03 - Death's Legacy (17 page)

“You wouldn’t think it,” Fritz remarked at his elbow, “but
that’s all part of the city’s defences. They cleared the trees from around the
walls so the enemy couldn’t sneak up on them, and the farmers just kept on
felling them to get more growing space.”

“What enemy?” Rudi asked, unable to imagine any foe foolish
enough to lay siege to these mighty walls. They reduced the riverboats entering
and leaving the city to the scale of toys, like the chips of bark he’d sent
gurgling down the forest streams as a child, and nothing he could conceive of
would be capable of breaching them.

“The vampire counts—from Sylvania,” Fritz said. “They tried
to take the city twice, oh, hundreds of years ago now.” He shrugged. “Although
they’re believed to have fought against the Chaos hordes in the north last year,
so who knows what their true agenda is.”

“When did you start taking an interest in history?” Hanna
asked, her voice tinged with surprise.

Fritz coloured a little.

“Mathilde’s been filling me in. She said that if I’m going to
live here I ought to know a bit about the place.”

“Well, that’s more than we do,” Rudi admitted. They were
passing through the wall, and he caught a glimpse of batteries of cannon poised
to pour thundering death down on any river-borne malefactor foolish enough to
try running the gap. Giant windlasses were also visible on both banks, heavily
protected by the massive stone fortifications, and he realised that if necessary
the river could be blocked by heavy chains. Marienburg had taken similar
precautions at the mouth of the Reik, although there he suspected the intention
had been to prevent smugglers from departing rather than to guard the city from
waterborne invasion.

His first impression of the city proper was that it seemed
almost like Marienburg in some respects, although in others it was
disconcertingly different. It hardly resembled Carroburg at all, although he had
to admit that his acquaintance with that particular city had been cursory at
best.

As in Marienburg, the houses fought for space within the
encircling walls, building upwards rather than outwards to make as much use of
the limited land at their disposal as possible. Not one of the buildings he
could see was less than four storeys in height, and most were even taller,
rising in some cases to six or seven. Unlike the bustling port, however, there
had been room to expand outwards to some extent, and the relatively open
farmlands beyond the city had been able to take some of the pressure from inside
the fortifications, so they seemed squatter and more solid than those he was
used to.

“Well, it’s less soggy than Marienburg,” Hanna said. Instead
of the intricate network of bridges and canals that had stitched the islands of
the Reikmouth together, Altdorf was a city of roads, although many of the
streets he could see on the bank barely qualified for the term, being closer to
alleyways, or possibly open sewers. Rudi took a deep breath, and almost gagged.

“It smells even worse, though. I didn’t think that was
possible.”

“They don’t call it the Great Reek for nothing,” Shenk said,
wandering past. They were approaching the docks, at the confluence of the Reik
and the Talabec, and the river traffic was growing denser. More riverboats than
Rudi could count were scudding out on the water, riding low with the cargoes
they were bringing in or had just taken on board, and smaller craft wove between
them with casual indifference to the threat of collision. He hadn’t seen such a
dense concentration of watercraft since leaving Marienburg.

“Cosmopolitan sort of place,” he commented casually, spotting
an ungainly Kislevite barge and an elegant vessel crewed by elves within moments
of each other. He thought briefly of drawing Fritz’s attention to the latter,
with some good-natured reminder of his excitement at his first sight of an elf
vessel entering the harbour as they’d first approached Marienburg, but before he
could speak, his voice was drowned out by an unearthly shriek that echoed across
the water and left his ears ringing. “Sigmar preserve us, what the hell’s that?”
It looked like a boat of some kind, but it was thrashing through the water
without any sign of a sail, churning up a thick white soup of froth in its wake.
Choking black smoke poured from a stovepipe in the superstructure, and a crew of
grimy dwarfs ran back and forth on its deck, growling at one another in their
incomprehensible tongue.

“A steamboat.” Shenk’s voice was suffused with disgust.
“Don’t often see them this far downriver. The hairbarrels seem to like them well
enough, but you wouldn’t get a real sailor aboard one at any price.”

“It’s made of metal,” Fritz said, his voice tinged with awe.
“Why doesn’t it sink?”

