CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 

 

They walked for most of the day through a landscape of unvarying monotony. Rudi was reminded of the moor they’d crossed before, but here, on the fertile floodplain of the Reik, the grass was lusher and the patches of tree and scrub more verdant. The ground was more waterlogged too. The grassland gave way to patches of marsh without warning, forcing them further and further away from the banks of the river. Before long it was out of sight completely, except in occasional glimpses. But there was no fear of losing their way, the sky in that direction was the paler blue of reflected water, a constant reminder of the river’s presence.

Although both he and Hanna chafed impatiently every time they were forced to make another detour, Rudi felt that this might be a good thing after all. If Shenk had spread the news about them at his next port of call, any searchers would be looking for them in the wrong direction. How far downstream Hauptmann’s Landing might be he had no idea, but he was pretty sure they’d come far enough inland to slip past it unobserved by now.

Another difference to the wasteland they’d traversed before was that this was an area teaming with life. He was pleased to see plenty of evidence of rabbits, but there was a plethora of other game too. The marshes were thronged with waterfowl, none of them species he recognised. On several occasions he saw the distinctive tracks of deer too. Each time this happened he felt a renewed pang of regret for his lost bow.

As it was they subsisted on the few nuts and berries Hanna recognised as edible, plucking them from bushes as they passed. But each hastily snatched mouthful only emphasised their growing hunger. Even worse was the thirst, which was becoming a permanent torment to them both, but all the water surrounding them was brackish, and to drink it was to risk delirium or worse. As the day wore on, and the sun grew steadily warmer, Rudi grew more and more tempted to risk it. A dark, insistent voice at the back of his mind urged him to quench his thirst at every stinking mud pool they passed. If it hadn’t been for Hanna he might even have succumbed, but the thought of her disgust at such a display was enough to restrain him.

“It’s no good.” She sank to the ground, which squelched beneath her knees. “I have to rest.”

“Not here.” Rudi glanced around them. “It isn’t safe.” They were traversing an area of marshland, which at first he’d thought they’d managed to avoid altogether, only after some time had passed had he realised that it was closing in on their left as well, and the day was too far advanced to retrace their steps. Now they were forced to stick to whatever areas of firm ground they could find; they were surrounded on all sides by treacherous patches of almost liquid mud. He pointed to a low grey mound in the distance. “There’s dry land over there. It’s not far.”

“All right.” Hanna struggled to her feet, as aware as he was of the dangers of being caught out here after dark. She took Rudi’s proffered hand as she rose, but let go of it once she was back on her feet. “I can manage.”

“I don’t doubt that for a second,” Rudi said, earning a strained grin in reply.

They stumbled on in the gathering twilight and the mound in the distance growing ever closer. Soon, to his relieved surprise, the going became firmer underfoot.

“I think we’re through the worst of it,” he said, and Hanna nodded.

“Just in time, too.”

The sun was beginning to set, the sky to the left of them a vivid red, as though the clouds were on fire. The world around them was beginning to fade into shades of grey. There was still enough light to make out the large patch of bushes and scrub ahead of them, and as Rudi stared at it he could make out regular lines among the tangle of undergrowth.

“It’s a ruin of some kind,” he said, surprised. At first he assumed it was another old farmstead, like the one they’d found before, but the closer they got the larger it seemed, until it loomed over them like a temple. “Why would anyone build something that size out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Because when they did, it wasn’t.” Hanna ran a hand over the old stonework, which was still remarkably smooth to the touch. The tumbled blocks around it were finely wrought, showing no tool marks at all. “This is old, really old. It must have been here for thousands of years.” Her voice was tinged with awe.

“Thousands of years?” Rudi couldn’t even imagine a period of time that long. “How can you tell?” Hanna indicated something incised into the surface, strange flowing lines, which he supposed formed words.

“I think this is elvish. They lived here long before humans, even before Sigmar’s time.”

