Bloodforged (17 page)

Directly before the door was an entirely enclosed wagon – like a Strigany’s caravan but without the colourful decoration – with a ramp leading up to an open door in the back. Some of the girls shied at the sight of it and held back, but two more hooded men prodded them forwards with sticks, and they crept timorously up the ramp and into the dark interior.

Ulrika crowded in with the rest, and by the time they were all in and the door shut and locked, they were packed together as tight as toes in a pointed boot, and just as fragrant. The cramped box smelled of fear, faeces and death, and was as lightless as a coffin.

A moment later there came the crack of a whip, the wagon lurched and they were off. Ulrika wondered belatedly how far they would go. What if they were leaving the city? What if they were leaving the country? What if they were let out in daylight? She shrugged. She would face that dragon when she reached it. There was little she could do about it now.

Beside her, one of the captives began to weep, a tired hopeless sound. Ulrika put her arm around the girl, and tried not to think about the blood pulsing just beneath her skin.

After only a short while, the closed wagon slowed and made a tight turn, then started down a steep grade. All the girls in the box staggered and crushed together towards the front until it levelled off again and came to a stop. Muffled voices came from outside, then, with a rattle and a creak, the door swung open. The girls turned like flowers towards the sun, squinting in the dim firelight that filtered through the door.

Two hooded men placed the ramp, then beckoned the girls ahead. They trudged obediently forwards, and Ulrika followed, looking around at their surroundings. The wagon had stopped in one corner of a huge vaulted chamber full of looming shadows and smoke. A cold wind blew down from somewhere above, tearing at a fire in a nearby brazier which cast flickering light upon rows of giant brass vats and wooden kegs taller than a man. It was reflected also in a great hill of empty glass bottles piled in one corner that glittered like a thousand red eyes. The place reeked of fermented grain and strong liquor – a kvas distillery, it seemed, though long abandoned.

‘This way, children,’ said a hooded man, motioning with an empty kvas bottle he held in his hand. He led them to an arched alcove in the stone walls, within which had been set a door of iron bars.

From one cage to another, thought Ulrika.

The man swung the door open, then blew idly across the top of his bottle, making a hollow tooting sound as two other hooded men herded the girls into it. Ulrika allowed herself to be prodded in with the others, for she saw the bars were old and rusted, and would not hold her if she did not wish them to. First she wanted to see what their captors intended to do with them.

She did not have long to wait. The man with the bottle held back the last girl, then locked the rest in. The girl struggled as the two men grabbed her and led her across the room to an open space between the vats.

Ulrika pushed forwards to the bars and saw that a shallow circle had been carved in the hard earth of the cellar floor, and that its edges were black with dried blood.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SERVANTS OF SLAANESH

Ulrika gripped the bars of the cage as, from all over the vaulted chamber, more hooded figures emerged from the shadows and gathered around the bloody circle. The design of it was just like that of the one she had found in the cellar of the abandoned tenement – the one with the sacrificed girl staked out in it. It seemed Gaznayev’s gang was selling the girls to a murder cult.

The girl fought harder as she saw where the hooded men were leading her. ‘What are you going to do?’ she cried. ‘Stop!’

The man with the bottle laughed. ‘Stop? Just when we are about to give your worthless little life meaning?’

He motioned to the other men, then continued speaking as they stripped the girl of her clothes and a fourth man set candles around the perimeter of the circle and began lighting them.

‘What would you have done with your span of years?’ he asked. ‘Shat out a litter of brats, lived in poverty, died in poverty? Your wretched life would have added nothing to the world. But now you will have greater purpose. Now you will be part of something monumental!’ He flipped the empty bottle in the air and caught it. ‘When Mannslieb is next full, your soil will join the others in the great awakening that will begin the claiming of Praag by its rightful mistress!’

The two men dragged the now-naked girl into the centre of the circle as another man stepped forwards with a hammer and spikes. Ulrika had seen enough. She wrenched back sharply on one of the cage’s iron bars. It squealed and bent, but didn’t break.

The girls around her gasped and edged away from her, wide-eyed, while the cultists at the circle turned at the noise.

‘What was that?’ said the man with the bottle.

Ulrika pulled again, and this time the bar sheared in half, tearing her palm.

‘What is she doing!’ cried the man. ‘Stop her!’

A handful of hooded forms trotted towards the cage, drawing clubs and daggers. Ulrika pulled at the lower half of the broken bar, trying to bend it down so she could slip through the gap. It snapped off at the base and she stumbled back with it in her hand. She grinned. Perfect.

The cultists slowed their steps, staring uneasily.

‘Powers of darkness!’ gasped one. ‘How is she doing that?’

Ulrika eeled through the gap and rose to her full height before them, brandishing the iron bar. ‘Let me show you the powers of darkness,’ she said, and before they could react, she sprang among them, lashing out on all sides with her makeshift weapon.

Three died instantly, their skulls caved in and blood darkening the fabric of their hoods as they toppled to the ground. The other three darted in, stabbing for her stomach and swinging for her face. She kicked one man back, caught the wrist of the second as he slashed at her with a dagger, then whipped him into the third man. These last two went down on top of one another. Ulrika stabbed down and pierced them both through the chests with her iron bar, pinning them to the ground, then turned to face the last man.

He stood stock still, and though she could not see his face through the veil he wore under his hood, she could smell the fear oozing from his pores. She ripped the bloody bar from the bodies of his companions and advanced on him. He shrieked and fled – but not fast enough.

