“Down here.” With a thrill of relief, he recognised a tavern,
the Mermaid, where he’d bargained with Shenk the previous afternoon. The wharf
he sought was only a few streets away, and he hurried them along as best he
could, trying not to slip on the freezing slush beneath their feet.
As they made their way through the growing press of bodies,
packages, and barrows flowing into the streets, Rudi kept turning his head,
looking out for the distinctive headgear of the Caps, but luck, or one of the
gods, was still with them. The thoroughfares were almost as crowded as they were
during the day, and the growing throng afforded them greater concealment than
ever before. Despite his apprehension, he saw no sign of a floppy black hat, and
no shouted challenge echoed from the walls around him.
They rounded the final corner onto the wharf itself, and he
narrowed his eyes against a sudden flurry of wind-driven snow. He blinked his
vision clear.
“She’s still there!” He pointed. The familiar silhouette of
the
Reikmaiden
was clearly visible between two other vessels about
hallway along the wharf. Hanna nodded grimly.
“Not for long,” she said. With a thrill of horror, Rudi
realised she was right. Pieter, the deckhand who’d befriended him the first time
they’d sought refuge aboard, was loosening the hawser securing the riverboat to
the dock. A moment later the thick rope splashed into the water, and Pieter
began hauling it in, apparently heedless of the chill the icy water had imparted
to it. Maybe his hands were numb already. The gangplank Rudi had boarded the
boat by, the previous afternoon, was missing too, and even as he watched, the
gap between the riverboat’s hull and the wharf widened perceptibly.
“Hey! Wait!” Rudi called, breaking into a run, Hanna pacing
him easily as he did so. Pieter’s head came up, and he shouted something. A
moment later, Shenk appeared at his shoulder, narrowing his eyes as he gazed at
the approaching fugitives. As they got closer, Rudi could see the captain shrug.
Clearly, returning to the wharf would be impossible, even if the
Reikmaiden
’s
master felt so inclined, and he seriously doubted that.
“Jump for it,” Hanna said, accelerating past him at a pace
that left Rudi gaping, her cloak flapping like a banner in the wind from the
river. Rudi ran as hard as he could, forcing his weary muscles into one final
effort, ignoring the burning sensation in his chest as the freezing air gouged
its way deep into his lungs. Hanna flung herself into the air, seeming to hang
suspended for a moment above the chill grey water, and then crashed to the deck
of the riverboat, where she lay unmoving. Almost before he realised it, Rudi’s
foot was thrusting against the edge of the dock, and he followed, willing
himself to make it across the widening gap.
Time seemed to slow, as it had done the day before when he’d
made his desperate leap from the jetty behind the lawyer’s office to escape Theo
and Bruno. With a strange sense of
déjà vu,
he took in Shenk’s startled
expression, uncannily similar to the one on the face of the bargee whose vessel
he’d bounded across on his way to safety. Then, the breath was driven from his
lungs as the rail of the
Reikmaiden
slammed into his midriff. He clutched
at the worn wood, finding himself slipping on the powdering of snow that crested
it, and began to topple backwards into the river.
“Welcome aboard.” To his surprise Shenk grabbed him just as
his grip was about to fail, and yanked him over the rail. Rudi slithered onto
the deck, retching and gasping. “I see you decided to come this morning after
all.” The captain’s voice was mildly curious, but nothing more. When they’d
spoken the previous day, Rudi had asked about passage the next time the boat put
in at Marienburg, almost a month away.
“Things got complicated,” Rudi gasped, turning to look at
Hanna. She was unconscious, her face pale, and a trickle of blood was running
from her nose. To his relief, and complete lack of surprise, the chip of stone
around her neck was no longer glowing, apparently as inert as the rock it
resembled.
“Hmm.” Shenk nodded. “I guessed that.” He turned to Pieter.
“Better get her below before she freezes.” He turned back to Rudi. “You too.
I’ve fished healthier-looking corpses out of this river, in my time.”
Too numbed to argue, Rudi simply nodded, but remained on his
guard nevertheless. Shenk had seemed solicitous enough the last time he and
Hanna had been aboard his boat, but he’d been ready to betray them at the first
opportunity. Keeping his hand close to the hilt of his sword, he followed the
deckhand down into the warmth of the hold.