“What does it say?” he asked, and Hanna laughed, a sound somewhere between amusement and exasperation.

“I haven’t a clue. I can only read Reikspiel, not every language under the sun.”

“Oh.” Rudi tried to hide his disappointment. He’d assumed that being able to read meant that you could read everything, but this clearly wasn’t the case. “How do you know it’s elvish then?”

“I’m making an educated guess,” Hanna said, clearly irritated by the question. “I know the elves were here in antiquity, and this place is very old. It’s not that hard to make the connection.”

“But how do you know the elves were here in the first place?” Rudi persisted. Hanna gave him one of her best withering looks.

“I read it. In a book. In Reikspiel.” She reined in her irritation with a visible effort. “I’m sorry. I’m tired and hungry, that’s all.”

“Me too,” Rudi admitted. He pulled his solitary snare line out of his pouch. “I’d better find somewhere to set this before the light goes.”

“Good idea. I’ll get some brushwood together.” Hanna wandered off to get some firewood, and Rudi went looking for a rabbit run. It took longer than he expected, and he offered up a quick prayer to Taal to provide a coney to fill the trap as he completed the task. His stomach was beginning to knot painfully by this time, and he could only imagine how Hanna was feeling.

She was waiting for him back at the ruin, her arms full of sticks, and despite the pain in his belly Rudi forced a smile. “You’ve been busy.”

“It passed the time,” she said, with studied nonchalance. “Where do you think we should camp?” Her face looked strained in the twilight. The moons were not yet high enough to provide much illumination, but the sun was still sufficiently close beyond the horizon to cast a feeble reflected glow against the sky. Despite her best efforts, Hanna’s voice was becoming slurred with fatigue.

“Perhaps we should try inside,” Rudi suggested, and Hanna nodded.

“It should be safe. The walls seem pretty solid.” A few moments of exploration along the stonework were enough to reveal a rectangle of solid darkness, which stood out in vivid contrast from the masonry surrounding it. Only then did Rudi realise the stones themselves were glowing softly, reflecting the feeble moonlight.

“Definitely elvish,” Hanna confirmed when he pointed it out. She regarded the shadowed entrance with thinly disguised apprehension. “We won’t be able to see a thing in there.”

“I thought you knew a spell for that?” Rudi asked. Hanna looked worried.

“I do. But casting one makes me tired, even at the best of times. I’m not sure I’ve got the energy after today.”

“Maybe if I go first,” Rudi suggested, edging closer to the pitch-black entrance. Hanna shook her head impatiently.

“You don’t know what’s in there. You could fall and break your neck.” She sighed, then screwed up her eyes in an expression of pained concentration. At first Rudi was afraid she’d failed, and stepped forward to support her as she swayed on her feet. But then a pale glow began to form in the air ahead of them, a flickering tongue of yellow fire like the flame of a candle, floating at about head height.

“You did it.” He hugged her briefly and led her forward, both of them stumbling with fatigue so much it was hard to tell which was supporting the other. “I knew you would.” He barely noticed their surroundings at first, preoccupied as he was with guiding her faltering footsteps.

When he did, he simply stopped in amazement and stared. They were in a vast chamber, seemingly a perfect circle. Overhead the ceiling rose to a dome, decorated with paintings all but obscured by time and filth, and still more murals covered the walls. Eight passageways led into the room, equidistant from each other. With a thrill of panic he realised that he couldn’t remember which one they’d entered by. No matter, his reason reassured him, when the morning came they’d be able to see daylight through it, and even if they didn’t the floor was covered in enough detritus for their tracks to be clearly visible. The floor appeared to be tiled, though many were cracked and broken; they had obviously once formed a mosaic of tremendous intricacy and exquisite workmanship.

