[Von Carstein 03] - Retribution

by Steven Savile - (ebook by Undead)

  “That is my charge… to sow the seed… for he is Vashanesh reborn. He told me so himself.”

  “He wasn’t, Constantin. He was a miserable paranoid creature unworthy of our sire, and most certainly unworthy of one such as Vashanesh.”

  “He could come back… he could be…”

  “No,” Mannfred shook his head. “You are free, Constantin. He is dead, truly dead.”

  “Free?” The scholar breathed, as though unfamiliar with the concept.

  Mannfred nodded.

  He held out a hand for the scholar to take, helping him stand. Constantin was unsteady on his feet. He reeled like a drunk. Flecks of spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth.

  “Where are we going? I don’t want to see Konrad. I haven’t finished. He has a temper. I don’t want to anger him.”

  “Konrad is dead,” Mannfred said again, as though simple repetition would drum it into the scholar’s broken mind. It wouldn’t. Not even blood could save him now.

  Mannfred wrapped a protective arm around Constantin’s shoulder. “Come, walk with me, I have something wonderful I want to show you.”

  “Really?” Constantin asked, his voice full of hope.

  “Yes,” Mannfred said, his right hand forcing a way through the scholar’s chest and bone, breaking a hole all the way through to his withered heart. For a moment, his hand wrapped around Constantin’s ruined heart, Mannfred saw the innocence and openness in the scholar’s face, and then it died as he wrenched the organ free, putting the addled vampire out of his misery.

  As it is below, so shall it be above.

  The process of restoring the old castle was monumental. Where Konrad had hidden in the shadows, delving deeper, Mannfred made his own shadows. He was that kind of monster.

  Peasants were brought up from the town to toil, serving as hod carriers, bringing the stones to the masons. There was a rhythm to it. They moved like ants marching up and down the ramps to the cries of the overseers. There were casualties, unbalanced by the weight of the stones as they traversed the wooden scaffold to the stonemason. Exhausted men fell. Their stones were collected by other thralls and delivered to the master masons high up on the scaffolds.

  As the season turned, the old castle gradually metamorphosed into a thing of majesty spanning the peaks above the city—in effect becoming a city above the city below. Mannfred’s Drakenhof was a massive citadel of dark splendour.

  Nine towers were added, one a dazzling minaret that speared the sky, three stunted beside the others, flat-topped. Invisible to the world below, Mannfred would retreat to these lower tower tops, where he would drive himself through a series of punishing routines, apparently fighting an invisible opponent. Sometimes he fought open-handed, other times he used weapons, most often swords, though occasionally he trained with a staff carved from black ash.

  The work on rebuilding was agonisingly slow. Mannfred chafed at the bit. He wanted the castle restored beyond its former glory. It stretched his endurance, but the new count was a patient creature. He could wait, allowing things around him to come to a natural fruition. The rigorous exercise regime was little more than a discipline. He gave himself to it completely, entrusting his chamberlain, Ebrahim, with the day-to-day running of the restoration. The man’s understanding of the mathematics of building and the angles of construction was impressive. He was able to predict the curvature of arches, the loads capable of being borne by keystones and the strength of any given foundation based around complicated calculations. He murmured about the sacred geometry underpinning the building—how all the angles came together in a pattern most pleasing to the eye, as though one were looking upon a creation of the divine. Mannfred had to agree there was something awe-inspiring about the castle. It looked less like a gargoyle and more like a majestic black dragon perched upon the mountainside.

  The new count was a reclusive beast. He did not impose himself upon his subjects. Runners came with news of strife in neighbouring provinces, the Empire at war, determined to tear itself apart from the inside out. He listened, accumulating knowledge. Knowledge was at the core of everything the new count did. There was no excuse for ignorance. Often he sat alone, poring over obscure arcana in the subterranean library, fathoming another aspect of the esoteric world. He breathed deeply of the wind of magic, savouring the nearness of Shyish in this place. For all his madness Konrad had chosen wisely in bringing his library down here. The old rock was stained with more than just bloodshed. It had an essence of something else, something more. Shyish: the amethyst wind, sixth wind of magic, so dark it appeared almost black as he unravelled it to get at its core. His fascination with the wind was complete. It offered power unlike anything else. To be able to draw from it, weave it into the threads of his desire and create magic was true power.

