by Nathan Long
She pursed her lips, then nodded. ‘You may come, but on one condition.’
It was his turn to pause. ‘What is it?’
‘You will swear, by Sigmar and your own honour, that you will not harm or attempt to arrest my mistress or any of her companions, tonight or in the future.’
Holmann’s face darkened. ‘I cannot swear to that.’
‘You must,’ said Ulrika. ‘Come, Holmann. Please. Leave them to Schenk. If he finds them guilty, so be it. Only don’t denounce them yourself. That is all I ask.’
‘All you ask,’ said Holmann, ‘is that I renounce my vows and give up being a Templar of Sigmar.’
‘No,’ said Ulrika. ‘Not so much as that. Just… just turn your eyes to other targets – cultists, witches, necromancers, I care not.’
He hesitated, then looked away. ‘I… I cannot. A Templar of Sigmar cannot “turn his eyes” from evil. I am sorry.’
Ulrika sighed. ‘Then I will leave you here, and good luck to you.’ She turned and started for the steps.
She was halfway up them when he called out again.
‘Stop!’
She looked back, fully expecting to find him aiming his pistols at her, but he was not. He stood in the door to the crypt, his head lowered, unable to look at her.
‘I will swear it,’ he said.
She stared at him. ‘Truly?’
‘Aye. These fiends must be destroyed.’
She walked back down to him. ‘Then let me hear it. All of it. And look me in the eye.’
He reluctantly raised his chin and met her gaze. He looked miserable. ‘I swear,’ he said, ‘by Sigmar and my honour, that I will not harm or attempt to arrest your mistress or any of her companions, tonight or in the future.’
She winced at the pain in his voice. Then she gave him a curt military bow. ‘Thank you, Herr Holmann. You honour me with this pledge.’ She turned for the steps. ‘Now hurry, there is no more time to waste.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE HAND OF THE TRAITOR
The last ghouls saw Ulrika and Holmann stepping from the second mausoleum and bounded away, shrieking, from where they had sat on the gravestones they had piled in front of the other crypt. Ulrika ignored them and ran with the witch hunter through the hills and valleys of the fog-shrouded graveyard until they came at last to the spike-topped wall. She clambered up this with ease, then gave him a hand and hauled him up as if she was lifting a child. He muttered a curse at this unnatural show of strength, but said nothing out loud, and they hopped down to the street and hurried on.
Holmann knew of an inn just on the far side of the Temple District that kept horses, and when they reached it Ulrika waited outside while he went in and browbeat the landlord into saddling two and giving him the use of them ‘on the business of the temple’ without a fee.
After that their journey proceeded at a much quicker pace. They galloped through the streets of the Aldig quarter to the Neuestadt Gate and were waved through without even having to slow. She thought there might be some trouble as they reached the river and thundered across the great bridge, where four witch hunters still watched the south end, but Holmann waved a hand at them and raised his voice.
‘News for Captain Schenk! Stand clear, brothers!’ he cried, and they parted before him.
They pounded down the Brukestrasse through the Faulestadt to the South Gate, and there had to stop for the first time since they had mounted, for the towering main gates were closed for the night, and one of the small doors at the side had to be opened and the horses led through on foot, but then they were off again, spurring down a wide road between moonlit snow-covered fields.
Despite what lay before her, Ulrika revelled in the ride. The snow had melted from the roads and the dirt was packed and firm – perfect for a gallop. How long had it been since she had raced flat out? Had it been that time with Felix on her father’s lands? That long? It felt marvellous. She gave the horse its head and let it surge away, topping a low rise and then barrelling down the other side in a spray of mud. The land, with its tidy white fields and its knots of bare winter trees, hadn’t the wild austere beauty of the oblast, with its endless vistas and huge skies, but after a week in the hemmed-in labyrinth of Nuln’s narrow streets, it felt as wide as all of Kislev.
After a while, when the horse started to flag a bit, she reined up and looked behind her. Holmann was coming doggedly on a hundred paces back.
She grinned as he caught up. ‘I’m sorry, Templar Holmann. It has been too long.’
