The Ambassador Chronicles

by Graham McNeill

  'You know the general?' asked Bremen.

  Kaspar nodded. 'He was an officer on my staff that I could never quite shake loose. Unfortunately, his family had money and I was obliged to keep him around. A competent enough soldier, but there is no humility to the man, no sense that he owes it to his soldiers to try and bring as many of them back alive as he can. Show him a battle and he will hurl men at it until it is won, regardless of the cost.'

  'From that, I take it there is no love lost between you?'

  'Not much,' Kaspar chuckled. 'When I retired from the army, Spitzaner assumed that, as ranking officer, he would take over, but there was no way I was going to let him have it. Instead I promoted an officer named Hoffman, a good man with a brave heart and uncanny sense for good ground.'

  'That can't have been easy to bear, a more junior officer being promoted over him.'

  'No, but I was damned if I was going to let "Killer Clemenz" have my regiment. Thank Sigmar, the countess-elector's father, who was the Count of Nuln back then, agreed with me and Spitzaner left, purchasing a commission in a Talabecland regiment.'

  'Where he has obviously prospered if he is now a general,' pointed out Bremen.

  'Or, more likely, his money has greased his ascent up the promotions ladder.'

  Further discussion was prevented by the arrival of Spitzaner and his coterie of horsemen: his officers, his priests, his bookkeepers, his historical recorders, his personal valets, a pair of men in long frock coats with the Imperial seal of Karl-Franz pinned to their lapels and a group of fork-bearded men with long swords who looked like they knew how to use them. As well as his banner bearer, General Clemenz Spitzaner travelled with his own trumpeter, who blew a series of rising notes on his brass bugle as the group of horsemen approached Kaspar and Bremen.

  Spitzaner was a man in his early forties, but appeared much younger, thanks to a life free of the vice and loose living that so typified much of the Empire's nobility. His thin face was sallow and angular, as though his bones pressed too tightly against his skin and his eyes were a pale shade of green. The general wore a scarlet greatcoat with gold braid looped across one shoulder and a golden-fringed pelisse of emerald green velvet draped across the other. His riding britches were a spotless cream and his knee-length boots a brilliant, lustrous black.

  Kaspar could tell that Spitzaner had known who he was going to meet at Kislev by the general's attire. Any other man would have ridden in practical furs and quilted jerkin, but not Spitzaner; he had a point to make. Kaspar wondered how long he had forced the army to wait, just outside of view of Kislev, while he changed into this ridiculous finery.

  The general's group halted in a jingle of trace and bridle and Kaspar put on his best smile of welcome.

  'My compliments to you, General Spitzaner. As ambassador to Kislev I bid you welcome to the north,' said Kaspar, turning to indicate the knight by his side. 'Allow me to introduce Kurt Bremen, leader of my detachment of Knights Panther.'

  Spitzaner bowed to Bremen before nodding curtly to Kaspar and saying, 'It has been a long time, von Velten.'

  'Aye, it has that,' said Kaspar. 'I believe it was the countess-elector's ball of 2512 we last spoke.'

  He saw Spitzaner's jaw clench and could not resist twisting the knife a little further.

  'And how is Marshal Hoffman? Do you keep in touch?' he said.

  'No,' snapped Spitzaner. 'Marshal Hoffman and I do not correspond.'

  'Ah, so often that is the way when brother officers are promoted over one another. I, on the other hand, still receive letters from him every now and then. One of my most gifted proteges, I always thought. No doubt you will be pleased to know he prospers.'

  'Indeed, but be that as it may,' said Spitzaner, a little too loudly. 'He is not here and I am. I am general of this regiment and you would do well to accord me the respect that my rank demands.'

  'Of course, general, no disrespect was intended,' said Kaspar.

  Spitzaner looked unconvinced, but did not press the point, casting his gaze out over the unkempt soldiers camped around the city walls and seeing scattered Empire standards planted in the hard ground.

  'There are Imperial soldiers here already?'

  'Aye,' said Kaspar. 'Remnants of the regiments scattered after the massacre at Zhedevka. Perhaps three thousand men.'

  'Are they quality?' asked Spitzaner.

  Kaspar bit back an angry retort and said, 'They are men of the Empire, general.'

  'And who commands them?'

