No time to a dwarf of course, was relative, a year being a blink of an eye.
Kallad nodded his appreciation.
“So you are leaving us?” Razzak asked, turning his back on the machine.
“Aye, I think I am.”
Razzak studied him thoughtfully. Finally he asked, “Do you intend to tackle your monsters alone?”
The question threw Kallad. He didn’t know what he had expected Razzak to say, a plea to stay, perhaps, but not this. He had become so accustomed to being alone while hunting his father’s killer that the notion of doing it any other way had never occurred to him.
“You are not the only one alone now, Kallad. Look around this room. Five here lost their life-mates to the Vampire Counts. Three more have no family outside the clan itself. War is hard on everyone, but you need to remember that no matter what you feel, you are not alone. You are one of us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, perhaps you don’t. It must be hard, having to carry the guilt of outliving your clan inside you. Look around, just in this room. Tell me what you see.”
Kallad did as he was asked. He turned slowly, taking in all of the hustle and flow. “You’re building a water pump,” he said finally, not sure what exactly he was supposed to be seeing.
Razzak smiled. “So you do see it even if you don’t understand exactly what it is you are seeing.”
“If you say so.”
“Let me explain,” Razzak put an arm around the younger dwarf and led him away. They talked as they walked through the vast network of tunnels and underways. “We are clan. It is more than just a concept, it is our identity. It defines us, and because of it we are never alone. Those who can do something do what they can, those who can’t find other ways to help, but every son and daughter of the clan is vital to the clan as a whole. Alone, no one, not even Grakchi, could assemble this monstrosity. He can imagine it, but he’s no smith. He couldn’t fashion the pieces needed for the complex mechanisms. Even then few of the foundry workers have the skill to fashion the intricate pieces, so these are hand-tooled separately. Do you see now? Ask yourself who is more valuable? If neither one can function without the other they are both essential. The clan is the same. You, my friend, are essential. Whatever you may think, you are a part of us.”
Kallad nodded, grudgingly. “Aye, but what’s that got to do with the price of fish?”
“Talk to Belamir, Cahgur and a few of the others. I don’t believe you have to do this alone. I think this is still something for the clan. Perhaps they would accompany you. After all, the world has changed for them almost as much as it has for you. Like you, they are refugees of the war. I think they would appreciate the chance to strike back. Otherwise, the vampires have taken all of your lives as effectively as if they had sunk their fangs into your necks.”
“Razzak told me you’d got some brainless plan about takin’ the fight to them pointy-toothed whoresons in Sylvania?” a bespectacled Cahgur laughed as Kallad outlined his plan to march into the darkest corners of Sylvania and root the undead out of their hiding places, not stopping until he had ended their threat once and for all. “All I got to say is you and whose army?”
Kallad grinned, the grin of a madman. He didn’t care. “You in?”
“I’d have to be a raving lunatic,” Cahgur said, shaking his head in wonderment.
“So are you in, laddie?”
Cahgur chuckled. “I must need my head read for sayin’ this, but aye, I’m in. Why the kruti not, eh?”
The response was much the same from the others he approached. They looked at Kallad as though he were some “zaki” dwarf wandering the mountains, but then the fire lit in their eyes and they held out their meaty hands, joining his band of brothers.
They were seven when they set out from Karak Raziac: Molagon Durmirason, Skalfkrag Gakragellasson, Othtin Othdilason, Belamir Kadminasson, Cahgur Ullagundinasson, Valarik Darikson and Kallad Stormwarden. They made an unlikely brotherhood, but they all had something in common: they no longer fitted among their own people. The wars had affected them too personally, too deeply. They left without ceremony, just like any other mountain patrol going in search of greenskins, only their quarry was far more dangerous than an ore or goblin.
The mood was sombre.
Kallad walked, looking up at the sky, at the skeletal branches of the trees and the freshly fallen snow. Each place offered its own unique hint as to the enemy’s movements if you knew what to look for. He sought black crows and the paw prints of wolves in particular.
They walked along in silence for the better part of the day, each lost in his thoughts. They made camp in the shadow of the mountainside that first night.
