[Von Carstein 02] - Dominion

by Steve Savile - (ebook by Undead)

  Breathless, Konrad watched as the swords flashed and the skin tantalised, and then it was over and the seven women threw themselves to the floor to the rapturous applause of Fritz. Others joined in as the women rose, and soon the great hall was full of appreciative applause. Konrad stood, bringing his hand down for silence. His control over the crowd was complete. He nodded.

  “I think it is time we partook of another delight, having stuffed our faces with fresh meat, and satisfied our eyes with these young ladies. It is time to look to the future. After that, I believe young Constantin wants to treat us to a ballad of his own creation. First though, the soothsayer, please.”

  Two of Konrad’s Hamaya escorted a filthy little man between them. He led a goat on a rope up to the top table and bowed stiffly. The goat was little more than skin and bones, and its master looked no healthier.

  Pieter stifled his giggles.

  Hans shook his head in disgust.

  Fritz clapped delightedly, while Constantin, at the end of the table, looked decidedly uncomfortable.

  Emmanuelle was looking at Konrad, not the curious little man and his goat. He found it impossible to look away. Was it wrong to covet his brother’s get? He was sure it was, but then, so much of the very best things in life were wrong. That didn’t stop him from wanting them.

  “My dark lord,” the soothsayer muttered, trying to claim Konrad’s attention. “Speak what you would know, and we will consult the omens.” He pulled a slim, gem-studded ceremonial dagger from the rope band cinched around his waist. He brought it to his lips and kissed the blade’s edge. What is it to be, lord? What questions burn in your heart?”

  The word “burn” jarred in Konrad’s head. It seemed to haunt him today. He turned to take in the little man. His skin was dark, although it was dirt not tan that muddied it, he was thinning on top and his beard was scraggy.

  “I would know the future for House von Carstein, fortuneteller. Speak to me, man. You have us all on tenterhooks. What is the wisdom of the gods?”

  Two of Konrad’s loyal Hamaya lifted the goat onto the central table and held the beast by the scruff of the neck, covering its eyes with a hand until it calmed. The animal was understandably skittish. The thick tang of blood was heavy in the air.

  “Hear our words, oh goddesses of discord, oh gods of dissension, show what the fates have in store for this great house, peel back the dark shadows, illuminate the path to wisdom, show us the clefts where failure lurks in wait, we ask this of you. Show us.” With that, the little man thrust the ceremonial dagger deep into the goat’s belly, tugging on the blade until the animal’s guts spilled out across the table, black and bloody as they slopped over the diners and their food, and spilled down onto the floor. The goat convulsed in his arms, its hooves kicking and sliding through the reeking string of guts. When the beast’s death throes subsided, the soothsayer dumped its carcass on the floor and knelt to study the omens offered up by the animal’s entrails still smeared across the table.

  The soothsayer looked up, fear written bold in his ugly face. “The omens are not good, lord.”

  “Not good?” Konrad said, raising an eyebrow. “Explain.”

  The little man swallowed and rose to his feet. Even standing, he was no match for the Vampire Count. “The guts are rotten, lord. The beast’s flesh is putrid. This is a bad omen.”

  “Indeed, perhaps we have another beast to hand that you can divine some mystical insight from its disembowelling.”

  “This is ludicrous,” Hans objected. “Must we sit through this chicanery? I for one have better things to do.”

  “You will sit down,” Konrad said calmly.

  Hans stood.

  “I said you will sit down,” Konrad repeated, an edge creeping into his voice as he rose to meet Hans.

  “I will do no such thing.”

  “Brothers, brothers, let’s just enjoy the show, shall we. Look, they’re bringing in a sheep to gut. This ought to prove most entertaining, as our frightened little soothsayer looks to predict a glorious future to save his own skin.” Fritz stood between the pair. “This really is unnecessary. Show some decorum, please.”

  Grunting, Hans sank back into his seat. He made a show of teasing off his gloves one finger at a time and cleaning his nails with the tip of his knife, studiously not looking at the soothsayer as he gutted the sheep.

