01 - Star of Erengrad

by Neil McIntosh - (ebook by Undead)

  “You’ve been checking the path behind us every day since we left Middenheim,” she said, not unkindly. “And in all that time you haven’t seen another soul—man nor beast. Perhaps there really is no one following us.”

  They sat side by side on the hilltop. The high path they had been following for the last few days had brought them temporary relief from the endless span of forest. From up here they could see for miles: to the granite-toothed peaks of the Middle Mountains, the dark green expanse of the Forest of Shadows, and beyond, towards the borders of Kislev itself. The land was a patchwork of undulating greens and browns, lit by the gentle hues of the rising sun. From afar the Old World looked very much at peace. Stefan knew it was not so, but, for a few moments at least, he allowed himself to take refuge within that comforting illusion.

  He sat back, savouring for a moment the warmth of the sun against his body. The season was changing; the fresh chill of spring had ebbed, and summer would soon be in full bloom. Time was passing: weeks now since they had left Erengrad, and close on two months since their journey had begun, a lifetime away in Altdorf.

  How much time had they left to complete that journey? Stefan had no way of knowing. All he knew was that their own resources were growing thin. They had survived the battles, and had endured the deprivations that the gods had cast in their path. But they were tired, and had little money remaining. The purchase of new horses had not left them with much money for fresh provisions.

  He retrieved the glass and raised it to his eye a second time. “They won’t need to follow us,” he said at last. There’ll be plenty more of their kind to pick up where the others left off. “Remember Otto’s map?” he asked her. “The map of darkness? Evil is everywhere. Behind us, ahead of us, all around. It knows no borders.”

  “You make it sound as though all we are doing is clinging to faint hope,” Elena said. “Clinging to the rock of hope against the black tide. Holding on until we are all swept away.”

  “Maybe so,” Stefan replied. “But I know there is as much light in this world as there is darkness. That tide can still be turned. But we have to believe it. Believe it with all of our hearts.”

  Elena stretched out her legs on the grass in front of her, turning her bare ankles in the warming sun. “What do you think Bruno believes?” she asked, suddenly.

  Stefan turned to look at the figure of his comrade, sitting in solitary contemplation on the hilltop fifty paces away. “I don’t know what he thinks,” he said, and realised he was admitting to himself a truth that he had been trying to deny. A year ago, before Stahlbergen, he and Bruno had been as close as brothers. Together they had carried their swords in battle wherever the gods had decreed. They owed each other several lives; they had shared the joys and sorrows of the soldier’s life on the road.

  Now, Stefan realised, Bruno had become a stranger. The man who had come back from the Grey Mountains had filled his comrade’s frame, but was his comrade no longer. In battle, since joining the expedition, Bruno had plied his sword when needed with the indifference of a hardened mercenary. There was no joy in their travels now, but Stefan sensed plenty of sorrow. And something worse.

  “Back in the tombs,” he said to Elena, “when those creatures were upon you. I saw what happened. I don’t know why it happened. But I saw it, right enough.”

  “You mean with Bruno?” Elena asked. She shrugged. “It’s in the past now.”

  “Not for me,” Stefan said. “You could have died because of Bruno. It was as though he had become paralysed by—what? Fear? I don’t know. But the friend I used to know wouldn’t have let that happen.”

  “Are you saying he’s become a coward?”

  “I don’t know what he’s become,” Stefan replied. “But he’s not the same man I once knew, I’m certain of that.”

  “You should talk to him,” Elena said. “Find out what’s changed.”

  “I’ve tried,” Stefan said. “He treats me like a stranger. Whatever it is that happened to him, he’s built a wall around himself to keep the world out. But I will know what this is about,” he declared. “And before we quit the borders of this land.”

  “Perhaps all he needs is more time,” Elena commented.

  Stefan sat for a while, watching the man who had been his friend. “You know,” he said at last. “There was a moment back there, in the tombs, when I thought it was him. Thought it was Bruno who had somehow betrayed us to the Scarandar. And I started thinking of what it would be like to have to hunt Bruno down with my own sword. What it would be like to kill him.”

