The Reik was not a river; it was a swollen, grey artery that carried the life and the refuse of the greatest human empire in the world. Geneviève reached it three days after the mill fire, near the port town of Auerswald. Here, the air did not smell of pine and snow as it did in Bretonnia. It smelled of burnt coal, salted fish, tar, and open sewers. It was the scent of "progress."
Geneviève walked along the crowded docks, leading Duraz by his reins. The dwarven horse, accustomed to solid rock, snorted nervously as he watched the murky water filled with barges, flatboats, and small merchant ships. She felt out of place herself. Her Gromril armour, though caked in mud, drew greedy eyes. She had wrapped her head and helm in a rough wool scarf, leaving only her vigilant grey eyes visible. The Grail within her was silent, stifled by her iron will. She had learned that in the Empire of Sigmar, those who shine with their own light often end up tied to a stake with a torch beneath their feet.
"I seek passage to Marienburg," Geneviève said, addressing a man shouting orders at two porters carrying crates of wool. The man turned. He was short, wide as a barrel, with a greasy beard split into two braids and a faded octopus tattoo on his bald scalp. Hans the Eel.
Hans sized her up, spitting black tobacco into the water. "You're big, stranger. And your horse looks like it's carved from granite. You weigh too much. You'd sink my Fair Greta."
"I pay in silver," Geneviève replied, clinking a heavy pouch. "And if there's trouble on the river, my sword is worth three of your men."
Hans looked at the pouch, then at the rag-wrapped sword on Geneviève's back. He grinned, showing gold teeth. "The river is full of trouble, friend. Forest Goblins shoot arrows from the banks, and river pirates demand tolls every ten leagues. Get on board. But the horse sleeps on deck—I don't want him smashing through my hold."
The journey began at sunset. The Fair Greta, a flat-bottomed river barge, slipped into the Reik's current. They were not alone; the river was a highway of water. They passed ships carrying timber from Talabheim, barges full of ore from the Middle Mountains, and even a small Dwarven paddle-steamer that belched black smoke, chugging upstream against all natural logic.
Geneviève sat at the bow, wrapped in her cloak, watching the dark forests lining the river. The Drakwald. She felt yellow eyes watching her from the thickets. Beastmen. Mutants. Things Vespers' Light yearned to burn. Her hands itched, but she could not act. There were other passengers on the boat: a family of Stirland refugees fleeing hunger, a fat, snoring Priest of Sigmar, and two wine merchants. If she drew her blade, if she let the light out, she would save them—yes—but she would also terrify them.
She saw a small girl from the refugee family coughing blood into a handkerchief. Tuberculosis. Geneviève clenched her fists. A single touch would suffice. One touch of her bare hand, an infusion of the Lady's life energy, and the child would be cured. She would run again. But if she did it, the Priest of Sigmar would scream "Witchcraft!" The boat would be stopped at the next checkpoint. Her mission would be over. The cruelty of the incognito, she thought bitterly. To have the power of a god and be forced to watch the world suffer like a helpless mortal.
Two nights later, the barge slowed abruptly. "Chains to the posts!" Hans yelled. "Imperial checkpoint!"
Ahead of them, a heavy iron chain barred the river, stretched between two grey stone guard towers. Upon the towers flew banners bearing the Twin-Tailed Comet and the Hammer.
"Curse it," Hans hissed, moving toward Geneviève. "Witch Hunters. Usually, it's just the tax collectors. Something must have rattled them."
Geneviève felt her heart slow, entering a state of cold calm. "What are they looking for?"
"Heretics. Mutants. Unregistered wizards. If you have something to hide, knight, throw it in the water now. Those bastards have a sharp nose."
Geneviève had nothing to throw. She was the heresy. A woman was magically transformed into a living weapon by an elven goddess in the land of Sigmar. She remained motionless.
A rowboat detached from the pier, bringing three men aboard the Fair Greta. Two were Imperial state troops with halberds and plate aarmour The third was the nightmare of every Imperial citizen. He wore a long black leather coat, a wide-brimmed hat that shadowed his eyes, and a silver amulet the size of a fist around his neck. At his belt sat a flintlock pistol and a slender rapier. A Witch Hunter.
They stepped onto the deck. Silence fell over the boat. Even the sick child stopped coughing out of fear. The Witch Hunter walked slowly, his boots creaking on the planks. He stopped before the Priest of Sigmar, who was breaking into a cold sweat. He ignored him. He stopped before the refugee family. He looked at the girl.
"She is ill," he said in a toneless voice.
"It is only a cough, my lord," the mother whimpered.
"Malady of the body often reflects that of the soul," the Witch Hunter declared. "Check her."