“Probably too pig-headed to,” Shenk said, “like its crew.
Bullying your way through the water instead of using the wind and the tide might
be all right for stumpies, but it’s no way for a human to travel.”

Rudi was inclined to agree. The strange vessel was like
nothing he’d ever seen before. He watched it go, heading upstream with a
cavalier disregard for everything else on the water, and braced himself against
the rail as the backwash threw the
Reikmaiden
through a series of
vertiginous lurches. As it diminished in the distance, trailed by the profanity
of the crews left bobbing in its wake, he blinked his eyes clear of the acrid
smoke that had drifted across the deck. The dockside loomed up through it,
surprisingly close, and he hefted his pack, feeling it settle into place across
his back with a welcome sense of familiarity.

“Got everything?” he asked. Beside him, Hanna nodded. She was
wearing her new dress, and the headscarf she’d purchased in Carroburg,
everything else she owned stuffed into the satchel she habitually carried.

The bright colours made her look different, Rudi thought,
harder and more assertive, if that was possible. He tried to keep his attention
on her face, instead of letting it drift lower to the expanse of cleavage that
the dress exposed, and ignore the disturbing memories of the night on the banks
of the Reik last summer that the sight evoked. Meeting his gaze, she grinned, as
if she could read his thoughts, and he flushed despite himself.

“If this frock has the effect on the wizards that it seems to
have on you, it was money well spent,” she said. Rudi was by no means sure that
the senior mages of the Colleges of Magic would be swayed by something so
simple, but if it increased her confidence it was no bad thing. He shrugged.

“Assuming you can find any,” he said.

“I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble,” Hanna said, and
anyone who knew her less well than Rudi did would probably have thought she was
as confident as she sounded. “The city’s supposed to be crawling with mages,
remember?”

“Well, here we are,” Shenk said. “Altdorf, as promised. Good
luck.” He stood aside as the three travellers filed up the gangplank, and turned
away before Rudi could say a farewell. “Look alive for Mannan’s sake, I want
those pots unloaded before a week next Koenigstag!”

“Well,” Rudi said, as his boots hit the cobbles, “where to?”
The bustle of the docks was almost comforting in its familiarity, but daunting
nevertheless. It was beginning to dawn on him that, once again, he and his
companions were alone in a huge and unknown city. At least in Marienburg they’d
had Artemus as a guide, and had found food and shelter for the night. Here they
had no one…

A piercing whistle interrupted his gloomy thoughts, and Fritz
looked up in response to it, reminding Rudi incongruously for a moment of an
eager puppy. A cheery grin spread across the simpleton’s face, and he waved a
greeting in response.

“There you are. About time too, I’ve been freezing hanging
about here waiting for you.” Mathilde wove her way through the hurrying
dockhands, and kissed him affectionately on the cheek. “Let’s find somewhere
with good food and some halfway decent ale, and thaw ourselves out for an hour
or two. I can always tell the boss the tide was out or something.” Fritz
blushed, pulling away, and for the first time the red-haired woman noticed that
her fellow bodyguard wasn’t alone. The insouciant grin Rudi remembered so
vividly quirked her mouth as she took in his and Hanna’s presence. “Well, this
is a surprise.”

“I could say the same,” Hanna said, raising an eyebrow. “I
see you and Fritz are still getting along all right.”

“You could say that,” Mathilde agreed. “Are you planning to
stay in Altdorf long?”

Hanna nodded. “I hope so,” she said.

Mathilde’s expression softened. “Good. We could do with some
more guests at the wedding.”

“Who’s getting married?” Rudi asked, before the penny
dropped, and he stared at Fritz in astonishment. The muscular youth blushed even
more furiously than before.

“Who do you think?” he said, a little defensively.

Noting Rudi’s dumbfounded expression, Hanna stepped into the
breach. “Congratulations,” she said. “When did this happen?”

“It sort of snuck up on us,” Mathilde said happily. “We spend
most of our time together anyway, and it just occurred to me one evening that he
scrubbed up pretty well for a yokel from the back of beyond. One thing just sort
of led to another.”

Fritz shrugged, looking oddly embarrassed.

