Bloodborn (12 page)

Ulrika looked up at him, aghast. In a single sentence, he had proven all the tales she had heard of his kind correct. They would indeed sink to any depths to show their devotion to their faith. And yet…

And yet, she did not see the light of fanaticism blazing from the young man’s grey eyes. Nor did she hear the hectoring tone of boastful righteousness, only a grave, faraway sadness. He was not proud of what he had done.

‘It hurts to this day,’ he continued. ‘But I find strength in Sigmar, and you would be wise to do the same. In his teachings I have learned that I gave them release from their suffering.’

‘I pray you are right, mein herr,’ said Ulrika, and smiled sadly to herself. In his grim, ham-fisted way, the witch hunter was trying to comfort her, to give her courage for an unpleasant task. It was touching.

She remembered her father giving her a similar talk when she had been a little girl and hadn’t understood why he had taken her older brother out on a hunting trip one day, and not come back with him. It had been a hard thing for a child to hear, but on the northern marches, so close to the Chaos Wastes that their glow could be seen behind the mountains to the north every night, it was something to be learned and accepted young, for mutation there was terrifyingly common. There had been many others throughout the years – cousins, uncles, aunts, any number of peasants – some of which she had dispatched herself. It had been part of her duties as the boyar’s surviving heir – a difficult, painful task, but she had made herself believe, as Templar Holmann believed, that she was practising mercy. She wondered if one day she would have the courage to practise it on herself.

They came to another intersection in the tunnels and Holmann held the lantern close to the ground, trying to determine which way the little man had gone. Ulrika pointed to the footprints she saw going over one of the narrow bridges. ‘There. He’s gone straight on.’

Holmann gave her a look. ‘You have sharp eyes.’

Ulrika swallowed as he started off again. She had to be more cautious. She had forgotten how much better her inhuman eyesight was than his. ‘I inherited them from my father,’ she said.

As they ran on, her mind finally settled enough for her to wonder about things other than her own survival and catching the little man. For instance, why was Templar Holmann down in the sewers hunting vampires in the first place? Had he seen something? Had Mistress Alfina’s corpse been noted after all? Or had the witch hunter seen her killer?

‘What led you down here, Herr Templar?’ she asked at last. ‘Do we hunt the same vampire?’

Holmann shrugged. ‘I know not,’ he said. ‘A man came to my comrades and I while we were investigating a disappearance earlier, claiming to have seen a vampire climbing a fence near the Silver Lily.’

Ulrika stifled a groan. They
had
seen Alfina!

‘He was drunk,’ Holmann continued. ‘But a Templar of Sigmar must investigate even the most unlikely rumour of evil, so the captain dispatched me and Jentz to follow him back. We found nothing at the brothel, and Jentz berated the drunk for wasting our time.’

Ulrika breathed a silent sigh of relief. They
hadn’t
seen Alfina. Good.

‘Jentz wanted to return to the captain,’ said Holmann. ‘But I had a…’ He shrugged. ‘A feeling, I suppose, and wanted to look around a bit more. I sent him back, then scouted the area. A few streets away I found an open sewer grate, and went down to investigate.’ He looked back at Ulrika. ‘I had just given up searching when I heard shouting and saw your light.’

‘And thank Ursun you did,’ said Ulrika, though, in reality, she was cursing the god for the mischance that had led to their meeting. ‘Or I might be drowned in filth now.’

She glanced down to be sure of the little man’s tracks and stared. They were gone. She stopped and looked back. They had just passed a ladder.

‘Wait,’ she said, and padded back. ‘What is it?’ asked Holmann.

Ulrika looked at the rungs of the ladder. Yes. Someone had gone up them recently, and she could smell the little man’s distinctive clove scent on them. She glanced up through the circular chimney to the grate. It had been pulled aside, just like the one she had entered earlier. She was about to tell Templar Holmann that their quarry had gone above ground again when she realised that the sky showing through the grate had a faint grey tinge. She froze, frightened. Dawn was coming. What should she do?

