Bloodforged (5 page)

And perhaps she didn’t have to. She had climbed before because she had looked like a scruffy and disreputable foreigner whom the guards would have been unlikely to let into the Noble Quarter in the middle of the night. Looking down at herself now, in her handsome black doublet and expensive boots, she wondered if she might risk the direct approach. She looked like a noble now, and she was only going into the Neuestadt, and the guards didn’t care so much about that.

She looked ahead. All was quiet at the gate. The guards in their black uniforms and breastplates trudged through their duty as if half-asleep. It was now or never. She strode forwards, chin high. As she approached, the guards looked up, peering at her, then straightened and grounded their spears when they saw the cut of her clothes.

She nodded coolly to them and they pushed open the pedestrian door beside the larger gates.

‘Evening, mein herr,’ said the bearded gate captain, saluting.

‘Evening,’ said Ulrika, stepping into the narrow tunnel that passed through the wall.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the captain do a double-take. Either her face or voice had told him she was a woman. She kept going, forcing herself not to increase her pace. She could feel his eyes boring into her back, but he said nothing as she stepped out of the other side of the little passage into the Neuestadt. One gate down. One more to go.

But just as she let out a sigh of relief and began to stride away, there came a clatter of hooves behind her. She looked back and saw four horsemen ride up on the Altestadt side of the gate, calling for the captain to open it. Ulrika froze. She recognised the men. They were all Hermione’s dandies. She stepped into the mouth of an alley and listened.

‘We’re looking for a thief,’ one of them was saying. ‘A woman disguised as a gentleman. She stole my lady’s jewellery.’

The captain gaped. ‘We just let her through, seconds ago!’ He turned and shouted to his men. ‘Open up! Open up!’ then peered through the bars of the opening gate. ‘She’s just – why. she’s gone! Where could she have got to!’

‘We’ll find her, captain,’ said the first horseman, and plunged through the gap with the others behind. ‘Bergen, Standt!’ he cried. ‘Warn the other gates! Folstad and I will search here.’

‘Aye, m’lord!’ called the men, and thundered off into the Altestadt as the leader and the other went more slowly, looking into every doorway and alley.

Ulrika shrank deeper into the shadows and watched them pass by, groaning to herself. She was fast, but not so fast as a horse. They would reach the gates long before she could, and then she would be trapped. Was there another way? Could she climb out? She had climbed the Altestadt wall, but the exterior walls were another thing entirely - heavily patrolled, and much higher. The drop to the ground would likely break her ankles or legs, inhuman strength or not.

No. The walls were not an option. She must find some other way out of Nuln, and quickly, for it was too confined a place to hide for long. It would only be a matter of time before Hermione and Gabriella or the witch hunters tracked her down.

She started down the alley, avoiding reeking puddles and keeping an ear out for horses, while cudgelling her brains for an escape route. If she were human, she could just disguise herself and slip through the main city gates once they opened in the morning and the crowds began to stream in and out, but that was impossible for her, for she would burn to a cinder under the sun’s angry rays. Worse, this would never change. Every night the gates would close, trapping her inside Nuln at the only time she was able to move around, and then open again just after she was forced to seek shelter indoors. Aristocrat of the night? What a joke! More like prisoner of the night.

But then, in the middle of the Handelbezirk, just as she was about to give up and start to seek shelter for the coming day, she walked into a thick, spreading fog, and the rank, wet stink of the river hit her. Her head came up as she inhaled it. The river! Now there was a gate that was difficult to guard.

She cursed as she started through the muffled streets towards the docks. Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? She and Gabriella had travelled from Eicheshatten to Nuln in a riverboat stateroom and never once had to fear the sun. Of course, booking passage on a passenger ship, even under an assumed name, was not wise. If the Lahmians came asking after her, Ulrika did not have a face and manner a purser was likely to forget. She would have to stow away. But that was even better. No sun ever reached the holds of cargo ships. She could get away in perfect safety, and she wouldn’t have to wait until tomorrow night to do it.

Even before sunrise, the riverfront was acrawl with industrious activity – both legal and illegal. Captains and harbourmasters checked manifests by lantern light and pried off the lids of crates to inspect the goods inside, while skulking figures made more furtive exchanges in the shadows of the grey wood warehouses. Longshoremen loaded cargo nets and rolled barrels up gangplanks, while in the dark places between the bigger docks little skiffs, hidden by the fog, offloaded contraband directly into the broken-gated outflow pipes of the sewers, through which it would be distributed to a hundred destinations across the city. Women with little wheeled grills rolled them up and down the quayside, selling river trout and hot chowder to the crews, while women in more colourful clothes sauntered at a slower pace, ready to sate the men’s baser appetites. Beggars clutched at Ulrika’s cloak, moaning for coins, as she edged through the crowd, and hard-looking men eyed her fine clothes and beautiful rapier as they lounged in the doorways of the dockside taverns.

The furious bustle of it all surprised her. She had expected the wharfs to be quiet at this time of day, and had hoped to be able to climb on board an unmanned ship and slip down into the hold without much difficulty. But there were no unmanned ships. All of them were swarming with men.

She glanced to the east. There was a definite orange glow to the fog in that direction now. If she didn’t get on board something soon she would have to give up and try again tomorrow. Then she saw her way – the grill women. When they trundled their little barrows up before a ship and called their wares, the men aboard would drop their work and hurry forwards for a hot mug and a quick bite. All she had to do was time it right.

She began trailing a woman who pushed a bright red barrow and wailed, ‘Hot chowder! Couldn’t be prouder! Hot chowder! I’ll sing it louder!’

The men from a long, flat riverboat got the nod from their bo’sun and filed down off the gangplank, rubbing their hands and calling cheerful vulgarities to the grill woman, who answered in kind.