Somewhat to Rudi’s surprise, it seemed as if Shenk intended
to go through with his end of the deal, at least for now. The captain had
carried Hanna down to the hold himself, under Rudi’s watchful eye, and waited
while Pieter slung the hammocks that the two fugitives had slept in the last
time they’d been aboard. At least, Rudi assumed they were the same ones; they
certainly looked similar enough. Dropping his pack and his bow on one of the
barrels beneath the arcs of cloth, he reached out to take his companion.
“Better let me do it,” Shenk advised. “I’m more used to this
sort of thing.” A fact he proved a moment later by hoisting the unconscious girl
into the sailcloth cocoon with a swift economy of motion, which Rudi had to
admit he could never have duplicated in his current condition. Noticing Rudi’s
expression, the captain smiled sardonically. “Usually it’s drunken deckhands,”
he explained. “Noisier, heavier, and…” his expression changed, “actually, not
a lot less fragrant. What have you been doing, rolling in a midden?”
“We got in a fight. We fell down,” Rudi said. The streets of
Marienburg weren’t exactly clean at the best of times, and the blighted quarter
where they’d faced Magnus’ mutants had been awash with filth. Only now did Rudi
begin to appreciate quite how permeated with it he and Hanna had become. The
smell was so familiar that he’d forgotten it was there. Reminded of it again, he
found the sickly sweet stench of it almost comforting. Shenk nodded, as if that
sounded reasonable.
“I’ll get Pieter to bring you some water,” he said.
After the captain and the deckhand had departed, leaving
behind them a bucket of chill water, a washcloth, and a plate of bread and
cheese, Rudi stripped off his clothes and removed as much of the grime as he
could before freezing. After donning a clean shirt and britches from his pack he
felt warmer, and turned his attention to the food. He hesitated for a moment,
wondering if it had been drugged, but it smelled no different from any other
lump of slightly overripe cheese he’d ever eaten, and he wolfed it down eagerly.
If anything, the slight hint of incipient putrefaction only sharpened his
appetite. Shenk, he was sure, would be just as straightforward in any future
betrayal as he’d been in the past, and starving himself wouldn’t help anybody if
his suspicions turned out to be correct.
Leaving part of the food uneaten, in case Hanna should wake,
he clambered into his own hammock, after a cursory glance at the sleeping girl.
She looked peaceful enough, as far as he could tell, although he was only too
aware that his knowledge of such things was limited. Consoling himself with the
notion that the only cure for magical over-exertion he’d ever seen was rest, and
that both she and Alwyn had recovered before, Rudi settled himself as best he
could and tried to sleep.
When he woke, the day was well advanced, judging by the angle
of the sunbeams slanting down into the hold, and Rudi felt ravenous again. He
rolled out of his hammock, instinctively checking that his weapons were where
he’d left them. To his mingled surprise and relief they were, although someone
had clearly been in the hold while he slept, because the bucket of filthy water
had been replaced by a fresh supply. His purse was still inside his shirt, and
the dagger he carried concealed in his boot nestled against his shin as usual.
Nevertheless, he felt a certain sense of relief once his sword belt was buckled
again. Sleeping with it was impossible in the cramped confines of the hammock,
as he’d discovered the hard way, but he’d become so used to its presence that
without it he felt curiously incomplete.
Hanna was still sleeping, snoring gently, and he felt
reluctant to disturb her, but, struck by a pang of unexpected solicitude, he
wrung out the washcloth and tried to sponge the worst of the accumulated grime
from her face. He half hoped and half feared that he’d wake her in the process,
but she simply slept on, as uncaring as an infant.
At length, feeling he could do nothing more for the young
sorceress beyond letting her recover in her own time as best she could, Rudi
ventured up the wooden stairs to the deck.
“Oh, you’re up then.” The statement was flat, devoid of any
concern, and Rudi was sure he could detect an undercurrent of barely-suppressed
hostility in it. Rudi squinted his eyes against the afternoon sun, relishing the
scent of fresh, clean air, the first he’d smelled since entering the city so
many months before.
