01 - Star of Erengrad

by Neil McIntosh - (ebook by Undead)

  “No,” Kuragin insisted. “Please, hear me out.” He took hold of Stefan’s arm. “I am a man of many failings, but I will try with every ounce of my being to serve Elena, and to serve Erengrad. Do you believe that?”

  “Yes,” Stefan said, truthfully. “I do.”

  “I know that Elena does not love me,” Petr Kuragin said. “Why should she? This is duty, not love. We both know that. But I shall never give her cause to despise me, and—who knows—perhaps one day she may be able to find some love in her heart.”

  Stefan waited. He knew no answer was expected of him. Kuragin looked at him for a moment, a strange expression on his face. Then he continued. “For now, I think it is you that she loves, Stefan. Am I right?” He quickly waved away Stefan’s protest. “I’m sorry. I have no right to expect you to answer that. There is no need. Elena’s eyes tell the story—yours, too.” He paused, searching for what he needed to say. “I want to tell you I’m glad that you were there for Elena, Stefan. I want to give you my thanks.”

  “Thank you,” Stefan said. A burden had lifted, but it had left behind a hollow place. Kuragin looked at him intently, and seemed to read his thoughts.

  “Franz is right,” he said. “We must make haste with the ceremony of the Star. But first, I think, you have your own ceremony to complete.” He nodded towards Elena, standing alone by the edge of the stage. “Please,” Kuragin said.

  Elena looked up, flustered, as Stefan approached. For a moment her face had worn a distant expression, as though her mind had been somewhere far away from Erengrad.

  “So,” she said, as brightly as she could muster. “This is goodbye then?”

  “Yes,” Stefan said. “The paths divide.”

  Elena cleared her throat, her voice suddenly cracked and thin. “I’ve realised something recently,” she said. “Realised I’m not much good at dealing with goodbyes.”

  “I don’t know that I’m much better,” Stefan replied. “I don’t think there’s an easy way with this.”

  Elena dropped her head, and brushed a hand across her eyes. She looked up again, forcing a smile. “Petr and I must consecrate the ceremony of the Star,” she said.

  “Will you be our witness?”

  Stefan stood facing her, battling with the forces inside of himself. All around them, on all sides of Katarina Square, the sea of faces looked on, waiting, expectant. For one brief moment he was oblivious to the thousand watching eyes. Stefan Kumansky was alone once more with Elena, and alone with his thoughts. His mind ran back to the night beneath the stars at Mirov; to a moment in time so fleetingly grasped. Would he have made the same choice, have taken that same path, had he known for sure that it would run its course so soon? Stefan had no need to dwell upon the question. His heart told him what the answer would be. He took a step back from Elena Yevshenko, and bowed low before her.

  “Yes,” he replied at last. “Yes, I will be your witness.”

  Whilst Stefan looked on, Petr and Elena linked hands at the front of the stage. In his other hand Petr held the Star of Erengrad, complete now, and dazzling in the sunlight. The clamour of voices rippling through Katarina Square suddenly dropped away to nothing. Petr and Elena stood together at the centre of a silent world. After a moment, Petr Kuragin looked out towards the crowd. Towards the people of Erengrad, his people, waiting for deliverance.

  “Too much blood has been spilt,” he told them. “Today we come to mourn our children of Erengrad who have been lost. But from today, too, the wounds shall begin to heal. With your hearts, and with your hands, we shall rebuild our city anew.”

  He passed the Star to Elena and, between them, they lifted it aloft in full view of the people massed around Katarina Square. A sound rippled through the crowd, barely more than a whisper; the collective intake of breaths. It was the sound of a people offering a prayer for peace, and it was the sound of hope.

  “With this holy relic, I pledge myself unto thee,” Kuragin intoned.

  “With this holy relic,” Elena repeated, “I pledge myself unto thee.”

  She turned towards the man who was now her husband. “Not so long ago there would have been flowers,” she said, half joking, half wistfully. “The streets strewn with sweet garlands.”

  “There will be flowers,” Petr told her. “Even now, we sow the seeds of their blossoming with our union.”

  They moved closer, and their lips met in a single kiss. The moment was stiff and awkward, but it had an unmistakable effect upon the waiting crowd. A silence, absolute and total, fell across the square. Stefan, too, found himself drawn under some kind of spell, as though the Star were speaking directly to him. It spoke of unity, of peace, of an end to a generation of civil war. He felt a warmth growing inside of himself, a warmth that radiated from the Star itself. He knew that every other man and woman of Kislev that stood within Katarina Square was feeling it too.