  “But it wasn’t him,” Elena replied. “It was Lisette.” In that moment the veil of sadness passed from Stefan to the young woman at his side. Elena’s voice became heavy; her head dropped. For a few minutes they sat in silence, watching Tomas practise his sword-strokes with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy.

  “Your judgment was right there, at least,” Stefan observed.

  “It was your judgment, too,” Elena reminded him.

  They watched as Tomas finished his practice and went to sit by Bruno. To their left, Alexei Zucharov prowled the hilltop like a caged bear. Of all them, he seemed the most anxious to be underway once more.

  “What about him?” Stefan asked her.

  “What about him?” Elena said. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Stefan said, “you seemed mighty pleased to see Alexei when he showed up in the tombs.”

  Elena turned and stared at Stefan, a puzzled expression on her face. “Of course I was pleased to see him,” she said. “Weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Stefan replied. “In a way. But I didn’t feel the need to kiss him.”

  “I was trying to put an end to your stupid fight,” she retorted, irritably. “That seemed to be the most direct way to break it up.” She paused, head on one side, looking at Stefan. A slow, knowing smile crept over her face. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Are you jealous?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Stefan snapped. To his dismay he felt his face reddening under her stare. “I just wondered whether you feel something deeper for him, that’s all. I need to know about these things,” he added, regaining some composure.

  Elena smiled at him kindly this time, then turned away to gaze towards the land beyond the mountains. Sitting on the hilltop, her arms hugging her knees, she reminded Stefan of a child at a carnival, eagerly waiting.

  “Do you know,” she said at last, “this is the first time I’ve really thought about going home.”

  Home. The word sounded in Stefan’s ears. Home. Was that where he was going, too?

  “What part of Kislev did you say you were from?” she asked him. Stefan hesitated. “I didn’t,” he eventually replied. “It was called Odensk. At the mouth of the Lynsk.”

  Elena looked blank. “What happened?”

  “Our village was destroyed,” Stefan said. “It was Norscans, men and mutants amongst them. They might have been headed for Erengrad, I suppose. But they found us first. They slaughtered every living thing they could find. Even the animals in the fields.” He paused, deep in recollection. “That was my first taste of Chaos,” he said. “I suppose you could say my life began anew there.”

  He looked up, into her eyes. “What about you?” he asked. “The rest of your family, I mean?”

  Elena laughed, but with little warmth or humour. “My family? Let’s not start on that again now.” She closed her eyes. “Let’s just enjoy the sun while we can.”

  She let her head fall back until it came to rest, gently, upon Stefan’s shoulder. Stefan felt himself stiffen instinctively and then relax, aware of the softness of Elena’s hair against the cotton of his shirt. Aware, too, of a softening inside him, for a moment at least. It was not a feeling he had allowed himself very often on the long ride from childhood through to his life in Altdorf. A journey he was perhaps now retracing.

  He looked up as a shadow fell across them where they sat. The tall figure of Alexei Zucharov loomed over them, blocking off the sun.
“Sorry to break up this tender scene,” he said, “but I think we need to get moving now.”

  He was clever, Kuragin had to give him that. He was working the crowd gathered in Katarina Square with the practiced skill of the street-trader and the piety of the priest. The clothes had changed—just a little shabbier and down at heel than when they had last met. And even the voice had changed; he had somehow managed to make it sound both humbler and yet more strident. And yet there was no mistaking who it was up on the platform, whipping the huddled mass into something approaching a pious frenzy. It had taken Kuragin only a few moments to recognise the sinewy figure of Count Vladimir Rosporov.

  The carefully crafted transformation from wealthy noble to man of the people was all but complete. Certainly none amongst the crowd of starving wretches surrounding Kuragin seemed to think for a moment that Rosporov was anything other than one of their own. Petr Kuragin tugged the hood of his garment a little further over his face and pushed his way towards the front of the crowd until he was little more than an arm’s length from his enemy. Then he stood to listen, careful not to get so close that Rosporov might spot him amongst the throng. He suspected that this would be a bad time for his true identity to be made known.

  “Brothers!” Rosporov extolled them. “Are we hungry? Are we sickening, are we weak?” At each question the crowd offered up an answering roar that belied the apparent frailty of many of the men and women standing beside Kuragin. Whatever their state of body and mind, he realised, they were angry.