  The two were inextricably joined. One could not draw on the winds without tasting power. One fed the other in an addictive spiral.

  Then there was the living book that had escaped with him from the lands of the Dead. It was unlike anything in the library. He had unwrapped it lovingly, hesitant to touch its corrupt skin, but even as he laid his hand on it he knew, inside, with calm certainty that it was right—that it was his. It always had been, whispered the seductive voice in the back of his mind. As he cracked open the spine a shadow, almost enough to be called a shape of substance, ghosted free, drifting across the wall, though there was no source of light to birth it. Mannfred knew it for what it was. He rose to dose the thick velvet drapes and extinguished the single stub of candle that burned, throwing the room into complete darkness. The darkness was no more reassuring. He felt the shadow coil around him seductively. He refused to flinch or recoil. He was stronger than that—he did not jump at shadows.

  “Be gone,” he said with such calm authority that the darkness drew away from him with a hiss. A breeze from out of nowhere rifled the vellum pages, turning them quickly. The ambient temperature of the room had dropped considerably. “I will not repeat myself.” The cover of the living book slammed closed, and he knew, instinctively that he was alone in the room once more.

  He kept the living book in the room that Vlad had once shared with his bride Isabella.

  It contained such knowledge.

  He caressed the binding, turning the page. The words were in no language he could understand, though as he traced his fingers across them he found them making sense, the words awakening some forgotten corner of his brain that linked them all, all of his kind, back to their father Vashanesh. Such was the power of the living book.

  It promised such dark delights.

  As the castle grew so too did the town below as people were brought in by Ebrahim to serve the new site, and to feed the new count. There was no indiscriminate bloodshed. They came to him willingly, offering their blood, and he drank, though never to the point of death. He cultivated his livestock, leaving them with enough strength to work on the restoration. The needs of Drakenhof came before gluttony.

  For when the hunger would not die there was a windowless room, on the seventh floor, where those who would willingly feed the beast lay in narcotic slumber awaiting the return of their master.

  Mannfred sat alone, a raven in his fine-boned hands. The winds were picking up, winter drawing in. There was a chill that hadn’t been there even a few weeks before. He sat on the battlements of the Raven Tower overlooking what had been the forest of the impaled. The plain had been turned into a shantytown of lean-to’s and shabby tents for the itinerant workers. From his perch the patterns within their movement were all the more obvious.

  A distant scream cut off abruptly. He could barely make out the corpse at the foot of the minaret. It lay broken, arms and legs bent in ways their joints were not supposed to allow. He lost interest in the corpse as the birds circled. They would descend, finally, when the corpse was nice and ripe. He was not eager to see it. He took no delight in the savagery of their feeding. Where Vlad had seen a beautifully choreographed dance, Mannfred saw bedlam, every carrion
bird prepared to tear the food from the mouth of another should it save them foraging the corpse.

  He turned his attention back to the raven in his hands.

  The bird was dead, but that was as it had to be for it to work as a conduit. He smoothed back the feathers on its tiny head with his fingers and lifted it so he could see into its dead eyes. He exhaled, his breath ruffling the bird’s plumage.

  “A woman you say?” he demanded of the dead bird. His words carried halfway around the old world to emerge from the mouth of another dead raven in the hands of Ion Skellan.

  “She fed on him, Mannfred,” the bird’s beak hung open slackly as the words came out. “She is one of our kind, but I felt nothing. I stood less than an arm’s length from her, and I felt nothing. How can that be?”

  “She is not of our blood,” Mannfred told the bird.

  “Not of our blood?”

