Genevieve 04 - Silver Nails

by Jack Yeovil

  'Where's'

  'The girl?' Maximilian looked puzzled. 'Gone. She slipped away before all the celebrations started. A pity. She'd have been a heroine all over again. It's her way, though. She did the same thing after she and my son well, you know the story.'

  Vukotich sat up in bed. His wounds didn't pain him so much now, although his throat was still tender.

  Genevieve! Gone!

  'She said something about a retreat. Some convent or other. In Kislev. You'd best leave her be, lad. Heroine or not, she's still well not quite like us, you know. No, not quite like us.'

  Maximilian poured him a goblet of the dangerous spirit, and he scalded his throat with it.

  'She left you something, though. She said you'd know what it was for.'

  Vukotich took another fiery swallow. Hot tears came to his eyes. It was the strong spirit. Alte Geheerentode would make any man's eyes water.

  The Grand Prince threw the padded ring, shining silver where it was sawn through, onto the bed.

  'Genevieve said you'd understand. Do you?'

  Fingering the marks on his neck, Vukotich wasn't sure. Inside him, the last sparks of her were fading. The wounds he would wear forever, but the link he had had with the vampire was shattered with their chain.

  He picked up the silver, and gave it to Maximilian. 'Give it to the temple,' he said, 'for the poor.'

  'Which temple?' asked the Grand Prince.

  Weariness crept up Vukotich's body again. Inside him something was dying.

  'Any one,' he replied. 'Any one.'

  NO GOLD IN THE GREY MOUNTAINS

  On the opposite crag, the seven towers of the Fortress of Drachenfels thrust skyward like the taloned fingers of a deformed hand. The sunset bloodied the castle as Constant Drachenfels, the Great Enchanter, had done in life. Joh Lamprecht had heard all the stories, all the songs. He knew of the long-lived monster's numberless crimes and of his eventual downfall and defeat. Brave Prince Oswald and Fair Genevieve, his vampire ladylove, had ended the horror, and now the castle was untenanted, all but the most earthbound ghosts flown to the beyond. However, it was still shunned. No peasant of this mountain region would dare set his boot upon the path to Drachenfels while the stories were told in whispers, the songs remembered by ill-favoured minstrels. And that was what made the place ideal for Joh's purposes.

  Big, slow Freder was too lackwitted to be concerned with superstition, and dark, quiet Rotwang too wrapped up in his own skills to take any notice of the rumoured creatures in the darkness. Which left only young Yann Groeteschele to be frightened by the old legends, the shadows and the night winds. Joh could count on the young bandit's unswerving loyalty for as long as Groeteschele's fear of him outweighed his fear of the name of a dead sorcerer. That should be a considerable time.

  Groeteschele had only heard the songs about Drachenfels' Poison Feast and the Sack of Gisoreux, but he had been present when Joh broke the back of Warden Fanck and led the mass escape from the penal quarrypits of the Vaults, to the south, and the fringes of Loren Forest he had held down the writhing body of Guido Czerepy, the silk merchant, while Joh tortured out of him the location of his hidden cache of gold.

  In the still air, the rattle of the coach was audible from several miles away. Joh keened like a crow and Rotwang answered from his position of concealment down by the road. Joh tapped Groeteschele and indicated the youth's crossbow. The lamps of the coach became visible in the evening haze. Joh felt the old excitement in his vitals and gripped the hilt of his curved sword. He had taken the scimitar from the corpse of a slain envoy of Araby, shortly after relieving the man of the jewelled tokens of esteem he was bearing to the Imperial court, and found it a more satisfactory item of killing steel than the common straight sword of the Old World.

  Groeteschele slipped a quarrel into his crossbow and steadied it against his cheek. Joh kept his eyes on the coach. As robberies went, this was simple. Three times last year, he had held up the same coach×carrying gold from the Kautner seam down from the mountains and through the Reikwald Forest to Altdorf×and the trick had been easier each time. Once the miners had paid their tax tribute to the Emperor's collectors they were hardly disposed to buy guards to escort it to Karl-Franz's coffers and so it was placed on the regular mail and passenger run.