She could not follow the little man’s trail through the city during the day. She would burn like a match. But if she stayed in the sewers any longer she would have to wait down there a whole day before she could return to Gabriella at Guildmaster Aldrich’s house. She couldn’t wait. She had to go back immediately and tell Countess Gabriella what she had discovered. But what excuse was she to give to Holmann for their parting that wouldn’t make him suspicious? She couldn’t just run off in the middle of the hunt after telling him she was a vampire hunter. Of course, she could just kill him. But she had promised not to kill. She needed a believable reason for splitting up.

Ah! She had it.

‘It seems he went up this ladder,’ she said, turning to Holmann. ‘But I think it might have been a feint to throw us off the trail. Look here.’ She stepped past him and pointed to the ledge further along the tunnel. There were no footprints there except their own, but Holmann hadn’t the eyesight to know that. ‘You see. It looks like he continues down the tunnel too.’

Holmann nodded as if he could see the prints. ‘Clever. So he continues down the tunnel?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ulrika. She stood up beside him, then shivered at the proximity. This close she could smell the blood in him, and hear it pounding, and the urge to feed grew like a fire in a hay loft within her. She fought it down with difficulty. She had to get away, as soon as possible. ‘We’ll… we’ll have to split up. You have the lantern. You follow the tunnel. I’ll go look in the street.’

Holmann nodded. ‘Very well. But how will we find each other again?’

Hopefully we won’t, thought Ulrika. I might not be able to resist temptation again. ‘Name the place,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait for you there.’

The witch hunter scratched his square chin. ‘The Armoury, in the Halbinsel. It is a tavern. You know it?’

‘I’ll find it,’ said Ulrika, and put a foot on the ladder. ‘Good hunting, Templar Holmann.’

And with that she scrambled up into the pearl-grey pre-dawn and ran, racing the sun and fleeing her hunger.

Ulrika cursed herself as she ran through the waking city. Why had she dismissed Aldrich’s coach? With it there would have been no trouble going home as the sun came up. Now it was going to be a race, and one with deadly consequences if she lost. She kept one eye always on the east, to watch the progress of the dawn. At first, there was almost no distinguishing the houses from the sky behind them, but as she wound through the Handelbezirk, where shopkeeps put out the morning’s wares and watchmen dragged off last night’s drunks, their silhouettes began to stand out against the brightening horizon, and as she reached the wall between the Neuestadt and the Altestadt, the sky had turned from grey to pink.

It had been nothing to pass through that wall in the coach of a wealthy merchant. The guards at the High Gate had saluted, and not bothered to look within. But as the coachman had warned, going back through alone in the early hours of the morning, dressed in patched male riding gear and speaking with a Kislevite accent, was going to be more difficult.

Ulrika paused at the last intersection before the gate, watching the bored guardsmen pace back and forth before it. She could try invoking Guildmaster Aldrich’s name to gain passage, but it might not work, and worse, it might draw suspicion to his house, something of which Countess Gabriella would most definitely disapprove.

She glanced again at the eastern sky. It was blushing brighter now, and beginning to hurt her eyes. It looked like it was going to be a cold, bright day, without a cloud in the sky. There was no time to hesitate, but what did she do? The sewers must go under the wall, but they were a maze. She might never find her way. Could she go over? She had heard of vampires who could turn themselves into bats or mist, but she had not so far noticed any of these abilities manifesting in herself.

Perhaps she didn’t need them. Hadn’t she made leaps and jumps that would have shamed a cricket? Hadn’t she broken out of the tower at Castle Nachthafen and climbed safely to the ground? She backed around the corner, out of sight of the gate, then wound through the neighbourhood until she came to the street which paralleled the wall. She looked up and down it. The architects of Nuln had built with security firmly in mind. There were no buildings on the wall side of the street, just the sheer face of the fortification itself, with every now and then a square watch tower dotted along its length. It was in these, strangely, that she saw an opportunity.

