Bloodborn (19 page)

Plague. The X was the sign of the plague. Ulrika shrank back instinctively, but then caught herself. What did she have to fear from human sickness? She was already dead. She started forwards, then paused again. Plague might be the least danger of the place. Best to have a look all around before walking straight in through the front door. She turned her steps and went down Messingstrasse until she came to the alley that ran behind the buildings that faced Hoff. These were all tenements, and had no yards, so the alley was a mere slot, with walls that rose up four storeys on either side, and blacker even than the intersection out front.

Ulrika crept down it as quietly as she could, eyes wide and ears cocked. She could hear voices and sense heartbeats all around her, and smell stale cooking and staler bodies. It was early evening, and the people inside the buildings were still at their leisure – singing, fighting, weeping and making love. But as she reached the back of the building with the black door the human sounds and smells faded into the distance.

She looked at the back door. It too was painted black with a white X, and the windows above it were all boarded up. She could smell the sickness that had been there, and the reek of bodies long ago dead and desiccated, as well as that of the vermin that had fed on them, but nothing else. The place was desolate, abandoned to disease and never reoccupied. She stepped to the door and put an ear to it, then froze. Not quite desolate. From somewhere within she could hear the sound of cautious movement, and a single beating heart.

She paused. She had little to fear from one living man, but still she should be cautious. It might be the fat little warlock again. He might vanish before she could grab him, or hurl some spell at her. She examined the door closely. The lock had been torn out, and it had been done recently. The splintered wood around the hole was still white and fresh. She pressed against it. It swung open, creaking on its hinges. She stopped it, then slipped through the gap and eased it shut behind her.

Her foot touched something as she turned to look around, and she found she was standing amidst a loose pile of withered corpses, all clustered around the door as if they had died clawing at it to get out. The poor beggars, she thought. Locked in to die.

She was in a narrow corridor that ran straight to the front of the building. It had several doors on either side and a stairwell halfway down on the left. At the far end, around the front door, she could see another clump of corpses, no more successful in escaping than their comrades at the back. She could also see fresh footprints in the years-thick layer of dust that lay over everything. There were several sets. Some in boots, some barefoot, and one that sent a thrill up her spine – a woman’s print, neat and small, with a pointed toe.

A rustle from above reminded her that one of those sets of prints was very fresh indeed. Whoever it was, they were one floor up, and moving cautiously. Ulrika listened harder. The steps, though stealthy, were heavy, and had the dull thud of boots. A man, then, and not small. She drew her sabre and crept forwards as lightly as she could. The boards creaked anyway, but only faintly. The sounds and the heartbeat above her did not signal any alarm.

The doors she passed on her way to the stairs were open, and revealed the final purpose of the house. Each small room was lined with rows of low cots, and on every cot, wrapped in dirty sheets, lay a body that was now more skeleton than corpse. Between the cots, and collapsed on top of them, were other bodies, wearing the white robes of sisters of Shallya, who had apparently succumbed to the plague while still at their duties. Ulrika wondered if they had volunteered to be locked in with their patients, or had fallen ill while treating others and been abandoned like the rest. She didn’t know, but found herself touched by the nobility of women who would continue to help others after they had been condemned to the same death.

She turned into the stairwell and looked up towards the first floor. Yellow light and moving shadows on the walls told her that the person above had a lantern. Then the light cut off sharply and the footsteps grew muffled. The person had entered a room. Good.

Ulrika cat-footed it swiftly up the stairs, keeping close to the wall where the treads would creak least, and gained the landing. A door led into the first-floor corridor, while the stairs continued to zigzag up to further floors. She crouched at the corridor door, listening.

The footsteps were getting louder again, and the corridor getting brighter. Her quarry was exiting the room he had gone into. She edged back into the darkness of the stairwell, waiting for him to go into another room, but he did not. The light swung closer. He was coming down the corridor.

She edged back further, stepping up onto the first step of the flight that rose to the next floor, and gripped her sabre tightly, prepared to spring.

The light and the footsteps paused just outside the stairwell, and Ulrika could hear the man turning this way and that, as if weighing options. She inhaled as his scent came to her, then froze as she recognised it. The templar witch hunter! The one from the sewers!

She took an involuntary step back. What should she do? Should she flee? Should she kill him? Should she question him?

The witch hunter stepped into the stairwell, raising his lantern to start up the next flight, then stopped dead, staring at Ulrika, who crouched upon them.

‘You,’ he said.

Ulrika swallowed. ‘Templar Holmann,’ she said. ‘We meet again.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE RAVEN AND THE ROSE

Holmann stepped back warily, a frown furrowing his forehead. ‘What are you doing here, Fraulein Magdova?’ he asked.

Ulrika stood and lowered her sword. It seemed she wasn’t going to kill him. ‘The same as you, I would think,’ she said. ‘Following up on our hunt from the other night.’

He continued frowning. ‘I find you once again in the dark without a lantern,’ he said. ‘It is most strange.’

Ulrika’s hand clenched around her sabre. ‘I… I had a candle, but I snuffed it when I saw your light. I thought you might be a villain, and didn’t want to give away my position.’ She smiled. ‘I… I was about to jump you just now.’

‘Mmmm,’ he said, still stiff. ‘You did not come to the Armoury. I waited.’

Ulrika almost laughed. Was he suspicious, or hurt? ‘I was kept away,’ she said. ‘Family business. And I’m afraid I lost the trail that morning. It seems you had more success?’