  Tonight's plunder would serve to equip Joh and his band for a more daring, more profitable exploit. Joh had a nice little Tilean princedom marked down, its vaults ripe for plundering, but he would need to hire specialists, to buy equipment that could not be stolen, and to make arrangements with a slightly dishonourable banking house to dispose of the accrued funds. A chest of Kautner gold should set the job up perfectly.

  The coach was near enough for Joh to see the horses' breath frosting. The coachman sat alone on the box, draped in a cloak. He would be wearing a breastplate under his garments, but killing the coachman never stopped anything anyway.

  There was a long, creaking sound and a crash. A tree fell on the road just as the coach had passed. Good. Freder had done his part well. Joh nodded and Groeteschele stood up, firing and reloading. His first quarrel took the lead horse of the four-strong team in the side of the neck and it tripped. A figure darted into the road, sword flashing. Rotwang drove his blade deep into the animal and it fell. He leaped aside, and the team continued, dragging its dying comrade a few yards.

  Joh made his way down from the rocky mountainside towards the road, Groeteschele following. He had complete confidence in Rotwang's expertise with this manoeuvre. It was tricky. Many bandits were crippled or worse when they got tangled up with the horse they were trying to immobilise. But Rotwang was the best killer Joh had ever seen, trained to it from birth.

  When he came out of the trees, all was well. The coach was halted, and Rotwang stood a little way away from it, red sword dripping. Freder held the still-standing horses and glowered up at the coachman. His height, broad shoulders and apish appearance helped to deter many a solid citizen from interfering in the band's business. )oh nodded to Groeteschele and the young man climbed up beside the quivering coachman and sorted through the luggage, throwing parcels and packages to the dirt road. Someone inside the coach was complaining loudly.

  'It's not here,' Groeteschele said.

  'What!' snapped Joh. 'Idiot, it must be. Look harder.'

  It should be in a small chest with the Imperial crest and a fine Bretonnian lock. It usually was. Groeteschele rooted among the remaining cargo.

  'No, nothing,' he said.

  Joh signed to Rotwang, who walked towards the coach. The coachman was trembling, praying to all the gods. Groeteschele climbed down and Rotwang pulled himself up to the top of the coach. He moved like a big cat, with strong but apparently lazy gestures, and he could strike like a daemon. He sat beside the coachman, plucking and throwing away the man's whip, and then did something to the man with his hands. The coachman screamed, and Joh knew Rotwang's inexpressive face would be wearing a slight smile. Rotwang whispered, passed his hands over the coachman's body again and there were more screams.

  Little knives flashed red in Rotwang's hands, and he paid some attention to the coachman's face. Finally, the bandit spat into the road and pushed the coachman off his seat. The man sprawled, dead, beside his vehicle.

  Joh looked up at Rotwang.

  'No gold,' the killer told him. 'The Kautner seam petered out three months ago. No more gold in the Grey Mountains.'

  Joh swore, calling down the wrath of Morr on this venture. He had blundered badly, and would have to redeem himself or lose position. Groeteschele was young and Freder was a clod, but Rotwang×who had so far displayed no taste for leading the band×could easily take his place.

  'What is the meaning of this?'

  The coach door opened and a well-dressed man stepped out. His elegantly booted foot landed on the coachman's body and he cringed away. He looked at Joh and Groeteschele and drew a long, fine duellist's sword. He assumed a fighting stance and looked at Joh, waiting for the bandit to stri
ke the first blow. Groeteschele shot him in the head and he staggered back, shaking from the blow. Freder pulled his purse away from his belt and threw it to Joh. It was heavy, but not heavy enough to make this job worth its while. The ill-advised hero slid down the coach and sat, dead, in the road beside the coachman, eyes staring either side of Groeteschele's bolt.

  Joh went to the open door and looked into the coach.

  'Hello,' said a musical female voice, 'are you a bandit?'

  She had golden curls, and was dressed fit for the Imperial court in a brocaded dress with pearls worked into the bodice. She was not ostentatiously bejewelled, but her fingers and ears yielded more gold than many a small miner's claim would in a year. Her pale oval face was lovely, delicate and lightly painted.

  She sat on the plush seat of the coach like a dressed-up doll, her feet not touching the floor. Joh judged her to be about twelve years old.