“You’re all gonna think I am mad,” Kallad said, around the campfire.
“Most likely, aye,” Belamir agreed, warming his hands briskly over the fire pit. “But tell us anyway. It ain’t like we’re strangers to a bit of madness.”
Kallad scratched at his beard. “Right, well, I ain’t told you how I know the beasts ain’t dead, now have I?”
“Ooh sounds like a story, good, good,” Molagon said, biting off a hunk of stone bread and chewing loudly. Cahgur swallowed a chug of robust ale, preferring it to the dry bread. He was more than happy surviving on nothing but ale for a few days. Belamir clanked tankards with Cahgur.
“Well, depends on your disposition, I’d say, an” whether you are willing to believe in some weird stuff. See, I was there at the end, with Grufbad and Helmar when the lad stuck the sword in, finishing off the blood count. But it weren’t just us. In the middle of this hellish battle we had some help. Unlikely help, you might say. There were two other vampires there that helped bring down their leader. One calling himself Jerek von Carstein,” Kallad began, telling them the story. It was the first time he had spoken of his pact with the undead.
“He came to me in the dark, claiming to be a friend. I didn’t believe him. All he had to say was, “Then let’s hope that by the end of the night I am.”
“I heard him out, even though I didn’t trust him. My thought was to strike him down. He knew it, I knew it. Why should I trust him? His explanation? “Because of who I was,” he said. “Not who I am. Because as the White Wolf of Middenheim I gave my life trying to protect the same thing you are trying to protect, and because, for some reason, a spark of whatever it was that made me still burns inside here,” said Kallad. Jerek’s words were poignant. Kallad could not resist the opportunity to turn into a storyteller, mimicking the vampire’s grave voice as he leaned into the fire. “I was a ghost, trapped between the land of the living and the nations of rot and decay, and nothing in either world.”
“It was a grand speech boys, I’ll grant the beast that. His words stirred something in me. I mean, I believed him. I could just tell he was telling the truth and the strength it must have taken to hold back the beast inside him, well, I wasn’t dense enough to think I could fight my way into the heart of their army and take down the blood count by myself. So we made a deal. He told me how the first war with the Vampire Counts was won by guile, not force. He explained that von Carstein had a talisman of incredible power that enabled his dead form to regenerate, and that the talisman was stolen during the Siege of Altdorf. See, it was that theft that allowed the Sigmarite priest to slay him once and forever.”
Kallad leaned in over the fire pit, warming himself on the blaze. Licks of flame danced erratically, throwing shadows across his face. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance. It was a melancholy sound, answered a moment later by a lupine lament. There was no way of knowing if the beast was a true wolf or a were-creature. The howl sent a shiver of ice into his heart.
“We know the story,” Othtin said, impatient to get to whatever nugget of mystery Kallad had alluded to. The Vampire Count’s ring; the thief stole it and gave it to the priests’
Kallad looked at him across the fire. “You think you know the story. There’s a world of difference, Jerek shared a secret about t
he damnable count’s ring. This secret has robbed me of peace.”
“Go on,” Belamir urged, leaning forwards, sold on the tale.
Kallad waited, looking slowly around the circle of faces. “The ring wasn’t in the vampire’s grave.”
“So?”
“Think about it, you don’t need me to explain it all.”
None of them dared say a word.
“If that ring resurfaces, any beast wearing it, well he’d be like that scourge, Vlad, and damned hard t’kill. Jerek was looking for the ring.”
“He wanted its power?” Othtin asked, appalled at the thought of another dread beast rising to challenge the stability of the Old World.
“No, he said he wanted to make sure the damned thing was destroyed.”
He let that sink in.
