[Konrad 02] - Shadowbreed

by David Ferring - (ebook by Undead)

  He wished he still had his kris, the blade with which he had dispatched his first beastman all those years ago. In doing so, he had saved Elyssa’s life. Maybe now his other weapons could do the same for Krysten.

  He moved closer and closer towards the most westerly fire. He would begin here, then make his way along the hostile ranks until he found the captured girl. Or until the enemy found him.

  The enemy were so confident, or maybe so stupid, that they had not posted any guards. Very slowly, Konrad edged closer, then crouched down so that he could keep the nearest group under observation. Half a score of the grotesque creatures sat around the blaze. In the twisting light they looked even more repulsive than they would have done in the daytime, the flames and shadows alternately revealing their deformities and masking them once more.

  Some looked almost human for a moment, until the fire exposed their awful aspects, the bestial characteristics that made them even lower than beasts. Then the light would change and their subhuman attributes would be hidden again, and instead their neighbours would be unveiled as foul travesties of humanity.

  Konrad gazed in mesmerized horror. What was so awful was not how different they were from the squadrons of mercenaries Konrad had commanded, but how similar. They were passing around a flagon of ale; they laughed together, probably sharing an obscene joke; they spoke in their heathen tongue, doubtless boasting of their exploits during the day’s extermination; they even sang together, their raucous voices totally tuneless.

  Konrad hated and loathed each and every one of them. They would all die, he swore; that was how he would begin his vendetta.

  He stood up slowly, taking several deep breaths, stretching each shoulder in turn as he prepared to swing both his weapons in his personal war of retribution. He lifted his sword, raised his axe -then froze, seeing…

  He spun to the left, aware that was the direction from which the danger would emerge, and backed away deeper into the darkness. As he did so, he saw a pale figure emerge from the gloom, heading towards the fire. A human figure, tall and slender, totally hairless.

  Skullface!

  Konrad stared in total amazement, unable to move. The figure passed directly ahead of him, twenty feet away. He had to act now or the moment would be lost. He shook himself free from the imaginary bonds that held him tied, and sprang forward at his hated enemy.

  Instinctively, he used his sword; it was a much more precise weapon than the double-headed axe blade. Even though he struck with his left hand, Konrad’s left was as strong and accurate as his right.

  The point of the blade plunged into Skullface’s back, between the ribs below his left shoulder blade, to where his heart was — or should have been. Blood spurted immediately, and that was when Konrad knew he was mistaken. There had been no such blood when his arrow first found Skullface’s heart.

  He wrenched his blade free, and the tall figure toppled twitching to the ground. After a brief spasm of frenetic writhing, it lay without moving. Konrad had killed often enough to know when his victim was dead. He glanced swiftly around, watching for another intruder, but the pale shape had died without a sound.

  Using his boot, Konrad rolled the figure onto its back. He already knew it could not be Skullface; the creature had died too easily. Even in the gloom, a quick glance confirmed his suspicions. It was just another of the bestial foe. Tall and thin, pale and bald — bald because no hair would grow on bone. Its head had neither skin nor flesh, muscle nor sinew.

  Then Konrad heard another sound, and he twisted on his heel, springing back as an amorphous mass sprang towards him through the blackness. He brought up both weapons as fast as he could, but not fast enough. The thing knocked him to the ground, its hatchet aimed at his unprotected throat, falling on top of him… then rolling aside.

  Konrad felt warm wetness on his face. Blood. But not his own blood. He glanced at the beastman. He could not make out the details of its appearance in the gloom, but it was big and dark -and dead.

  Another shape loomed through the night.

  “Thought you might need a hand, didn’t I?” whispered a familiar voice.

  Konrad rose to his feet, wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve, and watched as Heinler retrieved his blade. He had underestimated the man. Because he was a miner, his night vision was excellent; but he also seemed to possess other skills. It was no accident that he had survived the attack when everyone else had died or been captured.

