He looked the crow in the eye.
The crow blinked and inclined its head, aware that it was being watched from a distance. In the White Tower high above the world Finreir whispered, “Take me to him.”
The bird took flight.
Soaring high about the gothic sprawl of the castle below, its black wings danced across the eddies sending him soaring across the plains of the Moot. Following the River Aver and high above the black forests of Nuln, the crow swooped in on Altdorf and circled a city whose walls were empty and whose people had no protection from the advancing legions of darkness outside them. Finreir gasped, aghast at the display of such dark might, but the crow seemed disinterested in such esoterica. Whether a soldier was living or dead in this nightmare landscape made little difference. It would feed soon enough.
The crow extended its talons as it saw its quarry and swooped down to the head of the advancing lines, its gaze fixated on one man, Mannfred.
The bird came down, resting upon the vampire’s shoulder. Mannfred flicked it away with an irritated swipe, but the crow refused to leave. Finreir could taste the influence of an even more illusive and malign force influencing even this wretched creature.
Finreir demanded one last thing of the bird, “Who puppets this monster?”
The crow buried its beak into the side of Mannfred’s face, drawing blood and unleashing a tidal surge of hate that lashed back across the winds of magic all the way to the heights of the White Tower.
Finreir was pulled off his feet and hurled up into the vast vaulted dome of the chamber, slamming his willowy frame into the finely carved stone. He fell back to the floor, broken.
He knew only one thing as he slipped from consciousness—the vampire’s protector was the dark, slumbering evil of Nagash.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Promises Broken
The Underways Beneath Nuln
Jerek sat, slumped against the jagged rock-face.
The waterfall dwarfed him, the cascade of white water pouring down the falls from hundreds of feet above.
There was no way up that he could see, except for what looked like an impossible climb up the near sheer rock face.
Jerek closed his eyes. He had no wish to taunt himself with this fresh failure. He had come so close. He had… an idea.
He concentrated on the image of a bat in his mind, trying to become it just as he so often became the wolf, but he felt no answering surge, no transformation. He pictured a bird, a huge black winged thing, but still his body refused to surrender its form. He willed himself into its shape, trying to fall into the wings, but it was useless.
He fell back against the wall, grunting in frustration. He slammed his clenched fists into his thighs, angry at his own impotence.
It ought to have been the same, simply a case of transforming. He could feel the wolf beneath his skin, so eager to be released, but the other forms refused to take shape.
He dug his nails into the dirt and rock beside him, trying to swallow back his frustration.
He was healing rapidly, the process accelerating beyond anything he had experienced since his siring. It was Skellan’s blood. It invigorated his reparative system. Narcisa had been right when she had claimed that feeding on one’s own somehow leeched their essence, but Jerek knew it wasn’t going to be enough. It could be days before his leg was strong enough to take his weight.
He tested his broken leg. It had been hours at most since he had come crashing down the subterranean waterfall. It didn’t matter that the bones had already begun to knit, there was no strength in them. His lungs were full of water from the steam he had inhaled. He had no need of air, but the water set a fire inside him that dragged on his strength. He looked up at the daunting climb. There was no other way out of the chasm. Somehow he had to scale the wall. He wasn’t built for climbing, lacking the lithe grace of Skellan. He was heavy set, powerfully muscled, broad shouldered and bullish. His weight and size were detrimental, but it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. He would haul himself up by bloody fingernails if that was what it took. He would not fail now, not when he was this close.
The heat of the lava drew sweat out of him and with it his resolve. He looked back up at the climb and knew there was no way he was going to make it.
He had an unnatural thirst on him, although it was more about blood than water.
Now that he had succumbed, he knew that the thirst was going to worsen until he slaked it again and again, and again. He had to escape. He had to make the climb, find Mannfred and end his threat so that he could finally find some rest.
That was all he wanted, to rest. He had lived too long and seen too much. When he closed his eyes, ghosts of the conquered drifted across his mind, butchered corpses dressed up like mannequins to puppet out his memories.
“I am the wolf,” he said aloud. His words echoed up and down the chasm before being snatched away and drowned beneath the crush of water.
He pressed his back against the wall, using it to take his weight as he struggled to stand.
Despite the incredible healing properties of his tainted blood, the bones of his shattered leg were weaker than he had thought. Even a little weight would undo the healing process, the pressure driving the freshly knitted bones apart. He leaned heavily on his good leg, clutching the wall and working himself around so that he could begin the arduous climb.
The rock was slick with damp backsplash from the waterfall.
He felt out a handhold and pulled himself up, taking all of his weight on three fingers of his left hand and holding himself there, a few feet above the ground, while he felt out a second handhold. Jerek shifted his weight, easing himself another few inches up the climb.
Two more and he found a toehold to take his weight while he leaned back, trying to visualise a path up the cracks and crevices to the top.
It was far from easy. There was no natural route that he could see, only several difficult traverses that would involve perilous moments hanging on by fingertips and with hope. He had no choice but to risk it, knowing that the stalagmites were far enough away so that falling shouldn’t prove fatal, but there was the threat of the second crevice and the lava pit should he fall too far.