  The animal’s entrails were putrid.

  Terrified, the little man looked up at the row of vampires sitting at the table before him. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth as he struggled to speak the doom he read in the spilled guts.

  “Betrayal lurks on every corner. Betrayal will be your downfall. Friends cannot be trusted.”

  “Give me your knife, man,” Konrad said, coming round from behind the table.

  He held out his hand.

  “Now.”

  The little man passed the vampire his thin-bladed knife, his eyes alert, darting with fear. Konrad enjoyed the momentary thrill of power that coursed through his body as he drove the point of the knife into the soothsayer’s stomach. He opened the man up, even as the soothsayer screamed and tried to hold in the ropes of blue intestine as they spilled between his fingers.

  “Now, I am no magician, but I suspect, looking at the signs here, that the future is bright for House von Carstein. Very bright indeed.” He kicked the dead man. “I am equally sure that if he could speak, our soothsayer would agree. Alas, it seems the divination took rather a lot out of him.”

  “Oh, this is preposterous,” Hans said, in disgust. He rose, picking up the leather gloves from the table. “You are a disgrace to the family. Everything about you is vile. You are an aberration. You strut and pose, and act as if you are superior. You act as if you are him, but I have news for you, brother: you are not him. You are not worthy of his name. You are a disgrace. You always have been, you always will be. The soothsayer is right, if we follow you, we march willingly to our own doom!”

  “How dare you,” Konrad said.

  No one else moved as Hans came around the table and slapped Konrad across the face with one of the gloves.

  “A duel!” Fritz cried out delightedly.

  No one listened to him.

  Still holding the bloody knife, Konrad, sneered and pressed the keen edge of the blade up against Hans’ cheek. “I could gut you here and now,” he rasped. He applied pressure to the blade, enough to cut the skin. It drew no blood. Konrad licked at the blade, tasting the soothsayer’s blood. His smile was filled with predatory cunning.

  “You could try,” Hans said coldly.

  “Our brother is right, you have called me out. Your bloody sense of honour will be served in the last minutes before first light. We will settle this once and for all, brother. I will give you a few hours to regret the rashness of your actions, and then I will meet you in the duelling hall where your gets can watch me cut your heart out. Now get out of my sight.”

  It was Fritz’s idea to add fire to the spectacle.

  They banked timbers up along both sides of the duelling hall and doused it in oil. As the duellists faced off, they would apply a torch to the wood and make things interesting.

  “This is all so childish,” Emmanuelle said, taking her seat in the gallery. For all that she obviously disapproved, she was more than happy to partake in the proceedings.

  “On the contrary,” Constantin said, leaning in to talk quietly. The duelling hall had odd acoustics. Words had a way of carrying further and louder than intended. “A duel of honour is the last bastion of civilization, my lady. The situation might be contrived, but it is designed to maximise fairness of combat. It is likely that either Hans or Konrad will die in just a few moments, and in their death will prove the right of the victor. Scholars call it the last resort of law. It is a fascinating process.”

  “It is barbaric.”

  “On the surface, perhaps,” Constantin conceded, “as all forms of war are, but beneath the surface it is immensely cultured. Consider the phrase
‘throwing down the gauntlet’. This comes from the ritual of the duel. One accepts the challenge by picking up the gauntlet or glove, and there are, of course, many alternatives that could provide satisfaction. First blood, which of course means the first man to bleed would lose, but given our nature that is rather inappropriate, I am sure you would agree. Hans could of course have chosen to demand the ultimate price, to the death, in which there is no satisfaction until the other party is mortally wounded. He would equally have been within his rights to cease the duel when either of them is incapacitated, albeit not yet fatally.”

  “You know a lot about fighting for a man who locks himself away with his books day and night.”

