The Ambassador Chronicles

by Graham McNeill

  'Best not to fight then, eh? Might not hurt as much, but I can't promise.'

  He moved left, cutting her off from reaching the stairs as she reached the family crest bearing the two crossed cavalry sabres. She quickly reached up and tore the weapons from their hangings, turning to face him with them held awkwardly before her.

  'You think you can use one blade let alone two?' laughed Rejak.

  'They're not for me.' said Anastasia, throwing the swords across the room.

  The swords sailed over his head and Rejak followed their spinning trajectory until they were plucked from the air by a man standing beside the iron door he had noticed earlier.

  The man was thin and wasted, his skin blotchy and scabrous, and Rejak relaxed.

  Until the man spun the swords in a blindingly quick web of silver steel and dropped into a fighting crouch. The man's movements were sublime, his every motion honed to perfection, and there was only one man Rejak knew of who could move like that.

  His features were sunken and hollow, and only when Rejak looked deep into the man's violet eyes, did he finally recognise him.

  Sasha Kajetan.

  The Droyaska. The Blademaster.

  VI

  Kaspar whipped his horse to greater speed as he and the Knights Panther rode desperately through the streets of Kislev towards the Magnustrasse and Anastasia's house. The streets were thronged with people and he shouted fearful oaths to try and get them out of his way.

  His heart was heavy with black premonition, but there was nothing he could do except ride harder, pushing Magnus to more reckless speeds as they thundered towards the wealthy quarter of the city.

  Kaspar prayed he was not riding towards more grief.

  Rejak felt his momentary flutter of fear fade as he saw the ruin of the legendary swordsman's form. The man's limbs were thin and wasted, the flesh sagging from his bones, and his ribs were plainly visible through the skin of his chest.

  He looked no better than a beggar and Rejak grinned through his mask of blood.

  'I have always wanted to fight you,' said Rejak, circling the room with his blade aimed at Kajetan's heart. 'Just to know who was the faster.'

  'You hurt my matka,' hissed Kajetan, circling in time with Rejak.

  Rejak glanced over at Anastasia in confusion. What in Ursun's name was the swordsman talking about? There was no way she could possibly be Kajetan's mother.

  'That's right, my handsome prince,' said Anastasia. 'He did. He hurt me just like your father, the boyarin, did.'

  Kajetan screamed, 'No! and launched himself at Rejak. Their swords clashed and Rejak spun away from the attack, his own weapon sweeping low to cut the swordsman's legs out from under him, but Kajetan was no longer there, somersaulting over the blade and landing lightly on his feet.

  'Kill him, my prince!' screamed Anastasia and Kajetan attacked again, his twin swords slashing for Rejak's head. Chekatilo's assassin parried swiftly, launching a deadly riposte and slicing his blade across Kajetan's thigh next to a scar on his leg where he had obviously been recently wounded. The swordsman stumbled and Rejak kicked him in the balls.

  Kajetan grunted in pain and dropped to one knee, vomiting across the floor. Rejak jumped back in horror as the black, gristly liquid bubbled and hissed, eating away at the marble flagstones.

  Overcoming his revulsion, he closed to deliver the killing strike, slashing his sword at Kajetan's neck. The swordsman rolled beneath the blow, vaulting to his feet in time to block Rejak's return stroke.

  Kajetan recovered quickly, his swords drawing blood from Rejak's arm, and the two swordsmen traded blows back and forth across the marble floor of the hall, fighting a duel the likes of which had never been seen before. Kajetan was by far the better bladesman, but his strength was a fraction of its former self and Rejak could see that he was tiring rapidly.

  But Rejak was tiring too, his sword arm burning with fatigue and the wound in his belly stabbing hot spikes of pain into his body with each lunge and parry.

  The two men warily circled each other once more, exhausted by their furious exertions and knowing that only one of them would walk away from this fight.

  Rejak attacked again, a blistering series of slashes and cuts designed to keep an opponent on the back foot. His bladework was faultless, but nothing could penetrate Kajetan's twin sabres and Rejak realised with sick horror that he had no more to give.

