The walk to the dining hall was a short one, but even so,
Rudi had time to absorb his surroundings in some detail, aided by the frequent
pauses that Shenk made to swap gossip with a few of the locals. Although small,
the huts were all soundly built, presumably with timber shipped in along the
river, since there were few trees to be seen apart from a handful of stunted
specimens barely larger than bushes, and most had well-tended vegetable plots
alongside them. A few even had chickens scratching about, although the other
livestock, a handful of pigs and goats, seemed to have the run of the place,
apparently left to wander at will. There was little chance of them getting lost,
as the entire settlement was enclosed by a semicircular palisade, which probably
accounted for the scarcity of trees in the immediate vicinity. Anything even
remotely substantial had obviously been felled to form part of the defences,
which began and ended abutting the river. Rudi was troubled for a moment by a
nagging sense of familiarity, until the memory of the fortified stockade on the
moors, where the Imperial soldiers that Gerhard had been with had made their
camp, floated to the surface of his mind. The defensive arrangements were
strikingly similar, and he mentioned as much.
“There are always dangers out here to be wary of,” Pieter
said, and Rudi nodded, noticing that most of the men and several of the women
appeared to be armed. One of the locals, a tall man who seemed to be some sort
of leader among the little community, broke off his conversation with Shenk to
nod a confirmation.
“There is that,” he agreed. “Mutants escaping from the city,
for one thing, and I’ve heard tell of worse.” He didn’t seem at all inclined to
elaborate. Shenk nodded too.
“They say all sorts of things came down from the north last
year, and not all of them went home again.” Rudi felt his scalp begin to
prickle, in spite of his instinctive cynicism. Tales he would have scoffed at in
the comfortable tap room of the Dancing Pirate could seem all too plausible
here, in the gathering dusk, surrounded by leagues of marsh and bog. He knew
only too well the sort of things that lurked in the wilderness. He had killed a
skaven with his bare hands, and seen a warband of beastmen far closer than most
who’d lived to tell the tale.
“You’re not taking any chances, I see,” he said, nodding at
the spear the speaker carried. The man, whose name, he gathered from the
half-overheard conversation he’d been having with Shenk, was Ranulph, fell into
step beside them.
“Not at the moment,” he said. “We lost someone this morning.
Gofrey went out looking for herbs and didn’t come back.”
“Could he just have gone further than usual?” Shenk asked.
“We were hoping to see him. There’s a sick girl on the boat.”
“Then she’ll just have to get better on her own,” Ranulph
said. “We couldn’t find a trace of him, and it’s coming on to dark. If he’s not
dead by now, he soon will be.”
“I’m a pretty good tracker,” Rudi said. The scent of the
cooking fish called to him like one of the sirens the sailors of Marienburg
prattled about in their traveller’s tales, but the thought of someone lost out
in the marshes, prey to the horrors he’d seen, overrode it. “I might be able to
find some trace of him, if we bring a couple of torches for light.”
“It’s not quite dark yet,” Shenk said, surprising Rudi with
his unexpected support. Ranulph glanced at the reddening sky, and nodded
suddenly.
“Worth a try,” he said. He whistled, and a couple of the
villagers trotted over, bows slung across their backs. “This lad’s a tracker, so
he says, and he’s willing to go after Gofrey. He’ll need some help.” The two men
glanced at one another, clearly uneasy. “Get someone to go with you and carry a
torch, and the minute the sun goes down you head back here. I’m not sending out
another search party.”
“I’ll go,” Pieter said unexpectedly. Everyone looked at him,
and he shrugged. “I like Gofrey. He cleared up that dose of the… you know.”
Shenk nodded, with a trace of amusement. “It was more than the leeches in
Marienburg were able to do. I owe him one.”
“Fair enough.” Ranulph watched while Pieter selected a brand
from one of the neighbouring fires, and held it above his head, casting a circle
of warm light around the little party. “See you later, I hope.”
