The rat-catcher cringed away from the monster’s gaze, his mind reeling with horror. The image of Fritz with his throat torn out, the loathsome thought of the cannibalised rats with their innards eaten away and their skins turned inside out, these came crawling through his brain like black prophets of doom.
The giant was tensing itself to leap at the paralysed rat-catcher when the brute was suddenly struck from the side. This time it cried out, an angry chirp that sounded like steel scraping against steel. Hugo jabbed at it a second time with his pole and the brute spun around, springing at the man without any warning. Hugo screamed as the giant’s weight tore the pole from his grip and the fangs stabbed into his hand.
Hugo’s scream snapped the remaining ratters from their fright. Snarling, the two dogs fell upon the giant, one seizing an ear in its jaws, the other darting in to snap at the rat’s belly. The giant ripped away from Hugo, turning on these new attackers.
While the monster was busy trying to fend off the dogs, Walther drove in upon it. A thick hunting knife in his hand, he came at the brute from behind, stabbing its back again and again, thrusting the blade deep into the vermin’s flesh. Pained squeaks streamed from the rat as blood bubbled from its wounds. A terrible frenzy came upon it, enabling it to shake free of the dogs and drive Walther away with a lash of its naked tail.
The effort came too late to do the giant any good. The rat had taken too much damage; Walther’s knife had pierced past ribs to puncture the brute’s lungs. Wheezing, panting, it hobbled a few paces, then slipped on the icy floor. The dogs were on it in an instant, tearing at its throat and avenging their fallen comrade.
Walther shook with excitement, that curious alchemy of terror and jubilation familiar to any victorious soldier. ‘We did it!’ he shouted, his voice so loud they might have heard him back in the Black Rose. ‘Get ready, Bremer! You’re going to have a heart attack when you see what I’ve brought you!’
The rat-catcher turned towards his apprentice. Hugo was sitting on the floor, hugging his arm against his side. Walther clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Did you hear! Our fortune is made!’
Hugo nodded weakly, then his face contorted in a grimace of pain. ‘Very… nice… Herr Schill,’ he muttered. ‘But… do you think… you could… get my fingers… out of its mouth…’
Middenheim
Ulriczeit, 1111
‘Your grace!’
Franz’s cry had Mandred clenching his teeth. It was bad enough that he had been unable to shake his bodyguard, but now it seemed the knight was determined to let everyone in the Westgate district know that the Prince of Middenheim was walking the streets.
Mandred pulled his wool cloak a bit closer and ducked into the closest alleyway. For a moment, he thought about ducking out the other end of the alley but then decided that Franz would only catch up to him again. Or maybe the buffoon would start asking around the neighbourhood if anybody had seen the Graf’s son prowling about.
When Franz appeared at the mouth of the alley, Mandred grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up against the wall. The knight’s hand fell to the grip of his sword, but quickly relaxed when he recognised the prince’s features beneath the brim of the battered fur cap.
‘Your grace,’ Franz said, trying to affect a stiff salute within the narrow confines of the alley.
Mandred rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘You do understand that I’m trying to go unnoticed,’ he reminded the knight.
A bewildered expression came across Franz’s stony features. ‘Of course, your grace,’ he said. ‘You made that clear when we left the palace.’
‘Then can I ask you to stop addressing me as “your grace”?’ Mandred snapped. ‘And stop bowing and saluting every time I look twice at you. We’re supposed to be ordinary peasants, nothing more.’
Franz nodded. ‘Yes, your grace.’
Mandred felt an ache growing at the back of his skull. Rumours of refugees sneaking into the city had reached the palace, accompanied by rumours that incidents of plague had started cropping up in the poorer sections of the city. Graf Gunthar had already dispatched troops to investigate the rumours, even going so far as to request Thane Hardin send some of his dwarfs down into the old Undercity to see if someone had found a way up through the tunnels. His father would put a stop to the stream of refugees once he uncovered the source. Mandred was determined to keep that from happening.
No outsider could possibly manage to sneak into Middenheim without help, a native of the city who knew how to get around the Graf’s guards. Mandred was going to find that someone. Find them and warn them before his father could step in and stop the flow of refugees.
If he could only find one of the refugees and convince them of his sympathy, then Mandred might be able to learn who was helping them. But so far he had had no luck in finding anyone who didn’t belong in the city. And the longer he looked, the greater the chance that Franz’s blundering would give his presence away.
‘Perhaps we should go and check the Pink Rat again, your grace?’ Franz suggested, licking his lips at the thought of the notorious tavern.
Mandred closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to Ulric for guidance, or at least the self-control to keep him from strangling his own bodyguard.
The prayer for patience, it seemed, went unheeded, but a cry for help came drifting down the alleyway. It was the sort of appeal Mandred would have responded to anyway, but a thrill coursed through his body as he recognised a foreign tone to the shout. He opened his eyes and stared up into the grey sky. ‘Thank you, Wolf Father,’ he said before sprinting down the alley in the direction of the shout.
‘Your grace!’ Franz called after him.
Mandred didn’t slacken his pace. The cry hadn’t been repeated. Instead it had been replaced by the crash of steel and the inarticulate snarls of fighting men. The prince drew his own sword. He might have donned a simple horsehide sheath as part of his disguise, but the sword was the same keenly balanced dwarf blade with which he fought his duels with van Cleeve.
Through the maze of alleyways and side-streets, Mandred pursued the sounds of conflict until he burst out into a little square with a stone fountain at its centre. Dilapidated timber longhouses, their tile roofs groaning beneath a heavy snowfall, bordered the square on every side. Snow was piled high against their walls, almost to the very eaves, and a thick layer of snow carpeted the ground inside the little square. At once, the prince noticed the bright crimson splotches marring the ground.
Three men were sprawled in the snow, blades and bludgeons lying beside their bodies. Four ruffians in wool breeks and rough cowhide cloaks circled a lone fighter dressed in a heavy black cloak and wielding a fat-bladed broadsword.
It took Mandred only a moment to decide which side of the fight to make his own. ‘If it takes four of you rats to fight one man, maybe you’ve taken up the wrong vocation,’ the prince shouted. The combatants turned in surprise at his cry.
‘There were six of them when they started,’ the man in the black cloak boasted, his accent clipped and guttural, the mark of a Reiklander’s voice.
‘Stay out of this!’ one of the cowhide ruffians growled. He gestured with an ugly iron bludgeon at the Reiklander and again at the third body lying in the snow. ‘This scum has brought the Black Plague into the city!’
‘So you thought you’d avoid the plague by getting into a swordfight?’ Mandred said. He smiled with cool confidence at the four thugs. ‘A fine idea. I’ll be happy to oblige anyone who thinks six against two is honourable combat.’