“It’s Drachenfels,” she hissed in his ear. “We’ve brought him back!”
Lowenstein—Drachenfels—laughed again.
Someone in the audience discharged a gun, and a wound opened in the monster’s chest. He wiped it shut, still laughing, and threw something small. There was a scream as the gunman went down, writhing in torment. It had been Matthias, the grand theogonist’s advisor. Now, he didn’t much resemble anything naturally human.
“Does anyone dare defy me?” The great voice said. “Does anyone dare stand between me and the vampire?”
Detlef was standing between Drachenfels and Genevieve. His immediate impulse was to get out of the way, but the wounds in his neck ached, the wound in his heart kept him where he was. She willed him to go, to leave her to this monster’s mercies. But he couldn’t.
“Back,” he said, summoning all his acting skills to put the heroic ring into his voice. “In the name of Sigmar, back!”
“Sigmar!” Spittle flew from the mouthslit of the mask. “He’s dead and gone, little man. But I’m here!”
“Then in my name, back!”
“Your name? Who are you to defy Constant Drachenfels, the Great Enchanter, the Eternal Champion of Evil, the Darkness Who Would Not Be Defied?”
“Detlef Sierck,” he snapped. “Genius!”
Drachenfels was still amused. “A genius, is it? I’ve eaten of many geniuses. One more will be most refreshing.”
Detlef realized he was going to die before the curtain came down on his play.
He would die before his best work was done. To future generations, he would be a footnote. A minor imitator of Tarradasch who showed promise he never lived to fulfil. A nothing. The Great Enchanter was not just going to take away his life, but was going to make it seem as if he had never been, never walked on a stage, never lifted a quill from its pot. Nobody had ever died as thoroughly as he would die now.
Drachenfels’ hand fell on Detlef’s left shoulder. The fire of agony coursed through his arm as it popped out of joint. The Great Enchanter was exerting enough pressure to crush his bones to fragments. Detlef twisted in agony, unable to break the hold, unable to fall away in ruins. By degrees, Drachenfels applied more force to his grip. His putrid grave-breath was in Detlef’s face. The actor’s entire left side tried to curl up to escape the merciless pain. Drachenfels’ fingers burrowed into his flesh like lashworms. A few more moments of this, and Detlef would be glad of the release of death.
Behind the monster’s mask, evil eyes glowed.
Then Genevieve jumped.
X
Three times before had the killing frenzy fallen upon her. She always regretted it, feeling herself no better than Wietzak or Kattarin or all those other Truly Dead tyrants as she wiped the innocent blood from her face. The faces of her dead sometimes bothered her, as the face of Drachenfels had been tormenting her dreams these last few years. This time, however, there would be no regrets. This was the righteous killing for which she had been made, the killing that would pay back all those whose lives she had sapped. Her muscles corded, her blood took fire, and the red haze came over her vision. She saw through blood-filled eyes.
Detlef hung from Drachenfels’ fist, screaming like a man on the rack. Oswald—smiling, treacherous, thrice-damned Oswald—had his knife in Karl-Franz’s throat. These things she would not tolerate.
Her teeth pained her as they grew, and her fingers bled as the nails sprouted like talons. Her mouth gaped as the sharp ivory spears split her gums. Her face became a flesh-mask, the thick skin pulled tight, a mirthless grin exposing her knife-like fangs. The primitive part of her brain—the vampire part of her, the legacy of Chandagnac—took over, and she leaped at her enemy, the killing fury building in her like a passion. There was love in it, and hate, and despair, and joy. And there would be death at the end.
Drachenfels was knocked off balance but stayed upright. Detlef was thrown away, landing in a heap.
Genevieve fastened her legs about the monster’s midriff, and sank her claws into his padded shoulders. Strips of Lowenstein’s stage costume fell away, disclosing the festering meat beneath. Worms crawled through his body, twining around her fingers as she dug through his flesh to get a snapping grip on his bones. She had no distaste for this thing now, just a need to kill.
There was pandemonium in the audience. Oswald was shouting. So was everyone else. People were trying to escape, fighting each other. Others stood calm, waiting for their chance. Several elderly dignitaries were in the throes of heart seizures.
