03 - Death's Legacy (11 page)

“You’ve got an imagination, I’ll say that,” he said. Rudi
shrugged.

“If you say so. But if they were just ordinary pirates, why
didn’t we hear of them at any of the settlements we’ve put into? News like that
travels fast.” Shenk shrugged.

“Maybe we were just the first boat they jumped,” he
suggested.

“Perhaps we were.” Rudi led the way onto the gangplank. As he
gained the rough timbers of the wharf, his gait changed a little, his sense of
balance thrown subtly off-kilter by the motionlessness of the solid footing.
Shenk followed. “Do river pirates usually have guns?”

“First time I’ve ever seen it,” Shenk admitted. Firearms were
rare and precious, and to find so many in the hands of mere bandits would be
almost unprecedented. He caught Rudi by the upper arm, and swung him round so
the two of them were standing close together under the orange glow of a crudely
made torch. In the sudden silence, Rudi could hear the hissing of it, and smell
the unmistakable odour of burning resin. He tensed, wondering if Shenk was going
to attack him, and then relaxed, dismissing the thought. After seeing his
fighting abilities, that was the last thing the little man would do. The captain
glanced around, certain that no one else was within earshot, and lowered his
voice. “Why would the Fog Walkers be interested in my boat?”

Rudi shrugged.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he said honestly, “so long
as it doesn’t stop Hanna and me from getting to Altdorf. I might take a guess,
though.”

“I see.” Shenk nodded. “And your guess would be?” Rudi
shrugged.

“I found you in a rooming house owned by a notorious
smuggler, whose business had attracted a lot of official attention. Enough
attention for the authorities to risk annoying the elves to close down, which
they wouldn’t do just to claw back a bit of evaded duty on a cargo of wine or
cheese. The next thing I know, you’re heading back upriver.”

“We go up and down the river all the time,” Shenk said.
“That’s why they call it a river boat.”

“True,” Rudi said. “But I was a Cap for long enough to
develop a nasty suspicious mind, especially when there was an Imperial agent in
town, who I know for a fact the Walkers were taking an interest in.”

“Do you now?” Shenk’s voice was guarded. “And how would a
simple watchman know something like that?”

“A friend of mine works for him,” Rudi said, “and Sam Warble
asked me to find something out about what he was up to.” As he’d expected, Shenk
nodded at the name of the halfling information broker. Everyone in Marienburg
with a secret to sell or protect knew Sam.

“He told you he was working for the Fog Walkers,” Shenk said.

Rudi shrugged again. “Not in so many words,” he said. “But
the way he didn’t tell me was pretty convincing.”

“I see.” The riverboat captain’s face and voice had turned
grim. “What conclusion does your nasty suspicious mind draw from all this?”

“That I don’t want to draw any conclusions,” Rudi said.
“Boats like yours carry messages and packets all the time, don’t they?”

“Yes.” Shenk nodded. “And what’s in them is none of my
business.”

“Even if delivering them looks like getting you killed?” Rudi
asked.

“Especially then,” Shenk said. He might have been about to
say something else, but was interrupted by a bail from the gangplank. Ansbach
and Berta were clattering onto the wharf, apparently in high spirits.

“Skipper, Rudi.” Ansbach looked at Rudi with more warmth than
he’d ever done, albeit tempered with an air of wariness, like someone putting
out a hand to pat a dog he thought might bite. “We’re off to the Floating Log
for a celebration drink. Reckon we owe you at least one for this afternoon’s
work. Coming?”

“Thanks,” Rudi said, surprised almost as much by the man’s
relative affability as the news that the settlement was apparently prosperous
enough to support an inn. “This place has a real tavern?”

“Not as such,” Shenk said, clearly relieved at the change of
subject. “But they do have ale, and some stuff that’ll make you go blind, but
takes paint off really well.” He glanced back at the gangplank. “Where’s Kurt?”

“Staying on board with Yullis,” Berta said. “He thought
doubling the watches would be a good idea, at least as far as Carroburg.” Shenk
nodded.

“Can’t hurt,” he said, with a sideways glance at Rudi.
Evidently the mate, at least, was also aware that the real target of the raid
had been whatever lay hidden in the hold. “Where’s Hanna?”

“She’s staying aboard too,” Rudi told him. “She doesn’t want
to leave Pieter until she’s sure he’ll be all right.”

