Bloodforged (25 page)

But as they broke through them, three more – one small and two huge – charged up to block their way. Ulrika and Stefan attacked them negligently, but these cultists were different, and slashed back at them with unnatural speed and strength – and silver. One of the giants wielded a huge silvered axe that nearly knocked Ulrika’s rapier from her hand. The little one whirled two silvered long-knives, and Ulrika had to lurch back as one flashed an inch from her eyes. Beside her, Stefan barely dodged the second giant’s axe – identical to that of the first.

‘Defilers!’ snarled the smaller cultist, raising a voice like two voices over the wail of the still-screaming violin. ‘Give us the vessel!’

Higher up the stairs, the cultists Ulrika and Stefan had pricked in passing were recovering and edging down towards them.

‘Across!’ called Stefan.

He kicked back one of the giants and vaulted from their staircase to the other. Ulrika laughed and did the same, fanning back her attackers and bounding across the gap to the second spiral as they slashed futilely after her.

The weight of the violin case slapped against her back and made her stumble as she landed. Stefan steadied her, and they turned to descend, but before they took a step, the little cultist and the two giants landed in front of them, blocking their way. Ulrika gaped as she went on guard. What manner of men could make such a leap?

‘Do you think your night-born strength will save you?’ shrilled the little one in its strange double voice. ‘We are stronger! We are blessed!’

And with that, the three cultists ripped off their cloaks and flung them aside, revealing themselves to be entirely naked, and not entirely human. Ulrika recoiled, repulsed. Stefan grunted a curse.

The little one was a woman, red-haired and sun-bronzed, with twisting Norse tattoos all over her wiry, slim-hipped body. She was brutally attractive, with sultry eyes that looked out from under snakelike dreadlocks, but she was repellent as well, for the mouth on her face was not the only one she bore. A fat goitre grew from her neck, as if she were birthing a second head, and a drooling mouth distended from it and licked its plump lips with a long pink tongue.

Her monolithic companions were just as disturbing, for though they were identical twins – hard-muscled, barbarically beautiful giants with braided blond hair and blue eyes – one was emphatically male, while the other was abundantly female, and the skin of both gleamed with the hard white lustre of porcelain.

‘Foolish corpses!’ said the little woman from her mouths. ‘You stand before Jodis the Unsated, handmaiden to Sirena Amberhair, she who will soon be Queen of Praag. In her name, I shall be your doom. In her name, I shall–’

‘Get on with it,’ sneered Ulrika, and lunged at her while she was still in mid-sentence.

If the woman was caught off guard she didn’t show it. She parried Ulrika’s stroke with ease and pressed back, her long-knives blurring, as her companions charged Stefan, chopping with their axes and ululating like banshees. Ulrika could not stand against Jodis’s attack – it was too fast, and she feared the silver too much. Just one touch of those knives could cripple her. She backed away, parrying and dodging, looking for a hole in the shining web the Norsewoman wove around herself while the violin shrilled and sawed in her ears. If only it would shut up.

Beside her, Stefan too was backing up. His sword was striking the twin giants repeatedly, but it only chimed off them as if they were made of marble, and each time, their silvered axes sliced perilously close to his head and neck.

Beyond their fights, the remaining cultists were stumbling down the other stairway and coming for the one she and Stefan had leapt to. They would be surrounded again in moments, and couldn’t hope to survive it.

Ulrika blocked Jodis’s blades, but the mutant woman kicked her in the chest with a bare foot and she crashed against the banister, jamming the violin case painfully into her spine and making the instrument howl with anger. As she stopped herself from pitching headlong over the rail, Ulrika saw the crook-backed sorcerer staring up at the fight from the floor below and waiting, shimmering purple energy wreathing his hands.

Jodis attacked again and Ulrika ducked away, an idea forming – a way to remove at least one threat. She blocked the Norsewoman’s blades again, knocking them to the sides. Jodis took the bait and kicked her in the stomach as she had before. Ulrika threw herself back and deliberately flipped backwards over the banister, dropping right towards the crooked man.