Genevieve pulled a hand from the monster’s opened shoulder and tore at Drachenfels’ mask. The leather straps parted under her knife-sharp nails and the iron plates buckled. It came free and she hurled it away. There were screams from the audience. She avoided looking him in the face. She retained that much rationality. She wasn’t interested in exposing his face anyway. She just needed to get the iron guard away from his neck.
Her mouth opened wide, her jawbone dislocating itself as new rows of teeth slid out of their sheaths, then snapped shut. She bit deep into the monster’s neck.
She sucked, but there was no blood. Dirt choked her throat, but she still sucked. The foulest, most rancid, most rotten taste she had ever known filled her mouth and soaked through to her stomach. The taste burned like acid, and her body tried in vain to reject it. She felt herself withering as the bane spread.
Still, she sucked.
The scream began as Lowenstein’s last gasp, then grew in sound and fury. Her eardrums coursed with pain. Her skeleton shook inside her body. She felt mighty blows on her ribs. The scream was like a hurricane, blasting all in its path.
A stale trickle flowed into her mouth. It was more disgusting than the dry flesh.
She bit away the mouthful she had been working on, and spat it out, then sunk her teeth in again, higher this time. The Great Enchanter’s ear came away, and she swallowed it. She scraped a patch of grey meat away from the side of his skull, exposing the cranial seams. Clear yellow fluid seeped through between the bony plates. She extended her tongue to lick it up.
A hand covered her face, and pushed her back. Her neck strained, near to snapping point. She bit through the thick glove, but couldn’t lodge her teeth in his palm. Another hand gripped her waist. Her legs unwound from Drachenfels.
The killing frenzy ebbed, and she felt her vampire teeth receding. Convulsing, she vomited the ear she had eaten, and it stuck to the hand over her mouth.
She felt death touching her again. Chandagnac was waiting for her, and all the others she had outlived in her time.
Drachenfels tore her clothes, baring her veins. Her blood, the blood she had renewed so many times, would make him whole again.
By her death, she would resurrect him.
XI
Detlef was still alive. Half of his body was numb with shock, and the other half crawling with pain. But he was still alive.
Drachenfels’ scream filled the hall, pounding like nails into everyone’s heads. Stones were shaken loose from the walls by the noise, and fell on members of the audience. Every pane of glass in every window shattered at once. Old people died and young people were driven mad.
Detlef got to his knees, and crawled away.
Genevieve had sacrificed herself for him. He would live, at least for the moment, and she would die in his stead.
He could not allow that.
On his feet, stumbling, he knocked over a section of scenery. The person who had been hiding behind it—Kosinski—fled. Ropes fell around Detlef, and weights from above. Flats collapsed, buckling upon each other. A lantern fell, and a ring of burning oil spread from it.
He had lost his sword. He needed a weapon.
Leaning against the wall was a sledge-hammer. Kosinski had hefted it when the scenery was being put together. It should have been packed away. It was dangerous where it was. Someone could easily trip over it on their way backstage. Detlef had fired people for less.
This time, if he
lived, he would treble Kosinski’s salary and cast the brute in romantic leads if he wanted it…
Detlef picked up the hammer. His wrists hurt with the weight of it, and his wounded shoulder flared with pain.
It was just an ordinary hammer.
But it was no ordinary strength which flooded from it into Detlef’s body.
As he raised the hammer to strike, Detlef imagined a slight glow about it, as if gold were mixed with the lead.
“In the name of Sigmar!” he swore.
His pains vanished, and his blow connected.
XII
Drachenfels took the full force of the swing in the small of his back. He held Genevieve to him, unwilling to give up the blood that would revivify him.
Detlef Sierck swung round with his blow, and faced the Great Enchanter.
Drachenfels saw the shining hammer in his hands, and knew a moment of fear. He didn’t dare say the name that came to him.
Long ago, he stood at the head of his defeated goblin horde, humbled by the wild-eyed, blonde-bearded giant who held his hammer high in victory. His magics deserted him, and his body rotted as the hammer blows connected. It had taken a thousand years to claw his way back to full life.
