Savage City, page 5
‘I suppose so. Your gnoblars were a lot healthier, too,’ Sergei complimented her. And so they had been, he thought. Vicious little monsters could have been the death of us all.
Katerina nodded as if reaching a sudden decision.
‘Yes, you’re right. Come on.’
Sergei wondered what he’d been right about as he followed her back to the horses. When she unhitched their bag of dried provisions from the mule he was surprised, but only for a moment. His beloved was nothing if not sentimental.
With a thud, she dropped the sack onto the dirt.
‘Have our food, you useless creatures,’ she called out to the closed doors. ‘Although you should be out fighting for your own.’
When there was no response, Katerina grunted with disgust.
‘Gnoblars,’ she muttered and swung back into the saddle.
By the time the peasants re-emerged, she and her husband were no more than dots on the horizon.
CHAPTER FOUR
Skrit hated moving in the daylight. The brightness made his eyes sting and water just when he needed them most. Everything was awake, that was the problem. Awake and aware. Each movement had to be taken carefully, lest it alert the man-things that ruled the day.
They wouldn’t always rule it, of course. Every skaven knew that. Eventually, the Horned Rat would lead skavenkind to the dominion that was their destiny.
Unfortunately that day was strangely slow in arriving.
The sunlight filled Skrit with a constant, gnawing anxiety. The filthy hairs that furred his back bristled and he bared his teeth in a silent snarl of agitation. Behind him, the scurrying mass of his followers froze as they sensed his sudden change of mood. By the time he turned back to them they had already blended into the undergrowth. Skrit hunched his shoulders and tried to look meek, an attempt to lure one of them into a challenge.
When none came, he sprayed the ground with disgust and turned back to the trail they’d been following. The scent of it was fresh, especially that of the monster. Skrit had found some of its footprints earlier, the deep blackberry shapes mixed in with the hoofprints of his prey. Once again he thrilled at his genius in bringing so many of his followers. His mood lifted slightly and, with a twitch of his tail, he scurried forward. A moment later and he found an overgrown ditch that ran along the side of the track. It was half full of mud and dead, rotting things. Skrit felt his mood lift even more as he slithered along it, writhing through the filth like an eel.
Soon find them, he thought happily.
Very soon.
The stag crashed through the undergrowth, his great fetlocks tearing through the brambles as he fled. In front of him a stream gurgled through the forest, the path of it a deep, ankle-breaking trench.
Without a second’s hesitation the stag’s muscles bunched and he hurled himself across the water and onto the other bank. His hooves thudded onto hard soil and he lurched forward, nostrils flaring with exertion as he pushed himself onwards.
A dozen paces later and the undergrowth cleared enough for him to break into a gallop. He dodged between the tree trunks like the world’s biggest hare, his great chest swelling as he sucked in huge lungfuls of air. Broken beams of sunlight rippled across his back like shoals of fish, and his hooves blurred with speed.
And yet, despite all of this, the smell of predator grew stronger behind him. The stag wasn’t sure exactly what sort of predator it was. Its scent was new to him and he had only caught a single glimpse of it between the trees. That glimpse had been all he’d needed, however. Everything about the strange animal, from the long blades of its teeth to the impatient twitch of its tail, had screamed danger.
There were other scents on the wind now but the stag paid them no heed. Whatever lay ahead could surely be no worse than that which was pursuing him.
The trees began to thin and, just ahead, the gloom of the forest gave way to the molten copper tones of a stripped wheatfield. The stag, loath to go so close to settled lands, veered away to the left.
A moment later and he staggered to a terrified stop. A fresh wash of adrenaline fizzed through his veins as the predator appeared in front of him. With a panicked volte-face he turned and raced back towards the fields. The fear of humanity was quite forgotten now that he knew how close the predator was.
His chest was burning with exhaustion when the two archers appeared. They seemed to spring up from the very ground beneath his feet.
