Tales of the Old World (23 page)

“Keep talkin’, pretty boy! Froat Biter hasn’t finished wiv yer yet. Perhaps
yer voice won’t be so dainty once I’ve cut yer froat from ear ta ear!”

“I’ll bathe in your blood and count the heads of your friends before that
clumsy lump of pig iron touches my skin!”

“Let’s see if yer muscles are as big as yer mouf!”

As one, both combatants swung. Their mighty weapons rang against each other
with an explosion of magical energy. Steel-eye ducked Vagraz’s swing and brought
the warhammer around in a mighty blow that smashed off one of the warlord’s
shoulder pads. Amazed that his magical armour had been penetrated, the warlord
was thrown off-guard. Vagraz barely had time to throw a hasty parry as the
warhammer swung upwards again, knocking the orc backwards. Without pause, the
young human leapt forward to sustain his attack, raining blow after blow against
the orc.

Vagraz was not going to fall easily. A wild swing opened up a gaping cut in
the hunter’s side, but left the orc leader’s defences open. With a defiant yell,
the young man ignored his injury and swung again, the head of the hammer
sweeping Vagraz off his feet with an audible cracking of bones. A second blow
snapped the orc’s head backwards and sent his axe tumbling from his grasp.
Somehow the orc still clung to life. With a grunt it raised itself to its
shattered knees and held up a hand. Confused and suspecting treachery, the hunt
lord checked his next blow, staring distrustfully down at the broken creature on
the ground before him.

To Steel-eye’s surprise, the warlord started laughing, a dull chuckling that
rose to a guttural thunder. Vagraz snorted contemptuously, spitting several
teeth into the mud, and he raised a hand to form one final, vulgar gesture.

His patience gone, the hunt lord stepped forward. “Was that really the best
you could do?” Steel-eye taunted, stepping on the orc’s other hand with a
crunching of bones, as it stretched towards the fallen axe. Steel-eye steadied
himself and swung one final blow. As the body slumped to the ground, the hunter
stepped absent-mindedly to one side to avoid a rivulet of green, viscous fluid
that drained towards the trees. He was staring intently at the body, as if
suspecting it still presented some danger.

After a moment’s pause, Steel-eye turned to look around him. Kurgan strode
up, laughing heartily. The dwarf king tugged hard on the hunter’s ragged,
bloodstained cloak, stopping him as he took a stride towards the fight. The lad
turned quickly to glare at the dwarf, his wide, battle-crazed eyes full of
questions, the hammer in his hand half-raised to attack.

“Woah there, it’s only me! You’re a fine fighter, lad, and no mistake.
Perhaps you pinkskins aren’t so bad as we thought.”

Steel-eye looked down at the dwarf and held out the hammer, haft first. When
he spoke, his words came in panting gasps, his breath carving misty shadows in
the cold air.

“Thank you for… your weapon… Talk later… orcs to kill… Take it back… I’m sure
I can find… something else.”

The dwarf king shook his noble head. Stroking the tangles out of his long
beard, he looked up at the human with a wry smile on his face and a mischievous
glint in his eye. Kurgan took the proffered warhammer and patted its
rune-encrusted head. With a short chuckle, he handed it back to the surprised
youth.

“I think he likes you better than me. Keep him. His name is Ghal Maraz, or
Skull Splitter. You’ve done us a great service today. A small gift hardly
compares to the life of a dwarf king, now does it?”

The youngster nodded his thanks and turned to rejoin the fight. The remaining
orcs were falling back into the woods, all thoughts of battle gone now their
warlord was dead. Kurgan laid a hand on the hunt lord’s arm and halted him
again.

“This day will be recorded in our annals with joy. What’s your name lad, that
we might honour you?”

Steel-eye hefted the hammer in his hand, his eyes straying towards the
fleeing orcs. He looked at the dwarf king again, his eyes smouldering with
energy. The rest of his face was in darkness and as the flames flickered in
those intense grey eyes, they took on an eerie light. Even the baleful gaze of
the orc warlord hadn’t exuded the raw power of the youth’s stare. His reply was
short and simple.

