by Warhammer
As Felix watched a horse whinnied with terror. The rider, gaudily caparisoned in red and gold, was tipped from the saddle. A massive beastman clutching a standard depicting a bloated hungry moon face, tipped with a human skull, strode forward and drove the iron-shod base of the banner into the man’s chest with a sickening, squelching sound. The man gurgled as he died.
The beastmen turned, alerted by the sound of hooves crashing through snow. Ivan bellowed orders to his men and twenty lances dropped into the ready position. The Kislevite horse thundered forward and crashed into the unprepared ranks of the beastmen. They went down screaming, impaled on lances, trampled by iron-shod hoofs. Gotrek and Snorri were right behind, weapons ready, irresistible as thunderbolts. Max chanted a spell and the clearing became bright as day.
A glowing solar disk appeared over the wizard’s head and then, at a word from its creator, bolts of searing light erupted forth, burning the fur from the beastmen and filling the air with the smell of charred flesh.
Felix barely had time to rip his sword from the scabbard and climb down from the sledge before it was over. The savage beastmen, unprepared for such an onslaught, broke and ran for the woods. Most of them did not make it. They were overrun by the horsemen or slain by Max’s mystical bolts. Gotrek and Snorri finished off the wounded, looking utterly disgruntled.
‘Hardly a proper fight,’ said Gotrek.
‘Beastmen are not what they used to be when Snorri was a lad,’ said Snorri. ‘They would have put up a bit of a fight then.’
Felix was glad they had not. Slowed by his illness, and worn out by the chill, he wondered if he would have survived a battle with a beastman. Best to push such thoughts aside. He strode over to the carriage the knights had fought so hard to defend. Even as he did so, one of them, a huge man with a mane of golden hair, strode between him and the vehicle. He raised his blade, obviously intending that Felix come no closer. Felix shrugged and stopped.
‘We mean you no harm,’ he said. Gotrek and Snorri clumped over to stand beside Felix. They did not look quite as unthreatening as Felix would have wished. They were obviously still keen for a fight, and perhaps this knight would give them one. He certainly looked as if he were considering it. Felix thought he’d better say something before things got out of hand. ‘In Sigmar’s name, put your weapon down. We just saved your lives.’
The four surviving knights had gathered around the gold-haired man. From the way they looked to him for their cue, Felix gathered that he was their leader.
‘We were doing fine by ourselves,’ he said eventually. His voice was rich and commanding and filled with utter self-assurance. He seemed to believe every word he said.
Just what I need, thought Felix, another aristocratic idiot. There was something odd about the man’s accent, a thickness that was not quite Imperial and not quite Kislevite. A stress that reminded him of the way characters spoke in old books.
‘The way your men threw themselves on the beastmen’s spears was all part of your strategy then, was it?’ Gotrek asked sarcastically. ‘A great plan.’
Felix thought the knight was going to raise his sword to Gotrek. He was tempted to let him. If this idiot wanted to throw away his life fighting the Slayer why should he interfere, he thought uncharitably? He wiped his nose on a fold of his cloak and waited.
‘What is going on here, Rodrik?’ asked a woman’s voice from within the coach. ‘Why aren’t you thanking these kind strangers for their aid against those fiends?’
‘My lady, their manner is insolent and lacking in true courtliness. You should not sully your chaste ears listening to their words.’
Gotrek and Felix exchanged glances. If Felix had not known better he would have guessed the Slayer was amused. ‘I think it is you who are lacking in knightly graces, Rodrik. A truly chivalrous man would express gratitude under these circumstances, not look for excuses.’
The knight looked crestfallen and when his gaze returned to the Slayers, he executed a perfect courtly bow.
‘I apologise for my manners,’ he said. ‘My only excuse is that I let my concern for the safety of a fair lady overcome me. I beg your pardon.’
Gotrek spat on the ground at his feet. He was not one to accept an apology graciously. To his credit, Rodrik did not even blink. Max limped over. He looked even more tired and drained than usual. Working his magic on the beastmen must have cost him dearly.
