[Daemon Gates 03] - Hour of the Daemon Read online

  Hralif hadn’t seen it, but, then again, it was all he could do to stay on his feet.

  “Leave it,” Dietz said. “We can look later, when it’s light out.”

  Grudgingly, Alaric agreed, and together they took Hralif home. Dietz sent for a chirurgeon, and for Dagmar, and both arrived quickly. After that he allowed Alaric to drag him back to the shop, knowing Hralif was in good hands.

  Dietz stared and stared, but he still couldn’t see the mark Alaric had indicated.

  “Maybe you’re imagining it,” he’d suggested, but his friend refused to believe that.

  “I can see it,” Alaric insisted. “I don’t know why you can’t, but it’s definitely there.” He walked a few paces, staring closely at the wall, and then scanned the ground as well. “There,” he said, pointing. “There’s another one, more like blood dripping from a wound. Come on.” He set off at a fast pace, and Dietz matched him; even if the marks weren’t real, Middenheim had plenty of areas where it wasn’t safe to wander alone. That’s how he’d met Alaric in the first place, happening across the younger man just in time to save him from some thugs down by the docks, and he wasn’t about to let his friend and employer wander into the same sort of trouble.

  They followed the trail that only Alaric could see, and it led them into the warehouse district, and right to a stables.

  “I remember them,” the stablehand said when Alaric described the men, and proffered a silver coin to jog the lad’s memory. “They was here late yesterday. Seemed rough, but their coin was good. Wanted a wagon to Altdorf.” He shrugged. “We had several going that way, so I sold ’em passage on one. Left an hour or so later.”

  “Got them!” Alaric exclaimed as they left the stables. “We know where they’re going, and travelling by wagon will slow them down. If we leave now we can easily overtake them.” He was ready to ride off right then, but Dietz stopped him.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” he said, “not until we know Hralif’s all right.”

  Alaric tried to argue, but Dietz refused to listen. Hralif was their friend, and Dagmar’s intended. He hadn’t seen a ring on either of them, so they weren’t married yet, just as he’d thought, and it was his and Alaric’s fault Hralif had been wounded at all.

  “We can catch up to them just as easily tomorrow,” Dietz assured Alaric. “As soon as we know he’ll recover we can set out. Besides,” he added, directing their steps back towards Hralif’s home, “I could use a good night’s sleep, and I’m sure you can as well, especially if we’re to take to the road again.” That persuaded Alaric, and he did not protest again.

  It was two days before the chirurgeon pronounced Hralif on the mend, and Alaric all but leapt into his saddle the minute the healer had gone. Dietz had hoped to stay longer, but he couldn’t argue. The longer they waited the more of a lead the thieves had, and he had promised Alaric they would go after the men.

  They did not catch up to the wagon on the road, which meant it must have reached Altdorf ahead of them. Dietz would have worried about their turning off somewhere along the way, but Alaric had spotted additional blood drops and even blood smears along the way. Dietz hadn’t seen a single one of the marks himself, and he still wondered if his friend might not simply be imagining them, but there was no way to tell if a particular wagon had left the road at any point along the way, so it had made sense to stay on the road all the way to Altdorf and hope the cultists really were going all the way to the capital.

  So Alaric and Dietz forced themselves and their horses on. And here they were, finally, arriving during Geheimnistag.

  “How are we going to find anyone in all this?” Dietz asked, gesturing at the crowd before them. Several clusters were marching down the street, waving banners and flags, and holding up strange carvings and figures. Many of the people off to the sides cheered and waved, though others were too busy with their own activities to notice the small parade moving past. Geheimnistag was the Day of Mystery, and many people celebrated by dressing in strange costumes, burning effigies and dancing in the streets. It was mayhem. Dietz hadn’t seen the festival in Altdorf before, and it looked to be even more of a madhouse than in Middenheim, where he usually celebrated the day by planting himself in a tavern and not leaving until after the revelries had died away.