Holmann lowered his lantern, his expression softening somewhat, though still wary. He shook his head. ‘I found nothing in the sewer. And I had to return home to sleep afterwards. My duties with the witch hunters are at night.’

‘Then how did you find this place?’ Ulrika asked. It seemed best to keep him talking about himself instead of asking uncomfortable questions about her.

‘I returned to this neighbourhood after my rounds the next night and spoke to the men of the local watch,’ said Holmann. ‘They said several citizens had reported hearing a loud fight near this intersection, but the watch found nothing. I wanted to question the locals, but it was by then too late. They were all abed.’

Ulrika smiled. ‘So you shirked your duties to come again tonight at a more reasonable hour?’

Holmann looked shocked. ‘Certainly not. I asked my captain leave to investigate the incident. My request was granted.’

Ulrika turned her head nervously, listening for other men. Could she have missed them? ‘You’re not alone this time?’

He shook his head. ‘No others could be spared. We are still questioning the acquaintances of the women who were revealed to be fiends.’

‘Ah,’ said Ulrika, relieved. ‘Of course.’

‘Tonight I spoke to several persons near here who had heard the fight,’ he continued. ‘And was able to more closely pinpoint the source.’ He spread his free hand. ‘This was the only unoccupied house in the vicinity, and the only one the watch had not checked.’

‘And no wonder,’ said Ulrika, wrinkling her nose. ‘You’re a brave man, entering a plague house.’

Holmann touched the hammer pendant at his neck. ‘Sigmar protects his servants. You are brave as well.’

‘Ursun protects too,’ she answered. ‘Have you found anything?’

‘Footprints,’ he said. ‘So far that is all.’

Ulrika gestured up the stairs. ‘Shall we continue, then?’

Holmann glared at her. ‘One day your bravery will be your undoing,’ he said. ‘I understand your reasons for pursuing this life, fraulein, but it is still unseemly for a woman to be in a place like this, with a sabre and breeches and…’ He trailed off, embarrassed.

Ulrika was tempted to tell him she thought she looked a damned sight more seemly in breeches than he did, and likely fought better with a sabre as well, but knew it wouldn’t do. Instead she lowered her head meekly. ‘I wish it were otherwise, templar,’ she said. ‘But I have made a vow to wipe out the things that corrupted my sister. I would lose Ursun’s favour if I renounced it, and bring shame upon my family name.’

That seemed to be the right line to take, for Holmann nodded curtly and looked like he had swallowed a lemon. ‘Vows to one’s gods must be upheld,’ he said. ‘You are an honourable woman.’ He stepped ahead of her and lifted the lantern. ‘Come. I shall light the way.’

The second floor was the same as the first, room after room of dry corpses lying on low cots, and nothing else – no sign of a fight and no sign that Alfina had been there.

‘The authorities must have brought every afflicted person in the neighbourhood to this place,’ Ulrika said as they turned from the door of the last room and started up to the top floor.

The witch hunter nodded. ‘I was here during the trouble. There were houses like this all over the city. It was the only way.’

‘Do you think it made a difference?’ Ulrika asked.

Holmann shrugged. ‘Nuln still stands.’

The layout of the top floor was different from the others – three large rooms instead of many small ones. The first they entered was lined like all the others with neat rows of corpses and cots. The second had corpses too, but they were no longer neat.

‘Sigmar’s hammer,’ murmured Holmann as he took in the destruction. ‘What battle happened here?’

Ulrika knew instantly, but didn’t answer. Looking around she was certain this was the place Mistress Alfina had been killed. It had been a sick ward like all the others, but the dozens of corpses that had filled it had been tossed about like straw in a hurricane, and were scattered all over the room, limbs askew or snapped off entirely. Ulrika saw a parchment-skinned skull lost under an overturned cot, and near it, a pair of skeletons thrown together as if they were making love.

And there were other signs of violence. A boarded-up window had been broken open, the timbers split and smashed, and great gouges had been dug into the walls and floor as if by mighty claws. Black blood was spattered across the boards in dust-furred splashes and streaks.

And then there was the stench, so strong even Holmann could smell it.

‘Sigmar’s blood,’ he said, coughing. ‘That comes from no ancient plague corpse. It smells like a drowned body in the sun.’

‘Aye,’ said Ulrika. And more than that, it was the same stench she had first smelled on Alfina’s corpse, and again outside the Silver Lily, only now it was overpowering, like being buried in rotting carcasses. It raised her hackles and made her want to vomit, but at the same time she relished it. This was the scent of the killer, she could be certain of it now. If she could follow it back to its source, she would find what was attacking the Lahmians, and she could put an end to the terror, and hopefully to Hermione and Mathilda’s feud. But where had it gone, and how?

‘What did this?’ said Holmann, examining the gouges in one wall.

Ulrika stepped back out into the hall, ignoring him, and inhaled deeply. The smell did not come out this far. It faded out quickly at the door of the room, and she had certainly not smelled it on any of the other floors as she came up. What did this mean? Did the thing change form like Mathilda, and only smell like a corpse in one form? Perhaps, but–

Suddenly she had it. She pushed past Holmann back into the room, then crossed to the smashed-open window. Yes. Claw marks on the sill and the sides, and the revolting rotten corpse smell on every surface, so powerful it made her wince.

‘It came in through here,’ she said. ‘And went out again the same way.’