He forced failure from his mind and dragged himself up another two feet, grunting as his toe slipped off a narrow ledge. He clung to the rock, scraping his foot back and forth until it snagged on the tiny ledge and held firm. He looked down, but even as he did he knew he shouldn’t have.
Already, it was a long way down.
It took twenty agonising minutes for Jerek to manipulate his body around so that he had moved out of the spray. Twice his fingers slipped, but he didn’t fall. His fingernails had cracked and one had torn free, leaving a bloody mess. His shoulders and arms burned with the exertion. The muscles trembled violently as he struggled to support his weight. He didn’t dare risk taking any of the strain on his wounded leg. Grunting, he leaned out to look for the next few handholds.
His hands were too big; they made gripping his fingers on the narrow ledges almost impossible at times. He felt himself weakening with every new reach and stretch. Still, a little over an hour later he reached up, his fingers snagging the lip of the chasm, and with one last almighty heave, he dragged himself back up to the top. He lay on his back, panting and looking at the rainbows and fragments of colour from the crystalline walls. His fingers were raw and bloody. His entire body ached.
Jerek tried to stand, but his leg gave out beneath him.
He lay there, fading in and out of consciousness.
The pain was excruciating.
He dragged himself across the ground, clawing his way to the boulder that Skellan had been sitting on, and lay propped up against it. He felt out the knitting bones, testing them without pushing them to the point where the marrow ripped. They were stronger again, but it would still be a day or more until the leg would be able to take his weight.
There was nothing he could do but rest and let the unnatural t
ake its course.
He lay in the dark, listening, trying to discern whispers and sounds, convinced that somewhere out there Mannfred and his dead were scheming. If he could just listen hard enough, perhaps he could make out words in the echoes of the peculiar subterranean sounds.
* * * * *
When at last he was strong enough to walk, Jerek took Skellan’s sword and used it as a makeshift crutch. He tore another strip from his ruined trousers and wadded it around the blade’s point, tying it off so that the drag-and-carry of the crutch wouldn’t damage the weapon beyond repair. He would have need of it soon enough.
It was a long walk back to the surface.
He had come to hate the dark and the claustrophobic confines of the tunnels. The subterranean underway was grim and oppressive, the weight of the earth constantly pressing down on him. It was too akin to being buried alive, and that was an experience Jerek was none too eager to relive. He still suffered traumatic flashbacks to that moment in Morr’s garden in Middenheim when his eyes had first opened on the darkness of the tomb and he realised he had been cursed to this unlife. Being born again was not something any man should be forced to experience. Jerek shuddered at the memory and walked on.
It was impossible to tell if he was walking in circles, doubling back on himself and treading the same tunnels over again.
He began noticing signs scratched into the walls, the mark of the Horned Rat. Not wishing to stumble upon a lair of the loathsome ratmen, Jerek turned back, looking for other pathways that led slowly upwards. That was how he found his way out, looking always for the slight incline to confirm that he was moving in the right direction. Every so often he would come across one of the marks he had chalked on his descent. Whenever he saw the sign of Ulric he felt a surge of hope. He would make it. His god hadn’t forsaken him.
As he wandered the dark underways he puzzled away the labyrinthine deceits. The Lahmians had joined forces with von Carstein, of that there could be no doubt. The concubines and courtesans were paving the way for his armies, lulling the influential and powerful humans, bedding them and robbing them of their secrets, which in turn they delivered to Mannfred as their part of the pact. No doubt the whores whispered in their beau’s ears subtle misdirections of where the Vampire Count would strike should he ever have the strength to pose a threat to the living, planting arrogance where there ought to have been fear. It was cunning, but then everything about the new count was sly.
What Mannfred offered in return, Jerek dreaded to think?
He was forced to rest more often than he would have liked, but rest served to make him stronger. After a few days he had healed beyond the need for a crutch and fastened the sword to his belt. He was building strength in his leg.
Eventually the sporadic marks of the wolf led him back to the familiar tunnels of the Alt Stadt and in turn back to the Eternal.
There was no warmth on the old woman’s face as Jerek barged unannounced into her chamber.
“How dare you defile this place?” Kalada rasped, her voice rich and sibilant.
Jerek threw Skellan’s sword down onto the floor at her feet.
“You chose the wrong side in this war, whore,” said Jerek.
Outrage turned to fear as she saw the blood on him and understood the significance of the sword.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing that you can give me.”
“What do you mean to do?”
“Everything, but first I mean to finish you.”
“You don’t have the strength.”
“Is that an assumption you are willing to risk your life on? You might want to think about picking up that sword. I’ll give you a moment to think about it. I’d hate for you to die without at least a struggle.”
Before she could move Jerek swept across the five steps between them and took her in his arms. The physical violation of her skin pressed tight against his was clammy and repugnant. He tightened his grip, feeling her brittle bones crack. She struggled, but his grip was iron. His expression never wavered as he leaned in closer and whispered, “Say goodbye to all of this, witch,” his lips close up against her ear.
