[Blood on the Reik 03] - Death's Legacy

by Sandy Mitchell - (ebook by Undead)

  “Run out of time?” Rudi looked from one face to another, all three men clearly hoping one of the others would explain. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re dying, Rudi,” Gerhard explained, after the silence had lengthened uncomfortably. “The antitoxins were only partially effective, and even healing prayers can only reverse so much of the damage that the poisons left behind in your system are doing. Every major organ in your body is breaking down, quickly and irreversibly.”

  “How long have I got?” Rudi asked numbly, ignoring the howl of triumph from the oubliette in his psyche where the abomination inside him dwelt.

  “The rate of deterioration is accelerating,” von Karien said. “Our best guess is four or five days, a week at the outside.”

  “Then let’s do it,” Rudi said, “as soon as we can.” A strange sense of calm had descended on him. Events were moving beyond his control again, but he could at least decide his ultimate fate. The daemon’s euphoria evaporated almost as quickly as it had erupted, to be replaced by the familiar surge of thwarted rage. Rudi ignored it, as he had done so often before.

  “That’s a brave decision, Rudi.” Gerhard nodded, relief evident in his eyes. He turned to Hollobach. “Where do you want to carry out the ritual? We could probably find somewhere in the temple precincts.”

  The Amethyst mage shook his head dubiously.

  “Remaining here on consecrated ground would give us more protection, there’s no doubt about that, but if something was to go wrong, and the daemon escaped after all, there’s a whole city full of souls out there for it to harvest. I’d advise moving out to a rural shrine, where fewer innocents are at risk.”

  “Hammerhof,” Rudi said slowly. Von Karien glanced at him sharply, and then nodded.

  “The perfect place,” he agreed. “It’s consecrated ground, and it’s miles from anywhere.” He shrugged. “And I can’t deny there’s a pleasing symmetry about it.”

  “I know.” Rudi nodded, shivering, and pulled the counterpane up around his shoulders. “It all started there—it’s only right that it should finish there, too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Two days later they left the temple precincts just after dawn, in a coach surrounded by templar outriders, and Rudi watched the dismal city streets jolting past beyond the window in a desultory fashion. He’d insisted on climbing aboard by himself, shrugging aside Gerhard’s offer of a helping hand with a pettishness that vaguely surprised him.

  “I’m dying, not an invalid,” he’d snapped, clambering up the steps with more effort than he would have believed possible, and dropping onto the hard leather seat with a sigh of relief. The cold winter air had invigorated him a little, and enough of it seeped around the pane of glass that he now leaned against to keep his head clear, but the biting chill seemed to be settling into his bones, a constant presence, and he shivered uncontrollably most of the time. He pulled the thin travelling rug that Gerhard had handed to him around himself, grateful for its presence.

  He’d brought very little with him, even less than he’d left Kohlstadt with so many months before. There didn’t seem to be any point in burdening himself with possessions now, not even a change of clothes. By this time tomorrow, he’d have no need of anything. Before leaving his room in the Templars’ Court for the last time Rudi had dumped the rest of his worldly belongings, a pitifully small collection, on the bed and contemplated them.

  “I suppose Osric should have these,” he’d told Gerhard before turning towards the door, the last remnants of his former life already forgotten. For a moment he’d considered bequeathing something to Fritz, who, if not exactly a friend, had certainly become a companion on his adventures, despite the mutual loathing they’d had for one another back in their home village. But so far as he knew, Gerhard was still unaware of the young man’s presence in Altdorf, and it might not be prudent to draw his attention to the fact. The last time the witch hunter had laid eyes on Fritz, he’d ordered his execution as a heretic for attempting to conceal his brother’s mutations.

  Rudi sighed heavily, misting the glass for a moment. The streets of the capital city were just as crowded as he remembered them, despite the ravages of winter, and the omnipresent stench, which he’d almost forgotten about in the incense-scented cloisters of the temple, wound its way in through the gaps in the coachwork along with a myriad of freezing draughts.