  Konrad glanced over to the fire and the group of non-humans who sat carousing around it. They were unaware of what had taken place a dozen yards away.

  Like the pale figure that he had mistaken for Skullface, his attacker had come from the other direction. Konrad’s vengeful bloodlust had been assuaged for the moment. There was no need to kill again, to take unnecessary risks — not yet.

  “Want to tell me what you’re really looking for?” said Heinler.

  Konrad told him.

  “Let’s go find her, shall we?” said the miner.

  “You want this?” Konrad asked, offering his sword. It was best to divide the weapons between them.

  Heinler stuck his knife into his belt and accepted the blade; Konrad kept the axe in his right hand, drew the stiletto with his left.

  There was no need for discussion. Heinler understood what must be done, and for the first time Konrad really wondered about his companion and his previous profession. He had paid little attention to the miner, or to anything else. All that had concerned him was catching up with the legions who must have captured Krysten. They moved on warily through the night, heading for the glare of the next flames, covering each other’s back as they approached their target.

  Then Heinler’s voice broke the silence. “Look out!” he yelled.

  Konrad spun swiftly around, but too late. He felt a terrific blow on the side of his head. He managed to take another pace, turning and starting to swing the heavy axe at his unseen assailant, but then he dropped to the ground and the darkness claimed him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When Konrad finally managed to open his eyes, the first thing he saw was Morrslieb, gleaming high above.

  His head was tilted back, his neck tightly tied, and his hands were bound behind him. He was upright, lashed to a tree, naked. He was in almost exactly the same hopeless situation as Wolf had been less than two days ago — even more hopeless, because there was no one to rescue Konrad from his inevitable fate.

  He kept staring up at the irregularly shaped moon, not wanting to lower his gaze. The horrendous sounds that assailed his ears told him more than he needed to know about what was happening all around him.

  Unlike Mannslieb, the smaller moon never offered much illumination even when it was at its nearest or its fullest — and tonight it was both close and also at its maximum dimension. Morrslieb always appeared to cast a strange light, almost an absence of luminescence.

  It was as if it were a shadow moon, throwing darkness onto the world it encircled, drawing away any brilliance instead of giving it.

  As he gazed at the moon, Konrad took stock of himself and his injuries. He was fastened by the neck and wrists, both ropes securely wrapped around a solid tree trunk. His head throbbed incessantly from the blow it had received and he ached in several other places, as though he had been beaten while unconscious, then dragged across the ground. Many of the wounds he had suffered during the assault on the goblin stronghold had opened up again. He was coated in blood, down his face and over his body, although most of it had dried.

  He was alive for the moment, but torture and ultimate death seemed his only destiny.

  He lowered his eyes and swiftly glanced all around, then squeezed his eyelids shut with even greater rapidity. He did not want his captors to know that he was conscious — and he did not want to see more of what was going on in the moonlit clearing ahead of him than he had briefly witnessed.

  He could not exclude the harrowing images from his mind as simply as he could close his eyes. In the centre o
f a grove of trees stood a small altar. At its focus was an armoured figure. Clad in red and black, it was armed with a mighty axe and bore a familiar emblem emblazoned upon its shield. Konrad had noticed the design many times before, on some of the banners carried by the legions of beastmen: an X-shape, with a horizontal stroke through its centre and one at its base.

  Beneath the elaborate brass helmet, there was no face, however, nothing except darkness. The empty suit of armour sat upon a chair. No, not a chair, a carved throne — because the armour comprised an effigy of the perverted god that this clan of outlaws worshipped. At its feet lay a pile of bones and skulls. Human skulls.

  And fresh human heads had recently been added to the heap…

  Around the shrine the blasphemous acolytes stood reverently, revelling in the fresh blood that flowed freely from the latest sacrifices to their gory lord.