The light that shone in Detlef’s eyes was not the light of genius, it was the light of Sigmar.
The human tribes of the north-east and all the hordes of the dwarfs had rallied to that hammer. For the first time, Drachenfels had been bested in battle. Sigmar Heldenhammer had stood over him, his boot on the Great Enchanter’s face, and ground him into the mud.
Genevieve struggled free of him, and darted away. Another blow fell, on the exposed plates of his skull.
Deep inside Constant Drachenfels, Laszlo Lowenstein floundered in death. And Erzbet, Rudi, Menesh and Anton Veidt. And the others, the many thousand others.
Detlef jabbed with the hammer, using it like a staff, and Drachenfels felt his nose cave inwards.
Erzbet’s heart burst, flooding bile into his chest. Rudi’s fat turned liquid and gushed down into the cavity of his stomach. Menesh’s skin split and sloughed off him in swathes. Veidt’s bones cracked. Drachenfels was betrayed by his kills.
Waiting in the wings, Drachenfels saw the monk-robed figures. That semi-human ape tribesman would be there, and the thousands upon thousands who had followed him into death.
Detlef, paint streaming from his face, berserker foam in his mouth, swung his hammer.
Lowenstein’s thin body stood alone in the ruin that would have been the Great Enchanter. Drachenfels cried out again, feebly this time.
“Sigmar,” he bleated, “have mercy…”
The hammerblows landed. The skull cracked open like an egg. Drachenfels collapsed, and the blows continued to come.
It had been cold on the plains, and he had been left behind to die, too sickly to be supported by the tribe. The other man, the first kill, had chanced by and he had fought to take the life from him. He had won, but now… fifteen thousand years later… he knew he had lost after all. He had only held off death for a few moments in the span of eternity.
For the last time, the life went out of him.
XIII
Karl-Franz was bleeding badly now. Oswald’s hand wasn’t steady, and the blade was biting deep. It was only luck that had kept him from severing the artery, or poking through to the windpipe.
The spectacle on the stage was not what anyone had expected. The Emperor felt Oswald’s body shake as Detlef Sierck demolished the actor playing Drachenfels.
The traitor’s plans had gone awry.
“Oswald von Konigswald!” shouted Detlef, bloody hammer held aloft.
The auditorium grew quiet. There was the crackle of flames, but all the crying and shouting stopped.
“Oswald, come here!”
Karl-Franz could hear the elector whimpering. The knife shook in the groove it had carved in his neck.
“Stay where you are or the Emperor dies!” Oswald’s voice was weak now, too high, too slurred.
Detlef seemed to shrink a little, as if coming to his senses. He looked at the hammer and at the dead thing on the stage. He laid the weapon down. Genevieve Dieudonne stood beside him, her arm about him when he was ready to sag and drop.
“Kill Karl-Franz and you’ll be dead before he hits the floor, von Konigswald,” said Baron Johann von Mecklenberg, his sword raised. The elector of Sudenland was not alone. A forest of swordpoints glittered.
Oswald was looking around desperately for a way out, for an escape route. The back of the box was guarded. The sweetmeat man stood there, in a wrestler’s stance. He was one of the Imperial bodyguards.
“Know this, Karl-Franz,” Oswald whispered to him, “I hate you, and all your works. For years, I’ve had to swallow my disgust in your presence. If nothing else, I shall end the House of the Second Wilhelm tonight.”
Sssssssssssnick!
Oswald pushed Karl-Franz away, waving his bloodied knife in the air, and vaulted over the side of the box.
XIV
Grand Prince Oswald hit the floor in a crouch and ran down the side of the great hall. A high priest of Ulric stood in his way, but the man was old and was knocked down easily. As he fled, Oswald upturned the chairs the audience had been sitting in, hindering his would-be pursuers.
Baron Johann and his confederates stood before the main entrance, waiting for their quarry.
Oswald backed away from them and made a dash for the stage. Genevieve saw him coming and staggered into his way. She was weakened from her attack on Drachenfels and nauseous from the after-effects of his poison flesh. But she was still stronger than an ordinary man.