  'Is there anything worth stealing?' Groeteschele asked.

  Joh smiled at the girl, who smiled back.

  'I think so.'

  Her name, she told them, was Lady Melissa d'Acques, and she was distantly related to both the royal family of Bretonnia and the Imperial House of the Second Wilhelm. She had insisted the bandits bring her luggage to Drachenfels when they took her there, and from the number, quality and expense of the dresses in her travelling wardrobe, Joh knew her family would be capable of paying a substantial ransom for her return. So far as he could make out, the girl was somewhat simple for her age. She treated her captors as if they were servants pretending to be bandits and this whole episode a game to while away a dull afternoon in the gardens. So far, this had worked to Joh's advantage×she had ridden on Freder's saddle and given them no trouble×but he dreaded the inevitable moment when she tired of play and wanted to be taken home. Typically, she seemed to have found a soulmate in Freder, with whom she was laughing and joking, exchanging nonsense rhymes. If only she knew how many men and women the rough-faced giant had killed with his hands alone.

  She didn't complain at the quality of the food they gave her at their camp, which was pitched in one of the courtyards of the fortress, and she tried cheerfully to answer all his questions. His problem was that, in order to convert his stroke of luck into gold crowns, he needed to know more about Melissa's family. How he could get in touch with her father, for instance. But Melissa, although only too willing to expound at childishly tedious length about the minutiae of her family life, was unwilling or unable to give an address where her family could be contacted, and only had the vaguest awareness of anything outside the cloisters of her aristocratic circle. )oh gathered her family maintained households in Parravon, Marienburg and Altdorf, and that several of her male relations could be found in the courts of Bretonnia and the Empire.

  As Melissa spoke, Freder squatted by her, grinning, enraptured by her stories about playthings, pets and servants. Everyone and everything in the d'Acques circle had a nickname. She experimented with several unflattering nicknames for Freder, and tried to extend the practice to )oh and Groeteschele. The wolf-faced Rotwang she was×wisely×a little afraid of, and so Joh had him see to business elsewhere, settling down the horses. It was vital that he learn more

  'Tell me, Melissa, where is your father now? Were you travelling to him?'

  Melissa cocked her head to one side and then the other. 'That depends, Mr. Joh. Sometimes, he's in his castle, sometimes he's in his palace. Now, he's probably in his palace.'

  'And where is his palace?'

  'He's a count, you know, and a baron. It gets so confusing remembering. The servants have a terrible time. In Bretonnia, he's a count, and in the Empire, he's a baron, and there are fearful penalties for getting them mixed up. We travel between Bretonnia and the Empire quite a bit.'

  Melissa yawned, forgetting to cover her mouth, and stretched. She didn't appear to be very comfortable in her starched and formal clothes. That might mean she was being sent on a short journey, that she had people nearby. She hadn't known the man in the coach at all before setting out, and hadn't formed a good opinion of him. 'He pinched my cheeks and patted my hair too much. He deserved to be killed.'

  Lady Melissa was quite a startling little girl. The aristocracy bred its young bloodthirsty, )oh guessed. Certainly the duke's son he had had to kill all those years ago, after the fop had run through Joh's father from behind on a minor quarrel, had been a death-happy fool. That had been the first step on the road to outlawry. There was a song about Joh Lamprecht, telling of how he was driven to the bandit life by injustice and tyranny, but Joh knew he would never have been content to be a copper miner like his father and grandfather. He would have been a bandit even if he had been born on the estates of Benedict the Benevolent, rather than the iron-fisted Duke of Diijah-Montaigne.

  'I'm tired,' she said. 'Can I go to bed now?'

  Joh nodded to Freder, who took the child up in his arms like a fond father, and bore her away. Joh had had Rotwang air out one of the bedrooms in the castle, and do his best to clean the cobwebs away. They had chosen a room with a still-functioning lock and an available key. It had no exterior windows and would serve as a comparatively luxurious cell.

  Freder came back, grinning, to the campfire.

  'Well?' Groeteschele asked Joh.

  Rotwang came out of the shadows suddenly.

