“Where is he?” Count Ergon demanded.
Baron de Gavaudan laughed, a sound as sinister and cruel as the crack of a torturer’s whip. “Let’s find him together!” the vampire hissed, lips pulling away from glistening fangs.
Like a panther, Baron de Gavaudan pounced upon Count Ergon, crushing the nobleman to the ground. The vampire’s claw smashed down upon his sword-arm, bruising it to the very bone. The old knight cried out in pain, his entire arm going numb from the blow.
Baron de Gavaudan twisted his opponent’s head around, snarling as Leuthere rose from the ground in a lunging dive, his outswept arms catching the vampire and driving it from Count Ergon’s chest. The crazed creature writhed from Leuthere’s grip, turning the knight’s dive into an uncontrolled roll into the cemetery. The monster’s claw tore at Leuthere, tearing the gorget from around his neck, shredding the mail coif beneath.
Leuthere’s fingers closed about the dagger hanging from his belt. Desperately he pulled the blade free and stabbed it into the vampire’s body. Again and again he drove the steel into the baron’s withered carcass. The angle of attack was too low to threaten the monster’s black heart, all Leuthere’s efforts could do was annoy his foe. But it was enough to distract the vampire and keep its fangs from his throat.
Hissing in anger, the baron seized the top of Leuthere’s helm and savagely drove the knight’s head into one of the gravestones. The marker cracked apart under the impact, even with the quilt padding under his coif, Leuthere felt his brains rattling inside his skull. Stunned, he flopped helpless beneath the vampire.
Baron de Gavaudan grinned and leaned down to worry the throat of his victim.
“You forgot to break both my arms,” Count Ergon roared. His battered arm hanging limp at his side, the nobleman gripped his sword in his left hand and delivered a brutal slash across the vampire’s spine.
The vampire shrieked in agony, skin blistering around the cut. Baron de Gavaudan fell to the ground, his one good hand pawing at his back, trying to reach his burning wound.
Count Ergon kicked the crippled monster, snapping its head back with enough force to kill anything that could still call itself human. The vampire’s head lolled obscenely upon its broken neck. The creature struggled to pull itself upright, but its broken back left it writhing on the ground.
Count Ergon glared down at the monster. He gestured at the vampire with his sword, displaying the bulb of garlic he held against the hilt, the same bulb of garlic he had rubbed against the edge of his blade. “One of the peasants must have dropped this during the battle,” he told the vampire. “I decided to put it to good use.” Count Ergon stabbed the point of his sword into one of the baron’s knees, the vampire’s flesh blistering from the garlic-stained steel.
“I’ll ask this again, bloodworm; where’s the Red Duke?” Count Ergon pressed home his question by pressing his sword deeper into the baron’s flesh. The vampire answered him with a spiteful hiss. The nobleman shrugged and cast his gaze skyward. “Suit yourself. Dawn’s breaking anyway.”
Baron de Gavaudan’s eyes were wide with terror as he heard the count’s words. The crippled vampire thrashed about, trying to free himself from the knight’s sword, but every exertion only caused him more pain. In a matter of moments, the first light of day blazed across the roof of the chapel, bathing the vampire in its purifying light. The baron opened his mouth to shriek, but already his flesh was crumbling into dust. The vampire’s eyes melted into his collapsing skull, his hair shrivelling as though set beneath a flame. The rest of the creature quickly followed, disintegrating as completely as salt plugs dumped into the sea. In a matter of minutes, the only trace of Baron de Gavaudan was a stench in the air.
Count Ergon watched every moment of the vampire’s dissolution, wishing every second that it was the Red Duke rather than one of the monster’s slaves. When the last of Baron de Gavaudan was gone, the count turned and looked towards the south. He could see the black clouds Leuthere had mentioned. It was there he would find the Red Duke.
Holding his injured arm, Count Ergon began to walk back to his horse. The painful moans of Leuthere stopped him. He glanced at the young knight and clenched his fist.
As much as it offended him, the d’Elbiq had saved his life. Feud or no feud, revenge or no, Count Ergon knew he couldn’t leave Leuthere like this.