“Hanna! Look!” He nudged her, and directed her lolling head to the centre of the room. She took a moment to respond, and when she did it was with a burst of wakefulness that surprised him. Dropping the bundle of firewood she staggered to the ornamental fountain right beneath the centre of the dome, and leaned against the cool marble lip of it. A channel wider than Rudi could reach ran all the way round the structure at about waist height, collecting water that ran down the sides of the stone column in the centre. Warily she cupped her hand and sipped at it, then drank deep.

“It’s clean! Shallya be praised!” Rudi needed no further urging. He plunged his head into the cool, clear fluid, slaking his thirst and driving back his fatigue at the same time.

They both drank until they could hold no more then splashed water at each other like children, laughing hysterically with relief at their deliverance. Even the ache in their stomachs subsided a little, bloated as they were with the precious liquid. After a while they sobered up, and began to make preparations for the night.

“It looks as though someone’s been here before us,” Rudi said. Now he was feeling a little more refreshed he was exploring the chamber more methodically. He had found the remains of a campfire on the other side of the fountain. Hanna squatted down to examine it more carefully.

“Not recently,” she concluded, rubbing powdery ash between her fingers. Nevertheless it saved them the bother of constructing their own firepit from pieces of rubble, and they soon had a cheerful blaze crackling away. Rudi had been worried that Hanna was too exhausted to kindle the fire, but she’d repeated the trick he’d seen the previous night without much visible effort. The most unnerving thing was that the floating lamp had gone out before she began, so they’d been plunged into pitch darkness, but the bundle of sticks had flashed into flame almost immediately, providing light again as well as warmth.

“I can’t maintain two spells at once,” Hanna explained, illuminated now by the cosy glow of the campfire. Rudi nodded, as if he understood.

“Lucky you weren’t too tired to get the fire going, then.”

“Yes,” Hanna agreed. “I was a little worried about that.” She smiled as she said it, so Rudi wasn’t sure how seriously to take the remark. Being entirely in the dark here for the rest of the night would have been no laughing matter. It was obvious from the number of tracks in the litter on the floor that the fountain attracted a fair number of animals, and some of them could easily be dangerous.

To distract himself he wandered back to the fountain again. Now he came to look at it closely it had been sculpted to resemble a building of some kind, tall and slender. After a while he realised there was something familiar about the larger structure at its base.

“I think this is what this place used to look like,” he said. Hanna joined him.

“You’re right. We’re in the main building here.” She pointed. “The watchtower must have been right over our heads.”

“Is that what it was?” Rudi looked puzzled. “Watching for what?”

“Those, presumably.” Hanna squatted again, brushing the encrusted detritus of millennia away from the reliefs that decorated the pillar of the fountain below the rim. They depicted battle scenes, in which slender warriors with pointed ears fought hunched monstrosities. They seemed vaguely familiar to Rudi for some reason.

“They look like goblins,” he said at last. “But they’re huge.”

“Orcs,” Hanna said decisively. Rudi nodded, and stared at the grotesque creatures with vague apprehension.

“I don’t suppose there are any still around here, are there?”

“Of course not,” Hanna said, a little too vehemently. “Sigmar killed them all. The only ones left nowadays are leagues away, right on the fringes of the Empire.”

“Good,” Rudi said, somewhat reassured. He returned to the fire and settled again, trying to make himself comfortable on the stone floor. Without a bedroll, or a pack to use as a pillow, he didn’t expect to sleep much that night, but he might as well close his eyes at least…

“Rudi!” He woke with a start. Hanna’s urgent whisper was loud in his ear. She was shaking his shoulder gently. “I think something’s coming!”

“What kind of thing?” he asked, adrenaline coursing through his body. The fire had burned low, reducing the light it gave off to a feeble glow and he could barely see a thing.

“I don’t know. Listen!”

He strained his ears, hearing a skittering sound in the darkness, as though something was moving. Several things, he corrected himself, fast and stealthy. A faint squeaking was overlaid with it, modulated almost like speech, but he couldn’t imagine what sort of creature would make a sound like that.

