“I have no liking for this,” Molagon said. “Not one little bit. It’s unnatural.”
“Well this is what we came for, what did you expect?” Kallad asked. “The glittering halls of Grimnir and the magnificent forge of Grungni?”
The others laughed, but it was nervous laughter. Only now were they beginning to form an appreciation for what he had been through. His bravery was no bluster.
The walls were slick with blood, hot fresh blood turned black by the dark stone. It reeked of the forges of the metalworkers. Kallad knelt and pressed his fingers into the blood, raising it to his nose. It stank with a tang of iron. Dwarf blood, he knew from the higher iron content, and it was fresh, which meant that he had been wrong.
He hadn’t rescued everyone. Some had still died down here. Some were still dying. He unclasped Ruinthorn and plunged headlong into the darkness.
The Soul Cages were empty when they arrived.
They creaked and groaned on black iron chains, suspended over fire pits for cleansing, to burn the blood and faeces off. The sight of them brought back bitter memories of his time in the arena.
Othtin set off across the floor, ducking beneath one of the swinging cages.
“Not that way,” Kallad said. “Trust me there are no glittering halls that way.”
Othtin stood stock still and turned slowly to face Kallad. He raised an eyebrow. “How about Grungni?”
Despite himself, it made Kallad smile.
“Not unless he’s fighting in the arena.”
“So which way then?”
There were five doors leading off the cleansing room, one on each point of the pentagram. Two led down towards more prison cells, one fed off towards the galleries surrounding the arena, one to the arena itself. Only one led up to the galleries above. Kallad pointed. “That one.”
“Where does it go?”
“Up.”
“I don’t like all this quiet,” Skalfkrag grumbled.
“I can’t say I’d prefer a welcoming party,” Kallad said.
“Unless they brought ale,” Belamir chimed in.
“Then why are we standing around here yapping, I’m parched.” Valarik smacked his lips, clapped his hands and led the way.
They moved single file up the tight corridor. Grooves had been worn in the middle of the steps from the shuffling feet of countless condemned men. They crept on. The place was eerily empty. They had come prepared for grisly work and had thus far met nothing. Considering the enemies that could have been waiting, Kallad claimed it as one little victory.
They were not here to fight a war.
They were here to kill quietly and leave.
The strains of a haunting melody began to filter through from the throne room.
The smell of perfume and wine filled the air.
Kallad stood on the threshold watching a beautiful, naked harpist playing her fingers down to blood. The filaments of the instrument were so fine that they cut into her ivory skin like wire, and still she played on through the pain, feeding it to the threnody to make it all the more elegiac.
His clan brethren fanned out behind him, drawing their hammers and blades silently.
The lord of this wretched domain reclined languidly in a chair with his back to them, his effeminate hand clutching a lace handkerchief. A crystalline goblet, half-full of rich ruby blood, coagulated on the table beside him.
“Come to me, woman,” the vampire commanded. Her fingers trailed across the final notes, enthralled. She rose and moved with grace to kneel before him. The vampire took her ruined fingers in his hand and raised them to his lips to drink. Her eyes fluttered closed, her breast heaved and her breath hitched in her throat as the beast drained her.
It served as the perfect distraction.
The dwarfs crept silently across the marble floor, using the shadow of the obsidian throne as cover until they could be certain that there was no one watching who could alert Mannfred from the galleries above. The lord of all darkness was unprotected. All Kallad could think was that this had to be a trap. It was too easy, but, for all that, he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity. Cutting off the snake’s head might not kill it, but it was satisfying to watch it flail around in pain.
“Mannfred,” Kallad said, “I’d like to reintroduce you to Ruinthorn. I believe you’ve met.”
Without waiting for the Vampire Count to turn around, Kallad slammed his trusty axe into the back of the vampire’s head, splitting the beast’s skull in two. There was a moment of utter disbelief. The beast was dead.
“Right,” said Cahgur. “Let’s see about that ale then, shall we.”
“Stay your thirst, Cahgur,” Valarik said. “There’s something very wrong here.”
“Yes, it’s a bleedin” castle full of vampires,” Skalfkrag said, stating the obvious.
“Really? Then where are they?”
“Let’s get this wee lassie out of here. There’ve been enough victims already.” Othtin reached out to take the harpist’s hand and led her to freedom, but as their fingers touched, the girl recoiled and turned on them, her face contorting like some wild banshee as she opened her mouth and screamed.
“Shut up, lassie,” Othtin said, bewildered. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Kallad Stormwarden could see in her black eyes that she wasn’t screaming out of fear. She was screaming for help.
“Oh, bugger.”
He didn’t even think about it. He buried Ruinthorn in her throat silencing her screams.
The others stared at him in horror.
“She was one of them,” he said. It was all he offered by way of explanation.
“So what about this ring then? Isn’t it meant to bring him back from the dead? Maybe we should take it off his hand before it can do the business.”
“Aye,” Valarik agreed.
Kallad stepped over the bodies. Ruinthorn had obliterated Mannfred’s features, cleaving through his face, rendering him unrecognisable. The signet ring on his finger was all the proof he needed that he’d killed the right monster. He saw the feral bat shaped around the ring and knew it as von Carstein’s mark. He took the beast’s ring, finger and all.