  “It is precisely for that reason, my lady. There are things of interest in every book. The word ‘duel’, for instance, could have derived from the old Imperial word for war, ‘duellum’; but it could equally have originated from the word ‘duo’, giving new meaning to one-to-one combat. My personal favourite is actually much older, coming from Reikspiel, ‘teona’: ‘to burn’, ‘to destroy’. The gauntlet of fire is a fitting addition to the proceedings. It certainly adds an element of danger to both participants. Only the strongest of our kind can resist fire. Many peasants still believe the way to destroy a vampire is to burn it.”

  On the duelling floor, Konrad turned to stare at the pair in the gallery. Constantin lapsed into silence, assuming his constant chatter had disturbed his sire’s preparation.

  Grinning, Fritz leaned in from behind the pair. “You know, Constantin, you really do need to get out more. I could send some of my girls to your library to… ah… help you forget about those books of yours for a while if you like? If nothing else, they could most certainly offer you a unique avenue of study for a while.”

  “Fritz, you are incorrigible. Now, stop trying to corrupt young Constantin.”

  “Yes, sister-mine. You take all the fun out of life, Emmanuelle, do you know that?”

  On the floor, Konrad ran through a series of stretching exercises, both with and without his daemon sword in his hand. He moved with the grace of a natural gymnast, supple and lithe in the way he shifted from pose to pose. His balance complemented his graceful movement. The speed with which he ran through the exercises turned them into a beautiful kind of dance. The fluidity of the dance was hypnotic. There was an arrogance to it that was almost brutal. He took a silk cloth, tossing it into the air, and spun, bringing the sword to bear. The silk parted into two on either side of the blade and fell to the floor as Konrad sheathed the sword.

  He looked up as Hans entered the duelling hall.

  “I had begun to think you had come to your senses, brother. I am glad to see that I was mistaken. I will give you a moment to prepare. I would hate to be accused of foul play.”

  Hans rolled his shoulders and then turned to bow to the gallery. He turned back to Konrad.

  “You are an insufferable windbag, Konrad. It’s time you were cut down to size.”

  “Ah, but are you the man to do it, brother?” Konrad sneered. “Personally, I think not. We shall see, soon enough. Seconds, light the fires, if you would.”

  Two of Konrad’s Hamaya touched their torches to the oil soaked wood, and a tunnel of fire was born.

  The heat was staggering.

  At either side of the duelling hall, a necromancer tapped the winds of magic, channelling the flame to make sure it didn’t rage out of control. A single word from either of them would douse the conflagration before it could spread further into the castle.

  Konrad drew his sword and stepped into the tunnel of flame.

  At the other end, Hans matched him, his own sword a slim, slightly curved, blade that was unique to his native land. He touched the sword to his lips and stepped into the flames.

  The duel was not graceful.

  Hans launched a reckless lunge, the flames pressing in around his shoulders, which Konrad easily sidestepped and countered with a cuff from the pommel of the daemonic blade, and with an easy laugh meant purely to goad Hans into even more recklessness. It succeeded.

  Konrad swatted aside two more thrusts from his brother, his smile broadening with each.

  The only sounds in the duelling hall were the clash of blade on blade and the snap and crackle of the flames building into a genuine blaze.

  Konrad allowed Hans a moment’s respite, trading parries before he countered with his first serious attack. Hans was no match for either Konrad’s reflexes or his swordsmanship. He had no intention of allowing his brother dignity in true death. He wanted the vampires in the gallery to see him for what he was: their better. He took three steps forwards, and rather than launch a feinted move, a combination of blows ending in a high cut, which Hans would have expected, he thrust hard, driving the daemonic blade into his opponent’s upper arm. The blade pierced deep into the muscle, causing Hans to lose his grip on his own blade. The curved sword clattered to the floor. In that moment, Hans knew that he was dead.

  Konrad showed no mercy.

  Untouched by the flames licking around his feet, Konrad stepped in close, drawing Hans into a deadly embrace.

  “You’re dead,” he rasped, and then pushed his foe back so that he stumbled trying to catch his balance. With dizzying speed, the daemonic blade swept around in a vicious arc, cleaving Hans’ head from his shoulders in a single cut.