Once they’d left the warmth and light of the compound behind
them, Rudi began to doubt the wisdom of his sudden impulse to help. The young
men with them, who hadn’t volunteered their names, kept arrows nocked, and
looked around at the desolate marshes suspiciously. Thin tendrils of mist were
beginning to rise from the boggy ground, making the going even more treacherous
than it would otherwise have been, and Rudi placed his feet carefully, all too
aware that a single misstep could have catastrophic consequences.
“He came this way,” one of the villagers volunteered. The
light was greying, the floating patches of mist tinted gold by the westering
sun, and Rudi was glad of the extra illumination afforded by the blazing torch
that Pieter was carrying. It deepened the shadows of the tiny indentations in
the ground left by the feet which had passed through ahead of them, and Rudi
nodded.
“So did three other people, two men and a woman. They came
back the same way. Your search party?”
“That’s right,” the villager confirmed, visibly surprised.
“They couldn’t find anything on the path, so they came back around noon.”
“No sign of the other one turning back,” Rudi said. To his
relief the trail left by the missing herbalist was clear enough, his tracking
skills having remained Undiminished by his sojourn in the city. He pushed on as
quickly as he dared, acutely conscious of the fading light around them.
Conversation ebbed away as he kept his eyes on the ground ahead of him. Then he
stopped, abruptly, confused.
“What is it?” Pieter asked.
“His footprints have disappeared,” Rudi said, stooping to
examine the ground more closely. The marks left by the search party were still
visible, both coming and going, and he wondered for a moment if they’d simply
obliterated the ones he was interested in, but they were no more pronounced than
before.
“You think he went under?” the other archer asked, exchanging
a grim look with his companion. Rudi shook his head.
“There would have been more signs of disturbance in the mud
if that had happened,” he explained. He moved back a few yards, until he’d found
the prints he was looking for again, and cast around. To his relief the clear
indentation of a booted heel was visible in a nearby tussock, a couple of feet
from the track. He pointed. “He went that way.”
“That’s impossible,” the first bowman asserted. His companion
nodded. “There’s no path there.”
“Nevertheless, it’s the way he went.” Rudi hopped across the
mud to the mound of grass. Even in the fading light, he could see a faint
footprint in the next one. He jumped across to that one too, and then a third.
He glanced behind. “Come on, it’s easy.”
“Not a chance.” The two villagers shook their heads
vehemently, so quickly that Rudi couldn’t tell which one had spoken. “You miss
your footing out there and you’ll drown for sure.”
“He could be in real trouble,” Rudi urged. One of the bowmen
shrugged.
“More fool him for leaving the path, then.” Their minds were
clearly made up, and becoming aware of his position, Rudi couldn’t altogether
blame them for that. He gestured to Pieter.
“Coming?” The deckhand shook his head.
“I haven’t got my land legs,” he said. “I’d fall in for
sure.”
“Fine, go back then.” Rudi felt a surge of anger rising up in
him, although whether from unassuaged hunger or disgust at their apparent
callousness, he couldn’t be certain. The worst of it was that part of him
agreed. If the herbalist remained missing he wouldn’t be able to harm Hanna,
even by accident. Forcing the thought away, he held out a hand for the torch.
“Just leave me the light.”
He thought for a moment that his companions would try to
argue him out of it, but a quick glance at the sun, almost hidden by the
horizon, was enough to settle their minds. Pieter leaned out over the stinking
mud, just far enough for Rudi’s groping fingers to grasp the torch, and then
they were gone, heading back to Nocht’s Landing as fast as they could before the
light failed altogether.
Well, fine. It wasn’t the first time Rudi had been left on
his own, and somehow he doubted that it would be the last. Returning his
attention to the quagmire in front of him, he found the next disturbed patch of
grass, and jumped again.
The going was surprisingly easy, and he made good time,
better than he would have done had his companions still been with him, he
thought. The light from the torch was more than sufficient to pick out the marks
he was following, although the flame was burning a little lower now. Once again
he felt a brief pang of regret at his impulsiveness. If he didn’t find the
missing healer soon, he could be marooned out here himself, without light or a
clue as to his direction back to the settlement. It was an almost certain death
sentence.