“Good afternoon, Herr Busch,” he replied. The first mate of
the
Reikmaiden
was looking at him appraisingly. The last time they’d
faced each other had been in a brutal brawl on the moonlit deck, and Rudi had
come within a hair of killing the man, although Busch might not have realised
that at the time.
Recalling that instant, he found it hard to believe the
intensity of the dark desire to do harm that had so nearly overtaken him, but he
had felt it on other occasions too, and had grown wary of it. He’d taken several
lives since that night, both human and monstrous, and had learned to control the
impulse to some extent. Generally, he used the energy that the surge of
aggression gave him to win a fight, before overcoming the urge to finish his
vanquished opponent by an act of will. Each time he did so, though, something
deep inside him felt cheated, and on the occasions when he’d had no option but
to strike the killing blow, the dark presence in the depths of his mind had
exulted in the deed.
Rudi returned the man’s stare, levelly. If Busch thought he
could be intimidated, after all he’d seen and done in the last few months, he
was sadly mistaken. Both he and Hanna were very different from the callow youths
who’d fled the village of Kohlstadt last summer. Busch must have seen something
of that change in Rudi’s bearing, because rather than push the point, he simply
nodded.
“Seen worse,” he allowed grudgingly, as if admitting as much
was a huge concession. He’d take his lead from Shenk, Rudi knew, and so long as
the captain was prepared to tolerate his unexpected guests the rest of the crew
would accept their presence. “Going far with us?”
“Altdorf,” Rudi replied, chafing inwardly at the stilted
nature of the conversation.
Busch nodded, as if he hadn’t already known. Shenk would have
told everyone on board the nature of the deal he’d struck with Rudi, he was sure
of that. Rudi had found him in a smuggler’s den that the watch was raiding, and
concealed his presence, more for the fear of being denounced as a fugitive from
Imperial justice than anything else. Nevertheless, the captain seemed to feel
that he was in his debt, and had agreed to provide safe passage to the Imperial
capital in return. Assuming he wasn’t just after the price on their heads again,
of course, although that didn’t seem all that likely. If he’d known the true
nature of the charges against the two fugitives, Rudi was sure that he’d never
have allowed them on board in the first place.
Rudi glanced around the deck. Pieter looked up from his work
for a moment to smile a greeting that looked quite genuine, but for the most
part, the rest of the crew ignored his presence. The only other exception was
Ansbach, who’d also come off badly in the fight on the deck, and who glowered at
him with unconcealed hostility.
“Is that where your cargo’s for?”
“Most of it,” Busch said, “apart from a stop-off in
Carroburg.” He ran a hand through his close-cropped hair, a mannerism Rudi
remembered from his last trip aboard the
Reikmaiden.
“What’s it to you?”
“Nothing,” Rudi assured him with a shrug. Given the
circumstances of his unexpected meeting with Shenk back in Marienburg, which had
led to their unlikely alliance, at least some of the cargo aboard the riverboat
would no doubt have been of considerable interest to his erstwhile colleagues.
That was none of his business, though, and he dismissed the matter from his
mind. If anything, he was hoping that his suspicions were correct. If Shenk was
up to something illegal he’d be as eager to avoid coming to the attention of the
authorities as Hanna and himself. “I just wondered if we’d be stopping much on
the way, that’s all.”
“Nowhere else you’d have heard of,” Busch assured him.
Rudi remembered there were innumerable landing stages along
both banks of the river, serving hamlets barely large enough to deserve the name
of villages. Boats like the
Reikmaiden
called at them frequently,
bringing the necessities of life that were too bulky to transport economically
in any other way. The coaching inn where he and Hanna had first met Krieger’s
mercenary band had been served by one such jetty, which was where their paths
had first crossed Shenk’s.
That thought was a sobering one. The news of Gerhard’s arrest
warrant, issued at the time he and Hanna had fled from Kohlstadt, would have had
time to travel along the length of the coach road paralleling the southern bank
of the river, and every stop they made on that side would carry the risk of
discovery. Carroburg, he vaguely remembered, was on the northern bank of the
Reik, so they wouldn’t have so much to worry about there.