  “There are other bloodlines, other families. It was a dark time, the Diaspora, Abhorash, Neferata, Ushoran, Vashanesh, Harakhte, Maatmeses and W’soran all fled the fall of Lahmia, each one seeking safety at the far ends of the world where none might recognise the curse of our kind on them: the stigma. Each one, in time, was progenitor of his own bloodline: Blood Dragon, Lahmian, Strigoi, von Carstein and Necrarch. There are more. It matters little. Some allowed their evil to overwhelm their physical form and are more beast-like than human. Ushoran’s Strigoi root around in the dirt of the grave, drinking the turned blood of the long dead. They are quite savage and quite, quite mad. Others, those descended from Neferata, are creatures of exquisite beauty. They cling to what they once were and still call themselves Lahmians. Was she a creature of uncommon beauty this woman of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she is walking freely through the city?” He marvelled at the thought. They do not hunt her?”

  “No.”

  Mannfred thought about it, about what it meant for a Lahmian to be able to move at will through human society. The possibilities it offered were endless. The temptations…

  “I should very much like to meet this woman and her dark mistress.”

  “You do not think she is alone?”

  “They seldom are. The Lahmians are pack creatures. They congregate. Alone they are weak, but together, together they are strong. There is more to this than meets the eye, my friend. Another piece is in play. I do not like it when I am not in control of the board. It makes me uncomfortable. Things become unpredictable.”

  “Well that certainly stops them from becoming boring,” Skellan said through the dead bird. Mannfred did not appreciate the gallows humour.

  “There are worse things than facing a predictable enemy, Skellan. Make arrangements. There will be a meeting between our bloodlines. There are things that must be done. Do not fail me.” It was said casually but the threat was implicit. Do not fail me.

  The bird shuddered once, a final dying breath escaping its fragile corpse, and went still, the communication broken. Mannfred tossed the bird aside.

  There were preparations to be made, foundations to be laid. He looked up at the sky. The first tentative snowflakes of winter turned in the air, melting before they reached the ground.

  He opened the door on the seventh floor.

  Three women and a man lay on the blood-red divan, the sheets wrapped around their flesh. The man’s eyes were glazed, his skin waxen. They were exquisite mortals, all four. The women looked up expectancy. He shook his head slowly, holding out a hand for the man. The man rolled over, still lost in the languid torpor that comes out of the heat of passion. He saw his master in the doorway and rose. Mannfred was selective with those he chose to feed from. There was an intimacy to the act of feeding. It was something to be savoured. The flesh he chose was beautiful. There was no room for ugliness in his menagerie. Why drink from the hag when you can sup on the virgin? Why swallow old, tired blood, when you can get drunk on the innocence of the young?

  It reflected his vanity.

  The man stood naked before him.

  “Come, Rasul,” Mannfred commanded, turning his back on the women’s disappointment. All wanted to be favoured by the new count. All were eager to please. He led the man to his own chamber. Neither exchanged a word on the long walk. To those who saw them together, it was curious how one mirrored the other’s movements almost perfectly, like a skilled mimic, but it was not just in movement that the two were similar. The man bore an uncanny resemblance to the new count. They were by no means identical, but they were undeniably alike. For that reason and that reason alone, Mannfred tolerated his rudeness.

  Mannfred closed the door behind them, and walked over to the window. He looked out over the growing city, amazed once again at the transformation being wrought on his ancestral home. It was his in a way it had never been Vlad or Konrad’s. He had stamped his ambition on the very masonry, shaping it in his image.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?”

  The man nodded. It was, though to his eye it looked as though the architects of need and desire had gone to war creating a monstrosity.

  “There is so much that still needs to be done, but that is the way of all things. You begin, and it seems from that moment forth you never reach the end. I pity the cattie their short lives at times. How must it feel to never see the completion of one’s dreams? Ah, but you would know, Rasul. So tell me, do you ever yearn for time? Do you have dreams of dominion over your own flesh?”