She made a fist and struck Oswald in the face, mashing his aristocratic nose. She licked the blood off her knuckles. It was just blood, nothing special.
Detlef stood by, and watched. An audience, for once. Whatever had possessed him—and Genevieve had a fairly good idea about that—during his fight with the Great Enchanter had gone now, leaving him puzzled, drained and vulnerable.
Enraged, Oswald hurled himself at her. She sidestepped, and he fell.
He stood up, his boot slipping in the pool Drachenfels had left of himself. He swore, the knife darted out, and Genevieve’s arm stung.
More silver.
He stabbed at her, and missed. He flung the knife, and missed.
Fangs exposed, she lunged for him. He dodged away.
With a clean motion, he drew his sword, and brought the point to rest against her breast.
It was silvered too. A simple thrust and her heart would be pierced.
Oswald smiled sweetly at her. “We must all die, my pretty Genevieve, must we not?”
* * *
XV
A sword arced up from the auditorium, spinning end over end. Detlef stuck out his hand and snatched the hilt from the air, getting a good grip.
“Use it well, play-actor!” shouted Baron Johann.
Detlef lashed out and struck Oswald’s blade away from Genevieve’s heart. Genevieve stepped away.
The grand prince turned, spat a tooth at him, and assumed the duelling stance.
“Hah!”
His sword swiped, slashed Detlef across the chest, and returned to its place.
Oswald smiled nastily through the blood. Having demonstrated his skill, he would now take Detlef apart piece by piece for his own amusement. He had lost an empire, but he could still kill the fool dressed as his younger self.
Detlef hacked, but Oswald parried. Oswald struck out, but Detlef backed away.
Then they fell at each other with deadly seriousness.
Detlef fought the weariness in his bones, and summoned extra reserves of strength. Oswald wielded his sword with desperation, knowing his life depended upon this victory. But also he had had a courtly education, the private tuition of Valancourt of Nuln, the best blades. All Detlef knew was how to make a mock battle look good for an audience.
Oswald danced around him, slicing his clothes, scratching his face. Tiring
of the game, the grand prince came to kill him…
And found Detlef’s swordpoint lodged between his ribs.
Detlef thrust forward, and Oswald lurched off his feet, sliding the full length of the sword until the hilt rested against his chest.
The grand prince spat blood, and died.
ENVOI
After the premiere of Drachenfels, everyone needed lots of bed-rest. They all had scars.
The Emperor survived, but spoke in a whisper for a few months. Luitpold suffered nothing worse than a swollen jaw and a severe headache and complained of missing the end of the play. Genevieve fed herself from volunteers and recovered within a day or two. Detlef collapsed moments after the grand prince’s death, and had to be nursed back to health with hot broth and herbal infusions. His shoulder was always stiff after that, but he never let it be a handicap.
Baron Johann von Mecklenberg, elector of Sudenland, took over, and saw to the burial of Oswald von Konigswald in an unmarked grave in the mountains. Before leaving it, he spat onto the earth and cursed the grand prince’s memory. The remains of the Drachenfels thing he cut apart and threw into the valley for the wolves. What there was wasn’t much like anything that had ever lived.
He imagined he saw a group of cowled figures watching him as he disposed of the monster, but when the business was done with they were gone. The wolves died, but few were sorry of that. The grand theogonist of Sigmar, in mourning for his Matthias, and the high priest of Ulric forgot their differences for an afternoon and jointly held a ceremony of thanks for the deliverance of the Empire. It was not well attended, but everyone considered their duty to the gods done.
Detlef’s company milled around, loading up their equipment on their wagons. Felix Hubermann and Guglielmo Pentangeli took over the running of the troupe while Detlef was indisposed and was collecting a pile of invitations to stage Drachenfels in Altdorf, with its original ending intact. The conductor held off the many managements, knowing that Detlef would have to rewrite the story in accordance with the known facts. The nature of the conspiracy between the Great Enchanter and the grand prince of Ostland would never be known, but whatever Detlef chose to write would be the accepted version.
[Genevieve 01] - Drachenfels Page 20