  Gradually, the city was turning back towards the light. The gestures were small—handshakes, conversation, a shoulder for the tears of the bereaved—but they were unmistakable.

  “We live for moments like these, do we not?”

  Stefan turned to see Gastez Castelguerre standing at his side. Stefan thought of Elena, and he thought of the journey that had brought him to this final place. He smiled. “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, we do.”

  “We are much alike, you and I,” Castelguerre continued. He appraised Stefan with a measured stare. “I think our work here is done for the moment, don’t you?” He took Stefan by the arm. “Come,” he urged. “Let’s walk a while.”

  Stefan allowed himself to be led away. Castelguerre was right, perhaps more so than he knew. His part in Elena’s life was at an end now. Their story was drawing to a close, and a new chapter in her life with Kuragin—and the life of Erengrad itself—was opening.

  Once they were clear of the crowds Castelguerre stopped and turned towards Stefan, his expression pensive, probing.

  “There are not so many of us,” he said. “Men like you and I, that is.” He glanced back towards the couple upon the stage. “This is a great victory, but it has been won at a price. The world will not lightly bear the loss we have sustained.”

  “You mean Otto,” Stefan said, “and Andreas.”

  Castelguerre nodded. “With them gone, we are few indeed.” He paused. “But we would always have need of men such as you, Stefan Kumansky.”

  Stefan pondered the implication of the words. “You’re asking me to join your order?” he asked. “To join the Keepers of the Flame?”

  Castelguerre smiled, benignly. “Yes,” he said, simply.

  “And what if I say no?” Stefan countered.

  “Then I’ll content myself with having made you the offer,” Castelguerre replied. “And I shall not ask you again.” He paused. “But I do not think you will say no.”

  Stefan’s deliberations were cut short by a voice calling his name. He looked around to see Bruno approaching, looking troubled. Stefan made his excuses and hurried across to meet his comrade.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  “It may be nothing,” Bruno began. “But I’m hearing rumours about a rider running amok about the city, attacking people indiscriminately. Look, it might just be some garbled story, but—”

  “But what?” Stefan demanded.

  “The descriptions fit Zucharov,” Bruno said. “It sounds as though he’s lost his mind. Maybe he’s ill, running with fever,” he added.

  “Maybe,” Stefan murmured. The image of Zucharov, emerging through the smoking ruins of the city, filled his mind. Something in Zucharov had altered, but he had not looked ill. If anything he had seemed filled with a new, unnatural energy. Stefan heard again his comrade’s last words to him: I am strong. The words and the image echoed in his mind like remnants of a bad dream.

  “We’ll find him, don’t worry,” Franz assured them. “My men will soon have the city sealed. He’ll turn up before long.”

  Stefan felt a touch upon his hand. “What’s
happened?” Elena asked. “Is everything all right?”

  “It’s fine,” he told her. “Everything will be all right now. We’ve come through this, both of us.”

  Elena looked towards Petr Kuragin upon the rostrum, then turned back to Stefan. “I came to tell you I must go now,” she said. “I need to—”

  “Be at his side,” Stefan said. “It’s all right. I know. He needs you there, and you must go to him.”

  She stood facing him for a few moments longer, the warmth of her smile tempered by a deeper sadness. “We might have made something of a life together,” she said.

  “I know,” Stefan replied. “But that would have been another life. Along another path.”

  She stretched out her hand, and Stefan held it in his own for the last time, before letting her go. As he watched her walk back across the square, he realised he was already looking at a different person; a young woman already carrying the burdens of office upon her shoulders. Somehow, Stefan suspected, she would carry them well.

  “The war is won. Now they have to build a new peace,” Bruno observed. “It won’t be easy.”

  “That it won’t,” Stefan agreed. “But Castelguerre has brought food to fill bellies, and men to rebuild walls. The rest—rebuilding hearts, and souls—the rest is up to them.”

  Franz Schiller returned, talking hurriedly with Castelguerre. “Zucharov has been seen,” he told Stefan. He hesitated. Now it was Schiller’s turn to look troubled.

  “What is it?” Bruno asked. Schiller paled. “My men tried to stop him leaving the city,” he said. “Three died in the attempt.”

  “He’s fled the city?” Stefan demanded.