He gave her an odd look. ‘You ride well.’
She shrugged. ‘I told you. I am the daughter of a march boyar. I grew up on horses, and fought in my father’s rota. That part was also not a lie.’
He nodded, then looked away, his jaw set. ‘I… I can see that.’
Ulrika frowned. What was troubling him now? Then she remembered how he had looked at her before, on their way to the Temple of Morr the night they had met at the plague house, and how he had all but confessed to finding her attractive. The same fire had shone from his eyes just now, as he watched her ride, and then he had quietly and deliberately ground it out.
She wanted to say something to comfort him, but she refrained. It would only make it worse.
They rode on in silence for a while, but then Holmann spoke up again.
‘How long has it been since you became… what you have become?’ he asked.
Ulrika closed her eyes. She could almost read his thoughts. He was torturing himself with what might have happened had they met before she had been turned. He was thinking, ‘If only I had killed the fiend that seduced her before it found her. If only fate had put me in her path a little sooner.’
‘A hundred years, Herr Holmann,’ she said without meeting his eyes. ‘More than a hundred. Long before you were born.’
The witch hunter nodded sadly, but Ulrika thought he looked slightly more at peace.
As they got closer to the village that was the last crossroads before Mondthaus, Ulrika began to worry more and more about what Gabriella would do if she brought Holmann into her presence. She might have got a pledge out of the witch hunter not to hurt her, but she would never get a pledge out of the countess not to hurt him – not to mention Hermione. All in all, it would be better if he didn’t arrive at the house. If he didn’t, he would not die facing the monster, nor would he fall into the clutches of Gabriella or any of the other Lahmians.
The more she thought about the idea, the better she liked it. It would even have the added benefit of making him hate her, and thereby curing him of his painful attraction to her and set him back on the road to being the staunch enemy of evil and corruption he strove to be. She would be doing him a favour.
Her mind made up, she pulled up sharply and waved at Holmann to stop. He drew up next to her, concerned.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
She edged her horse next to his. ‘I’m sorry, Herr Holmann,’ she said. ‘You won’t be coming.’
Holmann frowned, confused, and in that instant she backhanded him across the face, then shoved him sideways as he reeled. He toppled from his saddle and crashed to the road in a splash of mud. Ulrika leaned forwards and caught his horse’s reins, then spurred her own. The two horses plunged ahead, leaving Holmann sitting up in the middle of the road, a look of almost comic surprise on his spattered face as he receded quickly behind her.
Ulrika turned her gaze away from him and focused on the road ahead, trying to squash down the bubble of guilt that rose up and tightened her chest.
Less than half an hour later, she found the final turning to Mondthaus and angled her horse into it, going at speed. All around, the snow-blanketed farmland rolled away smoothly, but the road she galloped along wound up into a patch of thick pine forest and jutting rocks – an untillable tor in the middle of the fertile plain. The fir trees quickly cl
osed overhead, and the wind, which had had nothing to cry about in the flat-lands, now moaned as it was torn by their branches.
In the thick undergrowth on either side of the narrow path she could occasionally see old stone walls, broken and moss-covered, and once, a stone of one of the old races, eerily illuminated by a stray shaft of moonlight that shot down through the close canopy of the trees.
As she got closer to the summit of the tor, a momentary dizziness came upon her, and she felt suddenly convinced that she was going the wrong way. With a curse and an effort of will she focused her mind and stayed on the path. It was another spell like that which had hid the crypt of the beast, but stronger, and seemingly attuned to her kind.
The urge to turn around grew more urgent as she pressed on, and she had to fight the compulsion to rein in with every stride of her horse. Then, ahead of her, she saw an iron gate set in a high sturdy wall. She pushed on towards it, though it felt like she was fighting a strong tide, then jumped down and reached for the gate.
She couldn’t even touch it. Some black energy flared from the bars as her fingers neared it and pushed them away. It was like a trick with lode stones she had seen an alchemist do once. The harder she pushed against the force, the harder it pushed back at her. Had the beast and the sorcerer already come and locked the door behind them? Was this their magic? Had they killed everyone and occupied the house?