“Sigmar.”

During the summer when the ship
Destrier
limped back into Bordeleaux,
the heat was everywhere and always. In the daytime it throbbed down from the
blinding sun, grilling the skin of those forced to toil beneath it. At night it
lay heavy in the air, radiating from bricks and cobbles so that the city felt
like a giant kiln.

Even in the docks, where Manann’s breath blew chill from the ocean beyond,
the heat greased the air. The open sewers that fed into the harbour oozed
beneath it, and the waste that finally dripped into the thick waters was as warm
as blood. Methane fires occasionally flared above the stew of filth and brine,
although they did nothing to dispel the stink.

But to Florin d’Artaud the foetid air of the harbour was sweeter than any
rose. After all, it was the smell of home, and after thousands of miles of ocean
and jungle and danger and pain, what could smell sweeter?

He lent over the railings of the
Destrier
and gazed longingly at the
sweltering city that rose up around them. Lorenzo, who stood behind him, was not
to be distracted by such sentiments. The older man stared at the deck instead,
his eyes glittering in the oil lamps that had been set around the gunwales of
their ship.

The treasure glittered, too. It had been spread out on the battered timber of
the deck, and now, as the survivors of the expedition watched like hawks, it was
being divided.

“Gold,” said the captain, weighing a misshapen yellow statue that looked a
little like a frog. “Sixteen pounds and nine ounces.”

The assembled men, gaunt and ragged and fabulously wealthy, nodded
approvingly. They watched the quarter master scratch the weight into the lump of
metal, then turned back as the captain lifted the next piece. It was a medallion
as big as a breastplate, the perfect oval spoiled only by a bullet hole right in
the centre.

“Gold,” the captain said. “Twelve pounds and six ounces.”

The men shifted appreciatively. Only Florin looked impatient. He paced around
behind them, gazing hungrily at his city. Even at this late hour it would be
teeming with life, he knew. There would be fresh women and fresh food, tailors
and bathhouses and wine merchants.

Behind him the captain paused over the next part of the inventory. A murmur
of disquiet passed through the men as they watched him turn the bauble this way
and that. Then he shrugged and put the thing into the scales.

“Egg,” the captain said as he weighed it. “Twenty-four pounds.”

Florin’s brow creased and he turned around.

“What did he just say?” he asked Lorenzo, who was frowning. It made him look
even more like a monkey.

“Egg,” he said, and there was no mistaking the disgust in his voice. “More
gold than we could carry, and what does some idiot decide to save?”

There was a murmur of angry agreement, and the captain held the egg up. It
took two hands to lift it, and although it was obviously worthless it was
pretty. Intricate shapes patterned the glazed surface, and he could see why, in
all the panic, somebody might have snatched the bauble up.

The men, however, seemed less understanding.

“Well, whoever brought this should take it as their share,” the captain
announced. “Who was it?”

The men fell silent. The Bretonnians glared suspiciously at the Kislevites,
and the Kislevites sneered at the Tileans. The captain, realising that the fuse
of racial tension had been relit, decided to douse it.

“Nobody? Right then, as nobody wants it we’ll throw it away.”

Before anybody could reply he lifted the egg high over his head and hurled it
over the side of the ship. It plopped into the sewage-choked water, bobbed once,
then disappeared from view.

“Gold,” the captain said, moving hurriedly on to the next piece. “Nine pounds
and four ounces.”

It was almost dawn by the time the spoils had been divided, and as the
shipful of rich vagabonds hove into Bordeleaux, not a single one of them gave
another thought to the egg that had been added to the rich stew of the city’s
harbour.

One Year Later

The men who worked in these depths toiled as hard as any miners. They
strained and swore and struggled, their brows oiled with sweat as they practised
their craft beneath the hiss of brass lanterns.

The patissier, his skin grey after a lifetime spent in clouds of flour,
battered his pastry with a blacksmith’s strength. The saucier wielded a
long-handled tasting spoon amongst his apprentices, driving them on like so many
galley slaves. Meanwhile the rotissier, his arms scarred by fire and boiling
grease, sliced apart a roast piglet with a swordsman’s skill.

