Free Bloodforged by Nathan Long Page B

within sight of the towers of Praag, far in the distance across the flat plains of the central oblast. Travel through them had been even more difficult than through the forests of the Empire, because towns were even sparser, and cover in an almost treeless land even harder to find.
    She’d lost the two horses just after Kislev, when she’d been caught feeding and had had to flee without going back to where she’d hitched them. Since then, she had made her way by following a supply caravan – a mile-long procession that was bringing timber, grain, guns and cavalry remounts to Praag to support the remains of the Ice Queen’s army there, as well as food and arms for the siege that was sure to come when the hordes returned in the spring.
    The caravan moved slowly enough that Ulrika could make up at night whatever distance it had covered during the day, and it was always surrounded by ne’er-do-wells and villains – men who attempted to steal the supplies, cheat the soldiers who guarded them, or lure away their camp followers for evil purposes, so she had a steady supply of predators to prey upon no matter where they were. She did her best to pick men of such evil and unreliable reputations that no one would care or wonder if they went missing, but even so, by the end of the first week the camps were whispering about a monster that followed them, and dragged away men in the night.
    She didn’t feed every night – that would have been too dangerous – and to her pleasant surprise, she found she no longer needed to. Where once missing blood for even a single day had been agony, now she found she could go sometimes as much as three days before the pangs became unbearable. She didn’t like to leave it too long, however, for it wouldn’t do to be weak and desperate if something went wrong, or if she became separated from the caravan, so she tried to feed every third night and never from the same campfire twice in a row.
    As the caravan had got closer to Praag, Ulrika had begun to see reminders of the Chaos invasion of the previous year – burnt towns, abandoned farms, mounds of earth covering hastily dug mass graves, and gaunt peasants whose fields and stores had been raided twice, once by the invaders when they came south, and a second time by the Ice Queen’s armies when they had arrived to push the hordes north again.
    She also saw signs that some marauders had not retreated. Columns of Gospodar winged lancers often thundered past, their eagle-wing banners snapping in the wind, and sometimes with barbaric severed heads impaled on their lance tips. Rumour flitted around the campfires that this or that caravan had been raided by crazed northerners who came howling out of the night and vanished again with captives and plunder, none knew to where. Ulrika saw a farm burning on the horizon one night, and passed through the smouldering ruins of a little town the next, its citizens butchered and violated in unspeakable ways. She snarled with patriotic loathing at each atrocity. Her homeland had been defiled, and worse was yet to come. She almost relished the return of the hordes in the spring. It would give her opportunity for vengeance.
    Finally, that morning, just before she had bedded down in the root cellar of a gutted farmhouse, she had seen the distant onion-domed towers of Praag glittering in the first pink rays of the rising sun, and now that it was evening there was only one last march to go. She would be in the city before daylight, and then… and then…?
    Her spine tingled with fear and excitement. In only a few hours she might be seeing Felix and Max and Gotrek again. Should she do it? Could she? Could she not? And what would be the aftermath? She might be dead the next instant, killed by the Slayer’s dread axe. Worse, she might be shunned. They might turn from her in loathing. Perhaps that was better. She would know where she stood. And if Felix or Max welcomed her with open arms, could she control herself?