  “I don’t know,” Alaric admitted, glancing around. Off to one side, they saw a man and a woman dressed in the distinctive garb of the Strigany—loose flowing skirts on the woman, loose shirts, open embroidered vests and heavy gold-hoop earrings on both—selling small trinkets of some sort. Dietz resisted the urge to look more closely. Not all Strigany were rogues—the ones they had met had been nice enough—but they worshipped strange gods and daemons, and had strange ideas about flesh and propriety. He had a feeling whatever those objects were he wouldn’t want to examine them up close.

  “Let’s look around,” Alaric said at last, also turning away from the Strigany and their wares. “We know they came this way. Perhaps we’ll find some trace of them.” He didn’t sound very certain of that, but they had come this far. It would be a shame to travel all the way to Altdorf and leave empty-handed, especially since Dietz knew neither of them liked the city much. He’d never been comfortable here: too much bad blood between Middenheim and Altdorf. Alaric disliked it for a different reason. He was a noble and had been raised on politics, but he hated such things with a passion, and avoided them like the plague. That usually meant avoiding Altdorf, the centre of the Empire and its political heart. At least, with the celebrations going on, they were unlikely to encounter any nobles.

  “I wish Lankdorf were here,” Alaric muttered. “He could track them for us.”

  Dietz nodded, but there was nothing to be said. They had waited outside Vitrolle for the bounty hunter, after the three of them had gotten separated escaping the town and the four-way war for its control, but Lankdorf hadn’t emerged. After two days outwitting bands of warriors from the various border princes, not to mention vengeful surviving cultists and random wild animals, Alaric and Dietz had been forced to accept the fact that their friend simply wasn’t coming. Whether he had been killed during the fighting or had simply fled via a different route, they had no idea, and they had no way of finding him. Dietz hoped he was still alive. Even though they had first met by becoming Lankdorf’s captives, he had come to respect and even like the quiet, competent bounty hunter, and his skills would definitely have come in handy now.

  “We’ll just have to look for ourselves,” he said finally, making sure Glouste was secure inside his jacket before nudging his horse forward. It balked at the wild sights and sounds before it, and at the mass of people filling the street, but Dietz patted it on the neck and guided it slowly, steadily through the throng, which parted around them and then swallowed them up again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Alaric rubbed at his eye.

  “Leave it alone,” Dietz warned without even turning around. “You’ll make it worse.”

  “It burns,” Alaric complained, hating the whine he heard in his voice, but unable to control it. His eye had been aching and throbbing since the battle in Vitrolle, and it had grown steadily more painful and more distracting. He suspected he’d gotten soot in it, or a speck of gunpowder, or even a tiny metal shaving; the air had been filled with all manner of things during that battle and it would have been easy to catch something in passing. He’d meant to see a physician about it once they were back in Middenheim, but hadn’t had the chance; they’d gone straight to Hralif’s shop and after that he’d been too concerned about the missing mask to worry about something as minor as his health. How had cultists found out the carpenter had been holding the relic for him? And where were they taking it?

  He glanced around and shuddered, hoping Altdorf wasn’t the cultists’ final stop. He hated the city, he always had. It epitomised everything he disliked in a city, with its heavy, glowering walls, its ostentation, its layout that seemed deliberately designed to confuse, its total concern for its own
appearance and welfare at any cost, and its utter disregard for everyone else around it. Altdorf was only interested in Altdorf, and the city as a whole was perfectly willing to sacrifice every other place and person in the Empire—and beyond—for its own success and survival. It was the perfect home for the Empire’s rulers.

  Alaric had never liked it here, and the fact that some of his brothers loved it only cemented his own opinion of the place. Picking his way through its crowded streets, searching for something so powerful and deadly many would kill to possess it, he knew what would happen if any of those nobles learned of the mask’s existence. He only prayed that they had not been the cause of the theft, because if a noble had already set his sights on gaining the mask there was little that would stand in his way.