‘It is unusual for people to be abroad in weather like this, with the land so dangerous,’ he said. The knight looked at him suspiciously. Felix had been around the wizard for so long he had forgotten how much many ordinary people disliked sorcerers.
‘I could say the same about you,’ Rodrik said. There was more intelligence behind the answer than Felix would have given him credit for. Perhaps he was not as stupid as he looked.
‘We have a mission,’ Max said suavely, although a pained look passed across his face. ‘A quest, you might almost say.’
It was a well-considered response. Felix could see that Rodrik was intrigued. Quests were the sort of things knights understood, particularly ones like Rodrik who appeared to think he was living in some courtly romance. Felix had heard that there were still some like him, but he would never have believed it until now. He had thought only Bretonnians went in for that sort of thing.
‘And what might that be?’
‘A fair young lady of our acquaintance has been kidnapped by an evil sorcerer. We intend to rescue her or avenge her.’ The words should have sounded ludicrous but the way Max said them invested every word with weight and seriousness. Felix could tell Rodrik was impressed.
The curtains of the coach window were drawn back and a pale, beautiful face cowled in black and partially obscured by a thin mesh of veil looked out at them. ‘If it would not delay you too long in your quest, perhaps we could offer you shelter for the night. There is a keep not too far from here where we are expected. The least we can offer you after your efforts on our behalf is a hot fire and warm spiced wine.’
Not even the Slayers seemed ready to object to that.
Rodrik and his men rode ahead of the coach. Ivan Petrovich’s scouts rode ahead of them. The sledges brought up the rear.
‘I notice they did not tell us what they were about,’ said Felix.
‘Doubtless we will find out soon enough, manling,’ said the Slayer.
‘It’s like a haunted castle in a Detlef Sierck melodrama,’ murmured Felix. The Slayer looked at him. Felix wondered if he knew who the playwright was. ‘I don’t like it.’
The keep clutched the top of the hill on which it stood, like a hawk on a perch. There was something predatory about it. It made Felix think of robber barons, bandits and other things less pleasant from old stories. The scene was somehow ominously familiar. He told himself not to let his imagination run wild. He was sick, it was cold, and any place in this icy land would look sinister. The place looked strong; the walls thick. The turrets of the inner bailey looked built to resist a siege, and yet there was something about it that suggested other things. Felix thought of torture chambers, ghosts with clanking chains and wicked old barons threatening heroines with a fate worse than death.
‘It’s a castle, manling, and a strong one. Some good stonework there, for human work that is.’ He might have guessed the dwarf would see things in the most prosaic terms possible. Not a terribly imaginative people, Felix thought, though at this moment it was a trait he wished he shared. There was something about this place that set his nerves on edge.
‘It makes me nervous,’ Felix said. ‘There’s something about the style of the building that…’
Even as he said the words, it came to him. He remembered where he had seen the likeness of this keep before. It had been in a book of horror tales he had read as a boy, tales set in the land of Sylvania. This place was an almost exact replica of one of the keeps in the book. It might have been the original model for the picture. He hoped that it was only the memory that made it seem so sinister.
> The town beneath the castle was mostly ruined. The destruction was not recent, Felix could see. Most of the buildings had tumbled down decades ago. The city looked as if it had been built for a population of five thousand and now held only a tenth of that number. Even in the city centre, on the main thoroughfare leading to the castle only about one in every three houses appeared occupied and those seemed to be half rubble. The people were surlier and more brutish than any Felix had ever encountered. They wandered through the near-deserted streets listlessly, with no sense of purpose. The air stank of rot and human excrement.
And this was Waldenhof, a large and prosperous town, by local standards. Felix decided he would not like to live here.
The road led up the steep hillside towards the grinning gatehouse. Even as they approached the entrance, the gateway reminded Felix of the mouth of a great beast, and the portcullis of its fangs. A shiver ran down his spine.
Fever, Felix told himself, but did not quite believe it.
