Bloodforged (9 page)

‘I tell ye, young Ham,’ that one was saying. ‘Style matters. Style will keep y’from the gallows.’

Ham, an ugly, lumpen young fellow, guffawed. ‘G’wan, Nikko. How’s a feather in yer cap gonna save y’from the drop?’

‘’T’aint just the feather, laddie,’ said Nikko. ‘It’s the whole thing. Why, if y’go in crackin’ skulls and makin’ widows of all and sundry before y’grab their loot, they hate ye, y’see. They scream to the wardens and call for the jaggers, and pretty soon yer on the wrong end of a foxhunt. But–’ he reached up and tapped the brim of his hat, ‘if ye swan in with a fancy bow and a merry, “stand and deliver!” and ye pay compliments to the ladies as ye take their purses and pearls, why then, they almost love ye for it. They’ve got a grand story to tell their friends – robbed by a dashing gentleman of the road – and they ain’t so inclined to go to the chasers.’

Ham grunted. ‘Sounds like a lot o’bother. And what if some coachman unloads with a pair of barkers. Am I supposed t’kiss his hand, then?’

Nikko shrugged. ‘Y’can kill any number of coachmen and outriders and wardens as ye like. The marks want t’know yer dangerous. Gives ’em a thrill. Y’just can’t kill the quality. Nobody cares if a few peasants gets it – not even t’other peasants – but ye kill a nob and they’ll chase ye from here to Marienburg.’

A distant rumble brought their heads up, and they looked to the south. Ulrika looked too. A coach flashed past a break in the trees, winding along the road that would pass below the hill.

‘Here we go,’ said Ham, lifting a crossbow from a hook on his saddle.

Nikko jammed his hat down firmly on his head and drew a pistol. ‘Just don’t shoot ’til they show fight this time, aye?’

Ulrika rose from her crouch. It was now or never. She’d lose her prize once the coach came into range. She stepped from the woods, directly behind them, unarmed. ‘Stand and deliver, gentlemen.’

The highwaymen almost jumped out of their saddles. They spun to stare at her as she strode between their horses.

‘Who in Ranald’s name are you?’ asked Ham.

‘Get away,’ snarled Nikko. ‘Yer spoilin’ our game.’

‘You,’ said Ulrika, ‘are my game.’

With a lightning hand she caught Ham’s arm and jerked him from his horse to slam on the ground. Nikko cried out and swung his pistol at her. She ducked and twisted it from his hand, then cracked him on the temple with it. He slumped to the ground beside his companion as their horses danced nervously aside, eyes rolling.

Ham was on his knees, drawing his dagger from his belt. ‘Ye mannish bitch,’ he snarled. ‘I’ll have yer liver for this!’

Ulrika kicked the dagger from his hand and hauled him up by the front of his leather jerkin, though he was nearly double her weight. He tried to throw a fist, but she caught it.

‘Leave off!’ he shouted, struggling. ‘Leave–’

His words died as she opened her mouth and let out her fangs.

‘Sigmar protect me,’ he whimpered.

‘You, murderer?’ said Ulrika, raising an eyebrow. ‘I doubt he cares.’

She sank her teeth into his neck and drank, closing her eyes as the soothing warmth of his blood filled her and his struggles quietened.

She fed with perfect control. Taking only enough to give her strength, but not so much as to bloat her or make her drunk with it. And when she was done, she killed with perfect control. A quick twist to snap his spine, and Ham sagged to the ground, limbs asprawl, a beatific expression on his ugly face.

She turned to Nikko, who stared groggily at her from where he had fallen.

‘Mercy,’ he whispered, crabbing backwards. ‘Mercy! I won’t tell a soul.’

Ulrika hesitated, considering. Nikko was no brute like Ham. He was handsome for his years, and had a friendly way about him. She could give him mercy if she wished. She would be far away by morning, once she had stolen his horse and ridden north. Even if he told, they would never catch her. But then she thought of his callous words, how he was willing to kill any number of coachmen and outriders because peasants didn’t matter. She snarled. A dashing feather could hide a vile heart.

