by C. L. Werner
Nartik ground his fangs together as he scampered through a dead forest and hurried to the hidden tunnel that would bring him back into the sprawl of the Under-Empire. Nekrot must have known! He didn’t want the necromancer dead. It had all been a ploy on Mordkin’s part to humiliate and belittle Clan Eshin! Yes-yes, that was the truth of the matter. It had all been a treacherous trap to kill the best of Eshin’s assassins! Such was the report he would make to Kreep. Nartik hadn’t failed in killing the target, he’d succeeded in escaping the trap!
The Deathmaster cast one last, hateful glance in the direction of Vanhaldenschlosse. If Nekrot really wanted the sorcerer dead, the Bonelord would have to do it himself!
Chapter V
Carroburg, 1119
It was something of a shock to Graf Mandred, Hero of Middenheim and Saviour of Carroburg, when he pulled back the horsehide flap and started to walk into the tent. His face flushed with embarrassment and he started to withdraw. From the corner of his eye, however, he saw his helm standing atop a wooden stand. There was no mistaking that piece of armour, not with the fangs of a skaven chieftain still embedded in it.
‘Forgive me,’ Mandred addressed the woman sitting in one of his chairs and whose unexpected presence had thrown him into such confusion. ‘I believe you have the wrong tent.’
Baroness Carin’s face contorted into a disappointed pout. ‘Do not say that you are turning me out.’
An awkward smile tugged at Mandred’s mouth. It was difficult not to compare the baroness sitting in his tent with the one who had spoken to his council. As a visitor to his court, her costume had been restrained, only allowing such concessions to femininity as decorum allowed. She had been a noble, even regal figure but at the same time distant and chaste.
It would take a man with ice in his veins to offer the same opinion as she appeared now. The crimson gown she wore wasn’t the billowy affair of court but a sleek garment that accentuated the delicate curves of her figure. If there was a bodice beneath that gown, the baroness had left it much looser, affording it no chance to hide the contours of her amply female form. The coiffure of before had been abandoned, leaving the noblewoman’s hair to hang about her shoulders in a dark cascade. Paints and powders complemented a face that was already possessed of a natural gracefulness, changing the features from striking to stunning.
Mandred felt guilty about letting his gaze rove across the baroness’s body for as long as it did. Even more so when he noticed her sullen pout had softened into just the barest suggestion of a smile, demure rather than wanton in its expression of invitation. With the taste of Lady Mirella’s lips still on his own, he felt uncomfortably like a traitor for the sensation that pulsed through his body.
He could see in Baroness Carin’s eyes that she fully appreciated the impact her appearance made. Mandred wasn’t so naïve as to think her change of wardrobe and presence within his own tent was mere happenstance. The base ardour rushing through his veins cooled as he considered the audacity of the noblewoman.
Reaching behind him, Mandred drew back the horsehide flap. ‘It has been a long and trying day,’ he said.
Baroness Carin sighed and shook her head. ‘We cannot all of us fight our battles with sword and shield,’ she said. ‘Some of us must make do with such weapons as the gods have seen fit to provide.’
Mandred couldn’t help but laugh at the frankness of her words. ‘I think few opponents could deny you the field with such an arsenal at your command.’
‘Only those who matter most,’ the baroness said. She’d made no move to leave the chair. ‘Those who can help my people.’
Mandred let the horsehide fall back across the doorway. His eyes searched the baroness’s face, trying to find any hint of duplicity there. Had her words, like her costume, been carefully calculated, an invention to appeal to him? Or was it a genuine concern he heard in her voice?
‘You inherited the title from Baron Salzwedel,’ Mandred recalled. He turned his head towards the wall of the tent, staring in the direction of the Otwinsstein and the demolished castle. Salzwedel had been among the electors who had joined Emperor Boris in his refuge and who had perished with the tyrant when plague penetrated the walls of that refuge. He looked again at the baroness. How old was she? Perhaps twenty? Not much older, certainly, than when his own father had died and he had inherited the heavy burden of leading his people. It was one thing to grow into the obligations of leadership, quite another to have the role suddenly thrust upon you without warning.