“You’d had a lot to drink, though,” he said. Mathilde punched
him affectionately on the arm.

“You hadn’t, though, which I suppose was just as well.” She
raised an eyebrow at Hanna. “So you see how desperate I am, flinging myself at
the sort of lowlife who’d take advantage of a helpless young maiden in her
cups.”

“Scandalous,” Hanna agreed, keeping a straight face with
difficulty.

“You’re about as helpless as an orc,” Fritz riposted, clearly
playing a long-established game, “and what sort of heartless harridan would toy
with the affections of an innocent country lad in the first place?”

“I can see you were made for each other,” Rudi said, while
the two lovers grinned inanely. He wondered if Conrad and Alwyn had been like
that at first, and whether they were alive at all now. Such speculation was
fruitless, though, so he forced the thought away, and tried to be happy for his
friends.

“Come on,” Mathilde said, linking her arm with Fritz’s and
leading the way out of the docks. “I’m cold and hungry, and the boss won’t wait
forever.” Rudi and Hanna fell in behind them, exchanging glances of amused
perplexity.

“Well,” Rudi said, “Altdorf is certainly full of surprises.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Mathilde assured him,
glancing back to speak to them over her shoulder. Rudi could well believe it. As
they left the waterfront and entered the city, he could see several men and
women dressed in the clothing of lands far from the Empire, a common enough
sight in the great port of Marienburg, but one he’d hardly expected to see this
far inland. Kislevite and Tilean mercenaries were common enough everywhere, of
course, but within a score of paces he’d seen the robes of Araby and heard a
couple of passers-by arguing loudly in Bretonnian. Several times they passed
dwarfs and halflings.

“Stick close,” Mathilde advised. “If you lose your way in
Altdorf, you might never find it again.”

Rudi eyed the narrow strip of sky visible far above them, and
nodded. With nothing familiar to go on, and even the sun out of sight, his
innate sense of direction would be of little help. At least in Marienburg there
had been the occasional break between the buildings, usually where the street
crossed one of the innumerable waterways, but here, it seemed, there was no such
respite from the masonry that loomed on every side.

“I can believe that,” he said. Mathilde shook her head.

“No, I mean that literally. The Colleges of Magic bend the
world around themselves. Streets don’t always go where they should, at least in
some quarters, and sometimes they don’t go to the same place twice.” She
shrugged. “You get used to it. The trick’s just to go where you’re going, and
not worry too much about how you got there.”

“I see.” Rudi didn’t, quite, but he thought he should try to
stay positive. “And you’ve been here long enough to pick up the trick?”

“I should hope so.” Mathilde shot another grin over her
shoulder. “I’m a ’dorfer, born and bred. I can find my way anywhere.”

“Would that include one of the colleges?” Hanna asked.
Mathilde shrugged.

“Anywhere I’d want to go, that is.” Her voice became
elaborately casual. “You won’t find anything interesting there.”

Hanna looked as if she was about to argue the point, but
subsided, looking grim.

“Seen any wizards yet?” Rudi asked her, lowering his voice.

Hanna nodded, looking a trifle unhappy.

“Plenty.” She indicated a couple of passers-by. “Those two,
and that man over there.” They all looked surprisingly ordinary to Rudi, who had
been expecting mages to wear the robes of their college or display some overt
symbol of power, but he trusted Hanna’s gift of perception. As he began to take
more notice of the people thronging the streets around them, he noticed several
glancing at Hanna in a faintly guarded manner. Others with the gift of
witchsight, he supposed. “There’s one in that alley up ahead, too, but he
doesn’t seem to be moving.” She indicated the mouth of the thoroughfare that
Fritz and Mathilde were just beginning to turn down.

“Are you sure?” Moved by an impulse he couldn’t quite
explain, Rudi dropped his hand to his sword hilt. Hanna nodded, and they
followed their friends into the narrow side street.

At first, he thought his suspicions were unfounded. Then he
noticed the small knot of people standing casually in the middle of the
thoroughfare, apparently talking to one another. They were spaced just a little
too evenly. Mathilde had obviously noticed them too. She detached her arm from
her fiancé’s, and shifted her weight on to the balls of her feet.