This time he had no time to react. Even as he tried to turn the hum of their bowstrings surged into a scream of agony that shot through his body. He fell, his powerful legs thrashing in instinctive defence as he collapsed forward.
But there was no defence now. Before he could even think about struggling back to his feet, one of the hunters, her hair flaming as brightly as the blood which pulsed from his punctured heart, leapt upon him. There was a blinding flash of steel, an instant of burning pain, and then nothing.
Nothing at all.
‘Well done, my love,’ Sergei laughed as he rushed over to join his wife. She grinned back at him and then bent to complete her butchery. Her thighs wrapped around the still warm body of the stag as she deftly tied off the artery she’d just cut. There was no point in wasting good blood. Then, content with her handiwork, she stood back to examine their kill.
‘He’s a big one,’ she said. ‘Look at how many points his antlers have.’
When Tabby loped into the clearing, the two of them were wrestling playfully across the stiffening carcass of the stag.
The big cat watched them disdainfully before prowling over and opening up her prey’s belly with a single swipe of her claws.
The smell of intestines brought Katerina and Sergei back to their feet.
‘We’ll leave her the innards,’ Katerina decided, ‘and hang the rest from a tree.’
‘It looks too heavy to lift. Maybe we should have brought the horses.’
‘No, the smell of them would have frightened him. That’s why me and Tabby never used rhinoxen to hunt back ho… I mean, in the ogres’ lands.’
Sergei shrugged. ‘Well, no matter. There’s plenty of wood. I’ll show you how to make a hoist.’
‘A hoist?’ Katerina asked, all innocence. ‘Is that something from the book that Lorenzo gave you? The one with all the woodcuts in it?’
Sergei cleared his throat and hastened away to start looking for the right sort of branches. He selected three of the strongest, hacked them down, then lashed them together into a single length.
Leaving Tabby to gorge on the stinking stew of their kill’s innards, he selected a pair of trees with boughs that were roughly similar. He passed the hoist over one of them so that it became a long lever, then tied the stag’s antlers to the far end. Then, throwing his weight on the opposite end, he lifted the carcass high enough for Katerina to tie its antlers against the opposite tree.
‘Nicely done,’ Katerina told him as they admired the hanging deer.
Sergei looked at the red meat that glistened within the fur and felt his mouth starting to water. He had eaten nothing but berries since Katerina had given their supplies to the villagers the day before.
‘I’ll go and get the horses,’ he decided. ‘Then we can start cooking.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Katerina said. ‘We can wash together in that stream.’
‘Sounds good.’
Tabby watched them trudging away and stretched. She purred with the sheer pleasure of laziness, then turned back to the bloody mess of her feast.
She had almost finished when, deep within the bushes behind her, something stirred. Her ears swivelled as she turned to face the sound, and her blood-soaked muzzle wrinkled as she sniffed at the air. The movement stopped. For a long, breathless moment the bushes remained silent apart from the rustling of the wind.
Fighting the soporific effects of a bloated stomach, the big cat got to her feet and padded towards the place where she’d heard the sound.
Green eyes glittering, Tabby thrust her nose towards the undergrowth. Something was hidden there, she could tell. Something that smelt unpleasantly alive and possibly edible.
Her whiskers were almost touching the thorns when, with a sudden panicked energy, two blurred shapes exploded from the bushes.
Tabby sprang back in surprise, her razored claws unsheathing themselves in an instinctive reaction. She watched the pheasants flutter upwards, their wings beating frantically as they fought for altitude. Then she licked her lips, and the taste of blood reminded her of the giblets that still remained uneaten. The subsequent surge of greed ended her interest in the undergrowth as suddenly as it had begun.
Her stomach rumbling, Tabby turned and went back to feed.
Skrit waited until the monster had reburied its head in a string of intestines. He waited until he could hear the slurp and rip of it feeding. Then he waited some more.