A growl rumbled in her throat. If that was the case, she would find some way to break their seal and slaughter them all. She would get vengeance for those she was too late to protect. She stepped back and surveyed the top of the wall. She could climb it easily, but would the energy be there too?
A crossbow bolt chimed off the gate and zipped past her ear. She dropped to a crouch and looked past the bars. One of Hermione’s gentlemen was coming forwards and laying another bolt in the groove. Ulrika sighed with relief when she saw him, despite his threatening posture. For if the gentlemen were still defending the house, it meant the beast had not yet struck, or – an even more thrilling thought – it had already been defeated!
‘Be off!’ he shouted. ‘They’re tipped with silver, and the next one’s through your heart!’
‘I have urgent news for your mistress!’ Ulrika called back. ‘I have discovered the lair of the killer!’
The man laughed. ‘The killers are captured, hoyden.’
Ulrika’s eyes widened at this. Hermione had trapped the beast and the sorcerer? The war was over?
‘Your mistress and the she-wolf,’ the guard continued, sneering. ‘Caught and chained and standing trial.’
Ulrika’s momentary hope shattered. She groaned. Could it be true? Could Hermione and her men have over-powered Gabriella and Mathilda? She grimaced. With silvered weapons, she supposed they could.
‘Then chain me too!’ she cried. She stood and unbuckled her sword belt, then threw it to the side. ‘For I have evidence to present in their defence.’ She raised her hands over her head.
The man with the crossbow frowned, uncertain, then looked questioningly to his left.
A voice behind the wall answered him. ‘Better to have them all in one basket, I suppose.’
The crossbowman nodded, then turned back to Ulrika. ‘On your knees. Hands on your head.’
Ulrika did as she was told, then waited as the gate creaked open of its own accord and the crossbowman covered her with the silvered bolt. Three more men came out from behind the wall. One Ulrika recognised as another of Hermione’s gentlemen, but the other two were dressed in huntsmen’s garb, and looked to be retainers of the estate. One of these came forwards with heavy manacles and pulled Ulrika’s hands down behind her back, while the other two put swords to her throat.
When the manacles were fastened, the huntsman hoisted her to her feet then shoved her forwards through the gate. It closed behind them, and he and the other huntsman led her up the path while the two gentlemen remained there on guard.
Ulrika surreptitiously tested the manacles as they walked on, straining at the chain that linked them. It was strong indeed. She felt she would be able to break them given opportunity and time, but it wouldn’t be quick. She sighed. If Lady Hermione was willing to look at the note she had found and listen to what she had to say, all would be well but, if she were blind and deaf to even that evidence, then Ulrika was walking meekly to her death, for she would not be able to defend herself, bound as she was.
The path twisted up through overgrown shrubbery and overhanging trees until, as the slope began to level off, a hulking, slate-roofed manor house was revealed among them, shouldering up from the crest of the tor to rise silhouetted against the clear night sky. The left end of the manse appeared to be an old keep, its raw stone and tiny, slotted windows a reminder of a brutal bygone era, but newer additions showed a more open face. The front door had grand marble steps leading up to it, and a portico topped with a balcony while, on the far right, a stately section made in the Tilean manner displayed a magnificent stained-glass window that was easily twice Ulrika’s height. And yet, despite the rugged beauty of the place, and the warm light that glowed from its many windows, it did not appear welcoming. No. That was wrong. Really it appeared too welcoming – unsettlingly so – like a giant jewelled snake waiting in its lair and mesmerising intruders with its glittering eyes and iridescent scales as it wrapped them uncomplaining in its coils, then swallowed them whole.
Another retainer on the steps opened the door and Ulrika’s huntsman guards prodded her through it into a small entry way. There was a high-ceilinged corridor ahead of her with richly-panelled double doors at the end. From behind these, she could hear the sounds of argument.
The huntsmen led her to the doors, then knocked quietly upon them. They cracked open and Otilia the housekeeper looked out.