He dived aside with a cry, the energy in his hands dissipating in his surprise. Ulrika twisted in mid-air and landed in a crouch, then sprang instantly at him, aiming her rapier at his heart, but the unaccustomed weight of the violin case threw her off and she ran him through the guts instead. He shrieked and collapsed in the rubble, clutching his torn middle.

Ulrika rose to finish him off, but Jodis dropped down and blocked her way. Behind her, three lesser cultists were racing to join her.

‘Cease your struggles, puppet,’ the Norsewoman laughed, with both her mouths. ‘Don’t you see that Slaanesh pulls your strings?’

Ulrika lunged at her, hoping to kill her before her help arrived, but the violin case again threw her off balance, and Jodis’s silver blades turned the attack. Ulrika cursed, frustrated, as the violin laughed and the three cultists swarmed in. Damn the violin. It was hitting her and bumping her arms with every move, and its constant shrilling melody was making it hard to concentrate.

Ulrika killed a cultist, then glanced up at the stairs, drawn by a horrible squeal echoing from above. The male giant was reeling back, crashing through a mob of lesser cultists, his silver axe buried in his beautiful face, as his female twin lashed out at Stefan with berserk fury.

Jodis came at Ulrika again, long-knives flashing. Ulrika parried the left blade, but the violin case knocked her dagger arm out of position and the second knife slid across the back of her wrist. Ulrika jumped back, hissing, as sickening pain shot up her arm to her shoulder. The silvered knife had made only the shallowest of cuts, but already the skin around the scratch was peeling back and blackening.

Ulrika’s dagger fell from her fingers and the world swam around her. She fought not to faint, backing and lashing wildly with her rapier to keep Jodis and the last cultists at bay. The violin laughed in her ears, its weight tugging at her, making her stumble. She couldn’t fight like this! With a curse, she shrugged the straps of the pack off her shoulders and tossed it and the violin aside, then went on guard again, holding her throbbing wrist behind her.

‘Now,’ Ulrika growled. ‘Now I will kill you.’

She lunged, stabbing savagely, and Jodis fell back, barely turning the rapier’s point aside in time. Ulrika feinted at her, then slashed to the side and cut down the last two cultists before following up with another thrust at Jodis. The Norsewoman retreated in confusion, dancing away from Ulrika’s questing point and grunting with effort. Ulrika grinned. Now she was fighting like she should! Without the weight of the violin and its incessant yammering, she was light as air, she could think. She would end this in seconds.

But in the next instant, Jodis recovered her composure, and was suddenly blocking all her attacks with ease. She laughed as she forced Ulrika back. ‘Did I not say Slaanesh pulled your strings?’

Ulrika didn’t know what she meant until, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the crook-backed sorcerer limping quickly towards the door, her pack clutched to his bleeding stomach.

From over the sounds of battle above she heard Stefan curse. ‘Fool of a girl! What have you done?’

Ulrika’s guts shrivelled. What mad impulse had made her throw aside the violin? What had she been thinking? But it hadn’t been her, had it? The violin had made a dupe of her, just as she’d feared.

With a snarl of rage she dodged around Jodis, trying to catch the hunchback before he reached the door, but the Norsewoman skipped back, staying in front of her and slashing with her knives.

‘What?’ she laughed with both mouths. ‘Will you take back what you have given?’

A cry of pain shrilled from above and Stefan blurred down the stairs, racing after the sorcerer as the female twin toppled over the banister behind him.

Jodis looked towards him, crying out. ‘No! Stop!’

Ulrika took advantage of the Norsewoman’s distraction and stabbed her through the ribs, then shouldered her down and ran for the sorcerer as well. Daylight shone through the hole at the base of the door. They had to stop him before he got out or they wouldn’t be able to follow.

The crooked man yelped as he saw them converging on him, then raised his free hand. It coruscated with shimmering power. Ulrika and Stefan sprinted faster, hoping to strike before he attacked, but when he released the boiling energy, it wasn’t at them, but at the door.

A near-invisible eruption of power smashed like a fist into the bricks that walled it up, and they burst outwards in a thunderous explosion of dust and rubble.