  All those people, he thought, going about their lives, far from the remnants of Archaon’s armies and the havoc they’d wrought in the north, blissfully unaware of the fact that Chaos was here too, gnawing away at the foundations of their safe and secure little world. He shuddered again, not entirely from the cold, and watched street traders and burghers, fishwives and mercenaries, servants in livery and beggars in rags, and envied them all their ignorance. Some glanced at the coach as it passed, but most ignored it, wrapped up in their own petty concerns.

  Well, if his sacrifice was to be the price of all those lives continuing to potter along in peaceful obscurity, oblivious to the threat all around them, then perhaps it was worth it after all. He’d known what the stakes were in the abstract, but seeing all these people, flesh and blood human beings, made it seem real. For the first time, he began to understand that this really was about more than the struggle between himself and the daemon inside him, and that its final defeat wasn’t just a matter of personal pride.

  “Feeling tired?” von Karien asked. The two witch hunters were sitting on the bench seat opposite.

  “No more than usual.” He continued to stare out of the window. So many faces, and none of them the one he suddenly realised that he’d hoped against all rational expectation to see. There were plenty of young women about, many of them blonde, but Hanna, naturally, was nowhere in sight.

  That was probably just as well too, he thought. It wasn’t as if he knew what he’d do if he did catch a glimpse of her. Smile and wave, or cry “Witch!” like the lynch mob in Kohlstadt had done, and watch while the templars rode her down? Once again his warring emotions contended briefly, before subsiding quietly into apathy. None of it seemed to matter anymore. Their paths had diverged again, as he’d always known they would in the end, and by some twist of fate they’d ended up on different sides in a battle that neither of them could ultimately win.

  He jerked back to wakefulness, suddenly aware that he’d been dozing. They’d passed beyond the city gates, journeying through a bleak winter landscape, the fields and occasional patches of woodland muffled beneath a blanket of snow. For the most part it seemed undisturbed, apart from the ribbon of rutted slush marking the approximate limits of the road they followed, although the crisp white surface was mottled here and there with traces of the small animals that continued to eke out a living in the harsh winter conditions. Even from within the jolting coach Rudi could recognise rabbit tracks, and the marks left by scavenging birds, and felt his spirits lifting. This was where he belonged, he thought, out here in the countryside, as far as possible from the thronging hives of humanity where he’d spent so much of the past year.

  He glanced back, seeing the long, low bulk of the city wall receding into the distance.

  “How much longer?” he asked. Von Karien shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable, and Rudi felt an unexpected pang of sympathy. No doubt his kinsman was recalling the last time he’d been to the old family estates, fifteen years before, and had devoutly wished never to return.

  “An hour or two, it depends on the road.” Rudi nodded, as the coach shuddered against a particularly deep rut. The ground was frozen solid, which at least meant they wouldn’t be bogged down in the mud as they would have been in the spring or autumn, but the icy conditions would be treacherous, and the coachman would have to drive cautiously.

  “How’s Hollobach getting there?” he asked, suddenly aware that the three of them were alone in the carriage. He’d been expecting the magister to join them for the journey, but they’d evidently bypassed the Amethyst College completely. It wasn’t all th
at surprising, now that he came to think about it. The simmering animosity between the wizard and the witch hunters had been all too evident at their previous meeting, and it was hard to tell which of them most disliked having to work with the other.

  “I’ve no idea,” Gerhard said, managing to imply that such a state of affairs suited him fine. With nothing much else to say, Rudi returned his attention to the bleak winter landscape.

  Rudi hadn’t been quite sure what he expected to find in Hammerhof, but the large, sprawling manor house still managed to surprise him. They’d come to it through the hamlet, a small cluster of homes and businesses that barely merited so grandiose a title as “village”, and he’d anticipated something on a similarly modest scale. Instead, as the carriage rounded a small copse of snow-shrouded trees, he found himself looking at a mansion, which seemed at first to rival the scale of von Eckstein’s town house in Altdorf.

  “Impressive,” he said. He looked across at von Karien. “I’d no idea you’d given up so much.”

