[Heroes 05] - The Red Duke

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

  The Red Duke’s armoured hands reached towards a pile of rubble, passing through the empty space where had once hung the most precious treasure in all Crac de Sang. His desperate eyes scoured the desolation, fighting to deny the terror that threatened to crush the vampire’s shrivelled heart.

  An anguished howl echoed through the ruins of the vampire’s castle. The Red Duke fell to his knees beside the collapsed wall, his fingers clawing at the ground, gouging furrows in the flagstones. Tears fell from the monster’s eyes as he raised his face and stared desolately at the emptiness where once had hung the portrait of Duchess Martinga. Another pained wail sounded from the vampire as he pressed his clenched fists to his eyes.

  The face of his wife was gone, lost to the shadows that had devoured his soul. The Red Duke had needed her portrait to anchor her image in his mind, to make her something more than a cold dead memory. As the vampire’s tormented cries scattered into the darkness, he knew it was not the woman he mourned, but rather the emotion that time and the curse of the undead had stolen from him. He could remember his love for her, the pain of her loss, the fury of his revenge, but he could not feel them now. The last fragile link between the man and the monster had been lost.

  The Red Duke rose from the dusty floor, rage replacing sorrow upon his drawn features. His armoured fist cracked against one of the standing walls, dislodging a stream of debris and causing a ten foot section to crash to the ground. The vampire stalked away from the cloud of dust that rose from the wreckage, his wrath growing with each step. All of his treasures and riches were gone, his great fortress cast into ruin. Those responsible for such destruction would rue the day of their birth and beg for the mercy of death before the vampire was done with them.

  The great hall stretched before him, its marble floor carpeted in the bloodied tabards and surcoats of fallen knights. A line of tall columns flanked the room; upon each face of each pillar was chained the dead and dying wreckage of those who had dared to oppose him. Rats gnawed at the captives, worms writhed in their open wounds. The despairing moans of the wretched shuddered through the hall. Some called out to the Lady for mercy, others cursed their oaths and tried to swear allegiance to their captor. One knight, more stalwart than most, had tried to end his suffering by swallowing his own tongue. He had been caught before he could die, restored to life by the vampire’s dark arts. Now the knight could only cough curses on the Red Duke with the ragged stump of tongue left to him.

  The vampire found the glottal noise soothing as he sat at his table and supped among the dying. It was a particular delight to bring the daughters of his enemies to his table, to fete the ladies with a sumptuous feast before the famished eyes of their tortured sires. Those who had been the Red Duke’s prisoner long knew how the dinner would end, watching with mounting horror as the vampire spurned all meat and wine placed upon the table. The Red Duke would watch them as he leaned back in his claw-footed throne, savouring every exquisite twinge of despair on the faces of his prisoners.

  In the end, the vampire would tire of his entertainment. Then he would slake his hunger. A clap of his hands would bring the decayed husks of his servants lumbering into the great hall. The zombies in their immaculate livery would attend the Red Duke’s table. First they would seize his dinner guest, stripping from her whatever rich gown the vampire had drawn from his wife’s wardrobe to accentuate the appearance of his victim. There would be a moment of shocked horror when the zombies seized the girl, followed by the impotent threats and pleas of the knightly prisoners. Then a moment of outraged disbelief as the clumsy cadavers ripped the clothing from the struggling girl’s body.

  Trembling and naked, the Red Duke’s guest would be laid upon the table. Tethers would bind her flailing hands, chains would be locked about her kicking feet. A living servant would attach the chain to the hook hanging inconspicuously from the ceiling while a brawny zombie worked the wheel set into the rear wall. The girl would be pulled upwards, her terror mounting with each shuddering creak of the wheel. Inch by inch, she would be pulled towards the ceiling, but only far enough to suit the Red Duke’s needs.

  With a grandiose flourish of his cape, the Red Duke would rise from his seat and draw a steel dagger from his belt. He would never use the edge against his victim, instead employing the sharp point to stab a delicate-seeming cut in the side of her neck. The cut would just penetrate the artery beneath the sobbing girl’s smooth skin, allowing blood to flow freely and copiously from the wound.