“That was the pact we made. I told him what I knew, which was precious little. I tracked the thief down in Altdorf, where he’d been taken in by the Sigmarites. He lost his hands, and the ring, to one of the vampire’s kind. Jerek knew what I was, the last of my clan. He’d been there, seen my father fall. He understood the anger inside me, the need for vengeance, because, like me he said he bore a grudge against the monsters that had made him into what he was, a monster in their image.” Kallad lowered his voice, lending his words an ominous quality. “We were not so different, the beast and me. He told me, “I will not lie down and let them swallow my world whole. I will not stand by and watch it plunged into eternal night. I will not watch it become a place of blood and sorrow. That ring cannot be allowed to adorn the finger of a vampire. It cannot. The world cannot withstand another dread lord of my sire’s ilk.” And his words sent a chill to my core, brothers, because in them I heard the truth. He had me over a barrel. He had saved my life, see, from the other vampire, the one he called Skellan. I didn’t like it, but he was at pains to point out that I didn’t need to. All I had to do was accept that he was less than human, more than vampire, something else entirely and nothing completely. He claimed no loyalty to the dead and only wanted to do what he had always done, protect the living.”
“Are you tryin’ to tell me that the damned beastie didn’t want the ring for himself?” Cahgur asked in disbelief. “Do I look like I am still sucking at my ma’s teat?”
“Trust me,” Kallad said. “He didn’t claim the life debt I owed him, though he knew full well he could. He was aware what it means to save a dwarf from certain death. He didn’t care. He wanted my help given willingly or not at all. What he was asking for was nothing more than help preventing a dark and hungry god from arising. We sealed the pact, and he upheld his end, he helped me get close to the necromancers and kill the mad vampire. We never would have done it without him.”
There was a long moment of silence before Belamir asked, “What did you promise him?”
Kallad looked at his new comrade across the fire’s heart.
“I told him I’d aid his search for the damned ring.”
“And this is what you want us to do? To scour the earth for some magical ring? Why didn’t you say this when we set out? This ain’t exactly hunting the beasts in their stinking lair!”
“Would you have come, Othtin?” Kallad Stormwarden asked, bluntly.
The dwarf shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“This is not all the story is it?” Valarik Darikson asked, thoughtfully. “It don’t feel… What’s missing, Kallad? You’re dancing around something. Just come out with it. What aren’t you saying?”
Kallad picked up a stick and prodded at the embers. Sparks fizzled and hissed and ash fell lazily back down to the ground. They deserved to know.
“At the end, on the field surrounded by the dead, Morr’s birds carried a message for us, the living,” Kallad said. The stick snapped as he thrust one end into the dirt.
“What was it?”
“Mannfred is coming!”
Kallad threw the other end of the stick into the fire. The flame roared as the embers scattered, scaring the hell out of his new companions. He grinned.
“You whoreson!” Othtin grumbled, clutching at his chest. “You scared seven shades of crap out of me!”
“I need a bloody beer after that!” Cahgur said.
“Aye, but what does that mean?” Belamir asked, knowing that any chance of understanding the message lay in getting to the root of Kallad’s reluctance to explain it.
“Mannfred’s the worst of them, that’s what Skellan said.” Kallad shivered at the memory. He made a show of rubbing his arms briskly as though to massage the heat back into them. “He all but killed me when I faced him… and…” And this was the wisp of memory that plagued him. It was like some perverse engineering puzzle all coming together layer by layer. “I killed him. I mean I split him in two with Ruinthorn here, but that bastard didn’t die.”
Skalfkrag Gakragellasson, who hadn’t said a word during the telling of the tale, understood first. It came out of his mouth like a death sentence, “He has the ring.”
“He has the ring,” Kallad echoed.
“So we are hunting a creature then,” Othtin said. “I like that better than looking for some stupid trinket.”
A few of the others nodded as the true underlying nature of their quest became clear.
Kallad nodded. “Aye, we are.”
“But it’s like a vein in a mountain, you can dig and dig and dig and never strike it. How’d you propose we find this Mannfred?” Cahgur asked.
“I have been in his home,” Kallad said. “I have been imprisoned in the dungeons and the dark beneath his castle. They call it Drakenhof. It lies in the barren wilderness of Sylvania, out of reach of the Empire. It is a vile place, but I know a few of its secrets. I know a way back into the castle through the old underways from the Worlds Edge. Now, I’m gonna ask you fellas again. Who’s with me? Anyone wants to return to the stronghold, there won’t be no grudge here. This is above and beyond what I can ask of you. Chances are we won’t come out of that place alive.”