‘Yes?’
‘Countess Gabriella’s ward, Frau Otilia,’ said the first.
Otilia looked Ulrika up and down with a cool eye, then smiled, which was even colder.
‘Put her with the others,’ she said, then stepped aside and opened the doors.
The huntsmen pushed Ulrika into a sumptuous panelled room, set about with gilded furniture and lit by a huge gold and crystal chandelier that hung from the coffered ceiling. Ahead of her, tall windows and leaded-glass doors looked out into a moonlit garden, while to her left, a fire roared in a marble fireplace decorated with carved dragons and knights.
It was to the fire that her guards led her. Countess Gabriella and Madam Mathilda knelt before it, hands chained behind them like her own, and their backs uncomfortably close to the flames. Glaring down at them with her Cathay fan white-knuckled in one delicate hand was Lady Hermione, all in white, her gentlemen in a half-circle behind her and von Zechlin at her right, his left arm wrapped in bandages and his face a mess of scabbed-over lacerations. Rodrik stood at her left, also bandaged. Famke fidgeted off to one side, chewing the nails of her long, slender fingers.
Gabriella shot Ulrika a sad smirk as the crossbowmen forced her to kneel beside her, but she said nothing. Mathilda was speaking, and not softly.
‘I didn’t come t’kill ye, y’daft bitch!’ she was braying. ‘Y’invited me here! Y’said we was to talk peace!’
Hermione slapped her with her closed fan. ‘I did no such thing! There can be no peace between us! Not after you killed Dagmar and the others!’
‘But I didn’t!’ insisted Mathilda. ‘Why would I?’
‘I thought you said I killed Dagmar,’ said Gabriella dryly. ‘You should make up your mind.’
‘You both did it!’ Hermione shrilled. ‘You have conspired against me from the first!’
Ulrika had had enough. ‘Mistresses!’ she cried, in a voice she had last used when addressing cavalry troops in the field. ‘I have proof that the killer is none of us! And that he is on his way here.’
Everyone turned to look at her, staring.
‘How dare you interrupt your betters, girl!’ snapped Hermione, but Gabriella cut her off.
‘Who is it then?’ she asked. ‘And what is this proof?’
Ulrika looked around at them, waiting to be shouted down, but even Hermione seemed willing to hear.
‘The killer is a great undead beast that resides in a crypt within the Garden of Morr in the Temple District,’ she said. ‘Its companion, or master, or servant – I know not which – is a warlock capable of hiding the beast even from our eyes. I found the beast’s coffin and the necromancer’s books in the crypt.’
‘Are we expected to believe this story because you tell it?’ sneered Hermione. ‘You are your mistress’s creature after all.’
‘I said I have proof!’ Ulrika cried, then continued before Hermione could draw a breath. ‘In the necromancer’s desk I found notes from a spy.’ She looked around at them all. ‘Someone among us who has told him our every move. Someone who knew Madam Dagmar would be alone in her coach the night she died. Someone who knew that Mathilda would come here even though she was not invited.’
Hermione and her gentlemen all began to look around at each other, frowning suspiciously.
‘The note is in my doublet,’ said Ulrika to Hermione. ‘I would give it to you except my hands are bound.’
‘I will get it for you, mistress,’ said Otilia, coming forwards from where she stood at the door.
Ulrika turned towards her, nodding to where the note was tucked, then froze, all at once remembering where she had seen the graceful script of the note before. It had been on the directions that Otilia had given Gabriella when Hermione had sent them to stay at Aldrich’s house – directions written in Otilia’s own hand!
Suddenly other things flashed back to her – things that had seemed inconsequential at the time. It had been Otilia who had suggested that the Lahmians look for clues in front of the Silver Lily, where the little warlock had planted the fur and the paw prints that had led them erroneously to suspect Mathilda. It had been Otilia who had poisoned Hermione against Gabriella by reminding her of the countess’s von Carstein blood. It had been Otilia who had urged Hermione to retreat to Mondthaus and who had tricked Mathilda into following her here with the false promise of peace talks.