The Ambassador

by Graham McNeill

  'As a gentleman should.' said Anastasia haughtily, though Kaspar caught a hint of excitement in her tone and realised she was enjoying having two men argue over her.

  He could see colour building on Kajetan's neck and, knowing that he was not a man to antagonise, said, 'I assure you, Herr Kajetan, that my intentions were strictly honourable. Had I known you and Madam Vilkova were a couple, I would have never have acted in such an inappropriate manner.'

  Anastasia giggled. 'Sasha and I are old friends. We aren't a couple.'

  Kaspar saw a flicker of emotion pass across Kajetan's cold features and wondered if he knew that. He heard the music from the main hall peter out and his irritation with Kajetan grew as the swordsman impulsively grabbed Anastasia's arm.

  Kaspar said, 'I was privileged to witness your fighting skills earlier, Herr Kajetan. I have never seen their like.'

  Kajetan nodded, momentarily distracted, and said, 'Thank you.'

  'Truly inspiring.' said Kaspar, picking a fragment of lint from his collar. 'Though it is never quite the same when there is no risk involved and the fighters are comrades.'

  Kajetan flushed red and snarled, 'I would be only too happy to try my blade against yours and show you what happens when the fighters are not comrades.'

  'That won't be necessary.' said Anastasia hurriedly, stepping between the two men. Out of sight from Kajetan, she pulled a folded piece of paper from her decolletage and crushed it into Kaspar's hand. As a collective gasp of dismay sounded from the main hall she leaned forward and whispered, 'These are directions to my home. Call upon me,' before linking her arm with Kajetan's and leading him away.

  Kaspar nodded and slipped the paper into the breast pocket of his shirt as he caught sight of Kurt Bremen approaching, his face grim.

  'What's happened?' said Kaspar, looking past the knight and seeing anxious faces in the main hall.

  'Wolfenburg has fallen,' said Bremen.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I

  He watched the boyarin lean against the side of the alley to let the evening's kvas pour from his body in a stream of hot urine. He watched him sway in his drunkenness and, once he had finished, watched him button up his britches with some difficulty. The boyarin staggered off down the street, and his thoughts turned sour as he pictured her face once again. He ghosted down the alley, naked as the beasts of the dark forests, and following the zigzagging boyarin as he made his way through the foggy darkness of the city towards his lodgings.

  As he watched the boyarin's swaying back, he felt the familiar bitterness swell within his breast. Not content with beating his mother half to death with a poker, his father had turned the long length of black iron on the boy, thrashing obedience and devotion into him in equal measure.

  He whimpered as he remembered the pain and humiliation. The powerlessness that had gripped him until the moment he had been elevated to his trueself. In their ignorance, the people of this city called him the Butcherman and he laughed at the inappropriateness of the name.

  The boyarin spun and stumbled against a wall, hearing the laughter behind him. He froze in his hunt, blending into the brickwork of the wall and holding his breath lest the drunken fool somehow see him.

  He knew it was unlikely. The little light cast by the moon just made the fog glow a spectral white and the torches of the palace were but a distant memory. The boyarin's lurching footsteps were louder now and he could easily make out the bulky, fur-clad figure moving unsteadily through the soupy fog. A familiar word sprang to mind.

  Hunted.

  He pictured her face again, bruised, bloody and with one eye swollen shut with weeping contusions. His teeth ground together with a rage and love that had not dimmed with time, and his fists bunched as he thought of ending the life of the pathetic specimen of humanity that stumbled and belched ahead of him. He promised himself that this time he would enjoy what he must do. His otherself would wail and cry, but what was he but the otherselfs secret face? That weakness was tucked away in a corner of his mind and would only be released when this task was completed.

  He pictured what would happen next, seeing once more the green field where he had taken the first, faltering steps on the road that had led here, the first emergence of his trueself. The blood, the axe and the taste of warm meat ripped from the bones of a living body.

  The boyarin even wore the same form of peaked helmet, the same colour of dolman as...