Ulrika and Stefan back-pedalled desperately as the sorcerer ran out of the tower and morning sunlight stabbed into the darkness like a blazing spear-tip, but Ulrika couldn’t stop in time and sprawled into the searing shaft, throwing out her hands and dropping her sword as she slammed to the sunlit floor. The skin of her knuckles blistered and smoked. Her face felt as if it were on fire.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

RED PASSION

Ulrika screamed and rolled as the fiery rays lanced her body. A firm hand pulled her into the shadows. She looked up through eyes half-blind with agony. Stefan stood above her, apparently unhurt.

‘Cover up,’ he said. ‘Quickly. We must go.’

‘G-go? But–’

‘I cannot fight them all! Hurry!’

Ulrika looked past him and saw Jodis standing and starting towards them, blood streaming down her naked torso from where Ulrika had stabbed through the ribs. The giant female was also still alive, rising from the rubble at the base of the stairs with strange wounds all over her body that looked like star-shaped cracks in thick glass. Behind them, a few cultists lurched forwards too.

‘What’s wrong, corpses?’ laughed Jodis. ‘Why don’t you run?’

Dizzy with pain, Ulrika fumbled gloves from her belt and hissed as she pulled them on over her blistered fingers. The Norsewomen and the cultists were spreading out to surround them. She threw her cape over her throbbing head, then looked up. Stefan had pulled up the hood of his scholar’s cloak, but was otherwise unprotected.

‘But what about you?’ she asked. ‘You will burn.’

Stefan pulled her roughly to her feet. ‘I will not. Now come,’ he said, then dragged her towards the door.

Ulrika stumbled after him, cringing and pulling her cape tight as the sun pressed on her shoulders like hot bricks and the reflected light from the floor stabbed her eyes. Behind them, Jodis cried out in surprise and anger, and Ulrika heard the swift slap of bare feet on stone.

There was a metallic scrape and Stefan pressed Ulrika’s rapier into her hand as they ran on, down the steps and into the narrow area between the tower and the outer wall. ‘You will have to climb while I–’ he began, then stopped and laughed. ‘No. They have pierced the wall. Good. Hurry.’

Ulrika weaved after him, one hand in front of her, as he led her along the outer wall. The footsteps behind them were gaining. Suddenly, Stefan whipped her ahead of him, and there was a clash of steel from behind.

‘Out! Out!’ he shouted.

Ulrika tripped over rubble on the ground and fell against the wall. There was a break in it. She stumbled through into the street. Another clang of swords and a shriek of anger and Stefan’s hand pulled at her arm again, laughing and leading her away from the spire.

‘They thought to trap us with the sun,’ he said. ‘But they are trapped now. They cannot follow naked into the streets of Praag bearing mouths where they shouldn’t and skin that cracks like glass.’

‘I don’t understand how you can walk in the sun,’ Ulrika said. ‘How does it not hurt you?’

‘It hurts,’ he said. ‘But it does not burn, not immediately. And I do not understand it either. I was born with it, that’s all. Now, hurry. We must get you home.’

‘But the violin,’ said Ulrika. ‘The sorcerer.’

‘He is long gone,’ said Stefan. ‘And we are too weak to fight him. We will have to try again tonight.’

Ulrika hung her head. ‘I am sorry for throwing off the violin. I… I think–’

‘It worked upon your mind,’ said Stefan. ‘I know. You will know to defend against it next time. Now come. We must find a grate to the sewers.’

They hurried on, searching frantically as the sun beat at Ulrika through her clothes like a flaming club. It amazed her that Stefan could bear it. She could hardly stand beneath it, even fully covered. What a wonder to be able to walk abroad during the day. Such a gift removed almost all the curse of being a vampire. One could move in normal human society. One could ride during the day, and travel in an open coach. One could turn the witch hunters’ suspicions with a single noon meeting.

A block on, Stefan found a grate just inside the mouth of an alley. He kicked away the beggars that slept on it, then hauled it up and helped her in before following and closing it over his head. Ulrika groaned with relief and she lowered herself unsteadily down the iron ladder to the brick tunnel below. The pain of her burns did not abate, but at least she wasn’t cooking them any more.