His followers skulked nervously around him. Skrit could barely contain the shivers of rage that wracked him. Not only had one of these worthless underlings almost ruined his plan, but it had actually had the nerve to put him, its master, in personal danger.
Not that Skrit was afraid of the great purring beast that had almost found them. No, not at all. Not a bit of it. Not him.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know which of his miserable slaves had attracted the cat’s attention. But that hardly mattered. It was all of their faults for not watching each other.
Warmed by this logic, the assassin amused himself by planning the punishments he would inflict back in the burrows. These happy thoughts helped to soothe him as he waited patiently for the big cat to roll over and fall into a glutted sleep.
Only then did he deign to move. Gradually, each and every movement a study in caution, he wormed his way through the mulch of the forest floor. Only when he was sure that he was out of sight of the big cat did he raise himself up and scuttle away after the humans.
He had wanted to wait until nightfall before tackling them but this was too good an opportunity to miss. The very thought of facing their animal had dampened his hind legs with the musk of fear. But now, it seemed, he wouldn’t have to. He wouldn’t even have to risk his followers against it.
Skrit bared his incisors in a grin of vicious delight. Up ahead, the trees began to thin into open country but that was no problem. The lands here were cut through with countless irrigation trenches and drains. Skrit regarded them as a gift from the Horned Rat himself, and he and his followers had spent the last few days squirming through these slimy tunnels as happily as maggots through a corpse.
Now they did the same again as, yard by silent yard, they closed in on their victims.
After the heat of the day, the water felt like liquid ice. It flowed over a wide, shallow bed of black polished pebbles. Tiny silvered fish usually darted amongst them but this afternoon they were gone, hiding in the roots of the willows that lined the banks.
Not that the green-shaded currents of the river were empty. Far from it. Even as the fish slunk nervously through the reeds the gurgle of its flow was drowned beneath Katerina’s shrieks of delight and the splashing of the water.
Two horses and a mule looked on as their masters chased each other through the freezing shallows. If they were embarrassed by the humans’ nakedness they gave no sign. When they did begin to whinny it was with anxiety, and it was because of what they smelt, not what they saw.
‘Wait a minute,’ Katerina gasped, holding up her hand as Sergei closed in on her.
‘Ah, surrendering?’ he asked, lowering his numbed hands to scoop up another splash of water.
Katerina tossed back the sodden tails of her hair as proudly as a lion with its mane.
‘Not likely,’ she said. ‘But look at the horses. See the way their ears are laid back? I think they’ve smelled something.’
Sergei looked at them for a moment before looking back at Katerina. By Loki, she’s wonderful, he thought. He let his eyes slide down the damp curves of her body, lingering on the heavy rounds of her breasts. Although she was as naked as the day she was born there wasn’t a trace of self-consciousness about her. Quite the opposite. She stood with an animal poise.
Even now, Katerina looked more dignified than the most perfumed and bejewelled of aristocrats. Not for the first time, Sergei thanked the gods that had gifted her to him. He had never even suspected that the happiness he had known with her could actually exist in this world.
Oblivious to his appraisal, Katerina turned and took a step towards the horses. They had begun to pull at their tethers, and Sergei realised for the first time how agitated they had become. He moved to follow Katerina to them but then, suddenly, he froze.
In the shadows that swathed the far bank something had moved. Something almost man-sized. Sergei squinted into the gloom, silently cursing the sunlight that he had been so enjoying a minute before.
Behind him one of the horses screamed.
The noise was greeted with more scurrying on the far bank.
‘Damn,’ Sergei cursed as he realised how far away his weapons were. He was turning to get them when the attack came.
The first Sergei knew about it was when the gloaming light splintered into a dozen blurred stars. They came spinning towards him, the jagged edges of the throwing stars spitting poison as they flew towards his throat.
Had the skaven been worse shots he would have died there and then. As it was, all twelve of the poisoned blades passed in a tight cluster through the space where he had been standing seconds before. He screamed a warning towards Katerina as he rolled to one side and plunged into the water.
