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Chapter 28 - The Cargo That Whispered

The Lady of the River did not look like a ship; she looked like a carcass. The flat-bottomed merchant barge had run aground deep in a bank of twisted roots and black mud, tilted on its side like a beached whale. The sails were in tatters, not from the wind, but as if someone—or something—had torn them from the inside.

Geneviève, Alonzo, and The Silent One left their horses on the muddy bank, where tall reeds hid the view but not the smell of decomposition. They boarded using a rotten wooden gangplank that creaked dangerously under the weight of Geneviève's dwarf armor.

The deck was deserted. But not empty. There were drag marks. Scratch marks on the wood. And, scattered everywhere, salt. Circles of coarse salt broken by frantic boot prints.

"Hola?" called Alonzo, hand on his rapier, voice less cocky than usual. "We are here on behalf of Director Van Haagen!"

No answer. Only the sound of water lapping against the hull and the buzzing of flies. Geneviève felt a pressure on her temples. It wasn't a headache; it was the proximity of Evil. "In the hold," she croaked, pointing to the hatch barred from the outside with planks nailed haphazardly.

Geneviève tore the planks away with the brute force of her gauntlets. She opened the hatch. The smell that wafted out wasn't just sweat and fear; it was the metallic smell of ozone and old meat. They descended.

In the farthest corner of the hold, behind a barricade made of broken wine barrels, were three men. They were emaciated, eyes wide and bloodshot, skin grey. The Captain, a man with a beard full of crumbs and tremors, aimed an unloaded crossbow at them. "Back!" he yelled, voice broken by weeping. "We won't open it! You can't force us!"

"Calm down, Captain," said Alonzo, raising open hands. "No one wants to hurt you. We just want the cargo."

At hearing the word "cargo," one of the sailors began to scream, curling into a ball. "It scratches! It scratches from inside! It wants out!"

Geneviève advanced, ignoring the crossbow. Her presence, a wall of black metal and unnatural calm, seemed to absorb the panic in the room. "Where is it?" she asked.

The Captain pointed with a shaking hand to the center of the hold. There, isolated in a circle of salt and sacred symbols of Sigmar and Manann drawn in chalk, was the Crate. It was large, reinforced with bands of lead and black iron. Carved on the surface were runes Geneviève recognized vaguely: they were not dwarven, they were human, but corrupted. Containment runes used by witch hunters, but warped.

And she heard it. A light sound. Scratch. Scratch. Like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard, coming from inside the lead box.

Geneviève approached. Her medallion of the Lady, hidden under her armor, grew hot against her skin. Detect Evil. It was not a simple magic item. That crate contained a malignant essence so concentrated it felt like a black hole in the fabric of reality. Mordheim. The City of the Damned. Whatever was inside was infused with pure Warpstone or possessed by a demon.

"We cannot take this to Marienburg," said Geneviève. Her gravel voice was as final as a sentence.

Alonzo blinked. "What? Gilles, my friend, five hundred crowns! Van Haagen..."

"Van Haagen is a madman or an idiot," growled Geneviève, turning to the Estalian. "If we bring this thing into a city of a hundred thousand souls, we will unleash a plague or worse. Do you hear that noise? It's not an animal. It's hunger."

She turned to the Captain. "Do you have lamp oil?"

The Captain nodded frantically. "Whole barrels."

"We will burn the ship," decided Geneviève. "With the crate inside. Fire purifies."

"No."

The word was spoken with a voice they had never heard. Melodious, ancient, arrogant. The Silent One. The hooded observer had come down the stairs. He positioned himself between Geneviève and the crate.

"Van Haagen paid for a delivery," said The Silent One. "And the delivery will be made."

Geneviève put her hand on the hilt of her sword. "Van Haagen doesn't know what's in here."

"Van Haagen," laughed The Silent One, a cold, crystalline laugh, "does what I tell him. One look, a whisper on a moonlit night, and that fat merchant would have sold me his mother to please me. The mind of mortals is so... malleable."

Alonzo paled, taking a step back. "Gilles... what is he talking about? Who is this?"

The Silent One raised his hands to the white porcelain mask. With a slow, theatrical gesture, he removed it. Beneath was not the anonymous face of an assassin. There was a face of painful and terrible beauty. Skin white as marble, eyes black as tar pits glowing with an internal red light, slightly elongated canines pressing on the lower lip. His hair was black and long, falling over his shoulders with an elegance belonging to another era.

Geneviève felt her blood freeze. She knew those features. That noble arrogance corrupted by eternal hunger. That archaic accent belonging to the forgotten courts of her homeland. It wasn't a generic monster. It was a Knight of Mousillon. The cursed city of Bretonnia, the land of vampires.

"My name is Valentin de l'Ombre," said the vampire, throwing the porcelain mask into the mud of the hold. "And that crate contains the soil of my ancestral crypt, recovered from the ruins. I need it to establish my dominion in Marienburg."

He looked at Geneviève with contempt, his red eyes piercing the armor. "Did you really believe a human merchant had the authority to send you here? I sent you here. Because I needed strong arms to move lead during the day." He smiled, and the hold seemed to get ten degrees colder. "Now the sun has set. And your contract has... expired."

Alonzo drew his rapier, but his hand was visibly trembling. "Vampire..." he whispered.

Geneviève did not tremble. She had left Bretonnia to escape her past. She had fought rats, orcs, and demons. But fate has a cruel sense of irony. The final enemy was not a foreigner. It was the nightmare of her own homeland that had followed her to the end of the world.

Geneviève drew her two-handed sword. The blade immediately ignited with a furious white light, reacting to the presence of the supreme undead. "Mousillon fell centuries ago," croaked Geneviève, her gravel voice full of hate. "And you will fall tonight."

Valentin hissed at the sight of the holy light, covering his eyes for an instant. Then he drew from his tunic not a dagger, but a longsword with a thin, black blade. "Let's see if your blood is as sweet as your faith, tin can."

The hold became an arena. Paladin versus Vampire. And this time, there were no dwarves covering her back.

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