Bitterly, the count turned a last longing gaze at the black clouds receding into the south.
CHAPTER XII
A cloud of smoke rose from the burning villages, a black pall of death that rolled out over the crystal waters of Lake Tranquil. The sound of axes felling timber rang from the forest as tree after tree collapsed to the earth. Fields and pastures were trampled underfoot as the Red Duke’s army scoured the land.
The vampire watched from the top of a rocky knoll as his troops, living and undead, carried out his orders. Not a single inhabitant of the region would be spared, be it man, child or beast. When he was finished, the land about the Tower of Wizardry would be a desolation to match the most abhorrent desert in Araby. The wasteland would be a monument of terror, a testament of his power and authority.
In the fields, the Red Duke’s engineers set about constructing the siege machines he would need to bring down the ancient fortress. Great towers of timber covered in hides ripped from the flesh of slaughtered livestock, giant trebuchets armed with masonry plundered from the rubble of grail chapels and shrines to the Lady, huge battering rams and immense mangonels, spear-hurling ballistae and corkscrew-shaped bores. It was an arsenal the likes of which had never been seen before in Aquitaine.
There was something else in the fields never seen before in Aquitaine. The Red Duke shifted his gaze from his living vassals to his undead slaves. He watched as gangs of zombies lifted great wooden stakes into the air. Upon the point of each, a captured peasant writhed. The zombies had already erected a small forest of impaled prisoners. By the time they finished the Red Duke’s grove would stretch all the way to the shores of Lake Tranquil It would dwarf the vampire’s garden at the Crac de Sang.
From her balcony, the Prophetess Isabeau would have a fine view of the vampire’s forest. It would take many days for the impaled peasants to die and the faithless witch would be able to enjoy every excruciating moment. The cries and moans of the dying would sing to her as she slept and welcome her when she awoke. She would be able to watch as the crows and jackdaws flitted about the forest, indifferent whether they supped upon the dead or the dying.
The Red Duke grinned up at the tower, sneering as he saw the lone woman upon the high balcony. She had brought this upon these people, not he. She had refused to acknowledge his right to rule Aquitaine. She had refused to bestow upon him the favour of the Lady. Isabeau had thrown her lot in with that of the usurper, the treacherous cur who dared call himself Louis the Righteous.
The witch had tried to kill him when he had ridden to the tower to ask for her support and the Lady’s blessing. Her spells had seared his flesh, scorched his armour. If he had still been mortal, she would have succeeded where all of Baron de Gavaudan’s assassins had failed. But the Red Duke was more than mortal now, and he had endured. The best the witch could do was drive him from her tower.
Now he was back, and with his army, the Red Duke would break Isabeau’s fortress. He would see the witch grovel at his feet, begging him for mercy. Gladly would she bestow upon him the Lady’s favour before he allowed her to die.
Aquitaine was his! It belonged to him, now and forever! Neither the Lady nor her treasonous servants would deny the Red Duke his birthright!
The vampire’s eyes narrowed with hate as he glared at the tower. “When this is over, you will regret betraying me, witch! I’ll tear this place down stone by stone and drag your carcass from the rubble! There are fates worse than death and, woman, you shall know them all!”
“You have not told me how it was that you happened to be following this monster.”
Sir Leuthere had dreaded the question, dreade
d it ever since Count Ergon had decided to join him on his hunt to destroy the Red Duke. He leaned back in his saddle, his hands folded across the horn. He stared at the long mane of the courser Count Ergon had given him, not seeing the horse, seeing instead the body of his uncle twitching above the Red Duke’s tomb. Seeing the Countess du Maisne butchered in the courtyard of her home. Seeing the cruelty inflicted upon Sir Armand du Maisne. There was no way he could tell the old knight the truth—that he rode to atone for Earl Gaubert’s evil, that it was his uncle who had called this horror from its grave.
Leuthere turned and looked back at Vigor, willing the peasant to silence. Astride his pony, the little arms of the girl wrapped about his middle, the huge warhorses following behind, Vigor had enough to worry about without adding the fury of Count Ergon to his woes. He gave Leuthere a slight nod of understanding. Whatever the knight said, Vigor would not contradict him.
