Warhammer - Wolf Riders

by William King

  As Melissa spoke, Freder squatted by her grinning, enraptured by her stories about playthings, pets and servants. Everyone and everything in the d'Acques circle had a nickname. She experimented with several unflattering nicknames for Freder, and tried to extend the practice to Joh and Groeteschele. The wolf-faced Rotwang she was - wisely - a little afraid of, and so Joh had him see to business elsewhere, settling down the horses. It was vital that he learn more...

  "Tell me, Melissa, where is your father now? Were you travelling to him?"

  Melissa cocked her head to one side and then the other. "That depends, Mr Joh. Sometimes, he's in his castle, sometimes he's in his palace. Now, he's probably in his palace."

  "And where is his palace?"

  "He's a Count, you know, and a Baron. It gets so confusing remembering. The servants have a terrible time. In Bretonnia, he's a Count, and in the Empire, he's a Baron, and there are fearful penalties for getting them mixed up. We travel between Bretonnia and the Empire quite a bit."

  Melissa yawned, forgetting to cover her mouth, and stretched. She didn't appear to be very comfortable in her starched and formal clothes. That might mean she was being sent on a short journey, that she had people nearby. She hadn't known the man in the coach at all before setting out, and hadn't formed a good opinion of him. "He pinched my cheeks and patted my hair too much. He deserved to be killed."

  Lady Melissa was quite a startling little girl. The aristocracy bred its young bloodthirsty, Joh guessed. Certainly the Duke's son he had had to kill all those years ago, after the fop had run through Joh's father from behind on a minor quarrel, had been a death-happy fool. That had been the first step on the road to outlawry. There was a song about Joh Lamprecht, telling of how he was driven to the bandit life by injustice and tyranny, but Joh knew he would never have been content to be a copper miner like his father and grandfather. He would have been a bandit even if he had been born on the estates of Benedict the Benevolent, rather than the Iron-Fisted Duke of Diijah-Montaigne.

  "I'm tired," she said. "Can I go to bed now?"

  Joh nodded to Freder, who took the child up in his arms like a fond father, and bore her away. Joh had had Rotwang air out one of the bedrooms in the castle, and do his best to clean the cobwebs away. They had chosen a room with a still-functioning lock and an available key. It had no exterior windows, and would serve as a comparatively luxurious cell.

  Freder came back, grinning, to the campfire.

  "Well?" Groeteschele asked Joh.

  Rotwang came out of the shadows suddenly.

  "We could do very well out of the Lady," Joh said. "But we'll have to take it slowly. She's rich. They aren't like you and me, Groeteschele. They have strange ways. I think we'll be able to find out about her family, and then we'll bargain for a ransom."

  "What if they don't want her back?" Rotwang asked. He was a foundling, sold for a pit-fighter before he could walk, and had no ideas about his real family. Joh sometimes wondered if Rotwang were entirely human.

  "Of course they'll want her back, Rotwang. She's a precious package."

  Freder tried to say something. It took him a long time to get a sentence out, and usually it wasn't worth the wait. Because they were all tired, Joh, Rotwang and Groeteschele sat back and let him speak.

  "Cuh-cuh-cuh-couldn't w-we cuh-cuh-cuh-keep her?"

  Rotwang spat in the embers. They hissed. The shadows closed in.

  In the darkness of the Fortress of Drachenfels, the Old Woman crept, her fingers curved like claws, her still-sharp mind reaching before her. She had no need of her eyes after all these centuries. As a creature of the night, the cursed stones were comfortable to her. There were intruders now, and she would have to see them off or be destroyed. Her veins were thinned, and her sharp teeth slid in and out of their gumsheaths. It was too long since she had slaked her red thirst.

  Drachenfels was gone, but he had left something of himself behind. She could taste the residue in the foul air. The spirits writhed deep in the shadows. But the living beings stood out like beacons. She latched onto them all, sipping their thoughts - although she would rather have been sipping their blood - and fixing them in her ancient mind.