She whimpered as he yanked her head back. She was ancient. Her bones might have calcified and become delicate, but there was power in her blood. Hatred blazed in her eyes. There was a frightening power within her. Kalada’s lips parted, jaw distending hideously as she lashed out at him, her nails clawing at his face, as Jerek sank his teeth into her throat.
It was the sheer audacity of his attack that was her undoing. She was so old, so used to deference, to temerity from her servants that she never imagined, not even for a beat of her dead heart, that a ragged peon of von Carstein’s could prove her undoing.
Shock registered in her eyes, but by then it was too late for her to do anything but die.
For the second time since coming below ground Jerek drank the blood of his kin. The first mouthful was intoxicating. She bucked in his arms, her nails breaking against his cheekbone as they gouged bloody black runnels across his face. Still he drank another greedy mouthful. Unlike Skellan’s blood, Kalada’s was a heady elixir. The potency of the tainted blood surged through him, revitalising Jerek. He swallowed mouthful after gluttonous mouthful until the Eternal stopped screaming and collapsed slackly in his arms. He pressed his hand flat against her breast, pressing down with his cracked and bloody fingernails until they pierced the skin. The woman convulsed once, viciously, as his questing fingers forced aside the tough cartilage and pulled apart the bone cage of her ribs, exposing her withered heart to the stale air. It smelled rank, of corruption and complicity.
Jerek tore it from her chest and took a bite out of it as he let Kalada’s corpse slump to the floor. It was tough, like old leather as he worked it with his teeth, and tasted of bile but that didn’t stop him from taking another bite, chewing it slowly and swallowing it down. Piece by piece he ate her heart out, and then walked around the subterranean temple, overturning the oil lamps and igniting the tapestries and curtains until there was a fierce blaze taking shape. He stood awhile and watched to be sure that the place would burn, expunging the Lahmian witch and her cult from the face of the Old World. Each crackle and hiss of flame and snap and cackle of wood cracking and splintering as the dissolution set in and the temple drowned in flame.
Jerek reclaimed the sword and strode out of the temple, content that through his actions it would look for all the world as though Mannfred had betrayed the Lahmians, breaking their foul pact.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Matter of Little Faith
Across the Battlefields of the Empire
Vorster Schlagener lived. That was his greatest achievement as a soldier in Martin von Kristallbach’s army. No matter how desperate the fight for survival became, Vorster Schlagener lived. It was a useful skill for a soldier and it had been noted among his superiors and the men beneath him.
Better a lucky officer than a tactical genius, he heard one man say, in defence of the mess they found themselves in. And it was true. As a soldier, Vorster would have always chosen to fight beside a lucky man in the hope that some of that luck might rub off.
Where others fell, Vorster somehow remained standing.
It went beyond useful. He became a talisman for the men around him.
He smiled at their talk of luck and the jibes about fate playing a hand. The truth was that none of them wanted to jinx whatever hoodoo kept the young soldier alive. Instead they sought to reap the benefits of his bravery.
As others fell, good and bad men both cut down before their time, Vorster found himself rising through the ranks until Martin himself named him Kreigswarden.
He tried to be a decent man and a fair leader, but it was difficult. Over the months he had developed a deeper appreciation for Ackim Brandt.
It had been more than a year since that first desperate cry of, “The vampires are coming!” And they had been fighting on three fronts in a bitter and bleak winter war. Snow swarmed in t
he air, whipping up a storm. The chill penetrated his furs, gnawing into his bones. The wind driving the flurry was biting cold, its teeth cleaving into his flesh, stinging all sense of feeling out of his hands. He rubbed them briskly together.
The winter had been the harshest in living memory. Cattle had died of lung blight, calves and foals were stillborn as the damned cold refused to relinquish its hold. The granaries and food silos were long since depleted. People were starving. Starvation led to discontent. With the uneasy peace it wouldn’t have been a stretch to imagine neighbours turning on one another if the rumour of a decent meal became too much for them to resist. Regional affiliations ceased to matter. It became a question of survival. Remote settlements were cut off by blizzards. Every homestead suffered losses. The weak and infirm died from the extremes of the elements if starvation didn’t take them first. It was all about filling empty stomachs.
Vorster was hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time his belly had been full.
It was dark and he couldn’t sleep so he had come outside to watch the silent enemy on the hills around them. The hillsides were lined with the army they said could never return.
It was difficult for Vorster to mask his bitterness.
He drew his sheepskin cloak up around his throat.
He turned his back on the dead and trudged back through the knee-deep snows to the pavilion that Ackim Brandt was using as his command tent. He pushed open the canvas flap and ducked into the tent, the storm blowing in behind him. Vorster stamped the snow off his boots and rubbed his arms vigorously, trying to massage his circulation back into some semblance of life. He wasn’t the only insomniac. Brandt looked up from the maps spread out across the table. He raised a curious eyebrow.
[Von Carstein 03] - Retribution Page 23