“I think we should go,” Hanna said, an uncharacteristic edge of nervousness entering her voice.

“I think you’re right.” He glanced around the chamber, trying to remember which of the corridors they’d come in by, but he was now completely disorientated. The glow of the fire was too feeble to make out the tracks they’d left coming, so that was no help. He was pretty sure that it was one of the three facing them, on the other side of the fountain. “Can you remember which entrance we came in by?”

“No.” Hanna shook her head. “And we can’t stay here to debate it.”

“This way.” Rudi made a snap decision. By moving towards the leftmost of the three doorways he’d narrowed the choice down. It was as good a direction as any, and seemed to be directly away from the sound of the approaching creatures.

To his relief they made it to the sheltering shadows before anything arrived in the chamber.

They hesitated on the brink of the deeper darkness. Hanna took hold of Rudi’s arm, and urged him onwards, but he resisted.

“Wait a moment,” he whispered. “I want to see what they are.” A moment later shadows began creeping across the chamber behind them, and a small knot of hunched figures emerged from the opposite tunnel mouth. Rudi tried to count them, but they were huddled so close together that their silhouettes blurred and merged. They were roughly man-sized, he could tell that, but hunched and misshapen, concealed beneath hooded cloaks.

“Beastmen!” Hanna breathed. Rudi nodded, although the ones he’d seen before seemed very different. These looked more like rodents, with tails protruding from their enveloping garments that trailed behind them like fat, diseased worms. He suppressed a shudder of revulsion, and turned to leave.

Just in time too, it seemed. The creatures’ chittering speech rose in volume and intensity as they approached the fire, and a couple of them seemed to be sniffing the air. To Rudi’s horror they began to fan out, clearly looking for whoever had been camping there.

“Come on!” he whispered, taking Hanna by the arm. They hurried into the depths of the tunnel. Impenetrable darkness wrapped itself around them, leaving Rudi feeling suffocated, as though the air itself was solidifying.

“This is insane,” Hanna panted at his side. “We could be running into anything!”

“If you conjure up a light they’ll know where we are!” Rudi countered. Behind them the squeaking and chittering had increased in volume, and the sound he most dreaded, the scuttling of rodent feet, echoed in the tunnel behind them. A few of the creatures had picked the right exit from the chamber, whether by luck or some abhuman sense he couldn’t say.

Abruptly the pressure of darkness against his face eased, and he found he could see a little; the cool silvery light of Mannslieb was filtering through a crack in the ceiling. It illuminated the tumbled blocks of stone that choked the corridor ahead of them. For a moment he thought they were trapped, and he cast around desperately for a shard of rock small enough to use as a weapon.

“Thank Sigmar for that!” Hanna clambered up onto the nearest block of stone. “We can get out this way.”

She was right, Rudi realised, with a sudden flare of relief. He scrambled up beside her, then onto another block balanced precariously atop it. He reached down to help her up, then leaped for the gap in the ceiling. For a moment he thought he wasn’t going to make it, but his scrabbling fingers found purchase at last, and he swung himself up with a sudden surge of energy he hadn’t thought himself capable of.

Outside the moonlight was brighter than ever. It lit up a roof pitted with rubble, over which the remains of the dome they’d sheltered in still loomed. The watchtower must have fallen this way, and caved in the roof on this side of the building. Huge blocks of stone lay scattered beyond, some of them larger than a hayrick. They receded as far as the eye could see into the distance. There was no time to stare at the spectacle now. Gasping, he rolled over onto his stomach, and reached down into the hole.

“Grab my hands!” Hanna leaped as high as she could and snatched at his wrists. For a heart-stopping moment he thought she hadn’t been quick enough to close her grip, so he grabbed at her forearms, but she clung on grimly. His arms were dragged painfully down as he took her weight, and he felt himself tugged forwards towards the abyss. Pulling back with all his strength, and ignoring the flares of pain along his arms and back, Rudi swung her up to where she could grasp solid stone and haul herself out onto the rooftop.