  Right now, the city seemed worse than ever. Alaric had always considered Geheimnistag a time of ill omen. Most sensible people locked themselves away for the day, safe inside their homes, and made offerings to whichever god they favoured that the day might pass them by in relative peace. Back in school he had known students who had considered the Day of Mystery a time of revelry. It was a day when all behaviour was excused as a reaction to the spirits, and so you could do anything and get away with it. Others had felt the same, and he had seen people cavorting and carousing, and generally behaving like savages and lechers, acting in ways they would not dare at any other time, secure in the knowledge that no one would blame them for their actions on that one day.

  In Middenheim, the attitude had been even more widespread, and Alaric had seen groups of people celebrating all around the city during Geheimnistag, without a care for the consequences tomorrow.

  Here in Altdorf such behaviour was apparently the norm. It looked as if the entire city had turned out for the celebration. Everywhere he turned he saw masks, costumes, banners and sculptures. The street was insane with people and motion, and colour and shape, and he could barely focus his eyes or think straight amid the mad, pounding tumult.

  Over there, for instance, a man cavorted beside a pair of women, his head masked by a pig’s visage. An appropriate image, surely, for he was leering openly at both his scantily clad companions, but the pig’s features seemed almost real, albeit distorted.

  The snout was massive, the eyes flaring to a ruby brilliance, and the ears were swivelling to catch the women’s laughing replies. The creature’s wide mouth opened, revealing the sharp teeth of a predator, and drool spilled out past the fangs, dripping to the pavement below and sizzling where droplets struck the paving stones. The pigman reached for one of the women with a clawed hand, the sticky pink of new flesh beneath an open wound.

  Alaric looked away, gasping for breath and blinking rapidly to clear his vision. What had that been about? Was he simply tired and anxious? He was feeling light-headed—was he growing ill? Had that man’s costume really been that elaborate, that… convincing? Its flesh had seemed real, even from here.

  “You all right?” Dietz asked, reaching out to steady him, and Alaric nodded.

  “Fine, fine,” he replied. “Let’s keep moving.”

  “Which way?”

  Alaric glanced around again, frowning. That was the question, after all. The cultists had come here, he was sure of it, but where had they gone once they’d entered the city? They had probably reached Altdorf well before the Geheimnistag festivities had begun this morning, which meant the crowd would have obliterated any traces of them. Except…

  A splash of colour caught his eye, and his gaze narrowed. “There,” he said, pointing towards a smear of brilliantly crimson blood decorating one of the city’s wrought-iron lampposts. “They went that way.”

  Dietz glanced in that direction. “How can you tell?” the older man’s long face showed concern, though his voice was as level as ever.

  “That splotch of blood, there on the lamppost,” Alaric answered, pointing it out again. “Don’t you see it?”

  His friend shook his head. “I can’t see anything through this crowd.” He frowned. “Are you sure? Sure it’s from them?”

  “Yes.” And he was, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. “It’s exactly the same shade as the marks I saw in Middenheim,” he explained, which was true enough, but that wasn’t all of it. There was just something about the mark, something in the way it had caught his eye, in its shape, in its placement; he couldn’t put it into words, but he knew it had come for the cultists.

  Dietz studied him for a second, then shrugged. “Only clue we’ve got,” he admitted tersely. “Might as well.”

  He pulled back on his horse, and Alaric kicked his forward in response, taking the lead. He led them slowly into the throng of revellers, glancing this way and that, trying to see any more marks that might appear.

  He wasn’t sure why Dietz couldn’t see them. Back in Middenheim he’d simply thought his friend was distracted by worry—he and Hralif had been friends in their youth, and now Hralif was engaged to Dagmar, who Dietz doted upon—but on the road, Dietz had still missed every sign, while they had stood out to Alaric as if limned in fire. Here, amid this insanity, how could he see them at all?

  But see them he did. A second smear appeared against a tethering pole, leading Alaric to detour off the main street and onto a smaller side road. A third mark caught his eye from a striped awning, and part of him wondered how the cultists had reached that high, and what sort of wound would continue to bleed, and in such quantities, after so much time? Shouldn’t the cultist have bled out long since at this rate? Another part of him simply rejoiced to know they were still on the right track.