“I followed the vampire after he killed Earl Gaubert,” Leuthere said, voicing what small part of the truth he felt able.
Count Ergon nodded his head in grim understanding. “We both seek out this fiend so we may avenge our dead.” A flicker of pain crept onto his face. “I must thank you for saving my life in the cemetery.” Count Ergon winced as each word left his mouth. “It comes hard to me to speak kindly to a d’Elbiq.”
“The balance is even,” Leuthere sighed. “You saved me from de Gavaudan too, remember. I won’t ask a du Maisne to accept my gratitude, but you have it just the same.”
“The balance is even,” Count Ergon repeated, mulling the words over. He fixed Leuthere with an imperious gaze. “See that you remember that. You don’t owe me any courtesy. I don’t owe you any.”
Slowly, Leuthere let his right hand drop from the horn of his saddle so it would be in easy reach of his sword. He watched Count Ergon carefully. The nobleman was still favouring his left arm after the fight with Baron de Gavaudan. It was an advantage Leuthere intended to remember.
“We agreed to set the feud aside,” Leuthere said.
“And so it is,” Count Ergon told him. “But I will say one other thing. I do not know what regard you held Earl Gaubert in, but I will say it can only pale beside the love I had for my son. When we find the vampire, he is mine to slay.”
Leuthere did not flinch as he met Count Ergon’s stern gaze. “A d’Elbiq has just as much right to honour as a du Maisne,” he said, his voice cold and firm. “If my chance comes, I will not stand aside for any man.”
Count Ergon pulled back on the reins of his courser, stopping the horse in the middle of the dirt road they had been following. “I will avenge my son,” he warned Leuthere.
“And I will redeem my honour,” the younger knight retorted. A dangerous tension filled the air. Leuthere’s hand closed about the hilt of his sword. Count Ergon awkwardly reached for his own weapon with his left hand.
Vigor spurred his pony forwards, trying to get between the two knights before they came to blows. “Don’t you think we should catch the vampire first, my lords?” the peasant asked, putting on his most ingratiating expression.
“We have only to follow the vultures,” Count Ergon answered, nodding his head at a circle of carrion birds wheeling in the distance. The knight tightened his hold on his reins, leaving his sword sheathed. “This will wait, Sir Leuthere,” he told the other knight. “But it will not wait long.”
Leuthere felt the threat of Count Ergon’s words, all the old hate of the feud rising under the nobleman’s provocation. He knew it was more than prideful arrogance that made the count so obdurate, but that knowledge did not lessen the anger growing within him. Only the oath he had given the count kept Leuthere from drawing his sword. Leuthere’s honour had been impinged enough by the deeds of his uncle, it did not need to suffer further indignity.
“As you say, du Maisne,” Leuthere hissed. “This will wait.” The knight let his hand fall back to the horn of his saddle. He stood in his stirrups, using the extra height to peer over the thick hedges that bordered the road. They had entered a region of bocage, rolling fields separated by winding ridges and sunken lanes bordered by thick hedgerows which acted as living fences.
The bocage country made travel slow, the lanes curling like serpents through the fields, twisting first one way and then another. Leuthere considered themselves fortunate it was not raining, for it seemed the farmers had engineered the sunken lanes to double as drainage ditches during the rainy season. The knight considered that things were bad enough without navigating a mire of mud and agricultural runoff.
Following the Red Duke’s army had been easy enough. As Count Ergon had said, all one needed to do was follow the vultures. The vampire’s horde had left a swathe of destruction behind it, burnt out villages and manors, not a living soul left in them. In some villages, the Red Duke’s viciousness had been especially pronounced, the entire population impaled upon stakes or lynched and hung from trees. In others, the vampire’s army had displayed a restrained, almost delicate touch. Porridge still smouldered over flickering embers, flagons of mead sat untouched in the taverns, bundles of wheat were piled outside the mills. Leuthere wondered if the people in these villages had been forewarned of the Red Duke’s advance and fled before his army, hiding in the wilds until they decided it was safe to return.
