by ich du
'Well, of course. That goes without saying. Now, come on, on your feet.'
'And make your job easier?'
'Oh, just stand up before I run out of patience and stick a sword in your gut, brother. You don't have to be standing to die, you know. It isn't a prerequisite. Swords are just as effective on people lying in the mud, believe me.' He held out a hand for the priest to take but the old man refused, levering himself up and stubbornly struggling to get his feet beneath himself.
'Who are you?'
'Does it matter? Really? What's in a name? Truly? Turned meat, cat's urine and mouldy bread by any other names would still smell repugnant, wouldn't they? They would still stink of decay, rot, so why this obsession with naming things? There is no magic in a name.'
'What a sad world you live in,' Guttman said after a moment. 'Where the first things that come to mind are riddled with corruption. Give me a world of roses and beauty and I will die happily. To live as you do, that is no life at all.'
'Do not be so hasty to dismiss it, priest. They have an old saying in my hometown: Die reinste Freude ist die Schadenfreude,' the man said in perfect unaccented Reikspiel. 'The purest joy is the joy we feel when others feel pain. Now I believe it is the only genuine joy we feel. The rest is transitory, fleeting. Soon the darkness will be all you have left, and the light and your precious roses and everything else you think of as beautiful will be nothing more than memories. The knowledge of this gives me some slight happiness I must confess. When you've been reduced to nothing, then let us see how much of the so-called beautiful you choose to remember. My name is Posner. Herman Posner. Say it. Let it be the last thing you say as a living creature. Say it.'
'Herman Posner,' Brother Victor Guttman said, tasting the name in his mouth. The words were no more evil than any others he had said. There was nothing unique about them. They were not tainted with vile plague or ruined by undeath. They were just words, nothing more.
'A rose or rot, priest? You decide.' Posner said. His hand snaked out grabbing the old man by the collar and hauling him up until his toes barely touched the floor. Guttman struggled and fought, kicking out as Posner drew him in close enough for the priest to taste the redolent musk of the grave on his breath. The creature's touch was repulsive.
It didn't matter how much he kicked and twisted against Posner's grip; it was like iron.
He felt the teeth - fangs - plunge into his neck, biting deep, hard. The old man's body tensed, every fibre of his being repulsed by the intimacy of the kill. He lashed out, twisted, flopped and finally sagged as he felt the life being drained out of him.
And then the pain ended and Posner was screaming and clutching his own chest.
Guttman had no idea what had caused the vampire to relinquish his hold. He didn't care. His legs buckled and collapsed beneath him but he didn't pass out. He lay in the mud, barely able to move. He was sure his tripping heart would simply cease beating at any moment and deny the vampire its kill. There was a delicious irony to the thought, the beast gorging itself on dead blood, only realising its mistake when it was too late.
Posner lifted his hand. The skin beneath was burned raw with the mark of Sigmar's hammer.
For a moment the old priest thought it was a miracle - that he was saved. Then the cold hard reality of the 'miracle' revealed itself. The silver hammer he wore on a chain around his neck had come loose from his clothing and as the vampire leaned in the silver had burned its mark on the beast. Silver. At least that part of the stories was true. The metal was anathema to the lords of the undead. He clasped the talisman as though it might somehow save him. It was a feeble gesture. Posner leaned over him and grasped the silver chain, ignoring the hiss and sizzle of his own flesh as he yanked the holy symbol from around Guttman's throat, and tossed it aside.
The stench of burned meat was nauseatingly sweet.
'Now let's see how you fare without your pretty little trinket, shall we?'
Before Guttman could scramble away Posner had him by the throat again, fingernails like iron talons as they sank mercilessly into his flesh. The pain was blinding. The priest's vision swam in and out of focus as the world tilted away and was finally consumed in an agony of black. The last sensation he felt as the pain overwhelmed him was the vampire's kiss, intimate and deadly, where his fluttering pulse was strongest. Guttman's eyes flared open and for a fleeting moment the world around him was intense, every colour more vibrant, more radiant, every scent more pungent, more aromatic, than they had been through his whole life of living with them. He was dying, drained of life and blood, and this intensity was his mind's way of clinging on to the memories of life, one final all-consuming overload of the senses. Victor Guttman let it wash over him. He felt his will to live fade with his thoughts as he succumbed to Posner. He stopped struggling, the fight drained out of him.