‘My younger brother was to inherit,’ the baroness said. ‘As far as my father was concerned, I was around only to tempt his most powerful vassals. He kept them loyal by dangling the prospect that one of their sons might marry into our family.’ There was more than the mere suggestion of a smile now, but it was bitter and cheerless. She plucked at the bosom of her gown, wrinkling the material. ‘I’ve had a lot of practice,’ she said. ‘It was only when the plague took my brother that my father thought of me instead of what he could buy with me.’
Pity for the baroness boiled up within Mandred. Before the emotion could overcome him, he strangled it. A man could be moved by pity, but it was a luxury a leader couldn’t afford. Everything since he’d stepped into his tent had been plotted and strategised. Her clothes, her appearance, the coy hints that teased when they briefly flickered on her face, even the musky odour she wore, all of it had been designed to entice him. Why should he think her words any different? What was it she was trying to buy now?
Mandred paced away from the baroness. Stepping over to the upturned box, he laid his hand on his battered helm. Even if he’d failed to pry the skaven fangs loose, Beck had done a commendable job polishing the steel. It was like gazing into a mirror. He could see Baroness Carin sitting there behind him. He studied her reflection, watching her expression.
‘The noblest are those who would sacrifice all for their people,’ he said. His voice was soft and comforting but his eyes were steely glints as he watched the baroness’s image. ‘It is so rare to find a kindred soul. Long have I sought someone who would share my vision for the Empire.’
It was only for a heartbeat, but Mandred caught the triumphant smirk that broke through the baroness’s carefully calculated ploy. His suspicions were justified. Unable to entrap him through passion, she now sought to snare him through his ideals. His hands were clenched into fists of rage as he rounded on her.
‘The lowest slattern is the one who seeks to climb the highest,’ Mandred snarled at her, his words clipped and cruel.
Baroness Carin didn’t even blink at his accusation. ‘For my people, I would seduce the gods themselves,’ she told him. There wasn’t a trace of vulnerability in her tone now. Her voice was like the rasp of an iron blade across a whetstone, unyielding and unbowed. Posture and expression changed in subtle ways, stripping away the enticing invitation she had worn as though it were another garment. Her visage, her bearing, everything about her had an unmistakable aura of command.
‘Get out,’ Mandred growled, all civility and propriety gone. When she didn’t move, he stormed across the tent. His hand closed about her arm, drawing her to her feet with a savagery that surprised even him.
‘Not until you listen to me,’ the baroness said.
‘I’ve heard all I care to hear,’ Mandred told her, dragging her towards the door.
‘But not all I have to say.’ Mandred wasn’t certain how she managed it, but a simple twist of her wrist and she slipped free of his grip. She stood there, massaging the spot he had held so roughly. Briefly, he felt shame that he had done her harm, imagining the bruises that must even now be forming underneath the sleeve of her gown. Then he reflected that a seductress would be accustomed to rough use. Certainly she was accomplished at slipping free from a man’s fingers.
‘Do I need to have you removed?’ Mandred asked, matching the glare his visitor directed at him.
‘I wil
l leave,’ the baroness said. ‘But not until you’ve listened to me. I want to explain to you why the Electress of Nordland so brazenly steals into your tent.’
Mandred smiled coldly. ‘I’ll find out who admitted you,’ he assured her. ‘If I limit myself to just staking them out for the wolves, they may consider themselves blessed by Shallya.’
‘My purpose coming here wasn’t what you think,’ the baroness told him. She laughed cynically. ‘Thanks to my father’s guile I have learned that the surest way to influence a man is to make him love you.’
‘And what did you intend to accomplish with such influence?’
‘The salvation of my people,’ she answered without hesitation. ‘Believe nothing else I have said to you this night if you will only believe that. Your army is the only power in the north with strength enough to save us. You can free Nordland and Westerland both.’
‘I have said my army will do so,’ Mandred told her.
