by Jack Yeovil
It was still locked. Rotwang fumbled with the key, and opened the door.
'What are you doing?' Melissa said, sitting up in bed, her hair loose. 'Am I to be murdered in my bed?'
As soon as he saw Freder's bodiless head, Rotwang knew that Joh Lamprecht's time as a King of Banditti was over. It only remained for Rotwang to live out this night in the castle, and leave. Perhaps he would turn to the mercenary life again and enlist in one of the many armies of the Old World. There were always opportunities for people with his skills, and many employers uninterested in the legalities of his previous adventures. He was not profligate in the deployment of his abilities, and liked to see gold from each of his killings. So far, the coachman had not been worth the effort. The little girl would never bring more than her jewellery. Kidnapping was a fool's crime, and had Joh proposed it outright Rotwang would have left there and then. The business of the bungled coach hold-up had been bad enough, but the kidnapping×and now the death of one of their number×told him that the days of easy plunder were at an end.
Currently, Joh was trying to talk to the Lady Melissa, to no great purpose. The girl knew nothing. Groeteschele was sitting in a chair, hugging himself. The youth was badly scared. He had been as courageous as any in the band's previous exploits, but had only faced cold steel and human muscle. Whatever it was that walked this castle was no natural thing, Rotwang knew.
Prince Oswald should have had the place razed to the ground once the Great Enchanter was dead.
'We stay here and protect the girl,' Joh ordered.
Rotwang didn't know if his chief fully meant what he said. He had not hitherto been noted for his sense of chivalry. Still, a farmer would guard from wolves a calf he fully intended to butcher on the morrow.
Groeteschele was too deeply frightened to answer. Joh looked to Rotwang.
This was as good a position as any to defend.
He nodded.
Joh sat on the Lady Melissa's bed, and told the child to lie back and go to sleep. He stroked her hair, almost tenderly.
'Good night, Mr Joh.'
The little girl smiled, shrugged, and pulled the covers up over her head.
'Shut the door and wait, Rotwang,' Joh said. 'It'll come to us.'
'I know.'
Joh wondered if the only dangers in the castle were outside the room. Groeteschele was nearly mad with fear, and the mad can be dangerous to those who mean them no harm. The lad was gripping his sword with both hands, holding it vertical in his lap, his forehead pressed against the flat of the blade. His eyes were active, looking at every corner of the room, but empty of intelligence. Joh had never bothered to find out what Groeteschele had been before Warden Fanck shackled them together in the quarries. They had shared days and nights ever since, but Joh still knew nothing of Groeteschele's antecedents, his former life, his original crime. Somehow, he knew it was too late now.
And Rotwang was slow to respond to his orders, taking a second to think things through. Obedience was no longer automatic. The killer was out for himself, and would not hesitate to leave the others to a ghastly death if he thought he could survive the better for it. After all, the man had lasted so long in his profession precisely because he was dangerous, treacherous, conscienceless. Often, Joh had wondered what the result would be if he were to duel with the killer. Rotwang would have the edge in training, experience and simple skill, but )oh thought the other man was dead inside. He killed without passion, without interest, and Joh suspected×hoped×his own brand of hot-blooded combat would prove superior to Rotwang's chilly discipline. It was a question he had never felt the need to put to a practical test.
The torch burned in its sconce, filling the room with red shadows. The Lady Melissa slept, or seemed to, the covers rising and falling as she breathed.
Joh had to turn the situation around to his advantage. He had to extort a suitable ransom from the d'Acques clan. He had to proceed to his Tilean pickings and make his name as a strategist. There would be more songs about Joh Lamprecht. More odes to his glories.
Outside, in the bulk of the castle, there were sounds. Joh knew the same winds that had blown the night before were setting shutters to rattle and old furniture to creak. But amid the thousand tiny natural sounds of night, there were silences that betokened huge and malevolent presences. Drachenfels was dead. There was no question of that. But the dead could still be dangerous. Perhaps something of the Great Enchanter remained behind in his fortress, waiting, watching, hungry
Like Groeteschele, he clutched his weapon as a cleric does the symbol of his deity.
