Hammer and Bolter 14 Read online

  The battle was over, or had moved on. This area had been cleared of dead and injured, and the women in hiding had taken their fallen men with them to tend their wounds or to prepare them for their graves.

  The mare’s ears pricked as a thin wail penetrated the still silence. Then came the faintest of sounds; as if a blade was striking off stone. Gilead could very nearly smell the sparks as they flew off honed steel.

  He was close, but the battle didn’t rage around him, it didn’t rage in the town proper, nor had it left the area.

  The battle raged beneath his feet, below Omalk’s market square in whatever sewers, catacombs, cellars and underground sluices and passages occupied the spaces below the streets.

  Gilead was struck by the thought that he should have known. He ought to have anticipated the knight’s movements. Of course, he would seek out towns that had underground places. He would not fight above ground, unless he had to. He could not fight by full daylight, not so efficiently as he could by night, at least, and Gilead had known it all the time he had been looking for the knight.

  Gilead did not know this particular town, but it did not necessarily follow that the knight had not sought it out because of the dark places beneath. Many towns and cities, especially those in the north of the Empire, had masses of underground byways, tunnels and even huge, open spaces beneath them, some caused naturally, others built, often by the skilled hands of dwarfs, who took great pride in hewing and dressing rock and stone of all kinds.

  Gilead thought again of the basement on the outskirts of town where he had heard the women and children gathered. This place might have almost as much city below ground as above. There must be a hundred entrances and exits, and dozens of routes and chambers.

  If the town below the town belonged to them all, and was in general and continuing use, then there would be plenty of access, and it would be close to the market square, close to where he was standing.

  He tethered the mare and walked around the square, touching the door handles of buildings, looking through unlit windows into darkened rooms, and skimming the ground all the time with his eyes, looking for access to the buildings below street level.

  He quickly found metal grilles set into the pavement right up against the buildings. They extended perhaps eighteen inches from the buildings they abutted, were a yard across, and they covered open cavities below so that no one could fall in accidentally. One or two of them looked like they covered chutes for goods to be delivered into waiting cellars, others looked like storm drains and overflows for collecting rainwater or to aid in cleaning and draining the market square. One was clearly a run off from a slaughter house, with two well-worn, wide-brushed brooms leaning against the wall, and the faint smell of offal and old animal blood.

  The smell of blood, fresh and human was stronger on the west side of the square, and, on close inspection, Gilead found that two of the grilles had removable bars. He only had to lift one of them out to be able to lower his body into the cavity. The narrow door that he found below street level showed no chink of light around it, and opened inwards.

  Gilead carefully replaced the bar above his head to leave no trace of his entering the building, and then pushed gently against the door, turning the knob on the outside first one way and then the other.

  The door opened an inch or two, but no further, and the strong, sweet, metallic smell of blood filled Gilead’s nostrils. The elf listened for a moment, and smelled the air again, but there was no new sound or scent. He put his shoulder against the door and eased it open, pushing aside the body that barred his way.

  Gilead rolled the corpse over. The kill was only a matter of a few hours old, and it was human. It had been cruelly, and none-too-cleanly eviscerated, and the hard floor that it lay on was sticky with blood and ichor.

  A low, rumbling echo met Gilead’s ears as he crossed the almost empty storage cellar, and he slowly, carefully, unsheathed his shorter blade, all the time edging towards the darkest corner of the room, eager to conceal his presence from anyone who might enter. He knew, from experience, that the knight was a fierce opponent, his equal in speed and grace with bladed weapons, and the elf wanted to meet him on his own terms, preferably by surprise attack.

  Gilead backed into a dry, smooth stone wall, adjacent to an opening. He thought, at first, that it was an alcove, and glanced into it to see if it would offer him a temporary refuge, but, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he realised that this was the opening of a low, arched, brick tunnel. He also realised that this was where the sound was coming from.

  He heard it again, but this time the low rumble was closer, and, quite clearly, a human moan, once the echoing nature of the subterranean corridor was factored in.