  The bandits and their prisoner. It was an interesting situation. She found human relationships endlessly fascinating. There were so many ways they could be broken down, set aside and tampered with. For her, there was pleasure in the panic and fear she could whip up in the bandits before the feeding frenzy fell upon her, just as an epicure would prepare his palate for the main course with a selection of aperitifs or a great amorist postpone lovemaking with extensive foreplay.

  She was pleased that the strongest physically of the living men was the weakest in mind. That made things so much easier. His strength would nourish her, help her get through the long night, and deal with the more dangerous of the intruders.

  Her eyes filled with blood.

  Joh was startled awake, as if by a mailed fist clenching around his heart. He was sure he had cried out. Groeteschele was shaken out of sleep at the same moment. They bumped heads. Blinking in the afterlight of the fire, they looked at each other. Something was wrong, but they couldn't tell what it was. Joh had been dreaming, he knew, but the dream vanished from his head as he was jolted out of the fug of sleep. It had been a bad one, and he was sweating.

  Rotwang was up, daggers in both hands. He kicked something, and it rolled towards the light.

  Groeteschele let out an involuntary oath, his voice womanish and shrill. Freder's head lay at his feet.

  "The rest of the oaf is here," Rotwang said.

  Joh stabbed a pitch-covered torch at the embers. It caught, and he held it up. Rotwang stood over Freder's bulky body. The head had been taken off neatly, and there was almost no blood. This was not a natural killing.

  "It's this place," Groeteschele said. "It stinks of that devil Drachenfels."

  "The Great Enchanter is dead and gone," Joh said.

  "So is Fat Fool Freder," said Rotwang.

  "There's someone else here with us." Groeteschele was shivering, but not with the cold. In his nightshirt, with his long, milky-white face, he looked himself like a cheap engraving of a ghost.

  "That's obvious. It's a big place."

  "The girl?"

  Joh had a moment of concern for the Lady Melissa. He did not want her dying in any manner he could not profit from.

  The three bandits pulled on jackets and boots over nightclothes. Joh swore as he cut his palm open on the silver spur he had forgotten to remove from his rough-riding boots. There was no time now. Weapons in their hands, they entered the wing of the castle where the captive's room was. Rotwang lead them through the dark. The sharpness of his eyes in shadow was among his most valuable attributes.

  Joh knew how serious their trouble was when he noticed that Rotwang wasn't sure about the path he was taking. The Fortress was legendary for its labyrinthine and contradictory byways. That was one of the reasons Joh had chosen to pitch camp in the courtyard.

  After a moment of near panic, they found the room. "Look," said Rotwang.

  The wood around the handle was deeply scored, as if a knife-fingered hand had tried the door.

  It was still locked. Rotwang fumbled with the key, and opened the door.

  "What are you doing?" Melissa said, sitting up in bed, her hair loose. "Am I to be murdered in my bed?"

  As soon as he saw Freder's bodiless head, Rotwang knew that Joh Lamprecht's time as a King of Banditti was over. It only remained for Rotwang to live out this night in the castle, and leave. Perhaps he would turn to the mercenary life again, and enlist in one of the many armies of the Old World. There were always opportunities for people with his skills, and many employers uninterested in the legalities of his previous adventures. He was not profligate in the deployment of his abilities, and liked to see gold from each of his killings. So far, the coachman had not been worth the effort. The little girl would never bring more than her jewellery. Kidnapping was a fool's crime
, and had Joh proposed it outright Rotwang would have left there and then. The business of the bungled coach hold-up had been bad enough but the kidnapping - and now the death of one of their number - told him that the days of easy plunder were at an end.

  Currently, Joh was trying to talk to the Lady Melissa, to no great purpose. The girl knew nothing. Groeteschele was sitting in a chair, hugging himself. The youth was badly scared. He had been as courageous as any in the band's previous exploits, but had only faced cold steel and human muscle. Whatever it was that walked this castle was no natural thing, Rotwang knew.

  Prince Oswald should have had the place razed to the ground once the Great Enchanter was dead.

  "We stay here, and protect the girl," Joh ordered.

