Gileads curse, p.27
Gilead's Curse, page 27
part #1 of Warhammer Fantasy Series
Strallan was terrified. He was so afraid that he was rooted to the spot. He could not move his feet or remove his hand from where it lay on top of the bridge wall. He could not blink or peel his eyes away from the stone flags that made up the surface of the road beneath his feet, the road that the cart wheels were traversing, spewing and shifting their little drifts and wakes of sand along as they went.
His mouth was dry.
This much fear should have generated a drenching sweat, but there was nothing. His brow, his armpits, his palms, were all dry.
It was only after the cart had passed that Strallan was able to blink and turn his head. He watched the cart as it trundled away, his gaze homing in on the strange earthenware jars that stood in rows on the back of the vehicle with their wax seals in the shapes of snakes and strange insects that he did not recognise.
When the cart dipped below the apex of the bridge and began its descent down the slope and into the north side of the city, the distant whisper of shifting sand disappeared in favour of a sound much closer to the boy. It was the sound of trickling sand.
The capping stone felt gritty under Strallan’s palm, and he lifted his hand to find it covered in a layer of sandstone dust as if the bridge were corroding before his very eyes. Then he looked down to see that the mortar holding the stones together had ceased to adhere, and was drying and crumbling away. The trickling sound was of the dry, dusty mortar falling away from the joints and collecting around the boy’s feet.
Surn Strallan was as afraid as he had ever been. He did not know what was happening, but he knew that they should have prevented the cart from entering the great city of Nuln, while they had the chance. He knew that he had not done his job, that his guard boss had not done his job. He could not go back there. It was too late.
Surn Strallan drew together what little courage he had left and was determined to take his fears to the city guards. He didn’t know whether they would believe him. He didn’t know how he would make them believe him, but he knew that he must try to make them understand.
The cart was strange, far too strange and threatening for one boy to comprehend on his own. It was from another world, a world that he did not understand. It filled him with fear and loathing, and with trepidation and dread.
He had tried to tell his boss that something was wrong, and nothing had come of it, except that, now, he was alone in the city with his fears. It was up to him to find someone who would listen to him, who would allay his fears, and who would fight for his city.
Everything was up to Surn Strallan, and the boy wasn’t sure whether he was man enough for the task.
Strallan took a deep breath, rubbed his hands together to get rid of as much of the sandy stone grit as he could, waited for a minute or two to make sure that the cart had passed out of view, and then made a dash for the far side of the Great Bridge. He did not know which direction the cart would take, but he knew that he wouldn’t have to encounter it again on his way across the city to one of the watch houses.
The Bridge watch house was one of the toughest in Nuln. The walled city was well-protected and most of the inner-city watch houses did little more than deal with day-to-day policing matters. The Bridge Watch was different.
The Bridge Watch dealt with everything and everyone that came through the northern docks. The guards didn’t just deal with petty crime and domestic disputes; they dealt with smuggling, racketeering and duty evasion; they dealt with merchant seamen and stevedores, and their drinking and brawling, not to mention their illicit trade in contraband and their whoring. They also dealt with insurrection and terrorism and other genuine threats to the security of the city and the safety of its inhabitants.
Surn Strallan couldn’t decide whether this was a good thing, or a bad thing. He wasn’t at all sure whether he would be taken seriously, and, if he was taken seriously, and the Bridge Watch went after the strangers and their cart, he wasn’t at all sure just how extreme their actions might turn out to be.
On the other hand, if Strallan was forced to turn right off the Great Bridge and find his way to the Handelbezirk Watch, there was a chance he could persuade them to do something. He had a cousin on the squad, even though he didn’t like him very much, and wouldn’t trust him further than he could throw him.
