Bloodborn by Nathan Long Read Free Book Online Page A

distance of more than three hundred miles, and Ulrika saw none of it!
    Things may have been happening outside – she heard fellow travellers passing them all the time, and often the distant howling of wolves and stranger cries, but in the coach, with the louvres closed during the day, she had seen nothing, and by night there had been nothing to look at but snow and black trees. In the stateroom of the riverboat there were no windows at all, only four panelled walls. On more than one occasion, Ulrika had the strange fantasy that they were going around and around in circles and would emerge from their room at the same place they left from. There was certainly nothing to tell her otherwise.
    How could one travel like this? Trapped in boxes with no wind on one’s face, and no idea of what was going on in the world outside the walls. She had grown up riding across the vastness of the northern oblast, and had been a traveller ever since. She liked seeing the scenery change, and the passing of the clouds. She liked the smells of earth and air and water. She liked the rain and the snow. To hide from them like this seemed almost a blasphemy.
    It was, therefore, a great relief when they at last berthed at the docks of Nuln, and stepped down onto the warped grey wood of the wharf just as the sun vanished behind the belching black smokestacks that rose from the Imperial forges to the south of the river.
    Ulrika knew Nuln’s reputation as the iron heart of the Empire, and she had had many reasons to thank its cannon makers and forge tenders in the past, when the magnificent field pieces and long guns they made had helped defend the cities of Praag and Kislev, and even her own father’s estates, but she had never visited the city before, and as she waited with Gabriella on the quayside while Rodrik hired a wagon and a coach – another coach! – to carry them to their final destination, her first impressions were that it was dark, ugly and sooty, and smelled much too strongly of hot iron, burning coal and unwashed peasants. Even the snow was black! Still, it was not the inside of a stateroom, and therefore she welcomed it, turning her face to the pungent wet breeze that licked up off the wide river and looking with delight at the crowds of stevedores, sailors and fishwives who moved to and fro along the wharf. She had not realised how strongly she missed the hustle and bustle of human life.
    When Rodrik returned with the hired coach and wagon and they started through the city, Ulrika couldn’t stop herself from opening the window and continuing to drink in the passing parade. The smell of living blood was everywhere. The throb of a thousand pulses rang like a symphony in her ears. Everywhere she looked there was meat on the hoof – soldiers and priests and lawyers, butchers and drivers and shopkeeps, all going about their business wrapped in their scarves and cloaks, utterly unaware of the predators that travelled through their midst.
    Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. The sheep might not sense her looking at them, or know Gabriella for what she was at a glance, but Ulrika could smell fear in the air along with the rest of the overwhelming bouquet of scents, and the broadsheet sellers were crying its name.
    ‘Vampire seen in the Halbinsel!’ cried one, holding aloft a gazette with a garish woodcut of a thing with foot-long fangs printed on it.
    ‘Daughter of councillor tested with garlic!’ called another. ‘A pfennig to know the story!’
    ‘Sisters of Shallya held in the Iron Tower!’ bellowed a third. ‘Disappearances in Shantytown! Whole family goes missing!’
    A woman at a makeshift stall was selling high leather collars that rose all the way to the ears. ‘Don’t fear the night, lords and ladies! Protect yourself with a witch hunter’s collar!’
    A woman beside the first hawked silver hammer pendants on ribbon chokers. ‘Repel the fiends with the symbol of Sigmar’s power and grace!’
    The people who moved