The vampire’s march displayed neither rhyme nor reason as far as Leuthere could tell. First the undead had been heading south, plundering graveyards along the way. Then the horde had abruptly turned northwards. Why the sudden change, Leuthere did not know, but it was certain there seemed an element of haste behind their march now. While the undead continued to despoil villages, they no longer stopped to loot the cemeteries. For a time, the knight dared to hope that Duke Gilon’s army was pursuing that of the vampire; however, if any force gave chase to the undead it left no trace of its presence.
A troubling thought occurred to Leuthere as he gazed out across the hedgerows. Perhaps the Red Duke was not being pursued. Perhaps instead the reason for the vampire’s haste was that he was himself pursuing something. The knight turned his eyes northward where a murder of crows circled above the smoking ruins of a farm. It came to Leuthere that he recognized that farm, indeed all of the surrounding terrain. This was the way to Lake Tranquil and the Tower of Wizardry. He had ridden this way many times to seek the serenity of the lake’s quiet shore.
The Prophetess Iselda! Leuthere could curse himself for not thinking of it before!
“Perhaps we do not need to play hare and hound with the vampire,” Leuthere told Count Ergon. He smiled as he saw the doubt on the nobleman’s face. The younger knight pointed with his armoured hand towards the northeast, beyond the burning farmstead. “If we strike in this direction we will reach the Tower of Wizardry and the Prophetess Iselda. Her magic is great. I have seen it for myself firsthand. If we appeal to her, she may use her powers to guide us to the Red Duke.”
“But would she aid us?” Count Ergon frowned. “She is a servant of the Lady. Of what concern to her the affairs of men?”
“Iselda has given me aid once,” Leuthere said, “I think she will help me again. The Red Duke is a danger to all Bretonnia, not just the lords of Aquitaine. I cannot think that the Lady would abandon her people to such evil.” The knight watched the crows circling above the farm. “No, Iselda will help us,” he said. “She knows the threat the Red Duke poses.”
Count Ergon nodded in agreement. “Then let us seek out the wisdom of the prophetess. My sword is eager to taste a vampire’s heart.”
For the rest of the day the two knights followed a meandering trail across fields and through gaps in the hedgerows. These were the same paths used by the farmers when tending their fields, a roundabout course that allowed the peasants to avoid the sunken lanes in times of flood. Progress through the bocage was slow but steady. If Leuthere had not travelled by these same paths dozens of times in the past, Count Ergon knew they would never have found their way. Even with the younger knight leading them, Count Ergon was
sore pressed to make any kind of sense of where they were going.
“You are sure you know the way?” the nobleman asked for the hundredth time since they had left the sunken lanes.
Leuthere gave vent to an exasperated sigh. “If you’d like me to get us lost, keep distracting me,” he grumbled. Standing in the stirrups, he peered over the hedgerows, studying the layout of the adjoining fields and matching them to the map locked inside his memory.
At once Leuthere dropped back into the saddle, his hand flying to his sword. He had other things to worry him now besides Count Ergon’s surly chatter. There were men on the other side of the hedgerow—armed men.
“Someone’s on the other side of these hedges,” Leuthere whispered to Count Ergon.
“Undead?” the nobleman asked, reaching left-handed for his own weapon.
“No,” Leuthere answered. “Living men, but bearing spears and bows. I don’t think they’ve seen us.”
The young knight turned around in his saddle to hiss a warning to Vigor. As he did so, he found that it was too late to tell Vigor about the men. He already knew. Seven scruffy-looking men in threadbare cloaks and dirty hoods were arrayed all around Vigor and the horses. One of the men held the pony’s reins in his hand, two others held the reins of the destriers. The other four held bows in their hands, arrows nocked to the strings and aimed at the two knights.
“You can come out now, Robert,” one of the bowmen called out. “We’ve gotta bead on these fine gen’lemen. They’s so much as look cross-eyed and they’ll be sproutin’ more feath’rs ’n a old tuck gobbler.”
It was not an idle threat. The strength of the Bretonnian longbow was infamous, capable of piercing a coat of plates from a hundred yards away. These bowmen were much closer and their broadhead arrows would easily tear through the armour the two knights wore at such a short range.
[Heroes 05] - The Red Duke Page 21