  As Gilead stood, four-square, in the mouth of the tunnel, he glimpsed movement some thirty of forty feet away. A lurching figure staggered around a corner and fell against the right-hand wall of the corridor, clutching at its body with one hand. It groaned once more and slid to the hard, earth floor. Gilead almost felt the life force leave the bulky masculine body with that final groaning exhalation. He could do nothing for the human, now.

  Gilead ducked from his full height and moved stealthily, virtually silently, along the other side of the corridor, stopping for only the briefest moment to assure himself that the knight’s latest victim was in fact dead. He looked down at the corpse still clutching at its gut even after death, trying to hold together a ragged tear that had allowed the contents of the man’s abdomen to spill out over his thighs. The wound was not a clean slice or cut. It was not the product of fierce and lunging swordplay. Either the knight had lost his weapon of choice and had resorted to some other way to see off his human enemies, or he chose to kill this way, to hack and tear when he could have killed cleanly, both more elegantly and with greater respect for his opponents.

  Gilead followed where the dead man had come from, turning left and right along corridors that smelled of recently spilled blood, stepping over more bodies with ragged mortal wounds ripped through torsos, necks, abdomens and faces. Some were cold, dead for several hours, others were warmer, and one or two still spilled blood, suggesting that they had not yet succumbed to their injuries, although they no doubt would.

  The light in the tunnel was subdued and intermittent. At times, Gilead passed close to one of the pavement grilles, which would have allowed light to flood in during the day, but which afforded only the most meagre glow of luminescence borrowed from candlelit interiors, few and far between on such a desolate night, in a town whose population appeared to be anywhere but here.

  There were torch sconces along many of the corridors he travelled, following his senses to where the knight must be doing battle. Some of them had lit torches in them, but they were clearly old and poorly made, using inferior waxes and oils, so that they smoked or burned with dull, green light, which cast gruesome shadows on all the surrounding surfaces.

  The knight, with his glowing eyes, could clearly see more effectively in the dark, and, if Gilead’s previous experience was to be born out, was stronger and more able in every way when and where the sun didn’t shine.

  Gilead soon became accustomed to his surroundings. He adapted quickly and efficiently, using his heightened senses to compensate for any loss of visual clues.

  Ahead of him, in the darkness, as Gilead approached a major hub where several tunnels of varying sizes and profiles, and various degrees of importance met, he saw a figure scuttling from one opening to another, and back again. Three of the tunnels were lit, and glowed oddly, casting a collection of shadows around the figure that seemed not to resemble its form at all. The figure appeared not to know where it was or where it was going. It seemed confused and not a little afraid. It was literally jumping at its own shadows.

  Gilead pressed his back lightly against the cool stone wall of the corridor from which he was approaching the hub, making sure not to cast a shadow of his own. He slowed his breathing and remained totally still, watching.

/>   The figure was joined by a second, which hurtled out of the mouth of one of the darkened tunnels, almost knocking into the creature that was already trying to find its way. Gilead could only think of them as figures or creatures. They might have been men, but he couldn’t be sure. They might have been boys, or even women. They were shorter than the average human male, and they were bent and ragged, the strange light conditions and multiple shadows hiding or distorting their forms.

  As Gilead watched, the figure that had jumped at its own shadow suddenly lashed out at the other. It appeared to have a wide, short blade in its left hand, and moved quickly in frantic, staccato bursts.

  It had clearly hit its target, because the other figure shrieked loudly, in obvious pain. It seemed to duck, and Gilead thought he saw it bare its teeth. Its head was entirely the wrong shape for a human, too flat on top and too narrow, and it appeared to end in an elongated jaw, too full of too-ragged teeth.

  As the figures resolved, Gilead watched the creature being attacked fill its maw with the other’s arm, and thrash with extended claws, ripping at clothes and flesh, and tearing aside improvised armour.

  Gilead allowed himself to breathe. The creatures, for it was clear that they were not human, were so caught up in their brutal skirmish that neither was likely to notice him.