The guards checked the girl for marks of mutation—scales, extra fingers. They found none. "Clean. For now."
Then, the Witch Hunter turned toward the bow. Toward Geneviève and Duraz. He approached. Geneviève stood, leaning against the railing. She was nearly as tall as he was. The Witch Hunter looked up from beneath his hat. He had a scarred face and eyes that looked like pieces of burning coal.
"You do not show your face, warrior?" he asked.
"I have taken a vow," Geneviève replied, deepening her voice to a grating rasp.
"Vows are convenient for hiding deformities." The Witch Hunter reached a gloved hand toward Geneviève's scarf.
Geneviève did not move. If he touched her, he would feel the unnatural heat of her skin. She had to distract him. "Touch me," Geneviève said, shifting her cloak slightly to reveal the hilt of the common sword—not the sacred one. "And my horse will tear your arm off before you can draw that pistol."
The Imperial guards raised their halberds. Hans the Eel turned white as a sheet. Threatening a Witch Hunter was suicide. But the Witch Hunter stopped. He looked at Duraz. The dwarven horse stared back with intelligent, malicious eyes, baring his teeth. Then he looked at Geneviève. He smiled—a thin, cruel smile.
"Arrogance. Violence. Contempt for authority." He withdrew his hand. "These are human qualities, not demonic ones. A mutant or a sorcerer would have tried to please me or flee." He adjusted his hat. "The river is dangerous, mercenary. I have heard rumours of a ghost knight burning mills in the mountains. They say he leaves only ash. If you meet him..." The Witch Hunter fixed Geneviève'greyay eyes through the gap in the scarf. "...do not hinder him. It seems he is doing my job better than I am."
He turned and signalled to the guards. "Let this tub pass. It only reeks of fish and misery."
When the rowboat pulled away, Hans the Eel slumped onto a crate, trembling. "You're mad! Stark raving mad!" he yelled at Geneviève.
"Perhaps," she replied, patting Duraz's neck to calm him. She had risked everything on a psychological bluff. She had bet on the fact that Witch Hunters look for fear, not defiance.
Two days later, the landscape changed. The river widened until it became an inland sea. The air turned salty. A myriad of islands connected by bridges appeared in the mist. Smokestacks, merchant palaces, forests of masts—the chaos of a thousand languages spoken at once. Marienburg. The city where everything is for sale, even your soul.
Somewhere in that labyrinth of water and greed lay the ship The Lady of the Sea, carrying flesh for the monsters. Geneviève looked at the metropolis. She felt small. In the mountains, the enemy was clear. Here, the enemy was hidden behind velvet smiles and legal contracts.
"Keep your eyes open, Duraz," she whispered. "We are entering the den of the greatest serpent of all."
Marienburg did not merely welcome visitors; it assaulted them. As soon as Geneviève set foot on the rotting wooden quay of the Suid District, she was struck by a sensory chaos that made the battle of Carcassonne seem almost orderly. The air was a thick soup of salt mist, exotic spices, decomposing fish, and the metallic tang of Dwarven foundries. Everywhere she looked, there was movement: cranes lifting crates as large as houses, haughty Elves walking on elevated catwalks to keep their silk robes from the grime, Dwarves haggling by shouting in Khazalid, and an endless tide of humans pushing, running, and cursing in a dozen different languages.
Hans the Eel wasted no time. He offloaded Geneviève and Duraz with the haste of someone disposing of a shipment of explosives. "Fair winds to you, Knight," he said, pocketing the agreed silver and spitting into the canal water. "A free word of advice: in Marienburg, everything has a price—even the air. If you don't pay, you stop breathing. And keep an eye on that horse. Here, they'll butcher anything with four legs to make sausages."
Geneviève nodded, pulling her scarf tighter over her face. Duraz, annoyed by the unstable ground and the scent of too many people, tried to bite a seagull that had strayed too close. "Easy," she whispered, stroking the beast's muscular neck. "I hate this place as much as you do, but we need to find a den."
Walking the streets was an exercise in paranoia. Geneviève felt watched from every window, from every dark alleyway. Her stature and herarmourr, though hidden by her tattered cloak, drew the attention of cutpurses and merchant-ship recruiters. But there was something else: an absence. In the rest of the world, she felt the presence of the Lady as a constant whisper. Here, in this city built on greed and unrestrained commerce, that whisper was drowned out by the clinking of gold Guilders. It was a city without gods, where the only true temple was the Stock Exchange.