He could only wait.
The Old Woman was glutted with the first of her victims. Freder's blood had proved rich, and with it came a rush of the memories of his body. She felt his pains and his pleasures as she drained him lustily. She had absorbed his life, and freed his tethered, childish spirit from its cage of meat. As an afterthought, she left him for the others to find. She found it easy to pass through the castle. Locked doors, walled-up passages, and trap-laden corridors posed no problems for her. Like a mist, she could pass where she willed.
From Freder's dull memories, she learned about the others. It was easy to see how to proceed against them. So easy. People never changed, never learned. They were always easy.
In the warm darkness she made and unmade fists, extending and retracting her hard, sharp nails.
Her thirst was quenched. The rest of the night's work would be for the pleasure of it.
Considering who her prey were and their intentions towards their captive, the Old Woman believed she served the cause of Justice as surely as any Imperial man-at-arms or thrice-blessed servant of Verena.
She could still taste the blood in her mouth.
She reached out for the weakest of the minds against her, and forced herself in.
After sitting still for over an hour, Groeteschele screamed. His sword leaped slightly in his hands and blood trickled down his forehead. He stood up, the blade scraping his skin. Joh was startled out of a half-sleep by his friend's cry and pushed himself off Melissa's bed. The child miraculously stayed asleep. Rotwang took an apparently casual interest.
Groeteschele dropped his sword. He was bleeding profusely, but his self-inflicted wound looked comparatively minor. His scream died away, but he kept whimpering.
'Calm yourself,' Joh ordered.
Groeteschele didn't take any notice. He was gabbling to himself, his meaning impossible to gauge. Blood dropped from his cheeks and chin onto his nightshirt. He shook his head and wrung his hands. He could have been posing for a statue of the muse of fear.
Joh reached out to take hold of Groeteschele's shoulder, but the younger man dodged back, his terror increased by the prospect of human contact.
Rotwang stood aside, impassive.
Groeteschele began to chant something in a language Joh didn't recognise. It was the unknown tongue the bandit used when he sometimes talked in his sleep, the tongue Joh assumed was that of the never-mentioned land of his birth. As he chanted, he made signs in the air with his fingers. Droplets of blood detached from his face and fell to the floor.
Groeteschele hit the door and passed through. Joh heard him blundering down the corridor, still chanting.
The bedclothes rose in a hump, and the Lady Melissa burrowed her way sleepily to the surface.
'What's going on?' she asked.
Joh's face was wet. Groeteschele had splashed him with his own blood.
'Watch the girl,' he told Rotwang. 'I'm going after him.'
Rotwang nodded. Melissa smiled and rubbed her eyes.
Lantern in one hand, scimitar in the other, Joh stepped outside. He could still hear Groeteschele babbling.
He walked slowly, towards the noise.
Joh Lamprecht was a sentimental old fool, Rotwang thought. The boy, Groeteschele, was dead, and Joh should have left him to rot. But Joh had formed an attachment to the youthful Yann, and would not be dissuaded from plunging into the darkness to face whatever horro
rs lay dormant in Drachenfels, waiting for him with claws, pincers and hot coals.
He paced the bedroom, struggling with unfamiliar feelings. Hitherto, he had faced death with a cool reserve born of a knowledge that those who let their emotions take over in a crisis were those least likely to walk away whole. In combat, he was as dispassionate as a surgeon, and he still lived, while all the berserkers he had faced were wormshit.
Now, he felt fear. Not just the healthy quickening that kept you cautious in the pit, that reminded you to keep your body away from your foeman's blade, but a deep-down fear that whispered to him, incessantly compelling him to throw down his sword and run like Groeteschele, run until he was free of Drachenfels, free of the Grey Mountains
He knew that was the way to die, but the temptation was still there.
The little girl was sitting up in bed now, playing with her long, fine hair.
Although roused in the middle of the night, her curls seemed naturally composed rather than tangled. Joh was right; the rich were different.
He had pledged his sword for the rich all his life. In the pits as a child, he had been wagered on by aristocratic sportsmen who prided themselves in picking a winner. Later, he had fought for the Elector of Middenland when his tenant farmers tried to resist a raise in the tithe. So much blood spilled, so much profit made, and so little of it, in the end, for his own benefit.