  Rotwang didn't know if his chief fully meant what he said. He had not hitherto been noted for his sense of chivalry. Still, a farmer would guard from wolves a calf he fully intended to butcher on the morrow.

  Groeteschele was too deeply frightened to answer. Joh looked to Rotwang.

  This was as good a position as any to defend.

  He nodded.

  Joh sat on the Lady Melissa's bed, and told the child to lie back and go to sleep. He stroked her hair, almost tenderly.

  "Good night, Mr Joh."

  The little girl smiled, shrugged, and pulled the covers up over her head.

  "Shut the door and wait, Rotwang," Joh said. "It'll come to us."

  "I know."

  Joh wondered if the only dangers in the castle were outside the room. Groeteschele was nearly mad with fear, and the mad can be dangerous to those who mean them no harm. The lad was gripping his sword with both hands, holding it vertical in his lap, his forehead pressed against the flat of the blade. His eyes were active, looking at every corner of the room, but empty of intelligence. Joh had never bothered to find out what Groeteschele had been before Warden Fanck shackled them together in the quarries. They had shared days and nights ever since, but Joh still knew nothing of Groeteschele's antecedents, his former life, his original crime. Somehow, he knew it was too late now.

  And Rotwang was slow to respond to his orders, taking a second to think things through. Obedience was no longer automatic. The killer was out for himself, and would not hesitate to leave the others to a ghastly death if he thought he could survive the better for it. After all, the man had lasted so long in his profession precisely because he was dangerous, treacherous, conscienceless. Often, Joh had wondered what the result would be if he were to duel with the killer. Rotwang would have the edge in training, experience and simple skill, but Joh thought the other man was dead inside. He killed without passion, without interest, and Joh suspected - hoped - his own brand of hot-blooded combat would prove superior to Rotwang's chilly discipline. It was a question he had never felt the need to put to a practical test.

  The torch burned in its sconce, filling the room with red shadows. The Lady Melissa slept, or seemed to, the covers rising and falling as she breathed.

  Joh had to turn the situation around to his advantage. He had to extort a suitable ransom from the d'Acques clan. He had to proceed to his Tilean pickings, and make his name as a strategist. There would be more songs about Joh Lamprecht. More odes to his glories.

  Outside, in the bulk of the castle, there were sounds. Joh knew the same winds that had blown the night before were setting shutters to rattle and old furniture to creak. But amid the thousand tiny natural sounds of night, there were silences that betokened huge and malevolent presences. Drachenfels was dead. There was no question of that. But the dead could still be dangerous. Perhaps something of the Great Enchanter remained behind in his fortress, waiting, watching, hungry...

  Like Groeteschele, he clutched his weapon as a cleric does the symbol of his deity.

  He could only wait.

  The Old Woman was glutted with the first of her victims. Freder's blood had proved rich, and with it came a rush of the memories of his body. She felt his pains and his pleasures as she drained him lustily. She had absorbed his life, and freed his tethered, childish spirit from its cage of meat. As an afterthought, she left him for the others to find. She found it easy to pass through the castle. Locked doors, walled-up passages, and trap-laden corridors posed no problems for her. Like a mist, she could pass where she willed.

  From Freder's dull memories, she learned about the others. It was easy to see how to proceed against them. So easy. People never changed, never learned. They were always easy.

  In the warm darkness she made and unmade fists, extending and retracting her hard, sharp nails.

  Her thirst was quenched. The rest of the night's work would be for the pleasure of it.

  Considering who her prey were and their intentions towards their captive, the Old Woman believed she served the cause of Justice as surely as any Imperial man-at-arms or thrice-blessed servant of Verena.

  She could still taste the blood in her mouth.

  She reached out for the weakest of the minds against her, and forced herself in.

  After sitting still for over an hour, Groeteschele screamed. His sword leaped slightly in his hands, and blood trickled down his forehead. He stood up, the blade scraping his skin. Joh was startled out of a half-sleep by his friend's cry, and pushed himself off Melissa's bed. The child miraculously stayed asleep. Rotwang took an apparently casual interest.