  The Red Duke always used a crystal goblet to catch the dripping blood, and always remembered to toast his captive audience as he drank his late dinner guest dry.

  The Red Duke shook his head to clear his thoughts, staring in confusion at the empty hand that a moment before had held a goblet of blood. He cast his gaze across the sad wreck of his great hall. The pillars had been cast down, the long table and claw-footed throne rotted away into ruin. He could see the iron wheel set into the back wall, now corroded into a lump of crumbling rust.

  Crac de Sang had been destroyed. The vampire remembered that now. An enemy had breeched the walls, sacked and plundered his mighty fortress. The question remained. Who had done this, and how? When he had departed to drive the usurper’s army from Aquitaine, the Red Duke had entrusted the safeguarding of his castle to Sir Corbinian.

  “Have mercy, my lord!” Corbinian’s shout echoed through the damp confines of the dungeon.

  The Red Duke turned away from the sinister device he had been hovering over. It resembled a long wooden table, its surface covered by barbed hooks. At either end of the table, a great winch was fastened. Dried blood coated the table and the floor beneath it. The flickering torches set into the walls of the dungeon illuminated every ghastly inch of the rack, the device its sadistic Arabyan creator had named “the fingers of hell”.

  The vampire approached the wall to which his errant vassal had been chained. He paused just beyond reach of the imprisoned knight. Corbinian knew it was useless to try to reach his tormentor, but that did not stop him from trying. The Red Duke sneered at the man’s futile effort to push his body away from the wall and get his hands around the vampire’s throat.

  “I am the one who disobeyed you!” Corbinian pleaded. “She’s done nothing to you! Let her go!”

  For a moment, the Red Duke smiled at Corbinian, almost as though considering the knight’s entreaty. Then the vampire’s lips parted, exposing his cruel fangs. “The wench was marked to die the moment I took her from her father’s castle. You knew that, yet you chose to defy me.”

  “Please, your grace, spare her!”

  The Red Duke scowled at his captive. “Love is a poor thing to own,” the vampire hissed. He gestured with one of his gloved hands. Henchmen shuffled out from the darkness, their faces hidden beneath leather hoods. Between them, the torturers held the limp body of a young woman. The Red Duke watched his men lead their prisoner towards the table, then turned to glare at Corbinian. “Everything a man loves dies,” the vampire said. “Everything he values must turn to dust. It is only the things inside a man that he can keep with him always. Things like loyalty and honour.”

  “I admit I broke faith with you!” wailed Corbinian. “I know I have wronged you! But punish me, not her!”

  The vampire turned away again to watch as the torturers lifted the unconscious woman onto the table. Her body flinched as the barbed hooks jabbed into her skin. The men had been quite thorough in their earlier attentions to her, but she would regain consciousness soon enough. The fingers of hell would see to that.

  “Do you know this device?” the Red Duke asked Corbinian. “It is an Arabyan invention, used to punish those who violate the harem of a Caliph. The offender is placed upon the table, the hooks latch themselves upon her skin. Then her arms are tied to the pulley at the head of the table. As the winch turns, she is dragged across the hooks and the skin is flayed from her body. It takes a long time. Sometimes the Arabyans will pardon the offender if they endure the pain well enough.
But I think I shall ignore that tradition.”

  Corbinian lunged at the vampire again, his chains rattling as they wrenched him back against the wall. “I will kill you!” the knight swore. “If I have to claw my way back from the pits of Morr, I will kill you!”

  The Red Duke smiled at the knight. “Pay particular attention to her suffering, because you will be next. And after you die, I shall help you claw your way back from the pits of Morr. I think you will serve me much more faithfully once you are beyond the distractions of the flesh.”

  “Corbinian!” The Red Duke shouted, his commanding voice booming from the shattered halls of his castle. Bats fluttered from the broken windows of the remaining tower, frightened by his voice. A scrawny wolf loped away from a pile of masonry, a whining pup clenched in its jaws. “Corbinian!” the vampire shouted again.