Ignoring the pain that the submerged pebbles bruised into his shoulder, the strigany flipped back to his feet. He blinked the water from his eyes in time to see the first of the assassins emerging from the darkness and his heart skipped a beat. It was horrible. Despite the semblance of humanity that lurked in the thing’s malformed body it seemed more rat than man, and more nightmare than either. Behind it, more of its fellows pushed forward. The sight of their yellowed fangs and silvered blades snapped Sergei back into action. Whipping his arm back, he hurled the stone he had picked up at the first of the things. It shrieked as the pebble bounced off it, but Sergei didn’t wait to see how much damage his improvised weapon had done. He was too busy ploughing through the water towards Katerina and their mounts.
‘Unhitch the horses!‘ he yelled at her as he stumbled onto the bank. But it wasn’t the tethers she was fumbling with. It was the bundle which held their weapons.
‘No time for that,’ she yelled back and threw him his sword.
He saw that she was right. In the seconds since the first attack, the assassins had almost closed with them. Their twisted shapes had danced through the water and the reeds as easily as wind blown leaves, and they were already so close that he could see the poison that smeared their knives.
He wanted to tell Katerina to hide behind him. He wanted to tell her to run. But instead of wasting his breath he just unsheathed his sword and leapt forward.
The first of the assassins, its snout wrinkled in a vicious leer, realised too late how far ahead of the pack it had come. It hesitated as it waited for them to catch up, but in that very moment Sergei struck. Stepping to one side, he spun around, wielding his sword like a peasant wields a scythe. His victim squealed as it tried to jump backwards, then squealed even louder as the blade bit home.
Sergei felt the impact of steel passing through vertebrae and the rat-thing fell dead, the two halves of it scrabbling on the ground.
Before the strigany could rejoice at this terrible sight, the next two were upon him. They took up a position on each side, both feinting and dodging as the rest of the pack caught up. From the rabble behind them two more throwing stars span forward, and as Sergei ducked the whirling steel fragments his two tormentors closed in.
He lunged towards the first and then, as it ducked back, he changed direction and punched his blade into its belly. It collapsed, screaming as it clutched at its spilt intestines. Sergei snarled in triumph as he twisted his sword free and turned to face the next enemy.
But the next one had already ducked beneath his guard. The first Sergei knew of it was when, with a meaty chunk, Katerina sent the deformed triangle of its head tumbling back towards the river.
‘Thanks,’ Sergei gasped as more throwing stars sparkled through the shadows. The rest of their attackers were reluctant to follow their comrades into these swordsmen’s blades. Although they outnumbered their prey six to one, their charge had faltered. Instead, they skulked back just out of striking distance and pelted their enemy with missiles.
Moving in perfect harmony, Sergei and Katerina closed in on them. Where they could, they dodged the flurry of thrown steel. Where they couldn’t, they cut it out of the air. It was all too much for the assassins. Their fear was obvious even in the inhuman deformity of their whiskered faces, and they seemed about to break and run.
Before they could though, the second wave attacked. There were perhaps a dozen of them, and they charged the humans from behind. Their ragged forms were dripping with water from where they’d crossed the river. Although smaller than the humans, they were bigger than their comrades. Bigger and more aggressive.
Sergei, alerted by the horses, fought back a sudden feeling of despair.
To the hells with that, he told himself. However hopeless the situation, now was not the time for self-pity.
So, leaving Katerina to defend their backs from the throwing stars, he stepped into the new onslaught.
Monsieur Dodieu himself would have been impressed. His student moved with an instinctive, natural grace. The flicker of his blade brought down first one, then three, then more of the swarming attackers. He stabbed. He slashed. He parried. And even while he carved a path through their bodies, he managed to slip past their own lightning-fast blows. He dodged and swerved around a whole thicket of poisoned steel; his quicksilver moves relaxed and effortless. When one of his assailants was blinded by a stray throwing star, he even found the time to laugh.