  Groeteschele dropped his sword. He was bleeding profusely, but his self-inflicted wound looked comparatively minor. His scream died away, but he kept whimpering.

  "Calm yourself," Joh ordered.

  Groeteschele didn't take any notice. He was gabbling to himself, his meaning impossible to gauge. Blood dropped from his cheeks and chin onto his nightshirt. He shook his head, and wrung his hands. He could have been posing for a statue of the muse of fear.

  Joh reached out to take hold of Groeteschele's shoulder, but the younger man dodged back, his terror increased by the prospect of human contact.

  Rotwang stood aside, impassive.

  Groeteschele began to chant something in a language Joh didn't recognize. It was the unknown tongue the bandit used when he sometimes talked in his sleep, the tongue Joh assumed was that of the never-mentioned land of his birth. As he chanted, he made signs in the air with his fingers. Droplets of blood detached from his face and fell to the floor.

  Groeteschele hit the door, and passed through. Joh heard him blundering down the corridor, still chanting.

  The bedclothes rose in a hump, and the Lady Melissa burrowed her way sleepily to the surface.

  "What's going on?" she asked.

  Joh's face was wet. Groeteschele had splashed him with his own blood.

  "Watch the girl," he told Rotwang. "I'm going after him."

  Rotwang nodded. Melissa smiled and rubbed her eyes.

  Lantern in one hand, scimitar in the other, Joh stepped outside. He could still hear Groeteschele babbling.

  He walked slowly, towards the noise.

  Joh Lamprecht was a sentimental old fool, Rotwang thought. The boy, Groeteschele, was dead, and Joh should have left him to rot. But Joh had formed an attachment to the youthful Yann, and would not be dissuaded from plunging into the darkness to face whatever horrors lay dormant in Drachenfels, waiting for him with claws, pincers and hot coals.

  He paced the bedroom, struggling with unfamiliar feelings. Hitherto, he had faced death with a cool reserve born of a knowledge that those who let their emotions take over in a crisis were those least likely to walk away whole. In combat, he was as dispassionate as a surgeon, and he still lived, while all the berserkers he had faced were wormshit.

  Now, he felt fear. Not just the healthy quickening that kept you cautious in the pit, that reminded you to keep your body away from your foeman's blade, but a deep-down fear that whispered to him, incessantly compelling him to throw down his sword and run like Groeteschele, run until he was free of Drachenfels, free of the Grey Mountains...

  He knew that was the way to die, but the temptation was still there. />
  The little girl was sitting up in bed now, playing with her long, fine hair. Although roused in the middle of the night, her curls seemed naturally composed rather than tangled. Joh was right; the rich were different.

  He had pledged his sword for the rich all his life. In the pits as a child, he had been wagered on by aristocratic sportsmen who prided themselves in picking a winner. Later, he had fought for the Elector of Middenland when his tenant farmers tried to resist a raise in the tithe. So much blood spilled, so much profit made, and so little of it, in the end, for his own benefit.

  "Mr Rotwang?" the girl asked. He didn't reply, but she continued. "Mr Rotwang, are you a really brave and ferocious bandit, like Blaque Jacques in the songs?"

  He ignored her. Brave and ferocious. That is what he had been earlier in the evening, before the accursed Joh Lamprecht led him to this doom-laden castle and exposed him to the terrors of the dark.

  Brave and ferocious. Now, he was not so sure about that.

  He could still hear Groeteschele chanting. The monotone had changed now, and the young man seemed to be singing. He was breathing badly, interrupting the song in the wrong places, and Joh assumed he was near the end of his strength. Good, he didn't want to have to fight his comrade to bring him back.

  He had never realized before how much the young man meant to him. Freder had been a cretin, and Rotwang was beyond conversation, which meant Groeteschele was the only person in the band Joh could talk to, could hand down the benefit of his experience to. Unconsciously, he had been training the lad to be his successor on the outlaw path. Without him, Joh's nights would be long and empty. All the passed-on wisdom would go to waste.