Ulrika sidled casually up to the boat and looked over its rail. A yawning black hatch was open in the centre of the broad deck, a pallet of blackpowder barrels hanging over it on a rope and tackle. She looked back at the men. They were all crowded around the grill woman, jostling and making jokes. Unfortunately, the bo’sun had stayed on board, pacing and going over a sheaf of papers on the aft deck.

Ulrika clenched her teeth. She would have to risk it – just as soon as he turned his back. There! With a swift leap she was over the rail and light-footing across the deck, then dropped into the hatch.

She landed with a soft thud in a dark, cavernous hold, her shoulders tensed as she waited for cries of surprise. They didn’t come, and she relaxed. The hold was as long as the boat, and stacked with blackpowder barrels and wooden gun-crates with the brand of a local forge burned into their sides. The stacks were covered in heavy canvas tarps, and stretched all the way back to the aft bulkhead. Ulrika crawled over the piles until she was as far from the hatch as she could get, then wormed under a tarp and nestled amongst the barrels.

A thrill went through her as she pulled off her makeshift pack and made a pillow of it. She had done it. She had escaped Gabriella and Hermione and found a way out of Nuln. She was free. She could go where she pleased, do what she wanted to do, be who she wished to be!

The thought brought her up short. Where
did
she want to go? What did she want to do? Who did she wish to be? She had been so concerned with getting free, she hadn’t until this moment given any thought of what she would do with her freedom once she had gained it.

When she had thought Famke would come along, she’d had some vague idea of going off and starting a new life with her outside the confines of the sisterhood, but she hadn’t imagined any specifics, just a few jumbled images – galloping down a winding road on a pair of chargers, sleeping in some farmer’s hayloft, finding some out-of-the-way place they could live in peace – all storybook nonsense, now that she thought of it. It would have been nothing like that.

The boots of the crewmen thudded on the deck above her, and she heard the calls of rough voices and the squeal of the winch as the pallet of barrels was lowered into the hold and men climbed down after it to roll them into place. Good. They would be off soon.

She returned to her problem. Now that she was on her own, she had no idea what she wanted to do, or where to go. She didn’t even know where her boat was going. Should she go to Altdorf? She’d never been to the Empire’s capital before, and had always wanted to see it. Should she return to Middenheim, where she knew the graf? Perhaps not. She certainly couldn’t renew the acquaintance, and Middenheimers were even more suspicious and fanatical than other Empire folk. It would be a dangerous place to be a vampire. Should she leave the Empire entirely? That was an attractive notion. She could go to Marienburg or Bretonnia, or Tilea, where it was warm and she knew no one, and could start again from scratch.

Then, with sudden clarity, she knew precisely where she wanted to go – where she
must
go. Her rebirth and re-education as a vampire, and the nightmare of Murnau and the murders of the Lahmian sisters, had taken her mind from the things that mattered most to her before her death, but now she was her own woman once again. Now she could do the things that were important to
her
, and nothing was more important to her than the defence of her homeland.

At the time Krieger had stolen her from Praag, the Chaos armies that had besieged the city had just withdrawn for the winter in disarray. But it had been a certainty in everyone’s mind that they would return in the spring, and this time the battle would truly be joined. It was the month of Jahrdrung now. Spring was less than two months away. If she started north immediately, she would make it just in time to help in the defence.

She smiled to herself at the thought. She was stronger now, and faster – deadlier than she could ever have imagined. She might not be able to fight side by side with the defenders, but she could do better things. She could sneak into the enemy’s camp at night and slit the throats of their leaders. She could turn their troops into mindless swains who would do her bidding instead of theirs. She could sabotage and spy and slaughter, and drown her pain in the blood of battle. It was a perfect plan.

Of course there were dangers in going to Praag as well, both physical and otherwise. Felix and Gotrek and Snorri and Max Schreiber had certainly returned there after they had left her in the countess’s care in Sylvania. Gotrek had come close to killing her then. He might not show such forbearance if they met again. And Felix and Max – she had loved them both, and thoughts of them still warmed her and filled her with desire. But these days desire was conflated in her with violence and feeding. More than once she had dreamed she was making love to one or the other of them, only to tear his throat out and drink him dry. What would happen if they actually met?

Despite these dangers, she found herself longing for such a meeting. The dour dwarf, the worldly magister and the moody poet had been her rock for some time. They had given her advice and comfort, and had led by example. They were practical, unflappable men, with little of the narrow-mindedness and fear that was all too common among the peoples of the Empire and Kislev. Hadn’t Gotrek allowed her to live, despite the fact she had become a monster in his eyes? Hadn’t Felix allied himself with the countess against Krieger, though he knew her true nature?

Suddenly she wanted more than anything to pour out her troubles to them, to tell them of Templar Holmann and the pain that had come when she knew she didn’t have the courage to save him from Gabriella. She longed to ask them what she should do, how she should live, how she was to resolve the black knot of conflict that twisted her cold dead heart. She was alone now, and it frightened her. She didn’t want to face the world by herself. She wanted companionship.

A mad spark of hope flared at the thought. Perhaps she and Felix and Gotrek and Max could travel together again – have adventures again. She had heard of it happening before. Hadn’t a vampire taken up with a great lord years ago and fought an evil sorcerer at his side? Hadn’t she even won the favour of the Emperor? Or was that only a story?

A cry of ‘Cast away!’ and a sideslipping lurch woke her from her thoughts and she looked up, even though there was nothing to see above her but canvas. They were away. She had made her escape. She was free!

It wasn’t until she closed her eyes and laid her head back on her makeshift pillow that she discovered, to her horror, that she was growing hungry.

CHAPTER FIVE