Bloodborn (21 page)

Ulrika smiled. ‘I grew up in the far north of Kislev,’ she said. ‘The daughter of a Troll Country march warden. There, this dress
is
normal and right, for it is so dangerous a place that even the women must learn to fight and ride.’

Holmann nodded. ‘Aye. A hard land breeds hard folk,’ he said. ‘I am from Ostermark. It too is harsh country. But…’ He paused, then went on. ‘But there is more to you than that. I have known bold hoydens before – hard-drinking, hard-fighting women. They haven’t your gravity, nor your sense of purpose. And I have known pious women before, devoted to their god, and the destruction of the Ruinous Powers. They haven’t your…’

He stopped, seemingly at a loss for words, and Ulrika could hear his blood suddenly begin rushing through his veins. The heat from his heart-fire was suddenly like a blazing hearth. The warmth of it made her dizzy. She looked up at him, blinking in surprise. What was this? He turned away, flushed, and gripped the pommel of his sword.

Ulrika stifled a smile and did her best to keep any laughter out of her voice. The dour templar found her attractive! ‘I thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘I take it as a great compliment, coming from a man of your virtue.’

Holmann shrugged as if his collar irritated him. ‘It is only that I… I have never before met a woman who… who has lost what I have lost, and faced what I have faced, and come away stronger for it.’ His face grew dark, as if at some memory, and his eyes far away.

Ulrika’s smile fell. She had been ready to laugh at him for a fool who could not admit simple lust and must cloak it in high-sounding words, who was trying to convince himself that what he felt had some noble basis, but the ache of pain and loneliness in his last words was not amusing at all. Where did a man so driven find companionship? Where did a templar find a woman who would understand what he faced every day? They were few and far between, and those that would not only understand, but also share his lot in all its harshness and horror, rarer still. He must be very lonely.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye as they continued on. She had never had any use for grim-faced fanatics, so sure of their own righteousness that they were willing to pass sentence on their fellow man, and she had at first taken Templar Holmann to be one of these. But though he was clearly a religious man, and zealous in the execution of his duties, there was yet humanity in his eyes and his heart. He was not the flint-hearted witch hunter of popular legend. He was certainly striving towards that ideal, but he was still young, and had not achieved it – not yet.

She remembered his story of killing his parents, and realised that he had come to his profession in nearly the same way she had come to her inhuman state. He had been forced into it. Had Krieger not taken her, Ulrika would never have chosen the life of a vampire. Had mutation not taken Holmann’s parents, he would never have chosen the witch hunter’s life. They were both children of misfortune.

She understood his loneliness too. She felt trapped between two worlds, and not entirely part of either. The human world was closed to her now, and the vampire world foreign and strange, and she dared not confide even to Gabriella her myriad fears and confusions, for fear of appearing weak or foolish.

Who had Templar Holmann to confide in? To whom could he admit weakness or doubt? The unbending demagogues who were his fellows? His priest? They would cast him out as heretic and coward. They might even burn him. Nor could he tell some wife who could have no understanding of the horrors he faced down every day. She might comfort him, but she could never empathise.

A sudden fondness for Holmann tightened her chest. A witch hunter and a vampire should be natural enemies, but she liked the templar. He was a good man, and she found herself wishing she could be the woman he thought she was, a comrade and confidante that would fight by his side in battle and comfort him body and soul afterwards. But thoughts of intimacy brought stirrings of another kind. His blood was still pumping strongly in his veins, and the smell of it was intoxicating. Entering the temple of Morr and piercing its wards had drained her, and left her hungry. She found she could not think of Holmann without thinking of drinking from him. She cursed silently. It was infuriating. Would physical desire and bloodlust always be conflated in her mind? Was even just walking with a human to be a forbidden pleasure?

If she grew any hungrier she would have to leave him, or she might have difficulty controlling herself. She didn’t want to attack him, not at this late date. She could only imagine the look of betrayal on his face. The thought made her cringe. Foolish though it was, she wanted him to continue liking her. She was pleased to have won his respect, and didn’t want to lose that to revulsion and rage.

Of course, if she fed on him, his rage would melt away, wouldn’t it? He would become like the other swains. He would love her too much to betray her to his zealot companions. Her heart leapt at the idea. Why not? She would no longer have to keep her secret from him. He would no longer have to be alone. They could be comrades, prowling the midnight world in search of the common enemies of vampire and man, and spending the days in shadowed embrace.

The image of Quentin staring up at her doe-eyed as blood flowed down his neck flashed across her mind and the dream popped like a bubble. Such a relationship with Holmann would not be as she longed for it to be. They would not be friends. They would not be comrades. They would be mistress and servant. Once fed upon, a swain lost his will and his self, and became only a devoted slave to she who drank from him. She had seen it in Quentin, and in Imma – that sick, dog-like worshipfulness that had nauseated her so. She didn’t want Holmann to become like that. She liked him for his hardness, for his deeply held beliefs, for his honour and grim humour.

All that would be lost if she bled him. No matter how martial a man he seemed afterwards, he would be hollow on the inside, a weak, needy thing like Rodrik, consumed with jealousies and insecurities, a lap-dog masquerading as a mastiff. She would have possessed the shell, but lost the pearl within. It was this, she realised suddenly, more than any other aspect of her new life, that she despised. The hunt, the blood frenzy, she could appreciate. They thrilled her. Even killing a victim, as long as it was the right victim, she had little trouble with. But taking someone’s will, that sickened her. She knew then and there that she would never take the blood of anyone she respected, for doing so would destroy the very thing that had won her admiration. She did not want slaves. She wanted friends. She wondered if it would ever be possible.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EATERS OF THE DEAD

‘What business have ye in the Garden of Morr,’ asked a hooded, heavy-cloaked priest through the spiked iron gates of the Cemetery of Nuln.