  He took a deep breath to calm himself, feeling the familiar excitement of the hunt build in his breast at the thought of pleasing her again. He slid the long, thin bladed knife his mother had given him from his flesh and padded soundlessly forward.

  There. He saw the boyarin steady himself on the corner of a sagging redbrick building, the moonlight illuminating his hateful features. Alexei Kovovich's face was flushed with alcohol and selfrighteous indignation. He could well imagine the satisfaction the boyarin had gotten insulting the new ambassador from the Empire. He bit his lip hard to stop from screaming as his anger built to incandescent levels. He leapt forward and grabbed the boyarin's arm, spinning him around and hammering the knife into his ugly face.

  The man roared in pain and dropped to his knees, his head lolling back on slack muscles. Moonlight glinted on the descending blade as he stabbed again and again. The boyarin's throat geysered and he was upon him, the knife forgotten as he tore flesh with his bare hands. Spittle flew and blood steamed in the cold night.

  He swallowed lumps of gristly meat as he bit them from the man's face.

  He vomited onto the boyarin's chest as he stabbed his thumbs through the jelly of the man's eyes.

  He bled and his otherself wept as he took yet another life.

  He could not enjoy this.

  He hated this almost as much as he hated himself.

  II

  Kaspar signed his name on a promissory note and handed it to Stefan with a growl of displeasure. It felt foolish to be spending money, his own money no less, on refurnishing the embassy and returning it to its former grandeur when hordes of northmen were massing to smash it to ruins. But standards had to be maintained and it would take time for more money to arrive from Altdorf.

  Outside, he could hear tradesmen cleaning the walls of the embassy of the Kislevite graffiti while glaziers tore off the wooden boards covering the windows and replaced them with new-blown glass.

  'We're getting there, slowly but surely,' said Stefan. 'Soon this embassy will be an outpost for the Emperor to be proud of.'

  'But it will take time, Stefan. Time I'm not sure we have any more.'

  'Perhaps,' said Stefan, casting a scathing look at Pavel, who lounged in the corner of the room, smoking a long and evilsmelling pipe. 'But we can't have these Kislevites thinking they're better than us, can we?'

  Pavel winked and said, 'Already know,' before blowing a smoke ring.

  'That's not it,' said Kaspar. 'I'd just be happier knowing that I wasn't wasting my money.'

  'Is there any further news from the Empire?' asked Stefan. The question was asked lightly, but Kaspar could sense the anxiety behind it.

  The news that Wolfenburg had fallen had been a harsh blow to morale, made all the more so by the lack of any further reliable information.

  Riders and messengers arrived at sporadic intervals, each bearing wildly contradictory rumours from the Empire.

  'Nothing reliable, no.' said Kaspar, shaking his head.

  'I was speaking to some arquebusiers from Wissenland yesterday.' said Stefan. 'Their regiment was destroyed at Zhedevka and they've been living hand-to-mouth since then. They said that they'd heard the Kurgans had pressed south and are camped outside Talabheim.'

  'Aye.' said Kaspar, arching his eyebrows. 'And I've heard that the Kurgans are in the west of the Empire, somewhere around Middenheim.'

  'You don't believe that?'

  Kaspar shook his head. 'Of course not, no army can cover those kinds of distances in so short a time. You should know better than that. For what it's worth, I th
ink that with winter coming, the Kurgans will turn northwards and march back to Kislev.'

  'Rumour has it a pulk gathers in fringes of oblast. Many soldiers.' said Pavel.

  'Is that true?' asked Kaspar.

  'Damned if I know. Tzarina not exactly share information with me.'

  'Oh, well thank you for your insight.' said Stefan.

  Kaspar ignored their bickering and leafed through a stack of papers on his desk and steepled his fingers before him. He was tired and the stress of the last few days was beginning to take its toll. Requests for an audience with the Tzarina to discuss military cooperation were being met by a stone wall, though Pjotr Losov had assured Kaspar that the Ice Queen would grant him an audience as soon as she became available.

  'These Wissenland arquebusiers you were talking to?' he asked. 'Where are they billeted?'

  'They're not. They're camped just outside the city walls. Them and a few hundred other souls who've come down from the fighting in the north.'

