Ulrika leaned a little further, twisted towards the front of the coach and snapped her fingers. ‘Damir. Dokumenty.’
The swarthy Ungol stooped down from the box and handed over a roll of parchment with an illiterate grin. The officer unrolled it. His eyes widened as he read.
‘This is the seal of the Reiskmarshal. My apologies…’ he re-read the foreign name on the document ‘…my apologies, General Straghov. You should have said.’
‘Is of no matter,’ said Ulrika with a nonchalant roll of the hand.
The man saluted. ‘Honour and glory to you in the north, general. And to you, Herr Jaeger. Please allow my men to escort you on to Pilgrim’s Gate. I’ll not have the generals of Commandant Roch held up on my watch.’
The officer and his men set about clearing traffic as Ulrika closed the door. Her demeanour was smug. Only after the soldiers had been allowed a good ten seconds to be about their business did Felix trust himself to speak. ‘You have papers?’
‘You think I seduce everyone?’ said Ulrika in mock horror. ‘Do I look like I have the energy for that?’
‘I’m just surprised, that’s all. Those things aren’t easy to forge. Trust me, Otto’s asked. And how did that officer know my name?’
‘Because,’ Ulrika began patiently, ‘these are the legitimate orders of Kurt Helborg, for the dispatch of the Hero of Praag – that’s you, Felix, in case you’ve forgotten – to the command of Commandant Roch. They both agree that a tour of the front would be a boon for morale.’ She produced a sarcastic smile. ‘Messengers have already ridden ahead with arrangements for speaking dates across Hochland and Ostermark.’
Felix shook his head, disgusted. ‘All of that, in Wilhelmplatz and with Kat, and I never actually had a choice at all.’
‘I wanted you to want to come with me.’
‘Why?’
Ulrika didn’t answer.
‘Is there even a Commandant Roch?’
‘Of course,’ Ulrika murmured, mind still elsewhere. ‘He has command of the Auric Bastion’s entire eastern flank. From his fortress of Rackspire it is even still possible to see over it and into Kislev.’ She paused for a moment as she collected herself, considering her next words before she spoke them. ‘This quest of ours is done with his knowledge and blessing. He is the one I call master now.’
‘I thought you had a mistress.’
‘This is a war that my Lahmian sisters have proven themselves many times to be unsuited for. Archaon will not be moved by a hitched skirt or a beguiling smile. This is not about who we pretend to call master for the next hundred ye
ars. This is existential. Roch knows how to utilise my talents best. He has Gospodar blood in him.’
‘High praise.’
‘The very highest.’
Felix could think of nothing to add to that and so retreated into contemplative silence, watching through the darkened glass as wagoners less fortunate in their patrons slid behind them. Despite the nearness of Ulrika, his thoughts kept returning to Kat. Was he doing the right thing by leaving? Somehow, knowing that he had not in reality had a choice did not seem to justify his decision. He couldn’t decide if Ulrika had been trying to be kind or had actually rather enjoyed tying his emotions in knots. But all of that was just a distraction from what he really didn’t want to think about.
Kat was pregnant!
The prospect of fatherhood found him no more certain of himself than it had in the Temple of Shallya, but part of him – that small, helplessly romantic part that had once composed poems for Ulrika – thrilled at the thought of returning home to see Kat carrying a little son or daughter of his own. Of his own.
‘She was lying to you, you know.’
Felix didn’t answer, didn’t want to.
‘I can hear the beat of an unborn’s heart, and I can feel the tension in a liar’s voice.’
‘Stop it,’ said Felix, though there was no strength in it. His heart had been pushed through too much today. ‘Why would she lie?’
‘To make you change your mind and stay? To make you risk failure by hurrying home? It would have gone easier on you both if you had just let me turn her.’
Felix just shook his head and went back to staring out the window. ‘Why me? You want Gotrek for this sort of thing, not his henchman.’
‘You should prepare yourself for the likelihood that Gotrek is dead. He was already in Kislev before the Auric Bastion was summoned.’ Ulrika turned in her seat, then took Felix’s hand in hers. She looked into his eyes. Her empathy was beguilingly genuine. ‘He was in the capital when it fell to the warlord, Aekold Helbrass. I doubt even he could have survived the aftermath of that battle.’