Posner yanked his head back better to expose the vein and sucked and slurped hungrily at the wound until he was sated. Grinning, he tilted the old man's head and dribbled blood into his gaping mouth. Guttman coughed and retched, a ribbon of blood dribbling out of the corner of his mouth. His entire body spasmed, rebelling against the bloody kiss and then he was falling as Posner let go.
The vampire walked away, leaving the old man to die.
To die, Guttman realised sickly, and become one of their kind. An abomination. No. No. It cannot happen. I will not kill to live. I will not!
But he knew he would.
In the end, when the blood thirst was on him and his humanity was nothing but a nagging ghost he would feed.
Guttman clawed at the mud, dragging himself forward a few precious inches before his strength gave out. His erratic breathing blew bubbles in the muddy puddle beside his face. His hand twitched. He felt himself slipping in and out of consciousness. Every breath could easily have been his last. He had no idea how long he lay in the mud blowing bloody bubbles. Time lost all meaning. The sun didn't rise. The rain didn't cease, not fully. He tried to move but every ounce of his being cried out in pain. He was alone. No passing carters would save him. He had a choice - although it was no choice at all: die here, now, and wake as a daemon, or fight it, grasp on to the last gasp of humanity and hope against hope that something in the temple could stave off the transformation and buy him precious time. Death was inevitable, he had always known that, accepted it. He would meet Morr, every man, woman and child would eventually; it was the way of the world. He promised himself he would do it with dignity. He would die, and stay dead. Judge me not on how I lived but how I die... who had said that? It made a grim kind of sense.
On the hillside around him the cries of the wolves intensified. It was a mocking lament. He knew what they were, those wolves. He knew how the beasts could shift form at will. He dreaded the moment their cries made sense to him, for then his doom would be complete.
He dragged himself another foot, and then another, almost blacking out from the sheer exertion. His face held barely inches above a muddy puddle, he stared at his own reflection in the water, trying to memorise everything he saw. He knew the image would fade, knew he would forget himself, but it was important to try to hold on to who he was. Another foot, and then another. The old priest clawed his way down the long and winding road. He felt the steel breeze on his face as he craned his neck desperately trying to see how far away the city lights were.
Too far, they taunted him. Too far.
He would never make it.
And because of that he was damned.
Desperately, Victor Guttman pushed himself up, stumbled two unsteady steps and plunged face first into the mud again. He lay there, spent, cursing himself for a fool for coming to the castle alone. The chirurgeon was long gone, probably safely at home in his bed already, tucked up beside his shrew of a wife while she snored. Or he's lying dead in a ditch somewhere. He was just as alone when he left the castle. Just as vulnerable. And probably just as dead, Guttman thought bitterly.
Again he stumbled forward a few paces before collapsing. Five more the next tim
e. He cried out in anger and frustration, willing someone to hear him and come to his aid. It was pointless, of course. The only people abroad at this ungodly hour were up to no good and would hardly come to investigate cries on the dark road for fear of their own safety. Thieves, robbers, bandits, lotharios, debauchers, drunks, gamblers and vampires, children of the night one and all. And not a Sigmar fearing soul amongst them. He was alone.
Truly alone.
II
MEYRINK AND MESSNER were passionately arguing an obscure point of theosophy, the older man being driven to the point of distraction by the younger's sheer belligerence. He was impossible to argue with. There was no reasoning, only absolutes. The arguments were black and white. There was no room for the grey spaces of interpretation in between. Normally there was nothing Meyrink enjoyed more than a good argument but the youth of today seemed to have abandoned the art of reason in favour of passion. Everything was about passion. Meyrink laid aside the scrimshaw he had been carving and rolled his neck, stretching. The carving was therapeutic but his eyes weren't what they had been even a few years ago and the close detail gave him a headache from straining. He felt every one of his years. Brother Guttman would return soon. Perhaps he could make young Messner see reason.
'Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,' Meyrink muttered bleakly. He didn't hold out a lot of hope.
'Ah, is that the sound of quiet desperation I hear leaking into your voice, brother?'
'Not so quiet, methinks,' Meyrink said with a lopsided grin. He liked the boy, and was sure with the rough edges rounded off his personality Messner would make a good priest. He had the faith and was a remarkably centred young man.
'Indeed. I was being politic. Come, let's warm our bones beside the fire while we wait for Brother Guttman's return.'
'Why not.'
''Tis a vile night out,' Messner remarked, making himself cosy beside the high-banked log fire that spat and crackled in the hearth. He poured them both cups of mulled wine.
'For once I'll not argue with you lad,' Meyrink said wryly.
The night stretched on, Meyrink too tired to debate. He looked often at the dark window and the streaks of rain that lashed against it. Messner was right: it was a vile night. Not the kind of night for an old man to be abroad.
They supped at their cups, neither allowing the other to see how much the old priest's lateness worried them until a hammering on the temple door had them both out of their seats and almost running through the central aisle of the temple to answer it. Meyrink instinctively made the sign of the hammer as Messner threw back the heavy bolts on the door and raised the bar. It had been many years since they had left the temple open through the night. It was a curse of the times. He didn't like it but was sage enough to understand the necessity.
Messner opened the door on the raging storm.
The wind and rain ripped at the porch, pulling the heavy door out of the young priest's hands.
For a heartbeat Meyrink mistook the shadows on the threshold for some lurking horror, distorted and deformed as they were by the storm, but then the wine merchant Hollenfeuer's boy, Henrik, lumbered in out of the driving rain and dark, a bundle of rags cradled in his arms. It took Meyrink a moment to realise that the rags weren't rags at all, but sodden robes clinging wetly to slack skin and bones, and that Henrik had brought Brother Guttman home. The old priest's skin had the same blue pallor as death. His eyes rolled back in his head and his head lolled back against the boy's arm, his jaw hanging loose.
'Found 'im on the roadside a couple of miles back. Carried 'im 'ere.' Henrik grunted beneath the strain. He held the old man in his straining arms like a sack of coals. 'No idea how long 'e'd been there. 'E's still breathing but 'e's not in a good way, mind. Looks like 'e's been attacked by wolves or summink. 'E's got some frightenin' wounds where 'e's been bitten round the throat.'
'Put him down, put him down.' Meyrink flapped. 'Not here, no, no, not here. In his room. In his room. Take him to his room. What happened? Who did this to him?'
'I dunno.' Henrik said, tracking the storm into the temple. Behind him, Messner wrestled with the door. Meyrink moved in close, feeling for the old priest's pulse. It was there, faint for sure, but his heart was still beating and his blood was still pumping.
They carried the broken body of Victor Guttman up the winding stairs to his bare cell and laid him on the wooden pallet he called a bed, drawing the blanket up over his chest to his chin. The old man shivered. Meyrink took this as a good sign - there was still life enough in him to care about the cold.
He sent Henrik on his way, urging him to summon Gustav Mellin, the count's chirurgeon. He pressed a silver coin into his palm. 'Be convincing, lad.' The wine merchant's boy nodded and disappeared into the storm.
Meyrink went back to the old priest's cell where Messner was holding a silent prayer vigil. He cradled Guttman's fragile hand in his, whispering over and over entreaties to Sigmar, begging that His divine hand spare the old man from Morr. It was odd how the young man could be so adamant in the face of theory and yet so devout in the face of fact. His blind faith was as inspiring now as it had been annoying a few hours ago. Meyrink hovered on the threshold, looking at the young man kneeling at the bedside, head bowed in prayer. Guttman was clinging to life - a few words, even to the great and the good, wouldn't save him. It was down to the old man's will and the chirurgeon's skill, if he arrived in time. When it came down to it that was their prime difference: Meyrink was a realist, Messner an idealist still waiting for the brutality of the world to beat it out of him.