Baroness Carin shook her head. ‘How will you free us?’ she asked. ‘As conquerors, or as liberators? Will you toss us our freedom like a bone thrown to a dog?’ She waved her hand, gesturing at the walls of the tent. ‘Look out there at the people of Drakwald. You’ve freed their land from the skaven, but you haven’t given them what they most need. What I’ve come here to beg you not to deny my people or the people of Westerland!
‘Something given away has no value,’ she explained. ‘What pride can the Drakwalders take in the freedom you’ve brought them? They had no part in it. They didn’t earn it. They didn’t win it for themselves.’
She saw the impact her words had made, the doubt that had struck at Mandred’s vision. Like a predator scenting prey, she pounced upon that vulnerability. ‘Allow my people and the people of Westerland to share in what you would win for them. Let them hold their heads in pride and declare that they too played their part.’
‘Your lands are broken, your people scattered or enslaved,’ Mandred pointed out. ‘What part would you have them play?’
‘It is true,’ the baroness admitted. ‘Our peoples are scattered and broken. We need the strength of your army if we are to be free. We need the sword only that mighty host may wield. But let it be Nordland, let it be Westerland that guides that sword. Together with Count van der Duijn, I have conceived a plan that will free both our lands and allow our peoples their portion of the glory.’
Mandred motioned her back to the chair. ‘You are right,’ he told her as she sat down. ‘You aren’t leaving until I’ve heard what you have to say.’
He was reminded of Warrenburg as he walked through the squalid refugee camp. The misery of Warrenburg had been born in the plague; the misery he saw around him had been inflicted by the skaven. It was difficult to decide which was worse. Wherever Mandred turned, he seemed to find some new horror. An old woman dragging herself along the ground like some sort of human slug, the scabrous stumps of her legs scarred by the marks of verminous teeth. A little boy shivering at anyone who came near him, cowering in the corner of a broken wall, crying out not with a whimper but with the rodent squeaks of the monsters who had enslaved him. The broken wreckage of a once hulking man, scarred holes where his eyes had been, his face branded with the scratchwork letters of the skaven.
Everywhere the bestial cruelty of the ratmen was on display, a parade of atrocities that stabbed at Mandred’s conscience. If he had acted sooner, if he had stirred his army from Middenheim earlier, how much of this misery could these people have been spared?
As he looked around him, Mandred saw too the evidence of what Baroness Carin had told him he would find: the listless shame of survival when so many others had perished, the apathy of men who had lost everything, the guilt of a people stripped of their pride. He wasn’t so credulous that he failed to see that Baroness Carin and Count van der Duijn would profit greatly by his implementation of their plan. By insinuating themselves so intimately with the liberation of their provinces, they would strengthen the foundations of their own power. Yet he could not deny that a people who found pride in their leaders was a people who found pride within themselves. He thought of how his father had made Middenheim strong through his leadership.
The plan Baroness Carin and Count van der Duijn had hatched between them appealed to Mandred. It possessed the right mixture of boldness and cunning. Mandred’s army would march into Nordland, striking for the port of Dietershafen. Once the town was liberated from the skaven infesting it, they would use the shipyards there to restore Nordland’s navy, refitting the ships that had been savaged by the ratkin. The army would winter in Dietershafen while the people of Nordland made ready their ships. In the spring, the revitalised fleet would carry the army to Marienburg. Jarl Snagr Half-nose and his barbarians would expect an attack by land, but they imagined only their own kind still roamed the Sea of Claws.
It was the Marienburg part of the plan that rested ill with Mandred. The Norscans, however barbarous, at least were men. With so much of the Empire in the thrall of the ratkin, it offended him to expend time and resources – to say nothing of lives – fighting his fellow man. Indeed, his misgivings were such that he’d left their meeting without giving the baroness a firm decision. He had to think about the campaign ahead, had to ask himself if his zeal to free Dietershafen and his reluctance to attack Marienburg owed itself to the arena of logistics and tactics or if it was simply the hatred inside him, the burning hunger to destroy the ratmen wherever they could be found. He thought again of Hartwich’s warning about the two wolves.
As he walked among the human debris of Carroburg, Mandred closed his eyes and prayed to Ulric for the wisdom to do what needed to be done.