  “It was tainted,” von Karien said shortly, “as I told you. I wanted no part of the place, and I still don’t.”

  “I’m sure the use the Church has been able to put it to has more than redressed the balance,” Rudi said. The patch of woodland was disappearing behind a wrought iron gate in which the symbols of the hammer and the twin-tailed comet were intricately intertwined, and he gave the copse a last, regretful look as his view of it was finally cut off by a high brick wall. He could picture the quiet and solitude within the glade, and felt it calling to him, a final lingering reminder of his old life. The gatekeeper, an elderly priest bundled up in a thick cape against the cold, clanged the portal closed behind the coach and scurried gratefully back to the warmth of his gatehouse.

  “I hope so,” von Karien said.

  The main driveway swept up to the front of the house, which seemed to be flanked by the same jumble of outbuildings that graced von Eckstein’s estate. This was the main entrance, Rudi reminded himself, and had been laid out with the intention of impressing visitors, but it was hard not to feel awed by the place. After everything he’d heard from Gerhard and von Karien, he’d been expecting there to be some brooding reminder of the manse’s sinister history in the very atmosphere surrounding them, but the only ambience he could discern as he disembarked painfully from the coach was one of cheerful activity. Initiates and clergy were hurrying from building to building, discussing matters of doctrine, devotional art, or the latest plays on the stages of Altdorf as they went, while servants moved about quietly in the background, unobtrusively catering to their more worldly needs in order that they might turn their minds more readily to higher things. Many of the outbuildings appeared to have been converted to scholarly uses, and it didn’t take Rudi long to pick out a chapel and a library. Most of the main rooms of the house, he assumed, were used for study or accommodation.

  This guess was confirmed as soon as he crossed the threshold, finding himself in a high, wide entrance hall, flagged in marble. Twin staircases rose in an elegant curve at the far end, giving access to the upper floors, and a statue in the same material, depicting Sigmar leaning on his fabled warhammer, loomed over everything, its head level with the second storey landing.

  “Ah, you’re here at last.” Magister Hollobach emerged from a drawing room on one side of the hall, his footsteps echoing on the pale, milky stone. The neutral surroundings seemed to emphasise his lack of colouration, making him fade into the background, so that his vivid purple robe struck the senses with even greater force. “We arrived some time ago.”

  “We?” von Karien asked, with manifest suspicion, casting around for a glimpse of other wizards. “I thought you were to be the sole representative of your Order.”

  “I am.” Hollobach looked at the witch hunter with amused disdain. “I was referring to von Eckstein’s emissaries. You didn’t think he’d let me remove the talisman from the safely of the college without sending someone along to keep an eye on it, did you?”

  “No, not really,” Gerhard admitted. He glanced at the oak-panelled door from which the magister had emerged. Hollobach had left it open, and Rudi caught a glimpse of a fire beyond it, and a scattering of comfortable chairs. Some of them seemed to be occupied, although he couldn’t tell by whom. Hollobach noticed the direction of his gaze.

  “Do you want to rest, or take some refreshment, before we begin?”

  “What’s the point?” Rudi asked. Resting wouldn’t relieve the aching in his bones, he knew, and the thought of food or drink merely nauseated him. “Let’s get this done.” The daemon inside him was thrashing in panic, wave upon wave of thwarted rage battering against his own resolve, but instead of wavering, Rudi found that he was taking fresh heart from it. His life was all but over whatever he did, and by Sigmar he was going to make his death mean something. He glanced at the two witch hunters. “Unless you’d like to take advantage of the offer, of course.”

  “We can wait,” Gerhard said. He and von Karien had shared a simple meal of bread and cheese in the coach, although Rudi hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of eating anything himself.

  “Then we might as well get started,” Hollobach agreed. “I’ll get the talisman.” He disappeared into the drawing room again.

  “Where are we going to do this?” Rudi asked. “The chapel?” Von Karien shook his head.

