Bloodborn (22 page)

‘Never mind,’ said Holmann. ‘Where is this place that priests of Morr fear to tread? I want to see it.’

‘I won’t take you there!’ the little priest wailed. ‘I don’t want to get sick!’

‘You have only to point out the direction,’ said Holmann through his teeth. ‘I wouldn’t have you along anyway.’ He nodded towards Ulrika. ‘I prefer braver companions.’

Ulrika ducked her head in thanks and hid a smile. Templar Holmann really was rather fetching when he was putting on his ‘Wrath of Sigmar’ act.

Once out of sight of the main gate and the central temple, the Garden of Morr was an endless ocean of the dead. Low hills covered in black rose bushes undulated off into the mist-shrouded darkness like storm-swollen waves floating with solemn debris. Jutting up from the brittle, snow-patched grass at precarious angles were grave markers of all kinds, from simple headstones to massive monoliths and towering skull-faced saints. A few black and bare-limbed trees loomed above it all like ships half-sunk, while from their branches came the mournful hooting of owls and the heavy flapping of unseen wings.

Despite being gifted with eyes that could pierce the dark, Ulrika could still see no further than ten paces, for glowing sheets of freezing fog drifted through the graves like ghostly sails, obscuring the distance.

Their journey took them through neighbourhoods and quarters of the dead, much like those in which the interred had once lived. First there were long avenues of dead merchants, neat rows of tall marble monuments, each competing with its neighbour for ostentation and ornament. Then came the mansions of departed nobility, mausoleums and crypts larger by far and better constructed than the quarters of most of Nuln’s living inhabitants. After that there were the slums, tiny plots, all crowded together, with monuments that were little more than kerbstones, and sometimes less than that.

Then at last they came to the place they sought – a part of the cemetery that had been old when the Deutz Elm was a sapling, a place of worn-away names and crumbling tombs, of overgrown obelisks and faceless, weathered statues entwined in dagger-thorned rose vines like martyrs bound for the fire.

Templar Holmann looked around him, his jaw tight as something howled in the distance. ‘The neglect here goes back longer than three years. These priests are cowards.’ He made the sign of the hammer on his chest. ‘Anything might be breeding here. Anything.’

Ulrika nodded, her eyes down, scouring the ground for footprints or other signs. She saw little. The snow of a few days ago was mostly melted, and the graveyard grass was coarse and long and did not betray passage. They moved on, the ground mist wrapping around their legs like an overly affectionate cat.

Then, at the top of a low rise, she smelled it, faint but unmistakable – the bloated corpse stench of the killer. She looked around. There was nothing to see but more graves and more hills half-hidden in the mist. She crouched and sniffed the ground.

‘You have seen something?’ asked Holmann.

Ulrika paused. She wasn’t going to make the mistake of revealing her superior senses again. ‘I… I don’t know,’ she said. ‘More a feeling. Let’s try over this way.’

‘Lead on,’ said Holmann, motioning her ahead. ‘I have grown to trust these feelings. Sigmar guides his servants.’

Ulrika smiled at that. She would rather trust her nose. Sigmar was not likely to favour a woman of her nature with any guidance in the near future.

The corpse reek grew stronger as they continued west through a tree-choked dell, and then up another low hill and through a line of overgrown cypress trees that overlooked a bowl-shaped valley. Here the smell hit Ulrika square in the face, and even Holmann jerked his head back. It seemed to be all around them, denser than the fog.

‘Sigmar’s mercy,’ he murmured. ‘The stench again.’

‘Aye,’ said Ulrika, grimacing. ‘I think we have found the place.’

They looked down into the fog-wreathed valley, the sides of which were ringed with cracked and crooked monuments like the sharp teeth that filled the maw of a remora. At the bottom – the throat – a cluster of derelict mausoleums surrounded a long-dry fountain with a headless statue of Ulric the Wolf God rising from its centre.

The templar pointed with his lantern. ‘One of those tombs, I’ll warrant you, houses more than its rightful occupants.’

‘Aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘I believe you’re right.’