They were just in time, as their chittering, skittering pursuers had reached the tumbled stone beneath them, and began to swarm up it without even seeming to slow down.

“Run!” Rudi picked up a chunk of debris and threw it at the leading creature. It squealed, and tumbled back. “I’ll hold them off!”

“Hold them off?” Hanna grabbed his arm, dragging him after her. “Who do you think you are, Konrad from the ballads?” They pelted across the rubble-strewn roof, hardly daring to look behind. But Rudi’s lucky hit with the piece of stone seemed to have bought them a little time. However dangerous these creatures might be, they were clearly more cautious than the average beastman.

“There’s no way down!” Rudi looked left and right. There was nothing but smooth, unbroken stonework below them.

Hanna shook her head. “We’ll just have to jump.”

“We’ll break our necks!” The ground below was pitted with rubble, and dappled with patches of shadow, which could have concealed anything. The drop was at least three times their height, and Rudi would have been reluctant to chance it even in broad daylight. In the dark severe injury or worse seemed inevitable.

“Not necessarily. Look.” Hanna pointed to one of the larger pieces of the tumbled watchtower. It was only a couple of yards away, and only half the height of the building they stood on. “If we can make it over there we should be able to get down to the ground.”

It was risky, but less so than waiting for their pursuers to catch up with them. A renewed cacophony of squeaking behind them made his mind up. A quick glance back was enough to confirm that the creatures were emerging from the hole in the roof, and were scuttling towards them from one patch of shadow to the next.

“Come on!” Before he could change his mind he clambered up onto the parapet and launched himself into the night. For an instant he thought he wasn’t going to make it, then hard, cracked stone slammed into his body, driving the wind from his lungs. Gasping for breath he staggered to his feet, looking around for his companion.

Hanna was still balanced on the lip of the drop, her face white in the moonlight. He waved, urging her on.

“Hurry!”

“I can’t!” Her voice was strained. “It’s too far! You’re much stronger than me, and you barely made it!”

“You’ll be fine! I’ll catch you!” Scuttling silhouettes appeared behind her, squealing excitedly. They were closing in on their prey. “For Sigmar’s sake, jump!”

For a moment he thought she’d left it too late, but just as the creatures seemed on the point of seizing her she closed her eyes and leapt convulsively. Shrill howls of disappointment rose from the warband stranded on the roof, but Rudi ignored them, his attention was riveted on the girl. She seemed to be falling more slowly than normal. The world seeming sluggish to his adrenaline-enhanced senses, as it had the morning he shot the wolf. She landed on the very lip of the block of stone, her knees flexing to absorb the impact, pushing her centre of gravity back. Her arms flailed and she began to topple backwards towards the ground below.

“It’s all right! I’ve got you!” Rudi grabbed her around the waist, and yanked her back onto solid stone. Her arms shot forward, wrapping his torso in a tight embrace. “Everything’s fine.” She clung to him for a moment, trembling with reaction, and Rudi took a couple of steps back from the edge. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” Hanna took a deep breath, and let go. Despite the danger Rudi couldn’t help feeling a vague sense of disappointment.

“Better get moving,” he said. The creatures showed no inclination to follow them, but it seemed they didn’t have to. The one he assumed to be the leader lifted a narrow snout to the sky and squealed something loud and undulating. Answering squeaks echoed from elsewhere in the ruins.

“I think you’re right.”

They scrambled down the edge of the stone block without difficulty, releasing their hands and dropping the remaining yard or so to the ground. “Where to now?” asked Hanna.

“This way, I suppose.” Rudi picked a direction he estimated led directly away from the loudest cries, although the maze of tumbled stone they now found themselves in echoed so much it was hard to be sure. They ran as hard as they could, heedless of the danger of tripping or turning an ankle on the rough ground beneath their feet. The labyrinth seemed to go on forever, and Rudi could not imagine how vast the structure had been before it fell.