Handelbezirk was a mid-rent area of the city and when times were good it thrived peacefully enough. Since the famine had begun to take hold, it had become a sullen, grubbing place full of dissatisfaction and petulance. Strallan often thought that he preferred the truly poor and bereft, who seemed to have more spirit in their tired bones, who complained less and helped each other out when it was needed. This miserable lot only seemed to gripe behind each other’s backs and snipe to each other’s faces. There wasn’t much crime, but what there was tended to be spiteful and destructive, mostly vandalism and domestic violence.
Even with a relation who might be willing to stand up for him, Strallan doubted whether the guards at the Handelbezirk watch house would take him seriously or be willing to spend any time or energy investigating one cart with its odd-shaped cargo and its rows of clay jars.
He was damned either way, but he had to do something.
As he stepped off the Great Bridge, Surn Strallan looked to the left, and then to the right, and shuddered. He didn’t know whether he was shuddering because he’d spotted the cart driving out along the dock towards Kleinmoot, or because seeing it going in that direction meant that he had no choice but to turn left and make his way along Siden Strasse to the Bridge watch house.
Fithvael stepped deftly. He didn’t quite cross the mouth of the alley, but hugged the shadows of the far wall, the west wall of a tall building two-thirds of the way down Hauptstrasse. It had been a beautifully kept emporium trading in antiques, but without regular custom, it appeared to have been closed for some time, although the windows onto the street were obviously still cleaned regularly, so someone had some hope of business improving again, one day.
Surn Strallan stopped before he reached the entrance to the alley, and looked around.
It had been a long day. It had been a very long day, and he began to wonder when he had decided it was a good idea to follow the strange man. It was the looking. It was all the looking, and the mortar. That was what had drawn him. Besides, he couldn’t bear to follow the strange cart after what had begun to happen on the Great Bridge, and he hadn’t been able to make anybody at the watch house listen to him.
First, his boss on the South Gate had waved the cart through with barely a glance. He’d let Strallan follow it, but that was an indulgence, and a way of keeping the boy busy. He was more trouble than he was worth; he’d known from the start that being conscientious wouldn’t get him very far; his cousin in the Handelbezirk watch house had warned him of that, but he didn’t seem able to help himself. This strange, tall, slender, old man seemed conscientious. He looked at things, examined them, and he was methodical and meticulous. Strallan had noticed it immediately, and he liked those things about the stranger. Those things made him feel safe.
The guards at the Bridge watch house hadn’t made him feel safe at all. They hadn’t wanted to listen to him. They hadn’t wanted to talk to him, and when he hadn’t taken the hint, they’d laughed him out of the watch house. Anyone who could bully a merchant seaman willing to trade contraband on the north docks of Nuln wasn’t going to take any nonsense from a raw recruit who belonged to a gate unit, and a second rate, poorly regarded gate unit at that. Strallan had left with his tail between his legs, a bruised jaw and the feeling that he ought to have known better.
Where had the strange fellow disappeared to?
Strallan took a step or two back the way he had come, and then stepped off the curb and looked across the street, but the foot traffic was light and there was no sign of the man in the hooded cloak. The boy reasoned that the man he was following must simply have quickened his pace, and so he hopped back onto the narrow pavement and continued on his way.
One arm came across Strallan’s body and the other hand around his face so quickly that he didn’t have time to draw breath, let alone scream, despite the fact that a stabbing pain shot through his jaw where he’d been thumped by the watch guard.
Strallan felt tears stinging his widening eyes, but when it came time for the drops to form in the corners of his eyes, nothing happened. In practice, he’d always managed to bite the hand that attacked him, but life wasn’t like practice, and the hand holding his face felt like it had the tensile strength of a steel gauntlet without the unwieldiness.
Strallan tried to throw an elbow and defend himself that way, but the arm around his body pinned both of his elbows to his sides, and he couldn’t move at all. Then he realised that the grip on his torso was so firm that he couldn’t feel his hands properly, that his arms were very nearly numb and that he really didn’t have any room to inhale.
Strallan began to panic.
Just how strong was his assailant?
Then he remembered that he had legs.