  Konrad didn’t stop there.

  He cut his fallen brother up, and piece by piece fed him to the flames, while the others looked on.

  “He who burns brightest…” Konrad said, laughing. “So much for the Golden One.” With the fire blazing around him, Konrad walked from the hall.

  In the gallery, Fritz rose to his feet and applauded.

  “That, my friends, is a true von Carstein.”

  “That,” Emmanuelle said, “you idiot, is a true monster.”

  “One and the same, my dear: one and the same.”

  “Your ignorance is dazzling, Fritz. Don’t tell me you can’t see what just happened.”

  “Hans was a fool. He allowed himself to be manipulated into a fight that he had no hope of winning.”

  “And next time it could be you, or Pieter, or me, or whoever, dear Konrad believes is a threat to his blessed reign.”

  “I am no fool, sister-mine.”

  “Oh, I think you have just proved that you are, Fritz.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Slouching Towards Sylvania

  THE BORDERLANDS OF SYLVANIA

  The first kiss of snow, winter, 2056

  There was something about the magician that made Kallad Stormwarden distinctly uncomfortable.

  He was not like other manlings he had encountered. It wasn’t that he was distracted and seemed to spend most of his waking hours lost inside his own head. It was not that the man was unreadable where most manlings wore their allegiances proudly, like badges of honour. It was not that the man spoke in cryptic rhymes of things that made little or no sense to the dwarf.

  It was much more simple than that. Kallad did not like Nevin Kantor.

  Still, he was necessary. Without the sorcerer, their pursuit would have been next to impossible. Kantor paused on the rise just ahead, apparently sniffing the air. The dwarf knew that the unnatural passage of the dead left a stink on the winds of magic, rich enough to be followed by a deaf, dumb and blind adept. Kantor had explained it to them on that first night, so many moons ago. The dead were an abomination and as such were reviled by nature. The winds were sensitive to the nuances of the world they flowed over, and picked up traces of nature’s revulsion, fashioning a tainted ribbon that could, in theory, be tracked on Shyish, the sixth wind, all the way to the beasts themselves.

  Kantor disappeared over the rise without looking back to see if the rest of the party followed.

  Grunting, Kallad shouldered his pack and set off after the magician.

  Kantor was tall, even for his kind, although it seemed that he possessed no more flesh than the soldiers that journeyed with them, which left
him looking gaunt and emaciated by comparison. His hair was drawn up in a topknot and the sides had been shaved high above his ears, in the fashion of the corsairs.

  The magician had led them to Nuln as the month slipped into Vorhexen. The butcheries of the vampire, Jon Skellan, were all too apparent inside the walls of the old town. The streets teemed with gossipmongers, and charlatans offering protection from the vampires with their gewgaws and talismans. The charms were of course useless, but the peasants were willing accomplices in the trickery, needing to believe that they offered some form of protection. Every other person they met in the streets wore the sigil of Sigmar on a chain around his neck. The rest carried more practical forms of defence: stakes, garlic cloves, bloodwort, wolfsbane, vials of water blessed from the temple fonts of their chosen deities, and silver. Merchants traded their share of the season’s harvest for the silver to fashion into daggers and amulets. Superstitious fear gripped the city.

  The conversations on every street corner returned again and again to the bloody fate of the ruling family, the Liebowitzes. Their bodies had been buried in the family mausoleum, face down, their coffins sealed over with huge slabs of stone.

  No one was prepared to risk their return.

  They had stayed in the city for four days, learning what they could from the gossips, but it was next to useless. Reports varied from Vlad von Carstein himself having returned to savage their city, to a vast horde of the undead descending in a single night’s depravity. There were stories that informers working with the beasts had walked through the city during the day marking the houses for slaughter and making sure that members of the blue-blooded aristocracy were singled out.

  In a peculiar way, the locals had come to think of the beasts as liberators as well as monsters.

  This was a revelation to Kallad.