‘Sigmar’s business, initiate,’ said Holmann, showing his chain of office. ‘Open up.’

The priest peered peevishly out through the bars, holding up his lantern and revealing an ugly, wart-studded face, then sighed and took out a jingling iron ring of keys. ‘I don’t know what ye want with our lot, witch hunter,’ he sneered. ‘They don’t respond to torture.’

‘It isn’t your charges I wish to speak with,’ Holmann growled.

Ulrika smirked as the priest paled and hurried more quickly with the lock, his gloved hands shaking with fright. They had had less trouble getting through the Altestadt wall than winning entry into the cemetery. The guards at the High Gate had waved them through without a second glance – a much easier entry than her previous attempt. She might be able to climb walls, but a witch hunter could pass through them with nothing but a glare and a wide-brimmed hat.

She had walked to the cemetery with Templar Holmann through the spire-hemmed streets of the temple quarter, and though she had feared the journey, had felt not a twinge of fear or pain. The sight of the icons and statues of the gods that ringed the marble walls had seemed to have no effect on her. Perhaps it was because they were not her gods. Perhaps things would be different in Kislev. She hoped she never had cause to find out.

‘Welcome, herr witch hunter,’ said the priest, bowing obsequiously as he swung open the creaking iron gate and let them through. ‘Shall I fetch the senior priest?’

Ulrika tensed as she stepped onto the cemetery grounds, fearing to again come up against the enervating force that had tried to deny her entry into the temple of Morr, but there was nothing. Whatever holy influence had protected the other place was absent here. She breathed a sigh of relief.

‘That won’t be necessary, sexton,’ said Holmann. ‘Unless you fail to answer me fully.’

The wart-faced priest trembled and ducked his head. ‘I shall do my best, templar,’ he said.

Holmann took out the torn and bloodied black robe and showed it to him. ‘We found these robes while hunting vampires this night. Have your brothers fought any of these fiends recently? Have you lost any of your number?’

The priest held his lantern close to the black cloth, then grimaced. ‘I’ll ask Father Taubenberger, but I haven’t heard of anything like that. We leave the fighting to you lot, and the Black Guard.’

‘Of course you do,’ said Holmann, sneering. ‘And no one has disappeared, or reported sick, or had an “accident”?’

The priest scratched a wart thoughtfully, then shook his head. ‘Not that I can remember. Not recently.’

Holmann sighed. ‘Fetch your superior, then,’ he said. ‘He may know more.’

‘Aye, mein herr,’ said the priest, then turned and limped away towards the low black stone temple that rose some thirty paces from the gate. He hadn’t taken more than three steps when he paused and turned back. ‘We have had some robes gone missing, though,’ he said. ‘And a grave disturbed. Would that be important?’

Holmann shot a glance at Ulrika. She raised her eyebrows. This sounded promising.

‘Yes,’ said Holmann, turning back to the priest. ‘That may be important. Tell me more of it. Who took the robes? How many were taken? In what way were the graves “disturbed”?’

‘Six robes have been reported missing,’ said the priest. ‘Don’t know who took ’em. Resurrection men, most likely. They pose as priests of Morr to steal bodies, then sell ’em to “scholars” for “medical research” if you get my meaning.’

‘I know the practice,’ growled Holmann.

‘That’s likely why the grave was dug up, too,’ said the priest. ‘They stole the coffin and left the body. Most likely using it to collect fresh corpses.’

Or to transport mangled Lahmians, Ulrika thought, a vision of a group of robed figures carrying a coffin through the streets of Nuln from Shantytown to the Silver Lily flashing through her mind. Is that how they’d done it?

‘Did you or your brothers see these grave robbers at their work?’ Holmann asked. ‘Have they returned?’

The priest shook his head. ‘Nobody saw ’em,’ he said. ‘But some of the brothers have been whispering since then about seeing shadows off in the distance at night when there shouldn’t ought to be anybody there.’

‘And you have hunted down these shadows?’

The priest swallowed. ‘Well, we’ve gone out during the day, but haven’t seen no sign.’

Holmann glared at him. ‘Sexton, is it not the sacred duty of the priests of Morr to make sure that the dead remain undisturbed? This is consecrated ground! You must protect it!’

The priest shrank inside his robes. ‘We do, mein herr,’ he said. ‘We do. At least most of it we do.’ He gestured around him. ‘This bit around the temple, and the noble mausoleums, and the merchant quarter – we patrol them and make our prayers all the time, but…’

‘But what?’ snapped Holmann.

‘Well, mein herr,’ said the priest, leaning in to whisper. ‘There’s parts of the old place nobody goes any more, not since the trouble.’

Holmann frowned. ‘Trouble? What trouble?’

‘The plague, mein herr,’ murmured the priest. ‘You remember. And the… the rats.’

The witch hunter drew himself up, shocked. ‘Since the great fire? You mean to say that there are places in this garden that haven’t been visited for three years?’

‘We daren’t,’ pleaded the priest. ‘We daren’t. The sickness still lingers. It isn’t safe.’

Holmann sneered. ‘You don’t fear the plague. You fear old wives’ tales. Rats that walk like men. Fah! Do you know it is heresy to believe in them?’

‘I don’t! I swear I don’t!’ cried the priest.

Ulrika did. She had in fact defended her father’s estate against them once, but she thought it was probably wisest to keep that to herself just now.