The sewers, it quickly became apparent, were not an ideal way to travel in Praag, particularly when one was almost too weak to walk, let alone run or fight. They smelled abominably, and were slick with slime and thick with rats. All those things were to be expected, of course, but there were other, more sinister residents as well. Strange hunched figures moved through the channels in packs, splashing away into the shadows at the sound of Ulrika and Stefan’s approaching footsteps. Eerie hooting and whistling echoed all around them, and they saw occasional campfires far down branching tunnels, throwing distorted shadows on the arched walls.

More dangerous than these shy horrors were the companies of Kossar infantry who marched through the maze in single file, spears at the ready, with silent scouts prowling to the fore, hunting the creatures who hid there. More than once, Ulrika and Stefan had to duck back into a side tunnel and wait for them to pass, and once they were forced to edge around a full-scale battle between the soldiers and men in rags, all with extra arms or legs, or heads with horns, or too many eyes or mouths where their stomachs should be.

Ulrika wondered, as they hurried away from the screams and clash of steel, if these horrors had always been here, or if the Chaos magic Arek Daemonclaw’s sorcerers had focused on the city during the siege had birthed them.

As they followed the sewer into the Novygrad, the tunnels soon became too populated to navigate, and they were forced to return to the surface. There were just too many mutants huddled in the shadows, and in their own territory, they were no longer so shy.

Ulrika cringed, wilting, as she and Stefan climbed back out onto the ruined streets and the sun struck her again like a hammer. It was full daylight now, and the ten blocks to her hideout in the abandoned bakery were utter torture. By the end, she was so weak Stefan had to carry her. Her entire body throbbed as if it were on fire, and her arms and legs felt like they were made of paper and twigs, but her hunger nearly drowned out all of those things. She needed to feed desperately. The fighting and the burns and the sun’s leeching heat had sapped all the strength she had taken from the apprentice’s blood, and it felt as if she would crumble to dust if she could not have more.

Stefan laid her on the baking table by the oven and unwrapped her cape, then hissed in sympathy as he saw her blistered skin. His skin was unmarked, but as red as a boiled lobster, and his hands shook as he tucked her pack under her head for a pillow.

‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I will bring us sustenance.’

Ulrika could do nothing but nod and lie back, staring at the brick ceiling as he hurried away. She could not sleep, or relax. She shivered like a plucked wire, and blinding jolts of pain shot through her body with every twitch. She had been burned by the sun before, but that had been the merest touch of the flaming brush compared to this. The backs of both her hands looked like milk on the boil, bubbling with hideous, pus-filled translucent blisters. She probed her face. It was the same. And under that bright pain was the dull sick throb of the wound Jodis had given her with the silver knife. The cut on her wrist was as black and brittle at the edges as burnt paper.

After an interminable time, in which she drifted in and out of waking dreams where women in gowns made of cobwebs clawed at her with hands like hawks’ talons, and where a faceless man in cultist’s robes cut open her veins with a shard of onyx that pulsed red at the centre, she woke to footsteps and voices above her.

‘I don’t take no damaged goods,’ a rough-voiced man was saying. ‘Only the youngest, most beautiful girls.’

‘I assure you,’ came Stefan’s voice, ‘she is so beautiful I wish I didn’t have to part with her, but in these hard times, one needs money more than beauty, eh?’

Ulrika frowned as the man with the harsh voice laughed. She didn’t understand what was happening.

‘Don’t I know it,’ said the man. ‘Right, then, where is she?’

‘Just down here,’ said Stefan. ‘In the cellar.’

There was a pause at that. ‘The cellar? This ain’t some trick? You ain’t got some mates down there, waitin’ to jump me?’

‘Of course not,’ said Stefan smoothly. ‘Here. You may hold my sword if you wish.’

‘Nah,’ said the hoarse voice. ‘Nah. It’s fine. Can’t be too careful though, you know?’