Holmann started down into the valley, drawing his basket-hilted long sword. ‘Then come. Let us evict them.’

Ulrika paused. She was not at all sure this was a good idea. Unlike the witch hunter, she had seen what the monster who had killed the Lahmians was capable of. It had torn vampires with centuries of experience to shreds. She knew she was a skilled fighter, and her new powers gave her great strength, but she wasn’t so confident that she was willing to go up against such a thing alone. And she would be alone. Holmann was brave and true, but no human, not even a Templar of Sigmar, would have the necessary strength to fight it.

‘Herr templar, wait,’ she whispered, hurrying after him and unsheathing her sabre. ‘We may face overwhelming odds. Let us reconnoitre and see if we should come back with reinforcements.’

Holmann turned, his brows lowered, but then he softened. ‘Your pardon, fraulein,’ he said. ‘I take you into danger without a by-your-leave.’ He smiled. ‘You make such a brave show that I momentarily forgot that you are still but a–’

Ulrika silenced him with a gesture. She had heard a noise. She turned and looked behind her. There was a movement in the mist at the top of the hill. ‘Something above us,’ she hissed.

Holmann raised his lantern and peered down the hill. ‘Below us too,’ he said.

She turned to look, but saw nothing. Then a movement to the left caught her eye. A dark shape had slipped behind a shattered monument. She looked right. More shapes were advancing – vanishing behind graves and statues the moment she spied them.

‘More to either side,’ she murmured.

Holmann set his lantern on a cracked marble plaque and drew a heavy pistol. ‘We are surrounded.’

Ulrika extended her senses. The death reek she had come to associate with the killer was wafting from the hidden figures. They were ripe with it but, to her surprise, they did not seem to be dead themselves. She could hear their hoarse breathing and their feverishly beating hearts. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘But by what?’

‘I will inquire,’ said Holmann, then strode forwards and stood tall. ‘Reveal yourselves, ye skulking creepers!’ he barked as Ulrika cringed. ‘Be ye man, beast or fiend, step into the light in Sigmar’s name!’

Ulrika shook her head, bemused. That was one way to do it.

There was no reply to his command but the echo of his voice ringing back from the far side of the valley and the whispering patter of stealthy feet coming ever closer. Ulrika counted the low-burning heart-fires that swarmed around them – ten, fifteen, twenty – like fireflies drawn to a torch. She stepped back and bumped into Holmann, who was looking out into the darkness in the opposite direction.

He looked over his shoulder at her. ‘My lady,’ he said. ‘I am shamed that I have led one so fair to so foul an end, and I hope you can forgive me.’

Ulrika warmed at his words, and she fought down an urge to kiss him, then bite him. ‘Let us not speak of endings and death, templar,’ she said. ‘Let us instead fight and win, so that you may compliment me again another day.’

Holmann’s stony face split into a grin. ‘With a will, fraulein,’ he said. ‘May Sigmar watch over us both.’

Then, with ear-piercing shrieks, the lurking shadows attacked. Bounding from behind gravestones and trees and leaping over fallen columns and faceless statues came a hideous horde of hunched, loping naked things – men once, but men no longer. Their limbs were white and gnarled, their hands hook-clawed talons, their cadaverous heads bald and criss-crossed with scars and lesions. Teeth filed to points flashed in their howling mouths, and eyes lit with mindless madness blazed in their sunken sockets.

Holmann’s pistol cracked and one went down, spindle limbs flailing, then he threw aside the gun and tore one of the glass vials from his bandolier. A creature fell screaming as he hurled it at its face and it shattered, splashing the thing with blessed water that ate the flesh from its bones.

Ulrika spit another on her sabre. It did not even try to block, but as she fought to pull the point free, three more were on her, pummelling her. Only her inhuman speed and strength saved her, allowing her to dodge one while shoving another into the third. She cleared her blade at last and gutted the other two, then gashed out the throat of the other with the claws of her free hand.

Only as she drove back the next wave did she remember what company she kept, and drew back her claws with a painful effort. Her fangs had extended too. She retracted them and glanced over her shoulder to see if Holmann had noticed. He was too busy keeping half a dozen of the things at bay with his sword and more vials of blessed water. What a foolish predicament. She would have to fight with sabre alone, and remember not to show too much of her strength.