  'You said they're living hand-to-mouth?'

  'Yes.'

  'Find out who commands them and send him to me. And find out what happened to the food that was sent to Kislev to feed these men. I want to know why they've not been supplied properly.'

  Stefan nodded and departed as Pavel stood and walked to the window.

  'Is bad times coming.' he said sagely.

  'Aye.' agreed Kaspar, rubbing his eyes.

  'Pavel not seen city like this before now.'

  'Like what?'

  'You think Kislev so busy all the time?' asked Pavel. 'No, most live on the steppe, in stanistas. You know, small villages? Most only come to city when winter breaks to sell furs, meat and such things.'

  'But now they're coming south because of the tribesmen?'

  'Aye. Has happened before, but not like this. Kyazak bandits, Kul and Tahmak mostly, ride the steppe to kill and rob, but people are safe behind timber walls. Take more than Kyazak riders to make this many people come to city. Kislev people are people of land, not stone. They not leave steppe unless forced to.'

  Kaspar nodded at Pavel's words. The city had felt busy, but no busier than most other cities he had visited. It had not occurred to him that this would not be the normal state of affairs.

  'If there is another army gathering in the north, it's only going to get worse before it gets better, Pavel.'

  'Is of no matter. Kislev been through hard times before. Survived them, will survive this.'

  'You seem very sure.'

  'How long you know me?' asked Pavel suddenly.

  'I don't know exactly, twenty-five years maybe?'

  'And in that time, you ever know me to give up fight?'

  'Never.' answered Kaspar instantly.

  'That Kislev way. Land all that matters. We may die, but Kislev live on. So long as land go on, so do we. The northmen may kill us all, but they will die eventually or someone else kill them. Is of no matter to land. Kislev is land and land is Kislev.'

  Pavel's line of thought was too abstract for Kaspar to follow and he simply nodded, unsure of what exactly his friend meant. He was spared from thinking of a reply by Pavel asking, 'You expecting visitors?'

  'No.' replied Kaspar, rising from his chair as the sound of angry voices came from the street beyond.

  III

  He woke and couldn't open his mouth.

  He clawed at his lips, peeling the dead skin mask from his face and hurling it to the floor in revulsion. He sat bolt upright, eyes wide in terror. The low sun shone through the dirty skylight and dimly illuminated the timber-framed attic, motes of dust drifting through stray beams. Flies buzzed around him, settling on his lips and arms where patches of sticky blood clung to him.

  Something dangled on a hook behind him, but he didn't want to look at it yet.

  He pushed himself to his feet, a terrible sickness building in his stomach as the smell of the attic assailed him: putrefaction and the reek of embalming fluids stolen from the Chekist building.

  In waking here, he knew that the thing inside him that called itself the trueself had killed again, though he did not remember who it had eaten. All that was certain was that another life had been torn screaming from this world and that it - he - was responsible. He dropped to his knees and retched, tasting raw meat in his mouth. The guilt was overpowering and he wept like a newborn for over an hour, rocking in a foetal position until he remembered the locket, clicking it open and staring at her picture within. A coiled lock of auburn hair nestled inside and he pressed it to his face, inhaling the rich aroma of her scent.

  He gulped deep breaths and the shaking subsided to a level where he was able to push himself to his knees. The lingering echoes of the trueself drained from his mind as he picked up a red sash, like that worn by Kislevite boyarin, and wiped his face, feeling his strength and identity returning as he cleaned himself.

  Silently he padded to the attic hatch and listened for any noises from below. He was always careful to conceal the activities of the trueself from the others; they would not understand the pain he suffered being torn between his warring selves.

  Satisfied that the tack store below was empty, he pulled open the hatch and climbed down to the cold wooden floor. He could sense that, save for the horses in their stalls below, the building was empty and made his way quickly to his billet in the adjacent building. Here, he located fresh clothes, a linen towel and a bar of scented soap, then headed back down into to the exercise yard.