  The clatter of disturbed rubble was the only sound to rise from the ruins. As the Red Duke’s attention was drawn to the rubble, his supernatural senses told him he had located the long-dead knight. With a hurried stride, the vampire marched to the pile of debris. He could see the outline of steps protruding from under the rubble. Once, this stairway had connected to the dungeons beneath the castle. The irony that Corbinian had been imprisoned in those dungeons a second time was not lost upon the vampire.

  “Corbinian!” the Red Duke hissed. “Attend your master! This I command!”

  The rubble continued to shift. Soon stone blocks were tumbling from the pile of debris, clattering about the flagstones at the vampire’s feet. After many minutes, a tunnel-like opening was exposed. A dark, spindly shape lurched out from the hole, its face a fleshless skull with green witchlights burning in the depths of its eye sockets. A rusty, bat-winged helm encased the skull and about the skeletal body decaying strips of armour were draped.

  The wight stared silently at the Red Duke. Its bony hands closed about the sword sheathed at its side. Without a sound, the wight drew its blade.

  The Red Duke regarded the skeletal horror with a cold gaze, making no move to defend himself against the wight’s sword. The vampire knew that there was no independent will left to the undead creature. If there had, it would have dug its way free long ago.

  Still without making a sound, the wight stabbed the blade of its sword into the ground and sank to one knee, bowing its head before its ancient master.

  Five hundred years had not been enough to free Sir Corbinian from the grip of his monstrous master.

  CHAPTER VII

  From the hilltop, the Bretonnian commanders watched the relief column march across the open desert. Despite the blazing Arabyan sun, the knights shivered with dread as they saw the seemingly endless tide of men and beasts advancing across the burning sands. The steel of their spears and spiked helmets glittered in the sun, making the entire procession resemble a winding river, an elemental force ripping its way through the wastes.

  Instinctively, the knights looked to their leader, wondering if the indomitable Duke of Aquitaine had finally found something even he could not fail to fear. The duke’s face was grave as he squinted through the strange bronze cylinder and swept its glass eye across the Arabyan army. It was many minutes before he lowered the device from his eye and nodded grimly.

  “A remarkable invention,” the duke said, handing the telescope back to Baron Wolff, one of the knights from the Empire who had ridden to join the Bretonnians in their crusade against Sultan Jaffar. “The craftsmen of your country are talented indeed to create such a wondrous device!

  The Imperial knight bowed his head as the telescope was returned to him. Most of the men from the Empire who had joined the crusade showed little deference to the Bretonnian nobility, whatever their rank. The Duke of Aquitaine, however, was one Bretonnian who had earned the respect of every man in the crusade.

  “It is of dwarf make,” Baron Wolff confessed. “The engineers of the Empire have not learned the precision to recreate them for ourselves.” The baron’s voice grew firm. “But we will,” he vowed.

  “What did you see through the glass, your grace?” asked a tall Aquitainian knight with mouse-coloured hair.

  The duke turned and raised his voice so that all could hear him. “The enemy is led by Mehmed-bey. They march under the standard of the Black Lizard.” His statement brought anxious murmurs from the gathered knights. Mehmed-bey was one of Sultan Jaffar’s most efficient and brutal generals. He had earned the sobriquet of “Mehmed the Butcher” after the Battle of the Nine Jackals. A crusader force had been sent to capture the Oasis of Gazi. Mehmed had allowed the knights to seize the oasis, but only after the magic of his fakirs had changed the water into wine. Despairing of thirst, the knights had been forced to fend off the repeated assaults of Mehmed’s akincis, fast nomad lancers and horse archers. Wearing down their resolve, the Arabyans forced the crusaders to drink the magic wine—a liquor of such potency that neither man nor horse could withstand its properties.

  With the crusaders now helpless, Mehmed-bey attacked the oasis one last time, employing his armoured sipahis to massacre the defenceless Bretonnians. The Arabyan knights took the oasis without a casualty. Those crusaders he captured alive Mehmed ordered hung by their feet from the palm trees, their mouths filled with salt and their lips sewn tight with twine. One man alone did the brutal general spare, allowing him to ride away and bear the tale to his countrymen, and this messenger Mehmed ensured would never bear arms against the sultan again by chopping off his hands before setting him on his horse.

  “Leave my land now, or stay forever in your graves.” Such had been the fearsome warning sent by Mehmed-bey to the invaders of Araby.