  Konrad had seen all this in but a moment. He had also seen the victims. And now he kept on hearing them as they endured the unendurable, as they suffered the insufferable. They screamed as they were tortured, screamed as they finally died, and even then their screams seemed to echo on and on and on.

  He risked another glance, to left and right, searching for Heinler. But there was no sign of him. He was not tied to another tree, and neither did his hunched corpse seem to be amongst the acephalous mound of death, his head an offering to the hideous deity.

  As his eyes swept the barbaric temple, Konrad recognized the last victim. His name was Hralvan, a mercenary from Norsca, who was probably the strongest human warrior Konrad had ever known. He used to cut his own flesh for fun, to hold a blazing torch under his limbs to show that he was immune to pain.

  But he was no longer immune. He had stood seven feet tall, with a girth to match his height. Now he had no legs and he wept like a beaten child — but it was blood, not tears, that flowed from his eyes as he was slowly sliced to death.

  And the ones who were inflicting such unspeakable atrocities on his massive body were two of the most beautiful women Konrad had ever seen. Except that they could not have been women, not quite; both had slender tails, the tips of which were bifurcated.

  Apart from spiked metal collars around their necks and wide loops of bone through their earlobes, they were completely nude. Their limbs were long and lithe — and splattered with blood. As their doomed victim’s life spurted forth, they became speckled with even more scarlet. They grinned as they danced around him, licking the drops of crimson from the blades that they both wielded with such dexterity. The knives were like the girls, slim and supple.

  Konrad was unaware how many worshippers stood around the altar, because most of them were lost in the shadows, but he could hear all the idolators roaring their depraved enthusiasm, chanting their hymns of blood.

  Then there was a sudden silence. A total absence of sound: not a scream, not a whimper, not a chant, not a prayer.

  Konrad realized why, but he could not prevent himself from confirming that Hralvan was dead. The giant Norscan had been dismembered, and one of the girls was holding his severed head aloft. Blood dribbled into her open mouth, then Hralvan’s head was added to the trophy collection at the feet of the armoured idol.

  There was no one else to kill, no more victims to torture to death — except one…

  Konrad clamped his eyes tightly shut, hoping they would believe he was still senseless, hoping that it would make a difference even if they believed it.

  The silence continued, but he was aware of the two devil dancers moving lightly towards him. They stood next to him, and he felt their warm breath on his face as they leaned close. Then their hands were on his body, stroking him, their fingers sticky and damp with blood. Even had they begun to cut him, he could have continued feigning unconsciousness; but he was unable to ignore their ghoulishly sensual advances.

  He opened his eyes and jerked upwards, supporting himself with his arms as he lashed out with both legs. He missed. The blood maidens sprang back, giggling, and Konrad almost strangled himself on the rope around his throat.

  That would be a much less painful, much swifter way to die, he realized. But before he could pursue the idea any further, one of the nude girls had moved behind the tree and released his neck. A second later, his arms were free — but only for a second.

  A length of rope hung from each of his wrists, and the other ends were caught up by the beautiful executioners. Even though their faces were masks of red, their long hair dripping with gore, they were hypnotically attractive. They appeared identical; it was impossible to tell them apart.

  He rushed at the one to his right, but she leapt away from him. As she avoided his lunge, her knife whipped through the night air — and through Konrad’s forearm. He grunted in surprise and pain. As the blood oozed from the wound and trickled to the ground, the worshippers sighed in ecstasy, their ritual chants commencing again as their final victim began to play his role in their obscene ceremony.

  The girl brandished her knife in triumph and then put the blade to her tongue, licking at Konrad’s blood. Her tongue was forked, like her tail.

  Konrad yanked on the other piece of rope, hauling the second profane priestess towards him. She simply let go of the rope, and he fell backwards into the dirt. The ground was like mud, saturated after a downpour. But it was a storm of blood that had turned the earth into such a quagmire.