  Kajetan's blades caught his sword on his last downward stroke and with a twist of the wrist, Rejak's blade was wrenched from his grip, skittering across the floor and coming to rest at the bottom of the stairs.

  Rejak leapt backwards, diving across the floor towards his sword.

  His hand closed on its leather-bound hilt and he rolled to face his opponent again.

  Kajetan was before him, his crossed blades resting either side of Rejak's neck.

  'You want to know who is faster?' snarled the swordsman. 'Now you know.'

  Kajetan slashed both blades through Rejak's neck and he toppled backwards onto the stairs, his head almost completely severed.

  His last sight was of Anastasia Vilkova staring down at him with undiluted hate.

  She spat in his eye and said, 'Tchar take your soul.'

  VIII

  They rode through the open gateway of Anastasia's home, Kaspar vaulting from the saddle before his horse had stopped moving. He ignored the flare of pain in his knee, running for the black door and drawing both his pistols. The door was locked, but a few heavy kicks from the armoured boot of Kurt Bremen soon smashed it from its hinges.

  Kaspar bolted inside, moaning as he saw a body lying at the foot of the stairs in a lake of blood. He ran over and knelt by the body and felt his heart lurch in surprise and relief as he recognised Rejak's dead-eyed features. The man's head hung slack on his shoulders, attached to his body by a few gory scraps of severed muscle and sinew.

  Kurt Bremen joined him as the knights fanned out through the house to search for Anastasia.

  'I don't understand,' he said. 'What the hell happened here?'

  Kaspar did not reply, his eyes falling upon a pair of bloody cavalry sabres lying beside the body and a pool of glistening black liquid in the centre of the marble floor. He left the body where it lay and bent to examine the black pool and the floor beneath it. The marble flagstone had been eaten away by the stinking substance's corrosive properties and Kaspar knew he had seen something like this only once before.

  Below the Urskoy Prospekt as it turned an iron breastplate to molten slag before his very eyes.

  'Is that what I think it is?' asked Bremen.

  Kaspar nodded. 'I think so.'

  Bremen looked back at Rejak's body and the cavalry sabres. 'But that means...'

  'Aye. That Sasha Kajetan was here. He killed Rejak.'

  'But how?' asked Bremen. 'It doesn't make sense, why would Kajetan be here?'

  Kaspar wondered the same and felt a creeping horror overtake him as the significance of Rejak's death and Kajetan's presence in this house settled on him like a sickness. Kajetan had been a broken man, a virtual catatonic, and Kaspar knew that there was only one thing that roused the swordsman to such violence. Matka.

  'It does, Kurt. Sigmar, save me, but it does,' said Kaspar sadly as the veil finally fell from his eyes and he saw how masterfully he had been manipulated.

  'Sigmar's blood, do you think Kajetan has Madame Vilkova?'

  'No,' said Kaspar, shaking his head. 'And your knights will not find her here either.'

  'What do you mean? Where is she?'

  'It's been her all along, Kurt. It all makes sense now,' said Kaspar, as much to himself as to the Knight Panther. He sank to his haunches, dropping his pistols as his heart beat wildly at the scale of this treachery.

  'What does? Kaspar, you are not making any sense.'

  'She has played us all for fools, my friend. The woman no one could describe who freed Kajetan? The woman in the sewer who took delivery of the coffin? Our unseen adversary who knew everyt
hing we discovered? The woman who tried to discourage me from even looking in the first place? Losov's collaborator? It was her, it was all her.'

  'Anastasia?' said Bremen, incredulous.

  Kaspar nodded, cursing himself for a fool. 'Damn it, Kajetan told us as much. "It all was her for", he said. I didn't realise he meant those words literally. It was her directing Kajetan's murders all along. No wonder she tried to have him killed before we could hand him over to the Chekist.'

  'I can't believe it,' whispered Bremen.

  'All the things I told her,' said Kaspar, rubbing his eyes and fighting back the hot flush of shame. 'All the times we lay together in bed and talked of the boyarins, the forces of the Empire, where they were massing, how they would fight and about the men who commanded them. And like a bloody fool I told her everything.'