He forced the thought away, along with the memory of his trek
through a similar wilderness of mud with Hanna a few months before. They’d found
firm ground then, but a nest of skaven too. Feeling the comforting weight of his
sword at his hip, and wishing he hadn’t left his bow behind, he hurried on as
best he could, trying not to think about how close the dwindling flames were
getting to his fingers.
The brand had almost burned down by the time the going
underfoot became firmer, and he hurried forward onto solid ground with a sigh of
relief. Almost as soon as he did so it scorched his hand, and he dropped it with
a yelp of mingled pain and irritation. The light went out, hissing against the
wet grass, and the darkness closed in around him.
Too experienced in the ways of the wilderness to panic, he
stayed where he was, waiting for his night vision to adjust. Morrslieb was just
visible over the horizon, the light it cast as sickly and ill-favoured as
always, but even that was welcome. Rudi shivered as his surroundings came slowly
into focus, the stars above adding their own modest increment of illumination,
and took comfort from the familiar constellations above his head. They, at
least, were unchanged, a reassuring presence.
The patch of dry ground he’d stumbled upon wasn’t large,
perhaps a score of yards across, but the far side of it was obscured by the
first real trees he’d seen since entering the marshes. A small copse of them
grew here, frail specimens compared to those he’d grown up surrounded by, but he
took heart from their presence. A woodsman all his life, the improbable glade
held out the promise of shelter and relative comfort for the night. As if to
remind him just what a tenuous hope that was, his stomach growled again.
Well, at least he had his tinderbox, and he was sure he’d be
able to kindle a fire. That would be something, and he wouldn’t starve by the
morning, he knew that much from experience. He just wasn’t looking forward to
the discomfort of another hungry night. He sniffed the air, catching the scent
of a roasting rabbit. It seemed as if his mind was beginning to play tricks on
him already, reminding him of what he was missing.
As he approached the stand of trees, however, he hesitated.
Far from fading away as he’d expected, the scent of cooking meat was growing
stronger, and an accompanying flicker of firelight was appearing intermittently
between the trunks. Loosening his sword in its scabbard, he moved on, all his
old forester’s instincts coming into play, slipping stealthily from one patch of
shadow to the next.
Concealing himself behind a trunk somewhat stouter than the
rest, he peered cautiously into the open space at the centre of the copse. The
trees grew in a ring, he realised, almost a perfect circle, and far too regular
to be natural. Who had planted them, and why, he dismissed as fruitless
speculation.
A fire had been kindled in the centre of the clearing, and a
middle-aged man was warming his hands at it with every sign of comfort. Two
coneys, expertly gutted and spitted, were sizzling over the flames, and Rudi’s
mouth watered at the smell of them. The fellow was dressed in rough but
serviceable clothes, and carried a small shoulder bag like the one Hanna used on
her herb-collecting forays.
“Herr Gofrey, I presume.” Further concealment would be
pointless, Rudi decided. He stepped forwards into the circle of firelight,
keeping his hands well away from his weapons. The herbalist must have assumed
that he was completely alone out here, and there was no point in alarming him
unnecessarily. To his surprise, though, the man seemed completely at ease with
his sudden appearance, simply glancing up for a moment before returning his
attention to the browning meat in front of him.
“That’s right,” he said, sprinkling some shredded leaf across
them, and sniffing appreciatively. Then he looked up again. “You must be Rudi. I
thought you’d be along about now.”
“How did you know that?” Rudi’s hand went to the sword at his
belt before he was even aware of the movement, and he checked himself in the act
of beginning to draw it. The healer looked harmless enough, but he was only too
aware of how deceptive appearances could be. On the other hand, there was no
point in overreacting. Gofrey didn’t seem at all put out by this sign of
distrust, though, glancing away to check on the roasting rabbits as he smiled a
welcome.
“Because somebody told me, of course.” He gestured towards
the fire. “Sit down and warm yourself. It’s going to be a cold night. We might
as well talk in comfort.”
Drawn as much by the scent of the food as by the man’s show
of friendliness, Rudi moved closer to the blaze. The warmth was indeed welcome.