  He worked the hand pump, filling the horse trough before the stables with icy water and proceeded to wash his entire body with the soap. As each patch of blood washed from his skin, he repeated the Mantra of Tranquillity, feeling calmer, stronger and more purposeful with each repetition. The true-self was still there, of course, but he could feel it receding to the back of his mind with each breath. He didn't know who it had killed, but knew that whoever it had been would have suffered a truly excruciating death. But he could not be held responsible, could he? When the dreams came and the true-self took hold, he had no power over it. Even as he thought of the trueself, a last fragment of its identity swam to the surface of his mind.

  The trueself thought of the locket, feeling the otherself becoming physically aroused at the thought of her. Her touch, her skin, her scent and her lingering kisses.

  Only for her could it do these things.

  It thought of the eyeless head hanging on the hook in the attic and smiled.

  The trueself felt sure she would have approved.

  IV

  'What in the name of Sigmar is going on down there?' said Kaspar as he watched scores of shouting people filling the courtyard before the embassy. Nearly a hundred people pressed against the iron fence, hurling guttural insults at the building and the Knights Panther who had wisely retreated behind the gates and shut them fast.

  The crowd gathered around a wailing woman swathed from head to foot in a black pashmina, her wails piteous and heartfelt.

  Kaspar turned from the window and grabbed his black cloak, wrapping it around himself before buckling his twin flintlocks on his right hip.

  'You sure that is wise?' asked Pavel.

  'Well I'm damned if I'm going to face a mob without a weapon.'

  Pavel shrugged and followed the ambassador out onto the hallway, where Kurt Bremen and Valdhaas were descending the stairs to the vestibule. Bremen stopped and turned to address the ambassador as he made his way from his chambers.

  'Ambassador, you should stay inside. We'll handle this.'

  'No, Kurt.I'll not have others fight my battles for me.'

  'Herr von Velten,' explained Bremen patiently, 'that is our job.'

  Kaspar started to retort, then realised that Bremen was right. 'Very well, come with me. But stay behind me.'

  Bremen nodded, noticing the pistols holstered beneath Kaspar's cloak.

  'Pavel,' said Kaspar as he took the stairs two at a time. 'The woman in black, what's her story?'

  'I do not know. Dressed for mourning,
but I not recognise her.'

  'Fine, so we know someone's dead and for some reason they're angry at me. Nobody's killed anyone and not told me, have they?'

  'No, ambassador,' said Pavel and Bremen together.

  'Very well, let's see what's going on then,' said Kaspar and pushed open the door.

  Screams and yells of abuse filled the air and the wailing woman slid down the railings of the iron gate, her arms outstretched in abject grief. She screamed and wept uncontrollably. Three young men, their faces alight with righteous fury shook the gates and roared at Kaspar.

  'What are they saying?' said Kaspar, suddenly realising the depth of anger in the crowd.

  Pavel pointed to the weeping woman. 'They say her husband is dead.'

  'And what has that to do with me?'

  'They say you killed him.'

  'What? Why?'

  'Not sure. Hard to make sense of what they say,' said Pavel, gingerly approaching the gate. Six Knights Panther held it against the press of bodies as he yelled into the crowd, waving his arms and pointing at the woman and Kaspar. After several minutes of confused shouting, he returned to Kaspar's side, his face grim.

  'Is bad,' he said.

  'Yes,' snapped Kaspar. 'I gathered that, but what's happening?'

  'Woman is Natalja Kovovich and her husband is dead. Murdered they say.'

  'I've never even heard of her husband,' said Kaspar, though the name was vaguely familiar, 'let alone murdered him.'

  'The drunk,' said Bremen suddenly. 'At the reception, the boyarin you spilt your drink over. That's who he was.'

  'Damn,' swore Kaspar as the name fell into place. He could picture the drunken boyarin's face now and remembered him saying that the Empire ought to burn in hell. He remembered his anger and that he would have put his fist through Kovovich's face if not for the intervention of Losov.

  Surely these people didn't think that he could have killed the man?

  This was madness, and he felt the situation slipping beyond control with every passing shout hurled in his direction. He drew one of his pistols and pulled back the flint.