He’d been pulled, bodily, into the alley, and he’d been virtually lifted off his feet in the fray, and all he’d been able to do was pinwheel his lower limbs, hitting empty air and scuffing the rough, uneven, cobbled surface of the alley with his boots. His attacker had placed him back on his feet, though, once he’d pulled him off the street, so, standing firm, Strallan had one last chance to fight back.
There was no point bringing a knee up, as his attacker still stood behind him, so Strallan tried throwing a heel backwards, hoping to drive it into a shin or groin. His foot went nowhere.
The man standing behind him was only as wide as he was, albeit he seemed to loom over him, so was clearly very much taller, but he seemed to be hewn not from human flesh but from something altogether firmer, stronger, less yielding, more… more…
Then it spoke.
‘Calm down,’ it said in the strangest accent. Its tone was light and calm and almost lyrical. It was a tuneful, musical, beautiful voice.
Surn would have felt his body relax, instinctively, had he been able to breathe.
Fithvael felt the young man’s body respond to his voice, and he relaxed the muscles in his left arm, which was wrapped all the way around the boy, his hand grasping Strallan’s right forearm.
‘Breathe.’
Surn took one short, shallow breath, breathed out a sigh of relief, and then filled his lungs.
Fithvael could feel the boy shaking slightly in his grasp, and made sure he held him upright so that he didn’t fall in a faint, but not so firmly that he could not breathe. He must find out the boy’s intentions, but he didn’t want to do him any harm. This was one of very few people in the city who seemed really alive and engaged with the world. The elf was concerned that the majority of the people of Nuln seemed to take no heed of their surroundings; they seemed to walk around in a daze, as if there was nothing left worth fighting for, as if their lives were already over. They were like the dead walking.
‘Don’t move,’ said Fithvael. ‘Breathe.’ He knew that the youngest members of the youngest races were always the most suggestible, and that a little magic can go a long way, and he used his knowledge to exert what mind control he could over the human youth to manage the situation. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt him.
Surn Strallan breathed in another deep breath. He wasn’t quite sure what was happening to him, but he was aware that any panic he might have felt had entirely left his body. He still didn’t know who had attacked him or what his assailant wanted from him, but he was no longer afraid of the tall, hard-bodied man that still held him in his muscular, martial embrace.
‘Now tell me,’ said Fithvael. ‘Why are you following me?’
‘It’s the stuff you’re looking at,’ said Strallan. ‘The bugs… They look like bugs, and snakes. What are those things? Why are you looking at them? Why are they on the jars on the back of that cart?’
‘What cart?’ asked Fithvael, his voice rising closer to its natural pitch as his guard dropped and his interest rose.
‘The sand,’ said Strallan. ‘What’s with all the sand?’
‘I’m going to let go of you,’ said Fithvael, ‘and you’re not going to run. Do you understand?’
‘Why would I run?’ asked Strallan. ‘Something’s happening, and you’re the first one to take me seriously.’
‘You understand?’ asked Fithvael again.
‘I understand,’ said Surn Strallan, sighing deeply with a relief that he had no idea he would feel. ‘I don’t know what I understand, but as sure as Ulric’s my god and the Knights of the White Wolf are his martial lords of the Empire, I understand something.’
The streets of Nuln did not bustle. They did not throng. As dawn turned to morning, people began to move around, leaving their homes for their places of work, entering or leaving the city as the routines of their lives dictated, going about their business, but they did so with a lack of energy or purpose borne of too many seasons of want and deprivation.
The cart had travelled for days, weeks, months, grinding out the miles, crossing the deserts of the Southlands, rolling ever northwards, skirting seas, scaling mountains, taking no heed of the rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of the moons or the changing positions of the stars in the night skies.
The travellers had one will, one purpose, one task to perform. They pushed the burden of the vehicle on the quietest roads, through the loneliest regions of the most barren lands. They had no reason to draw attention to their mission, no desire to commingle. They were at the mercy of no mortal functions, and heeded not the time that passed. It was as nothing to them.