Where the square shape of the tower jutted from the wall was a right angle, which would make for an easier climb than a flat surface. She hurried to the shadow of the nearest and sighted up it. The wall looked to be about five times her height, and the stonework tightly mortared, with almost no gaps between blocks. But the stone itself was roughly quarried, with lots of easy places to grip and pull – easy, that is, for hands that could tear a man limb from limb.

She started up, using the angle of the walls to brace against, and climbed fluidly. This close she was hidden from the eyes of any guards patrolling above by the overhanging lip of the battlements that ran along the top of the wall. But that benefit turned into a problem when she reached it. The underside of the lip was smoother stone, and there was no place for her to grab onto.

She leaned back as far as she dared, her claws gripping the wall so hard that she gouged white scars in it. Craning her neck, she could just see past the lip, and up the crenellated stone of the battlement. At first she saw no secure handholds, just smooth granite blocks, but then she noticed that spaced out along the bottom of the battlement were small rectangular holes, drainage holes, also no doubt meant to pour boiling oil down on any besiegers who made it this far into the city. There were only a few of them, and none directly above her, but they would have to do.

She drew her head back in, then crabbed sideways across the face of the wall – a harder trick than the climb, because she didn’t have the angle of the other wall to brace against – until she thought she was under one of the holes. She stretched her neck again, her claws slipping unnervingly. Yes! There was a hole directly above her. The only difficulty was that it was too high to reach without letting go with both hands, and if she did that she would fall.

She looked down between her wide-braced legs. With her newfound strength and vitality the fall would be unlikely to kill her, but it might hurt her badly enough that she would be unable to find shelter from the sun. It didn’t matter. She had to risk it. There was no longer any time to attempt a new plan.

She bunched herself as close as she could to the wall, finding the firmest, deepest holds for her feet, then tensed like a crouching spider and leapt up and out.

She flew out from under the shadow of the battlements as she arced up, watching for the narrow slot of the drainage hole. There it was. She shot an arm up and caught it. The edges were slimy with algae and snow run-off. Her fingers slipped, but she dug her claws in and they stopped her, her body swinging back and forth slightly as she hung beneath the battlements with nothing below her but air.

Dangling there one-handed, she marvelled once again at the new-found abilities Krieger’s kiss had given her. She could certainly feel her weight pulling at her muscles, but her arms and hands were nowhere close to the limits of their endurance, and she felt no fear of falling. She was nearly as comfortable here as she would have been on the ground.

She listened above her for guards. There were voices and footsteps far to her right, but none above her, and she sensed no nearby pulse or heart-fire. Now was the time.

Pulling herself up one-handed, she stretched up with her free hand and grabbed at the deep crenellation above her, then swung herself easily up and over the wall and onto the catwalk. She crouched there, motionless, looking and listening. The voices to the right were getting closer and she saw two spearmen in the black uniforms of the garrison of Nuln walking slowly towards her along the circuit of the wall.

She crept to the inner edge of the wall and saw that the defensive measures outside the wall were not enforced inside the wall. The buildings of the Kaufmann District – all domed banks and marble-columned arcades – butted up almost directly against the wall, with only the narrowest of alleys between them, and their snow-covered roofs rising more than halfway up the height of the wall.

Ulrika smiled. That was good enough for her. With a frog-like kick of her legs she leapt off the catwalk and dropped down to a tall building, landing as lightly as she could on the snowy slanting shingles of its roof.

She still made quite a clatter, and the voices of the guards were raised above her.

‘What was that?’ said one.

‘A cat?’ said the other.

Ulrika scrabbled up the slick slope and rolled behind a fat brick chimney, then held still as their footsteps thudded closer.

‘There was never a cat so big,’ said the first guard. ‘Did you hear the noise it made? And look at the snow on that roof! Something’s been climbing on it.’