“That’s good of her,” Shenk said. Then he nodded, relieved.
“Probably just as well, this isn’t really the sort of place for a young lady.”

Berta snorted. “Sounds like the right place for me, then,”
she said.

* * *

On closer inspection, Rudi had to concede that Shenk was
right. The logging camp was populated almost entirely by men, and the few
exceptions were clearly either there with a husband, or intent on making money
from the lumberjacks in one of the traditional ancillary professions. From their
manner of dress, or lack of it, most of the younger ones were evidently not
cooks or laundresses. Hanna would undoubtedly have attracted unwelcome
attention, and Rudi tried not to picture the likely consequences.

In contrast to the rude huts Rudi had been used to seeing in
the settlements they’d stopped at before, the buildings seemed sturdier,
constructed for the most part of logs or freshly-sawn timber. They seemed
extravagantly large, too, until Shenk explained that most of them were communal
dormitory blocks, or warehouses for the supplies that the flourishing community
needed. Everything, it seemed, came in by boat, either casual visitors like the
Reikmaiden,
or the regularly-scheduled barges that arrived every week or so,
laden with tools and food, and departed weighed down with timber.

“There’s still a bit of room for some private enterprise,
though,” Shenk assured Rudi.

Rudi wasn’t surprised. He was beginning to suspect that the
riverboat captain could find a profit pretty much anywhere.

“I think we’re attracting some attention,” he said. Several
of the men they’d passed were armed, carrying bows or spears, and most of them
glanced in his direction, their expressions far from friendly. Shenk waved.

“It’s your sword,” he explained. “Most people around here
don’t carry one.”

Berta snorted with amusement. “Why bother when you’ve got a
big chopper to play with?” she said, sniggering at her own wit.

“Good point,” Rudi said, and studied the guards again with
open curiosity. The wall enclosing the encampment was higher than the others
he’d seen along the river, almost as large as the one that surrounded Kohlstadt,
the village he’d grown up in, and a stout timber gate protected the stockade.
“So what are they carrying weapons for?”

Ansbach laughed. “It’s a forest out there,” he explained.
“Who knows what’s lurking in it? Beastmen, goblins, covens of witches, you name
it.”

“Trees?” Rudi suggested. “Rabbits?” He grinned, draining the
remark of any perceived belligerence. “I grew up in a forest. It’s not as bad as
all that.”

“Not south of the river, maybe,” Ansbach conceded, with an
obvious effort to be civil, “but this side’s Middenland. The greatest battle of
the war was fought at Middenheim, and not all the Chaos scum went north again
afterwards. Anything might have gone to ground in the Drakwald.”

“You’re right about that.” Rudi nodded his agreement, and
Ansbach looked surprised for a moment. “We even saw beastmen in the Reikland
last summer.” Suddenly conscious that he’d said too much about his past, and
that Shenk was looking at him with a curiously speculative expression, he
searched for a change of subject. A burst of raucous laughter attracted his
attention at just the right moment, and he turned his head to look at the
strange structure in the middle of the makeshift village. “Is that it?”

“Looks like it to me,” Berta confirmed, picking up her pace.
The tavern looked more like a tent than a building, although the floor was
composed of planks, none of them were quite the same size or shape as any of its
neighbours, and three of the walls were made of reasonably straight tree
branches and off-cuts from the saw pits. Evidently, whoever owned it had
scavenged whatever scrap timber they could to put the place together. The roof
was a sheet of canvas, which could be extended to the ground on the open side to
keep out the wind and rain.

Conscious of the way his breath misted in front of him, Rudi
found himself wondering why it had been left open on a night that his woodsman’s
instincts told him would probably bring frost.

As the little party of mariners reached it, however, he had
his answer. A blast of body heat, mingled with the smells of sweat, sour ale,
old vomit and flatulence, rolled out over him, sparking incongruous memories of
some of the less salubrious establishments of Marienburg he’d visited on
official business. The ramshackle tavern was packed with men, for the most part
muscular, and almost all drunk. The noise was almost as bad as the smell, and
Ansbach had to raise his voice as he pushed his way to the bar and dropped a few
coins onto it.

“Four ales!” he shouted, and turned back to Rudi and Shenk.
An expression of puzzlement crossed his features. “Where’s Berta?”

“Over there.” Shenk pointed to a table in the middle of the
throng, where his missing deckhand was joining in enthusiastically with some
kind of drinking game. Ansbach shrugged.