They neither ate nor slept, nor sweated nor defecated. They did not drink so need not follow watercourses or streams as other travellers must, and they did not breathe. They did not communicate one with another. They were of one purpose, and that purpose was all and everything to each of them and to all of them, and it required no discussion and no agreement. They needed nothing from one another, practically, materially, spiritually or emotionally.
They were automata, but they were not machines. They were beings, but they were not living.
Before they entered the South Gate of the city of Nuln, they had encountered nothing and no one that had stood in the way of their progress, by design, because of the routes that they travelled, and by the unbending nature of their intent.
It was nothing and everything to them to slice a carotid, pierce a femoral, gouge an iliac: always the arteries. When there had still been humans in the Southlands, that had been their pleasure. It had always been blood and sand, sand and blood: sand in all its perfect forms, and arterial blood, blazing hot and flaming red like the sun setting on the desert horizon. Only bloodless did a human body become something they recognised, only naked of its flesh could it be considered clean, and only clean could it be immortal. Dirt and death were the same. Heat and liquid, and food and faeces, were the same as dirt, were the same as death, were the essence of mortal life and the scourge of eternal life.
Once they entered the city of Nuln, whatever the temptations, however repellent the sounds and smells of meagre human life, however badly the three beings accompanying the cart wanted to shed the blood of the filthy mortal beings, however driven they were to disembowel and eviscerate the humans, cleansing and rebirthing them, purifying and sterilising, and desiccating and immortalising, they must cleave to their mission, and they must not falter.
They entered by the South Gate, apparently without incident. They did not even have to stop the cart. They did not have to look at the guards, despite being the only vehicle on the road, and potentially vulnerable. They kept their hoods up and their heads down, and they trundled on. They did not increase their speed, nor did they slow their pace. They were, if their minds comprehended such a concept, nonchalant, insouciant even. They were strangers, but they acted with the sort of composure that made them seem harmless, beyond reproach.
They did not see Surn Strallan’s reaction to their entrance to the city, to the sand that gathered in the creases of his boots, and if they had noticed him following them, they would not have considered the boy a threat. They might have cut an artery because they could, but not because he forced their hands, not because they must.
There had been only one mistake on the road to the Great Bridge. They had not been prepared for the child.
The sand was their power, their magic. They needed the sand; they could not do without it. Where they travelled, it travelled in their wake. There was no halting its flow unless the cart halted, and when its wheels rolled once more, the sands trickled anew. They did not see the child sitting on the kerbstone. They did not see it because of its small size. They did not see it because of its utter lack of significance to them. They did not see its naked hands and feet. They did not know how susceptible it would be to the sands of time when they came into contact with its skin, when it breathed in their dusty particles.
The cart did not stop, and its beasts of burden and its lead man did not speak one to another. They did not need to speak to know that they were in accord. They could not counter a commotion. They could not reason away a death by desiccation. They could not justify the presence of the sand. They could only keep moving.
They must cross the Great Bridge, thankful that so few people were yet moving around the city, and then they would take the back roads and wider alleys. They would come into contact with fewer people. The few people they would come into contact with in the more private, hidden parts of the city, they would encounter more closely, fatally closely, perhaps, but there would be no more accidents. They would take control.
The cart turned right immediately after crossing the Great Bridge, instead of heading north along the main thoroughfare of Emmanuelplatz. When he caught sight of the Feierplatz opening up in front of him, and a small, but not insignificant, number of people beginning to gather there, the leader of the trio signalled a left and drove them up the alley behind the Church of the Drunken where they encountered only the comatose forms of a pair of inebriated beggars in their squalor. The sand that rolled up to them, nestling in a drift against the backs of the legs of one of the pair, looked dense and grey in the dark shadow of the tall, black-stone church, more like ash than sand. As the cart rolled on, and the man closest to the wall groaned and tried to turn over, the mortar between the stones above him began to trickle free of its joints, landing in gritty patches on his upturned face, making him spit and cough and choke.