  “I do,” the man nodded. We all do, I think, at times. We look at our daughters growing up too fast and wish time would stand still for them, holding the moment of their innocence a little longer. Some learn to appreciate the fleeting nature of life, others hunger for more.”

  “And you?”

  “I hunger for more.”

  “Good. That is what I am offering you: more. I will be leaving soon and I would have you look after my interests here, Rasul. I need to have faith that my will shall be done.”

  “You have servants my lord, an army who would die for you,” the man grunted, something approaching a laugh. “They have died for you already, actually. Your will is what binds them to this realm, and you worry that your will shall be done? Have faith.”

  Mannfred turned away from the window. He reached out for Rasul, drawing him close. The man came to him willingly, tilting his neck to offer up the vein. A maze of scar tissue had hardened around his throat: puncture wounds that had healed over with time. It was not the first time Mannfred had retreated to this room with the young man, but it had been a while. Of late, Mannfred’s tastes had gravitated towards the fulsome young women sprawled naked across the divan, but Rasul was special. There was something almost narcissistic about feeding on the man.

  Mannfred ran his tongue across the hard scar tissue before sinking his teeth into Rasul’s neck. The blood came into his mouth in a rush. He savoured the delicious shiver that chased through his body and didn’t stop. He continued drinking even as the convulsions wracked Rasul’s body. Rasul reached up, his hand falling on Mannfred’s cheek. A moan of pleasure escaped his lips, as, at the point of death, Mannfred opened his wrist with the razor-cuff and forced the wound into Rasul’s mouth. The young man drank greedily. The sharing of blood was exhilarating. Mannfred had to wrench his wrist free of Rasul’s suckling. Rasul stared at him, wounded, ragged strips of flesh clogged between his teeth. He licked at his lips, desperate to swallow every last drop of the vampire’s astringent blood.

  “You will be me,” Mannfred whispered, sinking his teeth back into the young man’s throat. “For all the world you will be me.”

  “I will be anything you want me to be,” Rasul breathed, the words leaking out with his last mortal breath.

  He died in his sire’s arms and was reborn into the world of blood.

  CHAPTER SIX

  In the Shadow of the Valley of Death

  Talabecland, Obelheim in the Färlic Hills

  Fate came in the form of a swirling dust devil.

  A tiny wisp of smoke like bur
ning parchment appeared on the horizon less than a mile away, the bastard child of a horse and rider rolling like thunder across the dry plain.

  They all knew what the rising dust meant. The orders were coming.

  Vorster Schlagener pushed back the tent-flap and emerged into the morning. He joined the others watching the rider’s approach. Conversations were muted. Silent trepidation rippled through the camp. It was time. There was an air of disbelief. No one breathed a word. No one dared.

  Vorster tried to busy himself with some mindless task. Taking out his sword he thought about sharpening it against the whetstone, but he had done exactly that the night before, before turning in for sleep. The blade was as sharp as it had ever been. Instead he oiled his chain-mail.

  He looked up from the laborious task as the glistening black mare arrived. The rider had almost run the animal into the ground. Foam bubbled from the corners of its mouth and its coat dripped with sweat. Most of the men turned away, unable to watch the rider bring the beast under control and trot up to Vorster. They had been waiting for what felt like forever, but come the hour they were unable to face the course their lives would be forced to take.

  The rider was young and surly. He reached into his saddlebag and handed Vorster a sealed dispatch contemptuously. “You advance to the front,” he said, and jerked on the reins to gather his mare for the return trip. The exhausted horse wheeled around.

  “Wait!” Vorster bellowed, tearing off the wax seal and finding nothing of value within.

  All too conscious of the fact that the men were looking to him for leadership, Vorster pushed himself to his feet and approached the rider. He lowered his voice, moving close so that his doubt wouldn’t carry to them and become contagious. He held up the orders, crushing them in his hand. The details were worryingly thin: The cavalry to advance rapidly to the front—prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Talabecland cavalry is on your left. Immediate. “Which guns? Where?”