  Kaspar slumped to the floor, holding his head in his hands. 'How could I have been so stupid. Her husband... she had Losov pay to have him killed so she could take his wealth. All this time...'

  'I still find this hard to accept, but assuming you are correct, where do you think she and Kajetan are now?'

  Kaspar rubbed his face and pushed himself to his feet before bending to retrieve his pistols. 'That's a damn good question,' he said, his anger now beginning to push aside his hurt.

  'She must have known that when we found this mess, she would be unmasked,' said Kaspar, heading for the front door and marching towards the scabrous refugees camped throughout the grounds of Anastasia's home.

  'Speak to these people, Kurt,' ordered Kaspar. 'Find out if they saw where she went and don't stop asking until you get some damn good answers.'

  Kurt Bremen made his way around the refugees, shouting in fragmented Kislevite as Kaspar walked towards the gateway in the wall, confused thoughts spinning around inside his head.

  He had ridden here to save Anastasia, but it appeared that she had needed no rescuing, what with the deadliest bodyguard in Kislev to call her own. He wondered if she had ever really cared for him, then chided himself for such selfish thoughts when much deadlier matters were afoot.

  He leaned against the gatepost, his eyes idly following the profusion of tracks in the slush that ran through the gate.

  Most of the slushy mud had been churned by the passage of their own horses, but one patch of ground retained tracks other than theirs; cart tracks...

  Cart tracks with a cracked rim on one of the wheels that left a V-shaped impression with every revolution.

  It took Kaspar a few seconds to remember where he had seen similar tracks.

  In the sewers beneath Kislev.

  Made by a cart that had been driven off laden with a strange coffin.

  Kurt Bremen approached him. 'They say the White Lady left here not long before we arrived, that she was driving a cart with a long box on the back. No one mentioned anyone else, so I don't believe Kajetan is with her.'

  Kaspar felt a terrible fear as he looked up at the sky.

  Dawn was hours old and he knew exactly where Anastasia would be heading now.

  For months people had seen the White Lady of Kislev drive carts of supplies and food to the armies camped beyond the walls. She was a vision of hope and had been a welcome sight to the soldiers of Kislev and the Empire.

  So no one would bat an eyelid to see her driving a cart into their midst today.

  'Sigmar save us,' swore Kaspar, running for his horse. 'Everyone mount up!'

  'Kaspar, what is it?' shouted Bremen.

  'We have to stop her, Kurt!' replied Kaspar, pulling himself into the saddle and guiding Magnus towards the gateway. 'I don't know exactly what it is, but I think that whatever is in that coffin is some kind of terrible weapon. She means to destroy our armies before they can fight!'

  IX

  She whipped the horses, pushing them as fast as she dared through the breaking morning towards the Urskoy Gate. People huddled at the side of the road waved to her as she passed, recognising her distinctive white cloak edged with snow leopard fur. Anastasia ignored them, too engrossed in reaching the city gate before anyone stopped her.

  How could she have been discovered? The man who had come to murder her, who had sent him? The ambassador? Had the fool finally realised how he had been deceived and sent this man in a fit of one of his tempers? No, from her would-be-killer's words she felt sure that Kaspar had not sent him, but who?

  Chekatilo? The Ice Queen? Or had it been mere happenstance that had sent a killer to her home - this morning of all mornings - when she was on the brink of fulfilling her destiny to her dark lord?

  She allowed herself a tight smile as she remembered that in the works of the Great Tchar, there was no such thing as happenstance. Everything that had happened had unfolded according to his great, unfathomable designs, and no mortal could hope to divine his true purpose.

  It angered her that she could have so nearly been undone by such a brutish foe. That an initiate of Tchar such as she had so very nearly been killed by a piece of filth like that...

  If she had not already spent much of her power on holding the deadly corruption secure within the bronze coffin, she would have had no need to rely of the protection of Sasha Kajetan.

  And it pleased Anastasia to know that her decision to free Kajetan had been proved to be part of Tchar's plan all along, though thinking of the swordsman brought a sharp frown to her face.

