Hammer and Bolter: Issue 20 by Christian Dunn

Author:Christian Dunn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2012-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

LORDS OF THE MARSH

Josh Reynolds

‘I was drunk,’ Erkhart Dubnitz said, stepping back to avoid the rapier’s tip. The deck of the rolled beneath his feet and the rail of the river-barge connected with his hips. He held up his big hands, palm out, trying to look simultaneously innocent and contrite. As a true son of the Most Holy Templar Order of Manann, Dubnitz was equally bad at both, and his expression slid more easily into one of slightly panicked guilt. He wasn’t frightened, but he was worried. It had been miscalculation on his part. It had been enjoyable, but, in retrospect, unwise.

‘That’s no excuse for despoiling my sister, you-you lout!’ Sternhope Sark barked. The Averlander wore what passed for finery in Averheim, but his rapier was real enough and sharp. The tip of the blade scratched across the enamelled sea-green surface of Dubnitz’s cuirass, marring Manann’s face with a thin scar. Dubnitz’s gauntleted hand snapped shut on the blade and jerked it and Sark’s arm forward. The rapier’s tip bit into the rail and Dubnitz’s other fist came down on the flat of the blade where it met the crosspiece, snapping the thin metal.

‘Whoops,’ Dubnitz said, flinging the broken blade into the Reik. There was a heavy mist on the river, and it seemed to reach up and clutch for the rail as Dubnitz turned back to Sark. ‘How clumsy of me, I do apologise.’ There was a murmur of laughter from the nearby crew, and they gathered to watch. There was little to do on a barge, and any entertainment was good entertainment.

Sark gawped at him for a moment. Then, with a hiss, he struck at Dubnitz’s face with the broken end of the blade. Dubnitz grabbed Sark’s wrists and wrestled him around, trapping the smaller man between him and the rail. Dubnitz’s forehead connected briefly with Sark’s and the latter’s limbs went noodle-limp. Dubnitz grunted as a thin trickle of blood ran down from his brow, across his cheek and into his beard. Averlanders were a prickly lot when they were sober, in his experience. They were worse than Reiklanders, in their way, but he couldn’t fault the young man’s determination.

‘And I’d hardly call what I did despoliation,’ Dubnitz said, grabbing the young man’s coat to keep him on his feet. ‘It was more a peaceful transfer of military aid, if anything.’

‘Are all Marienburgers so bad at euphemisms, Erkhart?’

Dubnitz turned and glanced at the woman who had pushed through the throng of sailors who had gathered to watch the confrontation. There was a resemblance about the cheeks to the young man he held, which, given that they were siblings, was no surprise. Sascha Sark was dressed in the latest Nuln had to offer for the upper-class out-of-doors woman, with an exquisitely carved iron and wood hunting crossbow held braced against the ample swell of her hip. She was flanked by two bodyguards, the best money could buy.

‘We’re a simple folk, Sascha. Unsophisticated, even,’ Dubnitz said. ‘Granted, we also manage to keep our private affairs private.

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