“My kind of odds,” Othtin said. “I’m in.”
“Aye,” Belamir chuckled, “why’d I want to be going home just when things are about to get interesting? You’re a strange lad, Kallad Stormwarden.”
“We’re brothers now and our bond is stronger than steel,” Molagon Durmirason said. “We’ve seen some of the worst the world has to show us. Alone, we are outsiders, but together, together we are clan.”
He held his hand out across the fire.
“It’s gromril at least.” Belamir reached out and placed his on top.
Othtin did likewise. One by one the others reached across the guttering fire as it failed, adding their hands to the pile, sealing the brotherhood.
They would return to the belly of the mountains, to the cells where Kallad had been held prisoner, to the soul cages where he had been forced to fight for his life for the entertainment of the blood count, back to the one place he had vowed he would never revisit: Drakenhof.
He pulled his hands away from the others.
He felt whole for the first time in as long as he could remember.
He would have been lying to himself if he tried to pretend it was the company of strangers that contented him.
He was finally fulfilling his promise to Jerek. He had decided to live the rest of his life and make it count. He was going after the beast. He would most likely die in the coming fight but that, didn’t matter. He had stopped running away. He had made a decision to stand and fight in the face of the oncoming storm. He picked up Ruinthorn and pushed himself to his feet. The old axe felt comfortingly familiar in his hands.
“Well, lads, what are we waiting for?”
CHAPTER TEN
The Mirror of his Dreams
Nuln, the Imperial City
Jerek von Carstein huddled in the shadowed doorway of a disused oast house. He could smell the last few kernels of hops and the mulch of rotten straw. The air reeked of disease. He hadn’t fed on real blood in so long. He couldn’t remember when he had las
t tasted it. No, he could. He didn’t want to, but he could. Rats and cats, and dogs and birds were pale substitutes that barely sated the rising hunger in him.
His mind was useless. Words, random, disconnected words, floated through it. He grunted and moaned, drew his legs up to his chin and pressed back deeper into the doorway, wanting to disappear.
Passers-by flipped occasional coins at his feet, mistaking him for a vagabond unable to conquer his daemons. He left them. He remembered fragments of memory: the caravan, the old woman, the witch hunters, the bloodthirsty crowd, the dead man at his feet and his blood on Jerek’s tongue. Oh yes, that he remembered. That taste he couldn’t forget.
The guilt was killing him.
He had tried so hard not to kill. He had tortured himself with the hunger, grubbing around eating vermin, anything other than touch humans. He had wrestled his instincts, his needs, the drives that made him what he was and he had failed. They had corralled him into a corner of fire and hate, and he had lashed out, frightened. In that one moment of brutality it had all come undone.
He tortured himself with the face of the dead man.
Jerek closed his eyes.
He hadn’t fed in so long.
He had tasted the blood on his teeth and tongue and lips as he had killed the man, but he hadn’t fed. He hadn’t suckled at the wounds gulping down that heady elixir.
But he had wanted to, and that shocked him. After everything he had done to bury his nature, the first whiff of blood and he had wanted to undo it all and feast on the damned human.
He hated himself for what he had become.
They had found the witch hunter strung up from the ceiling of the temple of Morr. He had been mutilated, laid open like a lesson in the secret of anatomy. The murder was the talk of the city. The watch had scoured the streets, dragging hundreds of vagrants and undesirables into custody. Jerek had been forced to flee below ground until even that sanctuary had become unsafe. They had descended with dogs, savage animals that they unleashed in the tunnels trying to cleanse them. Jerek had fled to the rooftops before being forced to move on by the agonies of the sun. So he had become one of the hundreds of beggars, faceless and unmemorable. It hadn’t always been easy to hide. A wandering Shallyan had come to give benediction to the poor when she collapsed, suffering from a fit of hideous convulsions. She had fallen two buildings away from where the vampire hid. He had run before anyone could capture him.
[Von Carstein 03] - Retribution Page 18