  There was no general among Sultan Jaffar’s armies whose mere name could have intimidated the crusaders as that of Mehmed the Butcher. However, the Arabyan’s villainous reputation could be used against him. Once battle was joined, the crusaders would fight to the last man, only too aware their horrible fate if they should fall alive into Mehmed’s hands.

  It was the Duke of Aquitaine’s responsibility to see that when the fighting started, it was fought upon ground that favoured the Bretonnians, not their enemy.

  “Mehmed-bey has roused the whole of the western caliphates,” the duke told his knights. “This army numbers in the tens of thousands, more than enough to break the siege at El Haikk if it is allowed to reach the corsair city. Much of the Butcher’s army is mameluk slave-soldiers, but armoured janissaries and sun-blackened dervishes march under the Black Lizard as well. Nomad riders guard the flanks and sipahis on strong desert horses make up the vanguard. Through the Imperial glass, I have counted no less than fifty war elephants.” The duke swept his gaze across the ranks of his followers. “There can be no question. Mehmed-bey means to smash through the forces of King Louis and rescue his villainous master from El Haikk. If he succeeds, the crusade is over. Jaffar will be free to continue his reign of evil. Our own army will be broken, the survivors cast into slavery or forced to slink back to their homelands in shame.”

  The duke saw the doubt and fear on the faces of his men. It was the emotion he had wanted to provoke. The best way to instil courage in a man’s heart was to draw out his worst fears and force him to confront them. He gazed out across the band of warriors, knights from royal Couronne and fey-haunted Quenelles, from the mountain reaches of Montfort and the wind-swept coast of Lyonesse, from the dark forests of Artois and the verdant plains of his own Aquitaine. Foreign knights from every corner of the Empire looked upon the Bretonnian duke with the same expectant, longing expression as the men of his own land. Even the dusky Tilean mercenaries, sell-sword adventurers who had joined the crusade not to free Estalia and Araby from a wicked tyrant but from the promise of plunder, even these honourless soldiers looked to the duke for hope and guidance.

  The duke smiled. These men expected him to lead them to victory. They might doubt their ability to stop Mehmed-bey and his vast army, but they did not for an instant question the duke’s command. Such unwavering trust, even in the face of their fear
stirred the duke’s heart with pride. With men such as these, he would break Mehmed-bey.

  “To us has been entrusted the greatest honour. To us has been given the hour of glory. Before us marches the enemy, wicked and abominable, arrogant in his strength, proud of his tyranny and evil. In the mind of the heathen, the war is already over. With a host of slaves who have never known any life but war, the Butcher would break our righteous cause. He would save the corrupt throne of Jaffar and extend to the lands of Bretonnia and Estalia and Tilea and the Empire the same cruel chains that imprison the men of Araby. He would make of our sons and daughters, of the sons and daughters of all free men, a legion of slaves to feed the cruelty of his sultan.”

  The Red Duke’s pallid face pulled back in an expression of pitiless hate. “All that stands between Mehmed-bey and his victory is us, this small company of knights and yeomen, this small gathering of free men who will not submit humbly to the chains of a foreign despot, who will not meekly cast aside their freedom and end their days as a mameluk slave-soldier!”

  The vampire’s hand clenched into a fist of steel. “We noble few, who stand against the tide of oppression and tyranny this day, to us belongs the greatest glory the gods have seen fit to bestow upon mortals! We will not step aside and allow the enemy to continue his cruelty! We will not let fear make us forget duty and honour! We will stand and we will fight!” The Red Duke threw his armoured fist into the air. “And we will be victorious!”

  Fleshless skulls stared back at the vampire with their empty sockets, the Red Duke’s words failing to stir the blood of the dead as they had once fired the hearts of the living. The ranks of the decayed skeletons in their rusty armour and tattered surcoats stood in mute silence as their master addressed them. The rotting bodies of the Red Duke’s more recent victims maintained the same unmoving formation, the dead minds of the zombies unable to draw emotion from the vampire’s speech. Only the slavering ghouls, drawn from their holes by the vampire’s aura of sinister power, reacted to his words, howling like beasts and beating their feet against the flagstones.