He hefted his axe up onto his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” he said, but their retreat was already being countered.
Two vampires leapt through the stained glass windows above the gallery. A third loomed in the doorway. The girl’s cry had been answered.
The breath of talons brushed across Kallad’s throat.
The dwarf was fast. He smashed the vampire’s claws away with the butt of Ruinthorn and reversed the blow, bringing the axe-head up to thunder the flat of it into the beast’s face.
The other dwarfs instinctively scattered so as to make the vampires work for their targets.
Warriors never willingly bunched up.
Kallad hammered the blade into his opponent’s grinning face, opening its leering smile all the wider. The dwarf launched into a whirlwind spin, Ruinthorn arcing out in a lethal silver flash. Just as the next vampire launched forwards, the axe sheered through both of his fangs and tore out of the side of his face. The beast went down in a spray of tainted blood.
Valarik was not so lucky.
He charged at the fiend barring the threshold, axe raised above his head, but the vampire was faster. It leapt over the dwarfs wild swing, taking the flesh of Valarik’s throat with him. The dwarf was dead before he hit the floor.
Cahgur and Skalfkrag fought side by side, beating the unlife out of a fallen vampire. Their hammers mashed the creature to a bloody pulp.
“To me!” Kallad yelled, unhooking a peculiar looking mechanical crossbow from his belt. He took aim and squeezed down on the trigger, releasing the grapple. It sailed up over the gallery’s balustrade and clattered into place. He tugged down on it hard to make sure it was secure. He wrapped his arm around the rope and hit the spring-loaded winch propelling him out of the clutches of the vile beasts.
Kallad grabbe
d on to the top of the stone balustrade and hauled himself up onto the gallery. Gasping for breath and acutely aware that his brethren were locked in a desperate battle below, he jammed the crossbow-winch into the balustrade, hammering it tight with the butt of Ruinthorn. Moving quickly he disconnected the metal grapple and tossed one end of the rope down. Kallad speared the hook into the winch mechanism turning it into a handle.
Belamir grabbed the trailing rope and began to climb. Kallad spun the winch frantically, pumping his arms. Moments later Belamir was hauling himself up over the top and throwing the rope back down. He unshouldered his own rope and sent that over the top as well, allowing Othtin and Cahgur to climb together.
“Hurry!” Molagon bellowed. More vampires were arriving, closing in all the time. Skalfkrag was being forced back into a corner, three vampires slashing and clawing at his face even as his warhammer caved in temples and gouged out eyes. He fought like the mad dwarf that he was.
The ropes were thrown down again, slick with sweat and grease from going through the winch. No one was holding the end of the second rope. It fell in a serpentine coil, leaving the single rope dangling.
Molagon grabbed for the rope and missed. A vampire hurled itself into his back, punching him off his feet. As the beast’s fangs came down to tear open the back of his throat, Skalfkrag landed on its back, driving the wicked point of his hammer into the top of its skull and opening the back of the creature’s head up.
Molagon crawled out from beneath the dead vampire.
Together they grabbed the rope, but their weight was too much for the winch and Kallad’s tiring arm.
Cahgur and Belamir reached through the balustrade, struggling to grasp the rope and pull their friends to safety. Hand over fist, they dragged them higher. With the two dwarfs hanging in the no man’s land between the gallery and floor, the load on the rope suddenly grew lighter. Skalfkrag’s screams rang out through the great hall. Talons had sheered through the muscle and bone at the base of his neck, rendering him crippled. He fell and lay there, helpless, looking up, unable to defend himself as the beasts gathered around.
Kallad couldn’t watch as the vampires fell upon his friend.
“Look away,” Belamir said, revulsion clogging in his throat. “Give him his dignity.”
Cahgur helped Molagon up onto the gallery.
Down below one of the beasts looked up, and grinned, relishing the hunt. The air around him shimmered as his body slowly shifted into the form of a great black bird.
The bird flew at Kallad’s face.
Swinging Ruinthorn, Kallad split it in two. Both bloody parts fell at his feet. He was running before they hit the floor.
Broken glass and jagged lead crunched beneath his boots as he launched himself through the shattered remains of the great stained glass window. The others came behind him. The icy wind almost snatched Kallad off his feet. He slipped and skidded on the slick roof tiles, casting around, looking for a way down.
The blizzard had mercifully blown itself out for a while.
He saw huge claw marks gouged through the ice and into the very masonry of the castle, the feet of their maker almost certainly larger than the dwarfs were. Kallad had no desire to meet the beast responsible for them. He pulled a set of spikes from his pack and stamped them onto his boots hurriedly before running. He traversed the roof, peering over the edge, searching for a way down. The path across the top of Drakenhof led towards a far tower, its roof in two parts, a spired top and a mid-section collar that, Grimnir be with them, they could jump down onto.
Four vampires appeared on the crest of the roof behind them. They had unleashed the beast within, their faces contorted into vile animalistic masks. They moved with ungodly grace across the slick tiles, always in balance as they scuttled forwards.