  When Sasha had killed the other swordsman, he had dropped to his knees beside the corpse and sobbed like a baby. She had put her hand on his shoulder and said, 'There, my handsome prince. You have done your matka a great service and-'

  'You are not my matka!' he had screamed, dropping his swords and surging to his feet, his face alight with anguish. His callused hands had gripped her shoulders and she saw with a shock that his normally violet eyes burned with an inner radiance, both orbs flecked with blazing winter fire.

  'Oh, please no, not again...' he wailed, sliding to his knees and weeping as he saw the blood spreading from the man he had killed. 'This is not me, this is not me...'

  'Sasha,' said Anastasia. 'You have to help me.'

  'No!' he screamed, scrambling away from her. 'Get away from me. You are Blyad, woman. I see you now.'

  'I am your matka!' roared Anastasia. 'And you will obey me!'

  'My matka is dead!' shouted Kajetan, climbing to his feet and slamming his fists against his temple. 'She died a long time ago.'

  Anastasia had stepped forward, but Kajetan had fled deeper into the house and she had no time to hunt him down. Whoever had arranged this morning's violence would soon realise their assassin had failed and wheels would be set in motion that would drive events beyond her control.

  There was no time to waste, and so she had immediately gone down to the icy cellar through the iron door in the hallway and awkwardly dragged the coffin up the curling stairs. The coffin was heavy, but eventually she was able to haul it into her house's rear courtyard and lift one end onto the back of a cart. Gasping in exhaustion, she finally loaded her deadly cargo onto the cart and leaned against its iron-rimmed wheel.

  When she had her breath back, she led two of her horses from their stalls and hitched them to the trace. One horse was missing from the stalls and she shrugged, guessing that Sasha Kajetan must have taken it.

  Where would he go, she wondered, but dismissed the thought as irrelevant? She could not worry about that now. Kajetan was a rogue element best forgotten, and, pausing only to retrieve her white cloak from the house, she set out into the streets of Kislev.

  At last she saw the high towers of the city walls ahead of her and turned from the Goromadny Prospekt into the main esplanade of the gateway. The gates were open and she hauled back on the reins as she approached, the armoured men standing with their long axes bared smiling and waving to her as they saw her brilliant white cloak.

  Anastasia forced herself to smile back as they wished her a good morning, hearing herself mouth banal pleasantries in reply as she passed beneath the shadow of the gateway to
emerge onto the crest of the hill upon which Kislev sprawled.

  The cart rumbled across the timber bridge over the moat and she turned off the main roadway onto the rutted tracks that led towards the encampments of the allied armies. Hundreds of morning cookfires and thousands of tents filled the steppe plain before Kislev and she felt a thrilling excitement build inside her at the thought of the charnel house this place would soon become.

  Nearly twenty-five thousand soldiers and perhaps another ten thousand refugees were camped around the base of the Gora Geroyev, the Hill of Heroes.

  Soon it would be known as the Hill of the Dead.

  The track angled downwards and she leaned back on her seat, hearing the good-natured shouts of welcome from hundreds of soldiers' throats as they recognised her. The sounds of the camp surrounded her, the clatter of pots as cooks prepared food for the hungry soldiers, the wailing of children, the barking of dogs and the whinny of horses.

  Soon there would be nothing but the silence of the grave.

  An ad hoc square had been cleared at the base of the hill, where generals and boyarin gave speeches to rouse their soldiers, and it was at this spot she finally halted the cart.

  Anastasia pulled on the reins and climbed down to the mud, digging a rusted bronze key from her cloak and making her way to the back of the cart.

  She slid the key into the first padlock that secured the coffin shut. As the key turned, the padlock crumbled to umber dust and a breath of corruption, like the death rattle of a thousand corpses, sighed from the coffin.

  Taking an instant to savour the moment, Anastasia smiled as the sun finally began breaking through the early morning clouds and burning away the low ground mist.

  It was going to be a beautiful day.

  X

  Kaspar dragged on the reins, swerving to avoid a burly Kossar waving his axe as they approached the gates. He and the Knights Panther had ridden their horses almost into the ground as they raced through the streets of Kislev. Kaspar prayed they would be in time to avert whatever terror Anastasia planned to unleash.