‘Welcome to Waldenschlosse,’ said the man who waited for them in the courtyard. He was a tall florid aristocrat, garbed in a slightly antiquated style. The padding of his tunic’s shoulders and codpiece had not been fashionable in the Empire for half a century. Felix had only seen its like in old portraits. The others around him were garbed in a similar fashion. Somehow it suited their slightly antiquated manner of speaking. ‘We thank you for the service you have rendered my sister-in-law, the Countess Gabriella, and my son Rodrik. It seems that without your intercession we would not have the pleasure of greeting her now. Nothing we could do can express our gratitude for your kindness, but we will do our poor best.’
‘I am Rudgar, Count of Waldenhof, and you are my most honoured guests. I hope before you leave that you will discover the true meaning of Sylvanian hospitality.’
Felix’s mind reeled a little with shock. They had come further than he had thought, or, indeed, would have wished, if they had crossed the borders of the ill-famed province of Sylvania. It was not a place he had ever harboured a strong desire to visit, not even in high summer, and without the beastmen filling the woods. It was a place of very evil reputation.
More introductions followed, but Felix’s head still spun with the fever and he remembered none of them. He did recall noticing that the Countess Gabriella was looking at him, and, despite her widow’s veil he could see that she was a very beautiful woman.
‘Your health,’ said Count Rudgar, raising his glass. Sweat glistened on his bald pate. The tips of his long moustaches drooped into his wine. He tipped his glass back and downed it all in one long swallow. A silent servant glided forward to refill it almost automatically.
Felix had to admit that he felt better now after a few hours sitting at the dining table in the great hall, near a warm fire, his stomach filled with beef and roast potatoes and capon and gravy. Half a bottle of the count’s fine wine had done wonders too, and left him feeling a little better disposed to his surroundings as well. He could see that most of the others did not quite feel the same way.
Only Gotrek glared around suspiciously with his one good eye, as if expecting armed enemies to attack him at any second. Nothing unusual about that. He normally looked that way, but it was an unwelcome reminder to Felix that perhaps he should keep his guard up as well. Max was not drinking, and although the sorcerer chatted amiably enough with the Sylvanian nobles Felix could tell he was not entirely at his ease either. He saw Felix looking at him and nodded as if to say that he, too, shared his companion’s suspicions of the place.
The Kislevite horse-soldiers and Snorri Nosebiter dug in with a will however, throwing back food and wine as if this was their last chance at it. Come to think of it, it might be. Ivan Petrovich shared the table with them. His men had another table down the great hall with the off-duty castle soldiers and the other troops.
Felix was surprised to find that they and the countess’s party were not the only guests. It seemed many Sylvanian nobles were visiting Waldenschlosse, though why they should choose to do this in the middle of winter eluded him. He had read too many stories and seen too many plays in which terrible things happened at feasts in Sylvanian castles for his own comfort. Even through the pleasant warmth of the wine in his belly, part of him half expected to hear an order given that would have hidden warriors fall on the guests in an orgy of bloodshed. Such things were all too common in the tales.
He looked around trying to put faces to names once more. This time he was sure he had got things right. The frail old man on his right, skeletally lean and with a full head of pure white hair was Petr, Count of Swartzhafen. He seemed pleasant enough, mild-mannered and polite, but there was something about his eyes, a haunted quality that made Felix think that here was a man who had seen things that few mortals had. Facing him across the table was a tall man in his prime. Kristof, Baron of Leicheburg, had pure black hair and an arrogant hawk-like face dominated by blazing black eyes. To his right sat Johan Richter, a good-looking young man who shared something of the Count of Swartzhafen’s haunted air. From what Felix had gathered, all of them were important noblemen in this part of the world, and reading between the lines, all of them were scared. All of the assembled company except Gotrek raised their glasses to the toast. Felix felt as if eyes were on him, and looking to his left saw the Countess Gabriella was looking at him appraisingly, her blue eyes startlingly clear above the veil.
‘And to the health of our most unexpected and most welcome guests,’ said Rudgar. ‘They have my gratitude for saving the life of my son and my esteemed sister-in-law.’