The dwarfs knew where to pick their battles, and an icy rooftop was no place to fight a vampire.
Kallad leapt from rooftop to rooftop, across the uneven gothic gables, slipping and sliding on the treacherous ice every step of the way. Only the spikes on his boots prevented him from careening off the gables. He pulled up short, confronted by a sea of corpses impaled on spikes, some so fresh that their blood was still oozing down through the runnels in the earth and into the belly of the old world. He knew, sickly, where the blood in the tunnels had originated. It was another crime that the Vampire Count had on his undead soul. Anger swelled inside Kallad. The scourge of the vampires was relentless.
“We did what we came to do,” Kallad said. “We can’t take them all. We have the ring. There will be ample time for retribution.” He threw himself across the gap to the collar, barely making the jump. The wind howled around him, bullying him off the parapet.
He fell to the earth like a stone.
The others came down behind him, the rooftop vampires breathing down their necks.
They stared for a moment, confronted by the forest of the impaled, and then they ran.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Duel
Marienburg, the Imperial City
Finreir broke bread with the humans.
“The Vampire Count lives despite the would-be assassination, I see.”
The men of Marienburg were still uncomfortable in the elf s presence. They looked upon him with something akin to awe and suspicion, as though, Finreir thought, a god walked among them. What he did here at Marienburg would shape how humans and elves interacted for centuries to come. In some ways they were like children, blood-thirsty children, admittedly, but children none the less. Finreir was here to turn the tide against evil, although he was not entirely convinced of human kindness and was in half a mind to recommend on his return to Ulthuan that these creatures be watched from afar with keen eye. That is if they did not strip him of his status due to youthful impetuosity first. No doubt his expedition would trigger repercussions. Three elves breaching the seclusion of their people, indeed betraying their existence to these short-lived humans, could not go unpunished, but there was cause, good cause.
At the very least the humans deserved to survive this onslaught.
On an intellectual level, he suspected that given time the humans would learn to accept him, but they did not have time. As it was they deferred to him, which suited his purpose for now. It was a deference brought about by fear and suspicion, but again that suited him. It struck him yet again as remarkable that human and elven life spans were so different. At 60 years old in the human world he was not a child, but a wise elder and he was treated with respect accordingly. The feeling was good. He was not about to correct them.
“I do not understand,” said Johan Kleine, captain of the city guards. “You’ve only been here a week and you know more than we do about the wolf at our door.”
“One needs only to listen to the winds to know the truth,” the elf said, not bothering to explain further. “Mannfred has spent much of midwinter licking his wounds and replenishing his forces. You humans are so eager to die and join his ranks. He grows in confidence daily. Three skirmishes in as many weeks, and three times your forces have been driven back. It has been a month since your last victory. The tide of war is against you, but eventually tides always roll in. Such is the ebb and flow of war. He will be here before sundown so the only question that remains is will Martin von Kristallbach reach us in time or should we make peace with our creators?”
“We can’t afford to be optimists. We have to prepare for the inevitable.”
“Death is always inevitable, soldier,” said Finreir philosophically. “It is merely a matter of when we choose to depart this mortal coil.”
They were in a huge tower room armoury, the forges below belching out steam and smoke. There was the sizzling of water as weapons were plunged into cold baths to temper them. Around the room other soldiers were gearing up. The place reeked of linseed oil, beeswax, leather, horsehair and sweat, lots and lots of sweat.
The room was awash with the din of preparation: the clank of metal, the rasp of whetstones on steel sharpening swords
, the sound of knives splitting quills and trimming the willow, the gentle whistle of fletchers biting down on the feathers as they bound them with sinew to arrows.
Johan Kleine cinched the strap of his metal vambrace into place on his lower arm. A page knelt at his feet, helping him fasten his greaves securely. He adjusted his scale hauberk so that it sat comfortably on his shoulders. Another page fastened his fauld to his abdomen once his cuirass had been secured.
The heat from the forgers beating out arrowheads and casting cannonballs, and from the hot lead of musket balls was fierce. The deafening hammer blows of armourers hammering out dents from the breastplates and other oddments of armour beat out the rhythm of the drums of war. The men wiped the sweat from their brows with hands thick as ham hocks and black with soot. Once an hour, more pages rushed into the chamber to slake their thirst for ale. It was an endless carnival of motion.
In the middle of it all, implacable, stood the mage Finreir, surveying the machine of war as it gathered momentum.
The heavy oak doors of the massive chamber opened. Three elf warriors strode imperiously into the room to confront the mage.
“Does Mannfred approach?” Finreir asked his kinsman.
“He does, and he will rip through these humans without breaking sweat. Look at them with their toys of war, Finreir.”
“They do what they must to bolster their failing spirits.”
“Then why won’t you let us fight alongside them?”
“We did not come to watch carnage. It gives us no pleasure,” Málalanyn added.
“A wise commander studies his enemy before he weighs in. Impetuosity wins nothing.”
“Do not presume to lecture me on the tactics of war, mage. Battles are won by overwhelming force. If it has already come to blows the study of the enemy is meaningless. It is time to put an end to this haemorrhaging,” Aelélasrion said.
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