  It was the only part of Alaric that rejoiced at all. The rest of him was either too exhausted to care, too concerned to be pleased, or too worried to be happy. The last emotion was gaining more and more dominance with every foot they travelled into the city. Everyone seemed to be celebrating Geheimnistag, and all with a fervour that Alaric had never seen before. The costumes were more elaborate, the masks more realistic, and the imagery more disturbing than any he had encountered in previous years. It was less a celebration than a true unleashing of the city’s darkest impulses, and it seemed to be spreading.

  They passed a building whose door was closed tightly against the mayhem, but blood spilled out beneath the heavy barrier, seeping across the cobblestones and spreading in a slow, sticky pool across the street. Alaric watched with horror as it approached his horse’s hooves. The coppery smell assaulted his senses, and his horse whickered with concern, its eyes rolling, but it did not react as the blood lapped against its hooves, and when it raised each hoof Alaric saw they bore only dirt and mud.

  In another spot, they passed a narrow alleyway, and Alaric made the mistake of glancing down it. There were figures there, though he hesitated to call them people. For an instant, their limbs seemed oddly jointed and too long, more like insects’ than men’s. Their heads swivelled strangely on long necks, and their hands seemed narrow and pointed, like blades of flesh. The strange scene faded, though the cluster of people remained. There was a woman with them, and her screams echoed along the walls, as did the smack of flesh against flesh, but there was laughter as well, and his throbbing head could not tell if those peals came from her or from the men with her. Alaric glanced back at Dietz, who shook his head, although his jaw was tight.

  “Not our concern,” the older man warned, though from the look he directed back towards the alley, Alaric suspected he would happily intercede.

  Dietz was right. They were after the cultists, and the mask. Whatever was going on in the alley, even if it were as horrible as it seemed to him, it was as nothing compared to the horrors the mask could unleash in the wrong hands. They had to retrieve it. That had to come first. Alaric steeled himself and rode on, until he could no longer hear the screams or the accompanying shouts and cheers.

  A man darted out in front of his horse a moment later, forcing Alaric to rein in sharply to avoid trampling him.

  He shouted something incoherent up at them as Dietz pulled up alongside. He
was a short, fat man with an unkempt beard and a thick head of hair sticking out everywhere. His clothes looked slept in, as did his grimy skin, and he held a thick jug in one hand. “Drink?” The man proffered the jug, and Alaric saw it uncoil slowly, its scales rustling as they slid past each other; it was no earthenware vessel, but a large, buff-coloured snake, its tiny eyes a glittering black, its fangs the same midnight shade.

  “N-no, thank you,” Alaric managed to stutter, kicking his horse back into motion, and leaving the man behind them, still holding the writhing serpent high. Alaric heard a hiss as he pulled away, and realised with a start that it had come from the man. Glancing back, he saw strange slit pupils reflecting the nearby lamplight, and a thin forked tongue emerge to lick dry, narrow lips. Then they were gone, and it was just a heavy little man holding a wine jug.

  “Something wrong?” Dietz asked, and Alaric shook his head. Had Dietz seen that as well? No, he would not be asking so blithely if he had. Should he say something? Would Dietz believe him?

  They had been through many strange experiences together before this. They had fought daemons together, for Ulric’s sake! And if he really was seeing such things, surely Dietz had a right to know?

  “I-I’m seeing things,” Alaric answered finally, letting his horse slow to a steady walk as they continued down the street. At least it was quieter here than it had been closer to the city gates, with fewer revellers and thus less frequent revolting images.

  “It is Geheimnistag,” Dietz pointed out. He glanced around, the distaste evident in his expression. “Lots of strange sights here, and unpleasant ones.”

  “I know, but it’s more than that,” Alaric argued. “That man back there, with the jug—what did you see?”

  Dietz shrugged. “A drunkard,” he answered succinctly.

  “And the jug?”

  “Just a jug.”

  “I saw a snake,” Alaric explained, though he found himself doubting his own memories. “And the man looked serpentine as well.” Had he really seen that? It all seemed blurred, unclear. “At least, I think that’s what I saw,” he admitted.