  'A captain named Goscik, a good man. He has kept the soldiers together and in readiness for the fighting season.'

  'A captain commands three thousand men?' said Spitzaner, outraged.

  'He is the highest ranking and most competent officer who survived the battle.'

  'Intolerable! I shall assign a more senior officer from my staff once we have established ourselves in this dreadful country. I would be grateful if you could show us to our billets, it has been a long and arduous ride from the Empire.'

  'So I see,' said Kaspar, admiring Spitzaner's gleaming uniform.

  Spitzaner ignored Kaspar's barb and turned in his saddle to wave forward the two men who bore the Emperor's seal in their lapels.

  'This is Johan Michlenstadt and Claus Bautner, emissaries from the Emperor,' said Spitzaner by way of introduction. 'Their safe passage to Kislev was entrusted to me by the Reiksmarshall himself.'

  Kaspar nodded a greeting to the two men, wondering how desperate Kurt Helborg must have been to trust Spitzaner with keeping these men alive. 'A pleasure to make your acquaintance, gentlemen.'

  'Likewise, Ambassador von Velten,' said Michlenstadt.

  'Yes, General Spitzaner has told us a great deal about you, though I am sure he exaggerates sometimes,' said Bautner.

  Kaspar caught the man's ironic tone and warmed to Bautner immediately. He could well imagine the poison Spitzaner would have been spreading about his former general, and was pleased to meet someone who could see through it.

  'I am sure the general does me proud with his tales,' said Kaspar graciously, 'but I am intrigued as to what manner of mission you would be upon that the Reiksmarshall himself would take such interest in it.'

  'A matter of gravest urgency,' said Michlenstadt. 'It is imperative that we see the Ice Queen at the earliest opportunity.'

  'Yes.' continued Bautner. 'We bring missives from the Emperor himself and must deliver them to the Tzarina's own hand.'

  'That might not be so easy.' said Kaspar, faintly amused by the two emissaries' habit of finishing each other's sentences. 'The Tzarina is not an easy woman to see.'

  'It is vitally important.' said Michlenstadt.

  'Yes.' nodded Bautner. 'The fate of the world depends upon it.'

  II

  Icicles drooped fromthe cellar's roof, the steady drip, drip of moisture on the top of the bronze coffin echoing loudly in the icy room. The pale blue of the ice that covered the walls and floor was shot through with black and green veins, poisonous corruption that had spread quickly from the miasma that surrounded the coffin and infected everything around it with deadly, mutating sickness.

  The plague that stalked the streets above and killed scores daily was ample demonstration of the power of what lay within the coffin, its pestilent makers having excelled themselves in its creation. Perhaps too much so, she thought as she idly paced in a circle around the coffin, her breath feathering before her in the chill air. The force within was a living thing now - its power to corrupt growing with every passing day - and it had taken potent wards to keep its malice in check lest its eagerness to writhe and mutate unmask her before she was ready to unleash it.

  The tiny corpses lying frozen in the corner of the cellar gave testimony to the amount of innocent blood it had taken to subdue its malice, but fortunately Losov could obtain an almost limitless supply of such nameless, faceless victims from the Lubjanko.

  When it came time to break those wards and allow that malice its full, unchecked rein, s
he would relish the spectacle of painful death and mutation that would swiftly follow. The arrival of the Empire force, two days ago, had filled her with elation then disappointment. She had been told that the armies of both Talabecland and Stirland would be coming to Kislev, but now it seemed as though the Stirland force was marching west to link with the forces of Boyarin Kurkosk.

  With so many men camped outside the city wall, she could feel the pulsing, deathly desire of the corruption locked within the coffin to be released, to wreak its misery upon so many living things, to reduce them to foetid piles of mutated flesh and bone. She suspected that the Stirland army would come to Kislev eventually and knew that she could inflict much greater suffering were she to bide her time.

  She ran her delicate fingers along the rusted top of the coffin, feeling its power and its desire to inflict horrific change. But she was touched by the Dark Gods' favour and was resistant to its evil.

  'Soon.' she whispered. 'Curb your wrath for but a little longer and you shall be the unmaking of more life than you know.'

  She turned on her heel, more pressing business now occupying her thoughts.

  Sasha Kajetan.