She found lodging in an inn called "The Blind Seagull," a lopsided three-story structure leaning precariously over a minor canal. The stablehand demanded an exorbitant price for Duraz's oats, but Geneviève paid without blinking. She needed her companion safe and well-fed. Her room was little more than a closet with a straw bed that smelled omouldld, but it had a sturdy door. She sat on the edge of the bed, exhausted. She did not remove harmourmor. Not in this place. She looked at her hands; they were dirty, her nails black. Beneath the grime, her skin was perfect, healed by magic, but she felt contaminated. "Marienburg," she murmured in the dark. "How do you hide a ship in a haystack of ships?"
She went down to the common room an hour later. It was time to work. The tavern was full of sailors of every race. There were Kislevites drinking vodka, Tileans talking with their hands, and a group of Norscans—mercenaries, not raiders, at least for tonight—laughing raucously. Geneviève ordered a dark ale and sat in a corner, listening. She asked no direct questions; asking about a specific ship drew suspicion. Instead, she listened to the complaints. Sailors love to complain: about the weather, the captain, the cargo, the pay.
After two hours of boredom and secondhand smoke, she caught something. At the next table, two dockworkers with arms as thick as hams were discussing in low tones. "...I'm telling you, it's not normal," the first said, a man with a scar splitting his lip. "They're paying triple for the night shift at the Fog Pier. But they won't let us touch the crates. They use their own men."
"And so?" the other replied. "Gold is gold, Klaus. Who cares if they're loading silk or opium?"
"It wasn't silk. A crate fell. It cracked open." The first man looked around, lowering his voice even further. Geneviève sharpened her supernatural hearing. "There was ice inside. And beneath the ice... flesh. But not from a cow. It was grey. And it had tattoos."
Geneviève felt a shiver run down her spine. Found it. She stood up, leaving her ale untouched, and stepped out into the damp night. The Fog Pier. The name was appropriate. She headed toward the restricted port area, a maze of private warehouses guarded by private mercenaries.
As she walked along a narrow alley between two high red-brick warehouses, she heard the unmistakable sound of a blade drawn from a scabbard. She stopped. "Are you lost, fair lady?"
Three figures emerged from the shadows in front of her. Two others closed the path behind her. They were "Channel Rats," the local criminal scum. Filthy, desperate, and armed with rusted knives and iron-tipped clubs. The leader, a toothless man in a coat that had been elegant ten years ago, smiled at her. They had seen her heavy purse when she paid at the inn. News travelled fast.
Geneviève sighed. The steam of her breath mingled with the fog. "It's not the night for this," she said, her voice calm and deep. "Go away. Go back to your mothers."
The leader laughed. "Hear that? The giant is afraid. Give us the silver,r and maybe we'll leave you with only a few bruises."
One of the bandits behind her grew impatient and lunged forward, trying to strike her head with a lead pipe. Geneviève did not use her sword. She did not use the light. She simply shifted her body weight. The pipe struck her Gromril spaulder hidden beneath her cloak. CLANG. The bandit screamed, dropping the weapon; the recoil had vibrated all the way to his shoulder. Geneviève turned with a sharp, calculated elbow strike. She hit the man's nose. The sound of bone breaking was as dry as a snapped branch. The man fell to the ground, gurgling blood.
The others hesitated. This was no frightened merchant. "He's a soldier!" one shouted. "There's only one of him!" the leader shot back. "Get him!"
Geneviève grabbed the second aggressor by his scruff and belt, lifting him off the ground as if he were a child. She hurled him into the two coming from the front. They fell in a tangle of limbs and curses in the alley mud. The leader, left standing alone, drew a second knife, backing away. His eyes flickered from his fallen comrade to Geneviève's motionless figure. Geneviève took a step forward. The metal of her boots rang out on the wet cobblestones. "I said," she repeated, "it is not the night for this."
The leader fled. The others, moaning, crawled away into the darkness, leaving trails of blood on the stone. Geneviève stood alone. Her heart did not beat any faster. There was no adrenaline. Only an infinite weariness. Once, she would have felt pity for those lost souls. Now, she felt only annoyance at the interruption. Marienburg was already getting under her skin, hardening her spirit.
She adjusted her cloak and resumed walking toward the harbour. The Fog Pier closed, and with it, the Lady of the Sea. She had to see that cargo. She had to understand if Vane had told the truth or if it was just the beginning of something much greater. In the dark, her ring with King Louen's lion pressed against her finger—a cold reminder of who she truly was beneath the rags. A knight. Though here, among the rats, she felt more like an executioner.
Chapter 74: The Fog Pier and the Scent of Salt
The Fog Pier was an artificial island that seemed to float upon a sea of filthy milk. Connected to the mainland by a single drawbridge guarded by mercenarigrey-bluey-blue livery, it was a private fortress of the Van Haagen Trading House. Geneviève watched from the opposite bank, crouched behind a pile of barrels that reeked of salted herring. The fog was her only ally, diffusing the lantern light into a milky halo that rendered the world indistinct and spectral.