Ulrika caught him in two swift steps and bashed his head in from behind. His hood, as he fell, sagged and bulged like a sack full of wet meat.

The fight had taken all of twenty heartbeats, and as she turned towards the man with the bottle and his comrades at the circle, she could see they were as paralysed as her last victim had been. Ulrika looked back at the girls in the cage. They were frozen too, the whites of their eyes shining in the firelight as they stared at the bodies at her feet.

‘Go!’ she said. ‘Return to your families.’

Most of the girls didn’t move, but a few of the braver ones began to duck through the gap, and as they did, the more timid followed.

Ulrika turned back to the dozen cultists at the circle and started towards them, the iron bar held at her side.

The man with the bottle stepped back, pointing it with a shaking hand. ‘Kill her! Don’t let the sacrifices escape!’

His companions looked less than enthusiastic about the first part of his command, and instead split left and right to address the second, trying to get around her to the girls, who were breaking for the ramp. She let them go, and charged directly at the leader and the men who held the sacrifice. All three fled in different directions. Ulrika pounced on the leader, then dragged him back to the circle, where the girl lay cowering on the ground beside the hammer and spikes that would have pinned her to it.

‘Get away,’ said Ulrika, nudging the girl with her toe, then shoved the man down in her place as she crawled off, weeping.

‘You must not touch me!’ the man cried, squirming as Ulrika picked up the hammer and a spike. ‘Wait! What are you doing?’

‘Saving you for a greater purpose,’ said Ulrika, then knelt on his wrist and pounded the spike through the palm of his hand into the hard earth with a single strike.

He screamed and writhed as she stood and looked around the room. The other cultists had caught the escaped girls and were dragging them back towards the cage. She picked up her iron bar again and stalked towards them, growling low in her throat.

The men shouted as they saw her coming, and some released the girls and fled up the ramp. The rest clumped together and ran at her, weapons raised. Ulrika sprinted straight at these, then leapt over their heads, striking down with the bar.

She landed behind them, not turning to see if her blow had struck home, and charged up the ramp. The fleeing men turned at the sound of her steps, preparing to fight, but she leapt their heads too and got between them and the exit.

‘Jackals,’ she said, as they turned to face her. ‘Preying on the weak. Now you will know what it is like to be prey.’

She sprang into the middle of them before they could move, whirling around with the iron bar and cracking skulls and snapping arms. A handful fell away, howling and clutching themselves, but the rest leapt in, screaming. She smashed a man with a hatchet in the neck, lifting him off his feet and sending him crashing into the wall of the ramp. Two more hacked at her legs with swords. She dodged one, but took a cut from the other, then ran him through.

More darted in, slashing and chopping. She pulled on the iron bar. It was stuck in the swordsman’s ribs. A dagger gashed her back. A club smashed her shoulder. A sword grazed her arm.

Ulrika snarled, enraged, and shot out her fangs and claws as her vision turned crimson and black and a roaring filled her ears. The men around her gasped and cried out. She inhaled their fear and leapt at them, leaving the iron bar where it was. She didn’t want a weapon now. It would only keep her at a distance from her victims.

Blood splashed the walls as she tore a man’s throat out. Another stabbed at her and she ripped his arm off. Her claws found flesh wherever she turned, and she rended and tore in a red whirlwind, blind with fury, finding her victims by the hammering of their terrified hearts.

Then a deafening bang punched her ears, and a blow like a red-hot poker smashed her thigh and staggered her. She looked up, waking from her blood fugue as waves of searing pain radiated from the wound. The men she had vaulted were advancing up the ramp towards her. One had a smoking pistol in his hand, and was aiming a second.

Ulrika shrieked like a wildcat and bounded down at him. The second pistol cracked, but the ball whizzed past her and she tackled the man, smashing him through the others to slam him on his back at the base of the ramp. They skidded to a stop and she tore his throat out with her teeth.

The other men thundered down all around her, shouting at each other to attack. She looked up from her crouch, blood dripping off her chin, then launched herself at the nearest. Again the world became nothing but red and black flashes – frozen moments of glorious slaughter – a man falling, his veil and his face half-torn away, another man screaming and staring at the stumps of his fingers, a hooded head rolling away down the ramp.

Ulrika returned to herself some time later on her hands and knees at the base of the ramp, panting amidst the dead and dying, and deliciously happy. Rivulets of blood coursed down between the filthy cobbles from the men she had killed further up, and more dripped from her chin and nose. It was only as she stood and looked around at the carnage that shame chilled her contentment. There was a girl among the men, one of the abducted, as savaged as the others. There were bite-marks on her face.

Ulrika looked away, wincing and cursing. She felt no remorse for killing the cultists. They deserved worse than she had given them, and she hoped that, in death, they would find eternal torment at the hands of the cruel gods they had been foolish enough to worship in life. It was the way she had killed that repulsed her. She had once again lost control, once again broken her vow to herself, and once again paid for it in pain and self-loathing. Had she not been lost in scarlet abandon, she would not have taken the pistol ball in the leg, she would not have killed the girl, she would not now feel the crushing weight of guilt upon her shoulders.

She examined her gun wound. The ball had torn a ragged trench in her outer thigh, but had not remained. She didn’t have to dig lead out of flesh again – a small comfort. With a groan she rose to her feet. Her once-white shirt was red and wet from neck to waist. Her hands were sticky with blood, and her hair was stiff with it. She sighed and limped into the vaulted chamber as, on the cold wind that blew down the ramp, the faint notes of a violin laughed in the distance.