  “I’ve exchanged letters with the abbot about this, and we’ve agreed that the old lodge would be the best place. The cellars are still intact, and we can seal them up again afterwards. Apart from us, no one will ever know you’re down there.”

  “The old lodge,” Rudi echoed, feeling a faint sense of foreboding at the words. “Where’s that?”

  “Out in the grounds, away from the house,” von Karien said. He hesitated. “It’s where Manfred and Gertrude conducted their blasphemous rites.”

  “It was properly blessed and sanctified when the Church took the place over, of course,” Gerhard said, no doubt anticipating some objection on Rudi’s part, “so there’s no danger of the daemon drawing any power from some lingering taint.”

  “But it’s where it was summoned,” Rudi said. Once again he was overwhelmed by a sense of inevitability. Subconsciously, he supposed, he must have been expecting this from the moment he’d suggested returning to the estate in the first place. “Completing the circle.” He took a moment to savour the irony, goading the struggling daemon within him. It would spend centuries trapped immobile in the very spot where it had hoped to gain limitless freedom to rampage across the mortal world. He shrugged. “That seems fitting.”

  “I’m glad you approve,” von Karien said. Footsteps rang on the marble floor, and the three of them turned to face Hollobach, who was returning with the first of his travelling companions. A woman was with him, wearing britches and a travelling cloak, striking red hair falling down around her shoulders.

  “Rudi.” Mathilde looked at him, an expression of shocked pity on her face. Hollobach had undoubtedly told her what they were doing there, but being brought face-to-face with it was evidently proving more of a shock than she’d anticipated. It was the first time that Rudi had ever seen her lost for words, her habitual air of breezy self-confidence momentarily absent, and he found that more disturbing than he could have put into words. He noticed the new ring on her left hand.

  “Hello Mathilde. Sorry I missed the wedding.” He felt the pity in her eyes like a punch in the face, and tried to inject a little spontaneity into his rictus grin. “Something came up.”

  “We heard.” Mathilde turned her head, glancing back through the drawing room door. “Just how long does it take you to finish a drink anyway?”

  “Sorry, my love.” Fritz appeared, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. “Sigmar’s teeth, Rudi, you look awful.”

  “You don’t look so bad yourself,” Rudi said. If anything, he found the lad’s habitual lack of tact refreshingly honest. Fritz seemed about to return the pleasantry when he glanced pa
st Rudi to his companions, and the expression of amiable idiocy on his face turned to one of murderous fury. His sword hissed from its scabbard as he registered Gerhard’s presence for the first time.

  “You murdering scum, you killed my mother!”

  “Surrender or die, heretic!” Gerhard drew his own blade, and squared up to face him.

  “If you want him, you’ll have to go through me.” Mathilde drew steel too, and stood shoulder to shoulder with her husband.

  “You see how the taint of heresy spreads?” Gerhard asked Rudi, facing them both with easy confidence, and moving into the attack.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “Are you insane?” Despite his frailty, Rudi lunged forwards to stand between the putative combatants. “We’re here to prevent a daemon getting loose, not squabble among ourselves!” He seized Gerhard’s sword arm in a grip a kitten could have broken, but to his relief the witch hunter refrained from shrugging him off. Gradually Gerhard began to relax, but he still kept his sword up.

  “Easy for you to say,” Fritz snarled. “It wasn’t your mother he killed, was it?”

  “Actually he did,” Rudi snapped back. “He burned her as a witch fifteen years ago, my father too.”

  “And you’re willing to go along with this maniac?” Mathilde asked, incredulous.

  “Well yes, I am,” Rudi said, wondering if he could get everyone to put their weapons away before the strain of channelling his anger caused him to collapse. Another headache thundered behind the talisman fused to his forehead, and he used the pain, fighting to keep his thoughts focused. “For one thing they both deserved it, and for another, if I don’t then thousands of innocent people are going to die. So let’s stop this stupidity right now, and go and save the Empire while it’s still here to save, all right?” He swayed on his feet, and grabbed at von Karien for support. To his vague surprise he found the gesture hadn’t been entirely theatrical.