Bloodforged by Nathan Long Page B

Gospodar lancers with drooping moustaches stood in one corner, toasting each others’ girls with kvas. Squat Ungol tribesmen hunched around a table, drinking fermented mares’ milk and murmuring to each other. Men in uniforms from Kislev, the Empire and beyond crowded the long bar. Ulrika saw Tilean pikemen, crossbow men from the Reikland and Hochland long gunners, all talking to each other at the top of their voices.
    ‘Another one gone, I hear,’ said a mercenary with an Erengrad accent as Ulrika eased past him. ‘That little beggar gal who sang so sweet down by the bridge. Hasn’t shown up at her patch for three days now.’
    ‘That’s the fifth I heard of this week,’ said a man who might have been a winged lancer once. ‘Too bad. I liked her. Gave her a coin for luck every time I passed. What d’ye suppose is happening to ’em?’
    ‘Who cares?’ said a third companion, a dour-looking swordsman in Praag’s colours. ‘Good riddance, I say. Filthy refugees spreading disease and stealing our food. Why don’t they go back where they came from?’
    ‘Because it isn’t there any more, y’clot,’ said the ex-lancer.
    A loud cheer drowned out his friend’s reply, and a deep voice bellowed. ‘Harder! Strike harder!’
    Ulrika turned towards the voice and saw, in a room at the back, a crowd of hard-faced mercenaries surrounding a short broad figure who sat on a bench and gripped the table before him, while a man with a hammer stood behind him, raising it over his head. There were too many men in the way for Ulrika to see exactly what happened next, but she saw the hammer swing down at the skull of the short figure as another cheer went up.
    ‘Good!’ cried the deep voice. ‘Once more to set it!’
    Ulrika started across the taproom, alarmed. What was going on? As she walked up the three steps to the back room, the man with the hammer stepped back and raised it one more time, and she got a clear view at last of the figure sitting on the bench. It was Snorri Nosebiter, Gotrek and Felix’s ugly Slayer companion, and he was having a nail pounded into his head.
    Ulrika stared at the sight. She knew it was not the first time Snorri had had nails pounded into his head. A row of three rusty spikes had jutted from his skull in lieu of the traditional Slayer’s crest since before she had first met him, and he’d still had them the last time she saw him, when he and Gotrek, Max and Felix had left her in the care of Countess Gabriella, in the ruins of Castle Drakenhof. Now it seemed he was adding to his collection. Four lesser nails, some bent, had been interspersed among the spikes, and he was in the process of adding a fifth.
    He sat hunched, naked to the waist, his massive arms braced on the table before him, while a trickle of blood welled from the base of the new nail to run down between his bushy black eyebrows and drip off the end of his bulbous, oft-broken nose. A puddle of red was spreading between the mugs and plates on the table. Neither Gotrek, Felix nor Max was among the witnesses to this act of decoration.
    The man with the hammer struck again, and the new nail sank another quarter of an inch into Snorri’s skull as the men around him cheered and raised their fists and mugs.
    ‘That’s it!’ called the hammerer. ‘It’s set! Your crown is complete, Slayer!’
    ‘Snorri will be the judge of that,’ said Snorri, and reached up to grip the nail. Ulrika winced as he tugged experimentally at it, but he seemed to feel no pain. He nodded, satisfied.
    ‘Good!’ he said. ‘Now Snorri needs a drink!’
    ‘Then Snorri better go get a drink,’ said a big man with a cheerful, red face and a kerchief around his neck. ‘For ’tis his round.’
    Snorri wiped the blood from his brow with the back of his hand, then frowned. ‘Wasn’t it Snorri’s round last time?’
    ‘Aye,’ said the man, who looked to be the leader of the others. ‘But ye wagered it would take four strikes to pound that nail