More monsters came in from every side. She drew her dagger and fought Tilean-style, blocking her opponents’ claws with the short blade while running them through under their raised arms with her sabre. The fiends fell back screaming with each impalement, but half got up again, so lost to bloodlust that their wounds seemed only to goad them.

‘With the power of Sigmar, I cleanse thee from his land!’ roared Holmann. He hurled another vial and two more ghouls fell back, screaming, as their flesh bubbled.

‘What are these things?’ Ulrika called, gagging at their stench as she cut them down.

‘Ghouls,’ said Holmann. ‘Fallen men. Eaters of the dead.’

Ulrika was embarrassed. A human telling a vampire about the children of the night? And yet, was it so strange? Krieger’s knowledge had not been poured into her with his blood – only his hunger. She had not risen from her deathbed instantly wise in all the things a vampire should know. She knew more of these filthy scavengers from the battlefield stories of her father’s soldiers than she had yet learned from Countess Gabriella. Haunters of graveyards, cannibals, feral servants of vampires and necromancers, they were the lowest a living man could go, lower even than mutants, who at least kept their intelligence.

She decapitated one and turned to face two more, but there was a sudden tearing pain in her right calf. She looked down. A ghoul she thought she had killed had its filed teeth deep in her leg. Cursing, she hacked down at it, cleaving its skull. The other two leapt. She brought up her sabre, but too late. They slammed her down and the three of them bounced down the hill in a jumble, with more bounding after her.

‘Fraulein!’ cried Holmann.

She slammed to a halt against a granite grave marker with stunning force, and saw through the tangled limbs of her opponents the witch hunter fighting through five of the monsters to come to her rescue.

‘No! Protect yourself!’ she shouted, but he didn’t hear her.

A ghoul raked him from behind and he staggered forwards, lashing around him desperately. Another grabbed his wrist as he was about to throw another glass vial. A third bit his shoulder.

‘No!’ Ulrika shrieked.

She surged to her feet, claws and fangs shooting out, and threw the ghouls who held her aside like they were children. More leapt at her, ripping her clothes and flesh. She gutted one and tore the arm off another as she rushed up the hill.

Holmann was down, clubbing in all directions with the butt of a wooden stake and trying to free his sword from a ghoul’s abdomen as three more tore at him.

‘Get off him!’ Ulrika screamed.

She hacked off a ghoul’s head and leapt over two more to land behind the one on Holmann’s chest. She tore its throat out with her claws and threw it over her shoulder, then slashed left and right with her sabre. The other ghouls scattered and she hauled Holmann up. He was staring at her through half-conscious eyes. Had he seen?

‘Can you fight?’ she asked.

He only stared, his mouth hanging slack. His clothes were in tatters and he had bite and claw marks all over his body.

A ghoul slashed Ulrika’s arm. She turned and fanned it away. The others were closing, snarling, still more than a dozen. She lashed out and the ones in front of her danced back, but those behind attacked Holmann. She spun to fend them off, and more came in from another angle. It was impossible. She couldn’t fight them all, not and keep Holmann alive.

With a curse, she tucked her left shoulder against the templar’s belt buckle and heaved him up off his feet so that his head and torso hung down over her back.

‘Away, filth!’ she shouted, then flailed out at the ghouls and ran up the hill. Even with her unnatural strength, Holmann was heavy – taller than her and twice as broad – but she would not slow. She would not leave him to such a death.

She ran through the line of cypresses and turned east, towards the stone wall that separated the cemetery from the temple quarter. Unencumbered, the ghouls paced her easily, but she kept her sword flashing around her and they did not close. Like wolves chasing an elk, they were content to wait and let her tire, then pounce when she stumbled.

And she would stumble soon, she knew, for the fight and the wounds she had taken had weakened her. Already her legs were buckling under Holmann’s weight. She looked ahead for the wall, but could only see more hills and graves before her, receding into the mist. She would not make it.