Meyrink coughed politely, letting Messner know he was no longer alone.
'How is he?'
'Not good. These wounds...'
'The bites? If that is what they are.'
'Oh that is what they are, without doubt. Whatever fed on him though, it wasn't wolves.'
'How can you be sure?' Meyrink asked, moving into the cell.
'Look for yourself. The first set of puncture wounds are precise and close together, suggesting a small mouth, certainly not a wolf. And there are nowhere enough teeth or tearing to match the savagery of wolves. If I didn't know better I'd say the bite was human.'
'But you know better?'
Messner shook his head.
'Then let us content ourselves with the fact that the world is a sick place and that our dear brother was set upon by one of the flock. It makes no difference to the treatment. We must staunch the blood loss and seal the wounds best we can, keeping them clean to keep out the festering. Other than that, perhaps you are right to pray. I can think of nothing else we can do for our brother.'
They did what they could, a mixture of prayer, medicine and waiting. Mellin, the chirurgeon arrived at dawn, inspected the wounds clinically, tutting between clenched teeth as he sutured the torn flesh. His prognosis was not good:
'He's lost a lot of blood. Too much for a man to lose and still live.'
'Surely you can do something?'
'I'm doing it. Cleaning up the wounds. If he deteriorates, my leeches will be good for the rot, but other than that, he's in the hands of your god.'
Guttman didn't wake for three straight days. Mostly he lay still, the shallow rise and fall of his chest all that distinguished him from the dead, though he did toss and turn occasionally, mumbling some incoherent half words while in the grip of fever dreams. The sweats were worst at night. In the darkest hours of the night the old priest's breathing was at its weakest, hitching and sometimes stopping for long seconds as though Guttman's body simply forgot how to breathe. Messner only left his bedside for a few moments at a time for daily ablutions. He ate his meals sitting against the bed frame and slept on a cot in the small cell, leaving Meyrink to oversee the day-to-day running of the temple and lead the congregation in prayers for Brother Guttman's swift recovery.
The fever ran its course and on the fourth day Victor Guttman opened his eyes.
It was no gentle waking: he sat bolt upright, his eyes flew open and one word escaped his pa
rched mouth: 'Vampire!' He sank back into the pillow, gasping for breath.
The suddenness of it shocked Meyrink. He thought for a moment that he had misheard, that the dry rasp had been some last desperate plea to the gods for salvation before the old priest shuffled off the mortal coil, but it wasn't. He had heard correctly. Guttman had cried vampire.
Meyrink stared at the sutured wounds in the old man's throat, his mind racing. Could they truly be the mark of the vampire? The thought was ludicrous. It hadn't even crossed his mind. Vampires? But if they were... did that mean Victor Guttman is one of them now? Tainted? He was a priest of Sigmar surely he couldn't succumb to the blood kiss...
Meyrink took the old man's hand and felt none of the revulsion he was sure he should if Guttman had been born again into unlife.
'It's not too late, my friend,' he said, kneeling at Guttman's bedside. 'It's not too late.'
'Kill... me... please,' the old man begged, his eyes rheumy with pain. The chirurgeon had left nothing to dull the pain and Meyrink was loathe to let the man loose with his leeches. 'Before I... succumb... to it.' 'Hush, my friend. Save your strength.' 'I will not... kill. I will... not.'
III
REINHARDT MESSNER TURNED the brittle pages of the dusty old tome. He was tired, his enthusiasm for the search long since gone and the ink on the paper was a degree less intelligible than a spider's scrawl. The words had long since begun to blend into one. Beside him Meyrink grunted and shifted in his chair. It had been three days since Brother Guttman's return to the land of the living. During that time he had faded in and out of consciousness. He refused food, claiming he had no appetite. He drank little water, claiming he had no thirst. This disturbed the young priest. No hunger, no thirst, it was unnatural. It added a certain amount of credence to the old man's story of vampires but Messner refused to believe there was any real truth to it. Still, he studied the old tomes looking for some kind of geas that might be used to seal Guttman in the temple. It was useless. There was nothing.