Rodrik looked a little embarrassed by this, but kept his mouth shut. Doubtless he did not want any more lectures about gratitude from his father or the countess. Murmurs from around the table agreed with the count’s words. Whatever else you said about the Sylvanian nobility, Felix thought, they were certainly polite, in an old-fashioned courtly sort of way.
‘Now that we have eaten I suggest we get down to business,’ said Baron Leicheburg. His voice was deep and resonant, the sort of voice that could fill a theatre or a room, or rise effortlessly over a battlefield. Felix envied him it. ‘I have not come all this way through the worst winter in two hundred years merely to sip your wine, old friend, no matter how fine a cellar you keep.’
The count inclined his head graciously at the compliment and spoke at once.
‘Aye, there is the rub. It is the worst winter in two centuries and not just from the snow. Wolves multiply in the forests, beastmen clog the Emperor’s highway, and other things, worse things are stirring once more.’
Felix was not sure he liked the tone of the count’s voice. It made the hackles on the back of his neck rise. Count Swartzhafen raised his fist to his mouth and gave a dry, desiccated cough. ‘You are saying the ancient curse has returned to trouble us once more?’
Felix glanced over at Gotrek. The Slayer had sat up like a hound that scents prey straining at a leash. Doubtless he thought there was work here for him. Great, thought Felix, as if getting Ulrika from the clutches of a dark sorcerer was not bad enough, now they were going to get themselves mixed up with some ancient evil. Just what he needed.
‘Can you doubt it?’ said Richter. He leaned forward and placed his goblet carefully on the table but his eyes blazed with a near insane intensity. Felix was not sure he wanted to know what could put a look like that in a man’s eyes. ‘The signs are all there. A merchant saw witch lights burning on the Dark Moor two weeks ago. Black coaches have been sighted on the Old Road to the Red Abbey. Something had been disturbing the graves at the cemetery in Essen. On my way here I entered the crypt at Mikalsdorf, and found it empty. Grave robbers had been at work there.’
‘That does not sound good,’ said Count Swartzhafen mildly. Mirthless laughter from the rest of the nobles greeted this pronouncement, which also caused the men-at-arms to fall silent at the other table for a moment and glance at their masters. Only for a moment though, and then conversation was resumed.
Baron Leicheb
urg glanced at them all and continued. ‘Maidens have started to vanish again in the Grim Wood, and the peasants have started hanging bundles of witchbane and bloodroot over their doors. Normally I would have thought nothing of it. The winter has been so bad, and the Chaos tainted so numerous, this would be reason enough for their precautions, but black-garbed men with pale faces have been seen too.’
‘I don’t think there can be any doubts,’ said Rudgar. ‘The undying ones have returned.’
Something in the man’s tone made Felix shiver. ‘The undying ones?’ he asked. He guessed that he already knew, but he wanted to be sure.
‘The followers of von Carstein, the drinkers of blood,’ said Johan turning his blazing gaze upon them.
‘Vampires,’ said Max Schreiber. ‘You are talking about vampires.’
Rudgar gave him a bitter smile, a mere flashing of teeth with no mirth in it. ‘This is Sylvania,’ he said. ‘The land of the Vampire Counts.’
Silence fell once again. Not even the servants moved. It was as if someone had laughed at a funeral or voiced an awful truth that everybody thought but no one had dared put into words until that moment.
Wonderful, thought Felix: evil sorcerers, the coming of Chaos and now the return of the Vampire Counts. How do I get myself into these things?
‘More wine anybody?’ asked Count Rudgar to break the silence. His moustaches seemed to droop even more. He looked like a man who had just been told that his family had contracted the plague and there was a good chance he had caught it himself. Felix knew exactly how he felt.
Max glanced down into his still full wine cup as if he could see the secrets of the future there. Gotrek rubbed his massive hands together almost gleefully. Ivan Petrovich looked even more grimly determined to find his daughter. Felix stifled the urge to moan.
‘There will be time enough for these discussions later,’ said the Countess Gabriella, her musical voice sounding cool and amused. ‘Perhaps our guests would care to tell us what brings them here in this time of troubles.’