  'We could do very well out of the lady,' Joh said. 'But we'll have to take it slowly. She's rich. They aren't like you and me, Groeteschele. They have strange ways. I think we'll be able to find out about her family, and then we'll bargain for a ransom.'

  'What if they don't want her back?' Rotwang asked. He was a foundling, sold for a pit-fighter before he could walk, and had no ideas about his real family. Joh sometimes wondered if Rotwang were entirely human.

  'Of course they'll want her back, Rotwang. She's a precious package.'

  Freder tried to say something. It took him a long time to get a sentence out, and usually it wasn't worth the wait. Because they were all tired, Joh, Rotwang and Groeteschele sat back and let him speak.

  'Cuh-cuh-cuh-couldn't w-we cuh-cuh-cuh-keep her?'

  Rotwang spat in the embers. They hissed. The shadows closed in.

  In the darkness of the Fortress of Drachenfels, the Old Woman crept, her fingers curved like claws, her still-sharp mind reaching before her. She had no need of her eyes after all these centuries. As a creature of the night, the cursed stones were comfortable to her. There were intruders now, and she would have to see them off or be destroyed. Her veins were thinned and her sharp teeth slid in and out of their gumsheaths. It was too long since she had slaked her red thirst.

  Drachenfels was gone, but he had left something of himself behind. She could taste the residue in the foul air. The spirits writhed deep in the shadows. But the living beings stood out like beacons. She latched onto them all, sipping their thoughts×although she would rather have been sipping their blood×and fixing them in her ancient mind.

  The bandits and their prisoner. It was an interesting situation. She found human relationships endlessly fascinating. There were so many ways they could be broken down, set aside and tampered with. For her, there was pleasure in the panic and fear she could whip up in the bandits before the feeding frenzy fell upon her, just as an epicure would prepare his palate for the main course with a selection of aperitifs or a great amorist postpone lovemaking with extensive foreplay.

  She was pleased that the strongest physically of the living men was the weakest in mind. That made things so much easier. His strength would nourish her, help her get through the long night, and deal with the more dangerous of the intruders.

  Her eyes filled with blood.

  Joh was startled awake, as if by a mailed fist clenching around his heart. He was sure he had cried out. Groeteschele was shaken out of sleep at the same moment. They bumped heads. Blinking in the afterlight of the fire, they looked at each other. Something was wrong, but they couldn't tell what it was. Joh had been dreaming, he knew, but the dream va
nished from his head as he was jolted out of the fug of sleep. It had been a bad one and he was sweating.

  Rotwang was up, daggers in both hands. He kicked something and it rolled towards the light.

  Groeteschele let out an involuntary oath, his voice womanish and shrill. Freder's head lay at his feet.

  'The rest of the oaf is here,' Rotwang said.

  Joh stabbed a pitch-covered torch at the embers. It caught, and he held it up.

  Rotwang stood over Freder's bulky body. The head had been taken off neatly and there was almost no blood. This was not a natural killing.

  'It's this place,' Groeteschele said. 'It stinks of that devil Drachenfels.'

  'The Great Enchanter is dead and gone,' Joh said.

  'So is Fat Fool Freder,' said Rotwang.

  'There's someone else here with us.' Groeteschele was shivering, but not with the cold. In his nightshirt, with his long, milky-white face, he looked himself like a cheap engraving of a ghost.

  'That's obvious. It's a big place.'

  'The girl?'

  Joh had a moment of concern for the Lady Melissa. He did not want her dying in any manner he could not profit from.

  The three bandits pulled on jackets and boots over nightclothes. Joh swore as he cut his palm open on the silver spur he had forgotten to remove from his rough riding boots. There was no time now. Weapons in their hands, they entered the wing of the castle where the captive's room was. Rotwang lead them through the dark. The sharpness of his eyes in shadow was among his most valuable attributes.

  Joh knew how serious their trouble was when he noticed that Rotwang wasn't sure about the path he was taking. The fortress was legendary for its labyrinthine and contradictory byways. That was one of the reasons Joh had chosen to pitch camp in the courtyard.

  After a moment of near panic, they found the room. 'Look,' said Rotwang.

  The wood around the handle was deeply scored, as if a knife-fingered hand had tried the door.