'Mr Rotwang?' the girl asked. He didn't reply, but she continued. 'Mr Rotwang, are you a really brave and ferocious bandit, like Blaque Jacques in the songs?'
He ignored her. Brave and ferocious. That is what he had been earlier in the evening, before the accursed Joh Lamprecht led him to this doom-laden castle and exposed him to the terrors of the dark.
Brave and ferocious. Now, he was not so sure about that.
He could still hear Groeteschele chanting. The monotone had changed now and the young man seemed to be singing. He was breathing badly, interrupting the song in the wrong places and Joh assumed he was near the end of his strength. Good. He didn't want to have to fight his comrade to bring him back.
He had never realised before how much the young man meant to him. Freder had been a cretin, and Rotwang was beyond conversation, which meant Groeteschele was the only person in the band Joh could talk to, could hand down the benefit of his experience to. Unconsciously, he had been training the lad to be his successor on the outlaw path. Without him, Joh's nights would be long and empty. All the passed-on wisdom would go to waste.
If Yann Groeteschele died here in Drachenfels, there would be nobody left. When Joh himself passed on, there would be nobody left alive who knew the workings of the Three Gold Crowns Scam, the mechanics of the Vault-Piercing Screw, the profit to be had from the Joh Lamprecht Stagecoach Switch Manoeuvre. Without Groeteschele, Joh's life would be a waste.
In the back of his mind, Joh knew these thoughts weren't like him. Groeteschele was another crossbowman, no more nor less. Warden Fanck and sheer chance, not a bond of affection, had shackled them together. And yet, here in the dark of Drachenfels, something was coming out of him. He thought he was being worked on, and tried to resist.
Joh found Groeteschele backed up in a blind corridor, squeezed into a corner, still chanting. His eyes were shut tight, crusted over with his scabbing blood, and he was tracing symbols in the dust. Joh recognised a few gods' names×Shallya, Verena, Ulric×in Groeteschele's litany, and the scrawl on the floor included approximations of several sacred signs.
'Come, lad, there's nothing to fear,' Joh lied.
Groeteschele kept up his mad prayer, Joh set down his lantern and went to his comrade, and bent over, hoping to help him to his feet, to guide him back to Melissa's room to await the dawn.
Groeteschele's right hand was still tracing signs, but his left was at the belt he had drawn around his nightshirt, gripping something tightly. As he touched the young man's right upper arm, Joh realised what Groeteschele was holding.
He kept his quarrels strung on his belt.
Joh tried to pull back, but Groeteschele was fast. His eyes flicked open and his left hand shot upwards. He spat a curse, and lodged the point of the crossbow bolt between Joh's chest and shoulder.
Joh felt the weapon scrape his upper ribs and sink through the joint. Pain flowed up and down his arm and he dropped his scimitar. Groeteschele was standing up now, working the quarrel deeper, his right hand caught in Joh's hair.
They struggled together. The lantern was knocked over under their feet and a small spill of burning oil spread in the dirt. Joh saw red shadows dancing on the walls as he wrestled with Groeteschele. He punched the young man in the belly with his left hand and knocked the wind out of him. Groeteschele broke the clinch and staggered away. He let go of the quarrel with a final yank that shot another bolt of pain into Joh's torso.
Groeteschele was going for Joh's dropped sword. Joh kicked him in the side and tipped him over. He fell into the burning pool, and his flimsy cotton nightshirt caught in an instant, flaming up to his legs.
Screeching curses, Groeteschele came at Joh, the flames spreading over his entire body.
Joh stepped back and there was a wall where one hadn't been before. He struck the stone with his wounded shoulder, and screamed out loud, nearly fainting with the agony. He held up his left arm like a shield as the fiery Groeteschele lurched forwards. The bandit's smooth face was on fire now, the features running like wax, and the enclosed space was thick with the stench of burning flesh.
Joh's scimitar was ten yards away, and Groeteschele stood between him and it. He only had one weapon available.