  She knew that the swordsman had now descended to the point where his madness was complete and his obsession with the ambassador had consumed him utterly.

  It was time to set her handsome prince on the hunt once more.

  III

  'Damn it, how much longer must we wait?' snapped Clemenz Spitzaner, pacing up and down before the great portrait of the Khan Queen Miska in the Hall of Heroes. The interior of the Tzarina's Winter Palace was just as impressive as Kaspar remembered, the walls of solid ice glittering in the light of a thousand candles hung from shimmering chandeliers. Columns of black ice, veined with subtle golden threads rose to the great, vaulted ceiling with its mosaic depicting the coronation of Igor the Terrible.

  'You'll wear a rut in that rug, general,' said Kaspar, standing with his hands laced behind his back. Though he hated its ostentation, he wore his formal attire for the audience the Tzarina had finally deigned to give them: a cockaded hat with a long blue feather, a long embroidered coat with a waistcoat held shut by engraved silver buttons and elegant britches tucked into polished black riding boots. Spitzaner and his staff officers wore their colourful and ridiculously impractical dress uniforms, laden with gold braid, lace trims and bronze epaulettes.

  Both emissaries of the Emperor wore sober dark dress, their only concession to decoration the gold and scarlet sashes they wore bound about their waists and the Imperial seals pinned to their lapels. Bautner stared in wonder at his surroundings, while Michlenstadt picked small pieces of lint from his coat.

  'You are the ambassador,' said Spitzaner angrily. 'Shouldn't you be able to procure us an audience with Tzarina quicker than this? My army has been camped beyond the walls of her damned city for five days now. Does she not want our help?'

  'The Tzarina makes her own decisions as to who she sees and when,' explained Kaspar. 'Her advisor, Pjotr Losov is... shall we say, not the most cooperative of men when it comes to facilitating audiences.'

  'Sigmar damn her, but this tries my patience,' grumbled Spitzaner.

  'I do not believe we have any choice but to wait,' said Michlenstadt amiably.

  'Yes,' said Bautner. 'None of us can force a monarch to move to the beat of any drum but their own. We must await her pleasure, for we have strict instructions to deliver our missives to her hand and her hand alone.'

  Kaspar forced himself to ignore the impatient pacing of Spitzaner - the man had been nothing but an arrogant ass and pain in the backside the last few days - and moved further down the length of the hall, halting before the portrait of the other infamous Khan Queen, Anastasia. The woman in the picture was depicted riding her war-chariot, arms aloft as the heavens raged above her. Tall and beautiful, this Anastasia had a fierceness to her features that the Anastasia he knew did not, a ferocity that echoed the harshness of the land that had borne her. She was a living, breathing representation of all that made the Kislevites such a hardy race of passionate warriors.

  Thinking of Anastasia brought a familiar melancholy to him as he thought of how they had become estranged. Part of him wanted to reach out to her and make amends for the harsh words that had passed between them, but he knew that too much time had passed for him to know how to make such an approach. Sadness touched him at his limitations, but he knew himself well enough to know that it was too late for him to change and that the easiest way to bear that sadness was to lock it away in the deepest corner of his being.

  The chiming of the clock above the beaten golden double doors shook Kaspar from his thoughts and he turned back to the main hall as Spitzaner and his gaudily dressed officers arranged themselves before the doors, a strict hierarchy observed in their positioning.

  Bautner and Michlenstadt stood slightly behind and to the left of Spitzaner, who, naturally, took centre stage for the promised audience. As the ninth chime struck, the doors to the inner apartments swung open and the Tzarina Katarin, Ice Queen of Kislev entered the Hall of Heroes.

  Once again Kaspar was struck by the sheer primal force of her beauty. The Ice Queen's sculpted features were regal and piercing, as though carved from the coldest glacier with eyes like chips of blue diamond. She inspired awe and Kaspar remembered the fear and wonder that had passed through her subjects when he had last seen her move amongst them. A long, glittering gown of ivory trailed behind her, layered with ice-flecked silk and strings of pearls. Her hair was a fierce white, the colour of a winter's morning, threaded with rippling ice-blue streaks and braided with strings of emeralds beneath her glittering crown of ice. Kaspar saw she was armed with the mighty war-blade of the khan queens, Fearfrost, and could feel the bow-wave of chill that preceded her.