  The skaven beasts shrieked and clawed, turning and tumbling in a confusion of scrawny limbs, yellow teeth and claws, and mangy fur. Their blood, when it came, didn’t smell like human blood; it smelled of disease and decay, of rot and putrefaction.

  They were dwellers in the undercrofts, sewers and tunnels that lay beneath most human habitations, and where they could not adopt lost and forgotten underground byways, they dug their own foetid labyrinth of warrens. Gilead did not wonder what they were doing here, for they belonged here, this was their natural habitat, borrowed by the undead knight for his evil ends.

  As the ratmen rolled into the entrance of one of the darker, dingier tunnels, Gilead stepped deftly past them, listening at the mouths of the various corridors for sounds of battle. The skaven looked and sounded as if they were well on the way to killing each other, and the elf wanted no part of it. He had more pressing business. He was obliged to help the humans if he could, but more than that, he felt confident that he was reaching the end of a search that had taken decades, scores of years of his life.

  Gilead listened for sounds that he might associate with the undead knight, for the dancing footfalls of his fast feet, for the swish of a tempered steel blade cutting the air, for the thunk and clang of ill-aimed weapons falling against his shield. All he could hear were the shrill calls of ratmen and the anguished cries and grunts of human farmers and guildsmen turned hunters and soldiers.

  Before Gilead could decide which tunnel to follow, the hub was suddenly full of bodies teeming out of two of the corridors to his right. Some staggered and lurched while the more able-bodied pushed and shoved their way out. Many of the humans had jagged flesh wounds and all had rends and tears to their clothes.

  A skaven horde, dozens strong, followed its prey into the hub, and, as they rushed in, the two rats who had been fighting looked up in astonishment, one on top of the other. One of the larger rats kicked them, and they struggled to get up and join the fray, at least for as long as their tattered bodies would allow.

  Gilead drew his dagger. He would have preferred to avoid this mayhem, but he could not exit the hub for the mass of bodies fighting there, and, besides, the humans were being bested by the skaven, and the elf could not countenance the abject defeat of the local townsmen, knowing that their women and children were relying on them.

  Gilead deftly cut the tendons in the back of one of the skaven’s legs, bringing it down, and with it, two of its brethren, as it dropped its rusting blade to reach out for anything that might keep it upright. The human under attack turned in surprise, only to find himself at close quarters with another of the rat-kind eager to finish what his comrade had begun rather than deal with a fresher opponent.

  None of the filthy rodents wanted to face Gilead, and he found himself trying not to attack his foes from behind, blind-siding them. An elf warrior looked his opponent in the eye when he killed him.

  A young man, slight of build, but quick and agile, a hoe held between his hands as if it were a staff, was thrusting his arms this way and that, whacking any rat that came within a couple of paces of him around the head, back and chest, or anywhere else that he might unbalance the foe. He soon realised that once any rat was on the floor it was unlikely to get up again. The skaven were weak creatures, feverish in their efforts, but shuffling and inelegant, and they were so short-lived by nature that they seldom had the chance to gain valuable experience in any sort of fight. They thrashed like fearful human infants, angry, petulant and entirely without discipline. It made them the perfect opponent in every regard, except one; they were unpredictable.

  The young man swung his hoe, at waist height, once more. Gilead watched as the business-end hurtled towards a rat. The creature was a particularly ugly specimen with tufts of patchy hair protruding at odd angles from its skull and bony shoulders. The thing did not duck, but neither did the hoe blade connect with the rat’s torso, as Gilead had expected it would. The rat saw the swinging hoe, and thrust out its paws to catch hold of its shaft. The impact must have shaken the skaven’s elbow joints horribly, but it hung on, nevertheless, as the boy wrestled with it for possession of the improvised weapon.