  Schiller nodded. “We’ve lost him. I’m sorry, Stefan.”

  “Well,” Bruno said, “at least that means he can do no more harm here.”

  “Here, no,” Stefan agreed. The thought did not console him much. What had Otto said, half a lifetime away back in Altdorf? Words that Gastez Castelguerre himself had echoed on the eve of the battle for Erengrad? Beware the poison that claims men by stealth. Beware the poison in the stream.

  “Our troubles are still not yet ended?” the commander asked of him.

  Stefan forced a smile, but it was tinged with the gnawing ache he suddenly felt inside. It was a feeling he knew of old, one which was not going to let him go.

  “I fear Zucharov didn’t heed your warning,” Stefan replied. “I think he may be carrying the seed of darkness inside him.” He paused, remembering their earlier conversation.

  “I’m not forgetting what we spoke of,” he said. “But I cannot leave this unresolved.”

  “I know,” Castelguerre replied. “And my offer will still stand, whenever you are ready to accept it.”

  Stefan turned back to Bruno. “The journey’s not finished,” he said. “Not for me, at least. I have to track Zucharov down, Bruno. I have to find out. If this is some temporary madness, well and good. We’ll find a way to bring our brother back to us.”

  “And if it isn’t,” Bruno asked, “what then?”

  “Then it can only end in death,” Stefan said. “His death, or mine.”

  “The world is wide, Stefan. He could be headed anywhere.”

  “True enough,” Stefan agreed. “I don’t know where this journey will take me,” he told Castelguerre. “Or for how long.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” the commander responded. “When the time is right, we shall find one another.”

  Stefan looked one final time to where Elena stood upon the stage. What should he call her now? Countess, princess, lady of Erengrad? To him, at least, she would always be just Elena. Perhaps they, too, would find one another once more. Perhaps their paths were destined to cross again. Perhaps. For now, there was another path, dark and uncertain, which he was destined to follow.

  “I think Zucharov will try to disappear,” he said to Bruno. “Disappear until whatever has taken hold of him has eased—or strengthened its grip. I think he will do as I would do, and return towards what he knows, towards home. But he won’t be able to vanish without trace. Somewhere, sooner or later, I’ll find him.”

  “And I shall be there with you when you do,” Bruno said. “I shall travel with you on that journey, Stefan. We shall ride together. Until the story is ended.”

  EPILOGUE

  Deep within the lightless, empty space that was the domain of Kyros, the Chaos Lord looked down upon the mortal realm, and sensed the balance of the fates as they shifted. Slowly but surely his prize had slipped from his grasp. Inside the city, as well as beyond the walls, the battle for Erengrad was now ended.

  Kyros did not turn his face from defeat. He would drink it down, know its bitter taste and commit it to deep memory. For then vengeance, when it came, would taste all the sweeter.

  And vengeance would come. The final victory would be his, as surely as the waves would return to fall upon the shore. All of this—Erengrad, Kislev and the blighted lands beyond—all of it had but one destiny. To be subsumed within the dominion of the Great Lord Tzeentch. The time of his coming might have been forestalled, but it would not be long denied.

  Already, the picture was changing. Kyros now turned his gaze away from the gates of Erengrad, towards the shadowed deep of the forest and the lands that lay beyond, to the west. Towards the lone horseman riding hard for those lands, through the fields of the fallen dead. The speeding rider was not his to command and control; not yet. But the transformation had begun. Before long the dark flower would come to full bloom. Then a new champion of Tzeentch would walk the face of the world, and the world would know and fear his name.

  Until then he must nurture his disciple, keep him safe from the spiteful intrusions of mankind. Kyros knew that Zucharov was being pursued, and in one of the pursuers he had recognised the seemingly unquenchable fire of an enemy that had already, time and again, stood in his way of his goal. For the moment, the hunter would become the hunted. But time was a river that flowed only one way. The flesh of all mortal men would weaken and yield. If Stefan Kumansky chose to pursue Zucharov, then let him. For he would be pursuing his own death.

  Even as he set aside the conquest of Erengrad, Kyros was reaching out towards new, as yet unknown prizes. Prizes that would cast the loss of this miserable city into insignificance. The mortals could be vigilant, but their vigil could not stand forever. The fates would deal him another chance before long.

  This day the battle had been lost. But it was just the first battle in a war that was only now beginning.

  Scanning and basic

  proofing by Flandrel,

  formatting and additional

  proofing by Undead.