‘Aye,’ she said, drawing her rapier. ‘You won’t.’

He screamed and tried to run, but her blade lashed out and decapitated him before he gained his feet. His head bounced free of his hat and began to roll slowly down the hill, just as the coach thundered by.

Ulrika watched it out of sight, then knelt and searched the highwaymen, taking from them what coin and gear she could use, and stuffing it all in a sturdy pack she had stolen from a previous victim. It was more than two weeks since the incident with Herman and the roadwardens, and she had made good progress towards Praag, but the journey had by no means been easy or pleasant.

Ulrika could not have imagined before she left Nuln how difficult travel would be for a creature of the night. For a start, even after she had filled out again and regained the appearance of health, she had neither the face nor hair nor manner of dress that lent themselves to blending in. No matter where she went she was noticed, and noticed was the last thing a vampire wanted to be. A Lahmian sister, dressed as a great lady, or a servant, or a harlot, might be catalogued and dismissed, forgotten as soon as she was seen, but people didn’t stop looking at Ulrika. They were always taking another glance, trying to work out what she was. Was she a woman or a man? Old or young? A bravo or a dandy? And if they looked too long, they might notice something else – the pallor of her skin, the coldness of her touch, the inhuman something that made dogs bark fearfully when she was near.

So she’d learned to find shelter away from places where humans congregated, in farmers’ barns, in ruined towers, under haystacks and curled up in roadside shrines. But as she’d continued further north, and travelled deeper into the Great Forest, even such meagre shelters were not always available, and she’d had to, more than once, burrow under the leaf mould of the forest floor and pray nothing disturbed it before the sun went down.

Even more difficult was the challenge of feeding regularly. After the shame and tragedy of poor Herman, Ulrika had become more determined than ever to master her hunger, and to feed only on those that deserved it, so she was forever seeking out the worst of humanity and luring them to their doom. On her journey so far she had drunk from bandits and thieves, from murderers and pimps, from cultists, rapists, poisoners and thugs. Such hunting had been relatively easy in the towns of the south – though she had twice been seen and chased from a village by peasants armed with torches and pitchforks – but again, the further into the northern forests she went, the harder it became. Even along the major coach roads, she sometimes went a night without seeing a single man, let alone a villain.

Because of all these dangers, she had grown more cautious and methodical. Now she began looking for shelter hours before sunrise, rather than scurrying around in a mad rush while the sky grew pink. Now she made sure to feed before venturing off into desolate areas, and always enquired the distance to the next town. Now she kept an ear out at inns, listening for rumours of bandits and plundered wagons. Now she cut the throats of the men she fed from, in order to hide the telltale bite marks she left.

Still, for all that she had got better at it, it was a hard, unpleasant life, and she often dreamed of returning to Gabriella and begging forgiveness so she could be snug and safe again in the comforting nest of Lahmian luxury. But every time she was tempted, she reminded herself of the countess saying she might have slaves but not friends, and of the deaths of Friedrich Holmann and Lotte the maid, and the spaniel-eyed fawning of the blood-swains, and it strengthened her resolve. She would not trade honour for comfort. There had to be another way to be a vampire.

There
had
to be.

Ulrika picked up Nikko’s wide, feathered hat from where it had fallen and tried it on. It was a good fit. With the rough leather jerkin and heavy patched cloak she had acquired along the way, she imagined she looked a proper vagabond now – which was all to the good. A ragged traveller was much less conspicuous than a white-haired dandy in black velvet.

She tied the leads of Ham’s horse to Nikko’s saddle, then mounted and turned to the north.

In another two weeks Ulrika was across the Kislev border, and two weeks after that, she was within sight of the towers of Praag, far in the distance across the flat plains of the central oblast. Travel through them had been even more difficult than through the forests of the Empire, because towns were even sparser, and cover in an almost treeless land even harder to find.

She’d lost the two horses just after Kislev, when she’d been caught feeding and had had to flee without going back to where she’d hitched them. Since then, she had made her way by following a supply caravan – a mile-long procession that was bringing timber, grain, guns and cavalry remounts to Praag to support the remains of the Ice Queen’s army there, as well as food and arms for the siege that was sure to come when the hordes returned in the spring.