And through this inferno, his face red and his eyes savage, strode the chef.
In one hand he held the rolling pin that served as his marshal’s baton. The
other was empty, although it flexed nervously. After all, although every dinner
party involved the sort of perfect timing that would make a juggler dizzy,
tonight was even worse. Tonight his master, Monsieur Lafayette, was entertaining
his arch rival, Monsieur Griston.

Which was to say that perfection was no longer enough.

The chef idly whacked his rolling pin down on a porter who had been foolish
enough to cross his path. The impact of wood onto flesh soothed him. So did the
thought that tonight he would indeed give his master more than perfection.

“How’s the porc au miel provencal?” he asked the rotissier. The man, who was
using two knives simultaneously, answered without looking up.

“Needs to rest for twenty minutes,” he said.

The chef looked at his timepiece, a burnished brass lump that was as big as
his palm. “Twenty minutes,” he repeated. “Good, saucier?” The saucier swivelled
at the sound of his master’s voice.

“Chef?”

“Twenty minutes for the sauce florette de porc.”

“But it’s ready in five.”

“Twenty minutes!” the chef screamed, and all around him quailed.

“Twenty minutes it is,” the saucier said, already shoving his apprentice out
of the way to take personal charge of that particular cauldron.

The chef forgot him as he hurried towards his own bench. It was a marble
slab, as big as a coffin, and a porter stood beside it in constant attendance.
With a feeling of pride the chef put his rolling pin to one side and opened the
box of eggs that waited for him on the slab. He hoisted one out, turning it to
admire it in the lamplight.

He still wasn’t sure what the thing was. The size put him in mind of the
giant chickens that were said to live in the Southlands. On the other hand, the
colours that striped it were like nothing he’d seen on any mere bird’s egg
before. They looked almost ceramic.

It didn’t really matter. All that mattered was what lay inside the strange
shell. The one that he had sampled before purchasing the box had been as smooth
as the richest mousse. And the taste… For the first time in his life, the chef
believed that he had found something that couldn’t be improved upon by any
artifice of his.

He smiled happily, secure in the knowledge that he would get the credit
anyway. And all he had to do was to poach the eggs, slice them, and then cover
them with clear sauce translucid for appearance’s sake.

“Garcon,” he bellowed, despite the fact that the porter was standing right
behind him.

“Yes, chef?”

“Bring me the poaching kettle and the entree silverware.” The porter didn’t
reply. Instead, he choked. “The entree silverware?” he finally managed to
repeat. The chef turned to glare at him, fury in his eyes. “It’s just that we
don’t have it. Entreeier Reinald has already sent the entrees up.” The chef’s
look became murderous.

“He gave them oysters in sauce escargot,” the porter stuttered, and started
to edge away.

For a moment it seemed that he might have to run, but the chef’s fury found
its lightning rod in the person of the entreeier himself. He had just returned
from supervising the waiters’ handling of his creations, and had the relieved
look of a man who had done a difficult job well.

The expression vanished beneath the chef’s animal howl of outrage. Assuming
that his master had been driven to madness by the pressures of his office,
Reinald attempted to defend himself from the assault.

Unfortunately, such defiance did little to improve his superior’s mood. As
the two men fought their way through the shadows, fists blurring and teeth
flashing, the rest of the kitchen worked on. Most remained oblivious to the
violence going on around them as, sweating and swearing and struggling, they
created perfection.

But on that night, as their chef had known all along, perfection wasn’t
enough.

“These oysters are very good, Lafayette,” Count Griston nodded across the
dining table towards his host. “And the sauce is just right. It just goes to
show that you can prepare quite a decent dish without worrying about any
creativity whatsoever.”

Baron Lafayette smiled grimly at the insult. The worse thing about it was
that it was true. The oysters escargot were faultless, but apart from that they
were the same as oysters escargot anywhere.

“I’m glad you are enjoying them,” he told Griston. “I knew that you would.
Many people say that the true gastronomer is a man of simple tastes.”

“I quite agree,” Griston’s wife said. “When we last ate at the castle we had
oysters for an entree there, too.”