The Lady of the Sea was there, moored like a predator at rest. She was no blunt river barge; she was a deep-sea galleon, dark and aggressively lined, built to cut through the waves of the Great Ocean and defy its storms. Her sails were furled, but the deck teemed with activity. Geneviève saw long, narrow crates—disturbingly similar to coffins—being loaded into the hold via silent, well-oiled winches. The guards were no street scum. They moved with military discipline, their Dwarven-made repeating crossbows ready for use. Professionals are paid not to ask questions and to kill the curious.
Geneviève had to get on board. The deck was a tactical suicide. That left only the water. She looked at the black, oily surface of the harbour. Dead fish with bloated bellies floated amidst debris and oil slicks. She sighed, stifling a shiver. The noble life of a hero, she thought with bitter irony. She hid her cloak and heavy boots among the barrels. The Gromril armour was the real problem: thirty kilos of Dwarven metal that would drag her to the bottom like an anchor. But she could not remove it. Without that protection, in the midst of enemies, she was dead.
She began to breathe slowly, deeply. It wasn't magic; it was discipline. She forced her heart rate to slow, oxygenating her blood, preparing for the agony of the cold. She slipped into the freezing, disgusting water without making a splash.
Swimming in a full plate was torture. Every stroke was a struggle against the gravity that wanted to swallow her into the mud of the seabed. She dragged herself beneath the surface, gripping the anchor chain of a nearby ship, pulling herself forward by the strength of desperation, ignoring the taste of sewage and salt that entered her mouth.
She reached the side of the Lady of the Sea. It was a wall of slippery wood fifteen feet high, encrusted with algae and barnacles. Geneviève emerged just enough to take air, invisible in the shadow of the hull. The mooring lines were too exposed to the sentries. That left the rudder.
She climbed the rudder blade, her wet gloves slipping on the green slime. The muscles in her arms burned; the armour weighed double, soaked in water. She ascended inch by inch until she reached the stern gallery. The windows were dark. With a final superhuman effort, she hoisted herself onto the decorated ledge. She wedged the tip of her dagger into the window's crevice. The wood, swollen from the humidity, groaned and gave way. She rolled onto the floor, leaving a pool of fetid water on the Persian rug.
She was in the Captain's cabin. Luxury and decadence. Polished mahogany, red velvet, nautical charts scattered across a table. But there was no one there. The Captain had to be on deck. Geneviève stood with effort, dripping. She had to move fast. She approached the desk and began to leaf through the ledgers. Textiles, spices, timber... All covers. Then, in a locked drawer, she found a small book bound in black leather. She popped the lock with thumb pressure.
She opened it. The pages were filled with coordinates and notes written in a sharp, nervous hand. Special delivery: Teeth Bay, Norsca. Client: Jarl Hrothgar. Cargo: 50 Units "Type A" (Muscle grafts). 20 Units "Type B" (Enhanced sensory organs). Payment: Kurgan Gold and two seer slaves.
Geneviève felt bile rise in her throat. Vane had not lied. They were selling pieces of mutants and monsters to the Northmen to create enhanced berserkers. A weapons trade made of flesh. But the last page chilled her more than the harbour water. New priority order. Destination: Altdorf. Recipient: "TheGreyy Circle." Goods requested: Blood of a Saint.
She snapped the diary shut. Altdorf. The capital of the Empire. The heart of the Sigmarite cult. Someone in Altdorf wanted the blood of a holy being. She heard heavy footsteps approaching the door. Geneviève looked around. There was no time to go out the window. She flattened herself against the wall, in the heavy shadow behind a velvet curtain, her hand on the hilt of the common sword she had brought along.
The door opened. A massive, bald man in a long navy-blue military coat entered. Captain Van der Decken. And he was not alone. Behind him was a hooded figure, tall, carrying a scent Geneviève knew all too well. Ozone, sulfur, and that electrical static that precedes lightning. A Sorcerer. And not a hedge-wizard.
"Are you certain the route is secure, Captain?" the sorcerer asked in a sibilant voice that seemed to grate against the nerves.
"My routes are always secure, Magister," the captain replied, pouring himself a brandy with nonchalance. "Unless you brought rats on board."
The sorcerer sniffed the air. He froze. He slowly turned his hooded head toward the curtain where Geneviève hid. "No rats," the sorcerer said, and his hands began to glow with a sickly violet light that made the flowers in a nearby vase wither. "But there is a wet dog."
Geneviève understood that the time for silence was over.