  Unusually, she came without her normal array of flunkies, hangers-on and family members. Instead, four bare-chested warriors with shaven heads and long topknots and drooping moustaches followed her, bearing a heavy golden throne between them. Each carried a pair of curved sabres across his back and had a long, thin-bladed knife sheathed in a fold of flesh on their flat stomachs.

  Warriors from Sasha Kajetan's former regiment, thought Kaspar, recognising their skin-crawling habit of scabbarding blades within their flesh. A show of bravado, a rite of passage or a tradition? Kaspar didn't know which and had no desire to ask.

  The temperature continued to drop as the Ice Queen approached, and a ghostly mist rose around their ankles. Kaspar heard a soft tinkling, as of ice forming, and the scent of cold, hard, northern forests swelled to fill the air. He heard muffled gasps of unease from the men of the Empire as they bowed to her, a chill wind carrying the bitter cold of the oblast snaking around them. Every one of them would have heard the Tzarina's reputation as a powerful sorceress, but none of them had expected to feel such power so closely.

  Kaspar smiled to himself as he bowed. For all her intelligence, the Ice Queen was not subtle in the demonstrations of her power, and Kaspar was struck by how much he actually liked her. Her guards placed the throne behind the Tzarina and she arranged herself artfully upon it, the warriors taking up position either side of her, their arms folded and their posture aggressive.

  'Ambassador von Velten,' said the Ice Queen, her voice unexpectedly warm. 'It is good to see you again. We have missed you at the palace.'

  Kaspar bowed again graciously. 'It is an honour to be here again, your majesty.'

  'And how is that temper of yours?' she asked playfully.

  'As bad as ever,' smiled Kaspar.

  'Good,' nodded the Ice Queen, inclining her head. 'And who is this you have brought to see me? Other men of ill-temper?'

  'I fear not.' said Kaspar, turning to introduce his companions. 'This is General Clemenz Spitzaner of Nuln, your majesty. He commands the army camped beyond your walls.'

  'An honour, your majesty.' said Spitzaner, bowing elaborately and sweeping his feathered hat in an overblown gesture of greeting.
/>   'Quite.' said the Ice Queen, her eyes sliding from the colourful martinet.

  Kaspar continued his introductions, saying, 'And these are the envoys from your brother monarch to the south, the most noble Emperor Karl-Franz. Emissaries, Michlenstadt and Bautner.'

  Kaspar saw a flash of anger cross Spitzaner's face at being so easily dismissed from the Ice Queen's notice, but wisely the general said nothing.

  Emissary Michlenstadt stepped forward as the Ice Queen said, 'I am told you come with news of great import for me?'

  'Indeed we do, your majesty.' said Michlenstadt, striding forward and reaching within his coat's inside pocket. He had taken only a few steps when the warriors behind the Tzarina had their blades drawn and were holding them at the emissary's throat.

  'What?' gasped Michlenstadt, his face ashen as he pulled a wax-sealed letter from his coat. The nearest warrior grunted and snatched the letter from his hand, turning and passing it to the Tzarina.

  'Sigmar protect us.' whispered Bautner as the shaking Michlenstadt backed away from the fierce warriors.

  'Forgive their ardour.' said the Ice Queen. 'Protecting my life is a duty these men take very seriously, and they take a dim view of folk they do not know approaching me.'

  'Quite alright.' gasped Michlenstadt, though Kaspar could see the man was visibly shaken. 'Their devotion does you credit.'

  The warriors returned their blades to their sheaths and stepped back behind the throne, though Kaspar was in no doubt that the Ice Queen was fully capable of protecting herself should the need arise. She broke the seal on the letter and unfolded the parchment, quickly scanning the words written there.

  'Emissary Michlenstadt.' said the Ice Queen without looking up.

  'Your majesty?'

  'Explain this to me, if you would.'

  'I am not sure I understand, your majesty,' said Michlenstadt, sharing a confused glance with Bautner. 'I helped draft the Emperor's letter myself and strove for clarity in every word.'

  'Indulge me,' said the Tzarina, and Kaspar could sense the cold undercurrent to her words. 'Pretend I am some simple girl-queen you wish to impress with your fine words. Tell me what this letter asks of me.'