‘Indeed,’ said Stefan. ‘Now let me light a lamp and we shall go down.’

Ulrika raised herself up on one elbow and drew her sword as she heard the scritching of a flint. Was Stefan going to sell her? Why? Where did this betrayal come from?

Yellow light blossomed in the arch that led to the stairs, and steps creaked down them. Stefan entered the room with a gaudily dressed bravo behind him. The man lifted his lantern, squinting into the darkness and revealing curling moustaches and a wide, feathered hat, which he wore over a black bandana, like an Estalian bandit.

‘Where is she?’ he asked.

‘There on the table,’ said Stefan. ‘Waiting for you.’

The man turned towards the table, then recoiled, gagging. ‘Her face! What happened to her face?’

‘Oh, that will heal,’ said Stefan. ‘She only needs a good meal.’

And with that, he tore the lantern from the man’s hand and shoved him towards Ulrika.

Ulrika threw aside her sword and caught the man’s arms as he screamed, her fears allayed. Stefan hadn’t betrayed her. Indeed, he seemed to have gone out of his way to pick a victim she would approve of – a predator of the worst kind. It would be a pleasure to drain him.

The slaver thrashed and tried to get away, but as weak as she was, she was stronger than he. She pulled him close, knocking off his hat and gagging on the stink of cheap scent and pomade, then sank her teeth into his neck.

Cooling relief flooded through her body as the blood spilled down her throat and his struggles weakened. Her dry tissues swelled and smoothed and the pain of her burns and the cut from the silver knife began to lessen. The deep-sea pulse of the slaver’s pumping heart countered the throbbing of her head and enveloped her in soothing salt waves. Her eyes closed and she clung to him like a lover, wrapping her arms and legs around him and pulling him down on the table.

Too soon, a gentle hand rocked her shoulder.

‘Enough,’ said Stefan’s distant voice. ‘Enough. I too am hungry.’

Ulrika batted at the hand. ‘Leave me be!’

Stefan caught her wrist. ‘Enough,’ he said again. ‘You will be sick.’

Ulrika glared at him for a moment, unable to understand the words, but then reason returned to her and she let the man go. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘No need to apologise,’ said Stefan, pulling the man from her. ‘Your need is great, but there will be more later.’

He bit the man precisely where Ulrika had, and she watched, fascinated, as the man’s hands struggled feebly, then ringed Stefan’s waist and clung to him. It shouldn’t have shocked her that a male victim should feel pleasure from the bite of a vampire of the same sex – had not poor Imma, the maid at Herr Aldrich’s house, pledged undying love to Ulrika after she had fed upon her? Nevertheless it did, but at the same time it was somehow arousing. Stefan was strangely gentle with the man, supporting him and stroking him as he drank, and not pulling or tearing at his neck.

When he had finished, and the man hung limp in his arms, Stefan carried him to another table and laid him on it, folding his hands over his chest. Stefan’s eyes, when he turned back to Ulrika, were glassy and heavy-lidded.

‘We will take care of him later,’ he said, stepping to her with a smile. ‘But first we must take care of you.’

Ulrika frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

He reached out and turned over her hand. The blisters had shrunk, but they were still there, and still painful, and the black cut of the silver knife was still dark, and had not entirely closed.

‘You are not fully healed,’ he said. ‘And you have lost much strength. It would take many victims and many days to return you to the height of your powers, and we haven’t time for that, but there is another way.’

Ulrika drew back as he looked into her eyes. ‘What other way?’

‘I have strength to spare,’ he said, and turned his head to expose his neck. ‘I would share it with you.’

Ulrika blinked, shocked. ‘You want me to… to feed on you?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Surely you have heard of this before.’

‘Y-yes,’ she said. ‘But I was told it was… lovemaking.’

He smiled again. ‘It can be. But it also heals and imparts strength. Do you want to face those northern daemon-lovers again while weak and sick?’

She shook her head, remembering Jodis’s flashing long-knives, but still she hesitated. ‘Does it not also bind one to the other? Make them loyal to each other? Like the blood I shared with Boyarina Evgena?’