The caravan moved slowly enough that Ulrika could make up at night whatever distance it had covered during the day, and it was always surrounded by ne’er-do-wells and villains – men who attempted to steal the supplies, cheat the soldiers who guarded them, or lure away their camp followers for evil purposes, so she had a steady supply of predators to prey upon no matter where they were. She did her best to pick men of such evil and unreliable reputations that no one would care or wonder if they went missing, but even so, by the end of the first week the camps were whispering about a monster that followed them, and dragged away men in the night.

She didn’t feed every night – that would have been too dangerous – and to her pleasant surprise, she found she no longer needed to. Where once missing blood for even a single day had been agony, now she found she could go sometimes as much as three days before the pangs became unbearable. She didn’t like to leave it too long, however, for it wouldn’t do to be weak and desperate if something went wrong, or if she became separated from the caravan, so she tried to feed every third night and never from the same campfire twice in a row.

As the caravan had got closer to Praag, Ulrika had begun to see reminders of the Chaos invasion of the previous year – burnt towns, abandoned farms, mounds of earth covering hastily dug mass graves, and gaunt peasants whose fields and stores had been raided twice, once by the invaders when they came south, and a second time by the Ice Queen’s armies when they had arrived to push the hordes north again.

She also saw signs that some marauders had not retreated. Columns of Gospodar winged lancers often thundered past, their eagle-wing banners snapping in the wind, and sometimes with barbaric severed heads impaled on their lance tips. Rumour flitted around the campfires that this or that caravan had been raided by crazed northerners who came howling out of the night and vanished again with captives and plunder, none knew to where. Ulrika saw a farm burning on the horizon one night, and passed through the smouldering ruins of a little town the next, its citizens butchered and violated in unspeakable ways. She snarled with patriotic loathing at each atrocity. Her homeland had been defiled, and worse was yet to come. She almost relished the return of the hordes in the spring. It would give her opportunity for vengeance.

Finally, that morning, just before she had bedded down in the root cellar of a gutted farmhouse, she had seen the distant onion-domed towers of Praag glittering in the first pink rays of the rising sun, and now that it was evening there was only one last march to go. She would be in the city before daylight, and then… and then…?

Her spine tingled with fear and excitement. In only a few hours she might be seeing Felix and Max and Gotrek again. Should she do it? Could she? Could she not? And what would be the aftermath? She might be dead the next instant, killed by the Slayer’s dread axe. Worse, she might be shunned. They might turn from her in loathing. Perhaps that was better. She would know where she stood. And if Felix or Max welcomed her with open arms, could she control herself? Would she love them, or feed on them?

With a snort of impatience she picked up her pack and crawled out of the cellar. She had come too far to turn back now.

It was only a few hours later when Ulrika heard the screams. They drifted to her over a rise in the road, faint upon the wind. She picked up her pace, and as she reached the crest she heard clashes too. There was a battle somewhere ahead of her, hidden by intervening hills. She licked her lips. A battle meant blood, and it would be wise to feed before entering the uncertainty of the city. She hurried on, pack bouncing on her back, and after a long run over the rumpled landscape, came over a hill and saw, in the cup of a valley, a scene of savage slaughter.

A marauder warband, huge gaunt men, their half-naked bodies painted in purple woad and pierced all over with strange bone fetishes, were swarming a caravan –
her
caravan, the one she had travelled with since Kislev – while the soldiers and mercenaries who guarded it fought in a swiftly dwindling circle, outnumbered two to one. Mutated war hounds, their hides like armour and their muzzles dripping red, fought beside their barbaric masters, tearing out throats and intestines, while the leader of the band, a scarred bald gargantua on a hellish black horse, dealt death with axes in both hands.

A blistering rage gripped Ulrika at the sight. She had protected these people since Kislev, picking off the human wolves who would have thinned their ranks, and now, almost within shouting distance of Praag, they were attacked? How dare these northern scum touch her flock! They were hers to cull!