  Then both of the girls sprang at him, twin streaks of red — and two streaks of blood flowed from his throat. Konrad regained his feet, and the naked women circled him, taking it in turns to dart forward, to feint, to pull back, then to spring again and really draw blood with their flashing blades.

  They were fast, inhumanly fast. Female torturers were probably preferred because they were more subtle than the males; more delicate, they would not slay too soon with unnecessary force. Their victims would die more slowly, bled to death, drop by drop.

  Konrad’s body was soon as bloody as theirs, but it was his own blood which gave him a red second skin. He was also in great pain, but it was only superficial and he would not have to endure it for long. His tormentors were only playing with him. When they became serious, he was doomed.

  Before it was too late, he had to get on even terms. And what he needed to even the odds was a weapon. He immediately thought of the suit of armour on top of the shrine, and the massive axe held in its gauntleted fist. The thought was sufficient impulse.

  One of the tailed girls was between him and the throned figure. Konrad ran directly at her, and she nimbly skipped aside as he had known she would. Instead of turning back, he kept going, rushing at the altar, tearing free from the two ropes.

  Until now he had not paid much attention to the worshippers who stood around the diabolic temple. He could not see them very well in the gloom, and his priority had been the predatory duo.

  But suddenly his route to the weapon he needed was blocked by a group of shadowy figures, making a wall around the sacrificial area. He clenched his fist, slamming it into a darkened face, hearing a rewarding crunch as his knuckles crushed the bone. The shape fell back, creating a gap.

  Before Konrad could dive through, a gloved hand grabbed his shoulder. He twisted free, turning back, seeing the gleam of a weapon in the feeble moonlight. The second figure was drawing a sword, but Konrad wrenched the hand from the hilt and seized the blade himself. The handle was fashioned like a coiled snake, and Konrad raised the sword, completing his turn and heading back to his twin torturers. Then the snake writhed, uncoiled -and its fangs bit deep into his wrist.

  Konrad yelled out in agony, dropping the blade, and he rubbed at the two punctures in his flesh.

  There was absolute silence, and all was still. The rhythmic chanting had ceased, everyone was staring at Konrad. The fiendish pair stood poised behind him, while the worshippers encircled the three naked blood-soaked figures.

  The shape whose sword Konrad had taken stepped forward, and another dark form did the same, bending down to retrieve the fallen weapon and hand
it to its owner. The sword hilt was a sword hilt again, the serpent tightly coiled once more.

  Konrad glanced at the first dark form, almost indistinguishable in the black night. He noticed the shield the figure carried. It contained the same runic device as the one on the altar, but there was also another design on the shield, a crest that Konrad recognized.

  “Kastring!” he said.

  The figure had begun to sheath his weapon and turn away, but now he froze.

  He stared at Konrad for a few seconds, then walked slowly up to him.

  “No one has called me that for a long time,” he said.

  Although he was very close, Konrad could not make out his features because they were shadowed by his helmet.

  “Kastring,” Konrad repeated.

  “I was so looking forward to seeing you die,” Konrad heard him sigh. “But I believe that we should talk. We do need a last sacrifice, however.” He said something quickly, in a heathen tongue.

  Konrad did not understand, but he sensed a movement behind him. He spun around in time to see one of the death dancers decapitate her companion with a single stroke of her long knife. The headless corpse stood upright for several seconds, a fountain of blood pumping from the neck, before collapsing into the mud.

  Her twin held the gory head up by its hair and whirled it around, spraying cascades of blood over everyone who was watching and roaring their bestial approval.

  Konrad glanced back to the shape who had given the command. Beyond, he noticed the seated figure on the altar. And although it was hard to be certain, because his eyes had been splashed with fresh blood, it seemed for a moment that the armour was not empty, that there was a shadowy face staring back at him…

  “Would you care for some refreshment?” said Kastring, who seemed to be the leader of this group of heathens.

  Kastring had been Elyssa’s family name. That was why Konrad had recognized the heraldic crest on the shield. But which one was he?