“Rudi! Look out!” Hanna spotted the lurking ambushers an instant before they attacked, swarming out of the darkness between several blocks of stone ahead. They ran forwards, chittering excitedly, the moonlight glittering from blades in their hands. Rudi tried to estimate their numbers, but had no time before they were on him. There were a dozen at least, he thought. Then he was borne to the ground by a rush of foul-smelling fur.

As the leading creature closed with him he got his first real glimpse of it, and shuddered in instinctive revulsion. It resembled nothing so much as a gigantic rat, its sharp incisors catching the moonlight as it charged. He aimed a punch at it, but it dodged the blow easily, ducking its head to take him in the chest. Other rat-things seized his arms and legs, throwing him down and immobilising him. He thrashed around, trying to throw them off, and turned his head desperately looking for Hanna. If he could just buy her enough time to get away…

That hope evaporated in a shrill scream of fear and revulsion, which could only have been her. Frantic to help her he redoubled his efforts, but the rodents restrained him easily. He struggled desperately, expecting to feel those wicked teeth in his throat at any moment.

Then his eardrums rattled with a whump of combustion, similar to that which accompanied the magical lighting of a campfire. But it was louder than he’d ever heard it, and was accompanied by shrill squeals of panic and pain. The pressure against his body eased, and with a surge of strength he hadn’t known he possessed, he managed to throw off a couple of his assailants. The rest of them abruptly let go, and started to retreat, scuttling for the shadows like regular-sized rats.

“Oh no you don’t!” Carried away by the rage that had welled up inside him as he struggled for his life, he seized the creature that had first attacked him by the tail, and yanked it back. Squealing, it tumbled to the ground, where it scrabbled frantically for a moment in a futile effort to escape. Realising that its efforts were in vain it turned abruptly, mouth agape, and tried to bite him.

Rudi rolled aside, punching it hard in the face. It squealed again, slashing at him with its claws, which caught in the fabric of his shirt. Rudi fended it off and rolled again, gaining the upper hand and pinning it to the ground. He punched it on the snout, which cracked loudly under the impact, and the rat-thing bucked madly, its incisors clicking together inches from his face.

Realising he had to keep it from biting at all costs Rudi gripped it around the throat with both hands and raised himself up, keeping his face as far away from it as possible. The creature thrashed frantically as his whole weight bore down on its windpipe, and a mottling of foam began to appear around its jaws. Then, with a sudden rattling gasp and a shudder, it went limp.

Panting from the exertion Rudi let it go and staggered to his feet, looking around for Hanna. She was standing a few yards away, stunned, and as he approached her she didn’t look up.

“Hanna. Are you all right?”

“I don’t know,” she said flatly. “I did something…” Rudi became aware of the smell of charred flesh, and belatedly identified the trio of indistinct lumps on the ground in front of her as rat-thing corpses, burned almost beyond recognition by the red-tinged flames, which still flickered feebly around them.

“I didn’t know your fire spell was that powerful,” Rudi said.

“That’s just the thing,” Hanna said, her voice trembling. “It isn’t. That was a different spell, one I never learned.”

“You must have done,” Rudi replied, looking around for more of the rat-things. He couldn’t see any, but ominous scuttling noises in the ruins around them left him sure that they were still there, biding their time, waiting for others to join them. “You probably just forgot it.”

“No.” Hanna shook her head decisively. “It just appeared in my head, and I knew I could do it. Those creatures were all over me, and I panicked. I was sure they were going to kill me. Then suddenly I knew the… the things you need to do.”

“Lucky you did,” Rudi said.

“Is it?” Hanna looked on the verge of tears. “I feel like there’s something inside me I can’t control. I thought magic was simple, something you do just to make life a bit easier, and people like Gerhard were ignorant brutes. But now I don’t even know what I am!”

“You’re a pyromancer,” a voice said out of the darkness.