Clenching his teeth against what he was about to do to himself, he got a proper grip on the barbed bolt in his shoulder. He hoped to be able to pull it out as easily as one draws a dagger from a sheath, but the arrowhead tip tore muscle as he extracted the spike. He invoked the name of Khorne and held up the dripping quarrel like an offering.
A great scream was building up inside Groeteschele's chest, and emerged through an enlarged and ravaged mouth as he leaped at Joh, his flame-tipped hands reaching out to throttle.
With his left hand, Joh stabbed, aiming for the cut on Groeteschele's forehead. He struck home and, thumb over the end of the quarrel, forced the steel into his friend's brain.
Groeteschele's eyes died, and Joh pushed the dead man away from him. His left sleeve was alight. He tried to reach for it with his right hand, but as his elbow bent a crippling wave of pain made him sink to his knees. He scraped his burning sleeve against the wall, and the fires went out.
He felt like curling up and going to sleep, letting his pains fade away. But he knew that would be fatal.
At least his legs were uninjured. Unsteadily, using the wall as a brace for his back, he got to his feet.
Now, he realised how little notice he had taken of the path to this place. He had no idea how to get back to Rotwang and Melissa.
The fires died down and he was in total darkness, alone with his pain.
Trusting to instinct, he pushed himself away from the wall and followed the corridor.
The Old Woman's brain buzzed with the emotional discharge from the clash between the former friends. Their pain and fear was so much the greater for the bond between them broken by their fight. Her mouth was dry, but jolts of pleasure coursed through her human-seeming body.
Over a thousand years ago, when she was truly young, her coach had been stopped by a bandit. Not a gold-seeking thug such as these, but a wild-haired monster of the bloodline of Belada the Melancholy, an unlettered savage who could live for an eternity but who lacked the refinement to make such an existence bearable.
She was that vampire's get, his daughter-in-darkness, and she had birthed many a blood herself. The lady Genevieve, whose finest moment had come in this castle, was her granddaughter-in-darkness, the get of her get. It had been a proud, productive life
Freder's blood flowed through her veins, mingling with her own ichor. It was time she killed again, took more sustenance.
/> Two bandits and their little captive. They were alone in Drachenfels. The configuration was amusing.
In the morning they would all be dead. But the Old Woman's death would be like life. The others would be gone, used-up husks thrown away to rot.
Her eyeteeth extended and grew sharper and she ran her velvety tongue over them.
The little girl smiled innocently at Rotwang. A few minutes ago, he had realised he was nervously walking up and down the carpet and resolved to calm himself. Now he stood stock still, barely breathing, swordhilt in his hand. He didn't have too tight a grip×that made you too inflexible when it came to responding to an attack×and he was visualising a stylised wolf's head in his mind. It was the symbol he had worn as a pit fighter, and it always helped him relax before a battle to dwell upon its shape. Maybe the wolf was his personal talisman. He had always favoured Ulric, God of Battle, Wolves and Winter, over the more obvious Khaine, Lord of Murder, as the protector of his profession.
Sometimes, he dreamed that he was a wolf. He had been thickly-pelted as a child, although he was not abnormally hairy now, and he wondered if his unknown parents had lycanthrope blood in them. He had never shapeshifted, but he was not like other men in many ways.
The girl was singing to herself, a Bretonnian lullaby he didn't recognise.
'Mr Rotwang?'
'Yes, my lady?' He hated himself suddenly, for lapsing into the servile form of address. But it was only natural to him. 'What is it?'
'Tomorrow, when the sun comes up, will we be here?'
He had no answer.
Melissa scrambled out of bed. She wore a long, gold-embroidered nightdress that could almost pass for a ball gown. Her bare white feet were silent on the thick carpet. She danced around the room to her lullaby, holding her skirts out and curtseying to an imagined courtly admirer.
When Rotwang was her age, he had been killing for seven years. He resented the Lady Melissa for her family her wealth, her childhood. All these things had been denied him. He hated his possibly wolfish parents for abandoning him among men. He should have been suckled on the steppes, raised with the pack, and taught the trick, the trick of shaking aside human form.