When he opened his eyes, the first person he saw was a grubby, filth-covered woman. Tattered rags draped loosely about a body that had been starved into a scarecrow shape. The face was worn and haggard, ravaged by the twin evils of brutality and privation. The hair was grey from dirt and dust, but here and there a patch as white as driven snow managed to peek through. The piteous wretch was wandering amid the rubble, turning over fallen stones, peering behind broken windows.
She was just another of the flotsam discarded by the crimson tide of war, yet something about her drew Mandred. There was some unshakable feeling of familiarity, almost a sense of kinship. He watched her for a moment as she stumbled about the ruins, calling out in a weak, cracked voice. ‘The doktor! Have you seen the doktor?’
Mandred went to her. The accent in her voice wasn’t that of Drakwald, it belonged to Middenheim! When he joined her beside the burnt-out husk of a barn, she looked at him with dazed, confused eyes.
‘The doktor. Have you seen the doktor?’ she asked him.
As he stared down into her pleading face, Mandred felt a shock course through him. He knew this woman! She had been a regular visitor to the Middenpalaz. Her father had been Baron Thornig, Middenheim’s representative to the court of Emperor Boris.
‘Princess Erna?’ Mandred asked, almost frightened by the idea that this ragged, starveling creature could be the vibrant, kindly woman from his memories. He saw the confusion on her face become panic when she heard her name. Before she could run, Mandred grabbed her arm. He shuddered at its bony thinness, comparing it in his mind to the fleshy vitality he had felt beneath his hand when he had caught hold of Baroness Carin.
‘The doktor said he died from the plague!’ Erna cried, her eyes wide with terror. ‘He died from the plague!’
Mandred kept his grip on her. With his free hand he drew back the hood of the cloak he was wearing. He had borrowed the simple wool garment from Beck, using it to shroud himself in anonymity as he moved among the refugees.
Erna flinched as he threw back the hood, then a little ember of recognition seemed to shine in her eyes. Suddenly she dropped to the ground, falling to her knees in courtly deference. ‘Your Grace!’ she gasped. It was strange to hear himself addressed in such a manner, but he reflected that when
she’d left Middenheim, she’d known him as Prince Mandred, not Graf Mandred.
The genuflection of the ragged, tattered figure drew the notice of the refugees around them. Timidly, they crept towards Mandred, maintaining a wary distance, unable to believe their liberator was among them. First one, then another of the wretched figures fell to their knees, their heads bowed.
Mandred raised Erna to her feet, hoping that by doing so the others would also stand. Their obeisance made him feel guilty. After all they had endured, that they should still remember to humiliate themselves at the feet of a noble was perhaps the cruellest barb of all.
‘It’s all right now,’ Mandred soothed Erna. ‘You’ve come home.’
She started to pull away, fright again filling her wasted features. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I mustn’t. I have to find the doktor.’ She lowered her voice, leaning close to Mandred. ‘He’s my friend,’ she whispered. She nodded as though to convince herself. ‘We have a secret,’ she added. ‘One I can’t tell anyone else. I must find him so I can tell him our secret. He has to know I haven’t forgotten.’
Mandred remembered the young princess he knew, tried not to let that memory become the sad creature he now held. ‘What is the doktor’s name? I’ll help you find him.’
Erna blinked at him, puzzled by his words. ‘We can’t find him,’ she said. ‘They took him away.’ A horror shone in her eyes as her wounded mind connected the words she spoke to the memory they represented. Sobbing, she collapsed against Mandred’s chest. ‘They took him away,’ she repeated. ‘He didn’t want to go, but they took him down into their burrows. They took him into the dark and he didn’t want to go.’
Gently, Mandred led the sobbing woman away. He praised Ulric that he’d found her, that he’d been led to this single mote in a sea of suffering. A face and a name had been given to those languishing under the verminous tyranny of the skaven. He had seen what it meant to fall into their clutches: Erna the kindly princess reduced to the crazed creature he now held. Whatever could be done to restore her body and her mind would be done, he made this vow to himself.