  Neither the boy nor the rat was going to let go. Hanging on to his portion of the hoe meant that the boy lost all his agility and had to plant his feet firmly, shoulder-width apart, to stop himself tipping over. He stood his ground, determined not to be bested by the ugly rat. Gilead noticed other skaven creatures reacting to the situation. They redoubled their efforts to deal with the humans, scrapping harder and faster, and squealing more loudly as they exerted every ounce of strength they had to free themselves of their individual battles, either by besting their human opponents or by escaping from them.

  One rat came up behind the young man and took hold of the hoe’s handle, making it even more awkward for the boy to wield. Then two more came in low and began to bite and scratch at the boy’s ankles and legs. Seconds later, another rat hurled himself at the boy’s back, landing there, wrapping its ersatz arms around the boy’s neck in a chokehold.

  Gilead switched his dagger to his left hand and drew his sword. He began to attack the rats closest to him, cutting them down with one swing of his sword or one deft thrust of his dagger, regardless of whether they were facing him or not; most of them were not. He made his way towards the boy, whose face was turning pale, but who stood his ground. The boy had two choices, he could keep a firm hold on his weapon and suffer the wounds that the other rats were inflicting on him with their snapping jaws and greasy claws, while the two on either end of the hoe disabled him, but he would surely die. Alternatively, he could let go of the weapon and have nothing left with which to defend himself against the massed skaven attack.

  Gilead separated another rat from its life force, thrusting his dagger into the main artery in its groin and leaving it to bleed out, and he was right in front of the boy. The boy went from looking washed out to looking preternaturally pale. He had been heroic in his battle with the rats until they had found a way to get the better of him, and he still showed more courage than most, despite the colour draining from face. The elf was another matter entirely. Every sensible human was in awe of the elves, in awe of their stature, their prowess, and their long, long lives; in awe of their legendary standing.

  Gilead saw mingled fear, respect and even hero-worship in the boy’s eyes. Then, the elf swung his sword at an angle and connected with soft tissue. The rat holding the bladed end of the hoe suddenly let go. As Gilead withdrew his sword for a second swing, the skaven clutched its paws to its belly and looked down at the blood and viscera leaking out of its abdomen.

  The boy blinked, and a little of the colour flushed back into
his cheeks. His eyes glistened and he nodded slightly at the elf, relieved to find an ally.

  Without turning, the young man shoved the shaft of the hoe back into the rat behind him, winding it and snapping its fragile ribs, causing it to fall over the pair of skaven that were shredding his trousers and boots. He kicked them off, and then turned and backed hard into an adjacent wall to dislodge the creature from his back.

  Encouraged by the boy, some of the men rallied and redoubled their efforts against the skaven, but the ratmen, if not stronger, were, at the very least, wilder, more ruthless and more accustomed to fighting. There were also a very great number of them.

  Gilead continued to kill and maim the creatures in short order, but his real mission was to find the undead knight and prevent him causing any more damage. The skaven were opportunists, surely? Gilead thought it unlikely that they were in some way allied to the knight; he was a beast of an altogether different breed. He was as immortal as they were short-lived, as skillful in combat as they were clumsy, and as intelligent as they were brutish. The knight was more akin to the elf than to these sorry creatures.

  The boy stayed close to Gilead, his new hero, wielding his hoe with innate finesse, felling a number of skaven while not actually managing to kill them.

  ‘Flee!’ Gilead said, the word alien in his mouth. He seldom spoke to humans, although he was able, preferring simply to listen to their conversations than join in with them and endure speaking in their ugly guttural language.

  The boy looked at him, unsure what to think as the elf’s dulcet tones struggled with the human word.

  ‘Flee?’ he asked.

  ‘Flee,’ said Gilead, again, severing a rat’s sword-arm from its body, as it swung its spiked mace in a haphazard arc, trying to get under the elf’s guard.

  Gilead and the boy were subduing the skaven horde more successfully as the elf fell into an easy rhythm and the boy’s confidence grew. Some of the men, on hearing Gilead speak, took the opportunity to follow his instruction and leave the skirmish, while some simply stared at the elf in awe and wonder.