“Oh well.” He drained one of the mugs in a couple of
swallows, and distributed the other three. “Pity to waste it.” After a cautious
sip, Rudi decided he was right. It wasn’t the best drink he’d ever tasted, but
it was far more palatable than he’d feared. He swallowed appreciatively.

“Not bad,” he said. “Thanks.”

Ansbach coloured a little, and took a swallow of his own
drink. “Well, I reckon I owed you,” he said awkwardly. “We’d probably all have
been fish bait if it hadn’t been for you.” Rudi shrugged.

“Well, I couldn’t let that happen. It’s a long walk to
Altdorf.” He grinned, pleasantly surprised to see a matching smile on Ansbach’s
face. “Fancy another?”

“Thought you’d never ask.” Ansbach grinned a little more
widely, and drained his tankard. “Same again for you, skipper?”

“You two enjoy yourselves,” Shenk said, his eyes scanning the
throng, and sparking with sudden recognition. “I’ve got a bit of business to
attend to.” He raised a hand in greeting, and slipped through the crowd of
lumberjacks. A moment later Rudi saw him chatting to a man dressed rather better
than the labourers, who he assumed must therefore be someone in authority.

“Looks like it’s just us then,” Ansbach said.

To his vague surprise, Rudi found the evening remarkably
enjoyable. It had been a long time since he’d been able to savour the simple
pleasures of socialising, and as the night wore on and the amount of ale they’d
both consumed increased, Ansbach mellowed far more than he would have believed
possible. The deckhand had a couple of acquaintances among the woodsmen, whose
names Rudi never quite caught, but whose stories of life among the timber made
him feel comfortably nostalgic for his former life in the woods around
Kohlstadt, and who seemed gratifyingly pleased to have found a kindred spirit.
Eventually, they went off to bed, and Rudi rose to his feet, swaying slightly,
his head pleasantly clouded with the effects of the alcohol he’d drunk.

“We’d best be getting back too,” he suggested. Ansbach stood
as well, a trifle unsteadily, and nodded.

“Reckon you’re right,” he said at last. The makeshift taproom
was much quieter now, most of the drinkers left snoring quietly to themselves,
their heads pillowed on forearms folded neatly on the ale-puddled tabletops or
vomit-puddled floor, and only a few diehards continuing to besiege the bar. Now
that Rudi could see it more clearly, it turned out to be another assemblage of
crudely nailed-together planking. “Looks like it’s just us left.”

“Looks like,” Rudi agreed. He glanced around, looking for
their companions, but Shenk had long since disappeared, and Berta had vanished
too, leaving most of the participants of her drinking game snoring quietly in a
heap of tangled limbs. “How do we get back to the wharf from here?”

“That’s easy.” Ansbach led the way outside, and pointed.
“It’s down that way.” He stepped into the shadows. “Hang on a minute. Just need
to make an offering to Mannan, if you know what I mean.” Stepping away from the
relieved sigh and the sudden cloud of acrid-smelling steam that followed it,
Rudi let his gaze wander around the logging camp. As he’d expected, the frost
was hard, sharp pinpoints of starlight speckling the sky, and the silver disc of
Mannslieb, the major moon, was crisply delineated like a hole in the sky. He
amused himself for a moment looking for the shape of the rabbit in the softly
glowing orb, as he had done as a child, and returned his gaze to the buildings
surrounding them. Shards of frost glittered on every surface, painting the world
silver, and he was able to see almost as well as he would have done in daylight.
His breath puffed into little clouds that reflected the sheen of moonlight with
every exhalation, and the bitter cold began to clear his head, although the
alcohol he’d drunk insulated him from its worst effects.

As he waited for Ansbach to conclude his devotions, another
glint of reflected moonlight caught his eye, and he turned, trying to find the
source of it. For a moment he failed to see it again, and then there it was: a
hard-edged glitter deep within the shadows cast by a nearby warehouse.

Something was moving, an indistinct mass, and then his night
vision, which for so long had been muted by the ubiquitous lamps and torches of
the city streets, reasserted itself. There had been no aids to vision growing up
in the woods, and using them would surely have scared off the game he’d been
after anyway, so for most of his life he’d been adept at distinguishing shapes
in the darkness. This was a human figure, he was suddenly sure, wrapped in a
cloak of some dark material. Why would anyone be hanging about outside on a
freezing cold night like this?