  Rosporov raised his hands to the crowd to quieten them. He prolonged the gesture, letting the sunlight play upon the shriveled, pock-marked flesh of his right arm.

  He parades his infirmity before them like a badge, Kuragin thought. A badge that says, “I too have known pain. I too am a child of suffering.” Clever indeed.

  “Truly, we are dying of hunger,” Rosporov went on. “But who should we blame for the empty ache in our children’s bellies?”

  Most of the assembled crowd were silent. Rosporov let the question hang in the air, playing his audience with a showman’s guile.

  “Could it be,” he continued, “that the real enemy of Erengrad lies not with some imaginary power lurking out there, but here, right within the city?” A murmur rumbled through the square, gaining momentum as the idea found favour with the crowd.

  “Where are our leaders?” Rosporov demanded “What have they done for us? Who are our leaders supposed to be? Two crumbling dynasties, too bloated on the fat of our land to give a thought to the needs of their starving people?” A cheer went up now, ragged but heartfelt, and edged with a thirst for vengeance. Kuragin shuddered.

  “Two ancient families, too busy squabbling amongst themselves to care a fig for the city whose honest citizens have sweated blood to earn them their wealth?”

  The cheering doubled in intensity. An urge rose up in Petr Kuragin to speak out, whatever the consequences in the midst of the volatile mob. To announce himself to his people; to deny the heresy that Rosporov spun so smoothly. To his shame, he found himself unable to speak, his tongue seemingly locked tight in his mouth. But others—a few—did raise their voices against the tide. One man in particular strode to the front and stood before the platform with his back to the count and his men. Kuragin recognised him. It was Martin Lensky, an ostler from the north quarter, a coarse but steadfastly honest man who would have no truck with double dealing or duplicity. Kuragin was pained to see that he had looked as though he’d lost almost half his weight, and his voice, once lusty, now sounded reedy and thin.

  “It’s the meddling of Chaos that’s brought us to this!” Lensky called out, struggling against the barrage of voices rising up around him. At the word Chaos, much of the sound seemed to die down, and a more sober mood fell across the crowd.

  “Believe me, friends,” Lensky shouted at them, “if we let Chaos gain a foothold in Erengrad, then before long the living amongst us will envy the dead.”

  For a moment there was almost total silence. All eyes, Kuragin’s included, fell upon Count Rosporov, awaiting his response. Again he held the silence until the tension seemed near breaking point.

  “Then you have encountered Chaos?” he asked of Martin Lensky, mildly. The ostler shook his head, understandably nonplussed by such a question. The count arched his finely drawn brows, feigning surprise at Lensky’s response. A low muttering spread across the ranks of people in the square.

  “But you seem to have such deep knowledge of the so-called Dark Powers,” Rosporov continued. “Or could it just be your empty belly giving you hallucinations?”

  He raised one arm to cut off the ripple of laughter that, incongruously, greeted his reply. “Who amongst you has encountered them?” Rosporov demanded of the crowd. “Who can speak the truth of it?”

  “I can.”

  All eyes now swiveled towards a figure standing towards the middle of the crowd. Kuragin, too, found himself completely drawn to the spectacle. His searching gaze found a small, wiry man dressed in dung covered artisan’s robes. He stood uneasily amidst the crowd, as if waiting an allotted turn to speak. Rosporov, like a kindly teacher, encouraged the man to continue. “Tell us,” he urged, “in your own words.”

  The man spoke quickly, glancing around him as he delivered his words. “I was starving hungry,” he said. “I couldn’t stand it no more. One night I sneaked out over the east wall, where the ramparts is lowest, just at the time when the guard was changing. I didn’t know what I might find, nor what I hoped for. Only knew I couldn’t stand the hunger any longer.”

  “And?” Rosporov prompted. The silence in the crowd was absolute now.

  “I was feverish, mad from hunger,” the wiry man continued. “I don’t know how far I strayed, or what would have become of me, if they hadn’t have found me.”

  “They?” the count enquired.

  “A body of men. Travelers, I was reckoning. But there were tall swordsmen in black amongst ’em. Men with armour, shields covered in strange runes and the like. I’m an ignorant man, your worship, but I knew what those runes signified, all right.”

  “Go on,” Rosporov urged him, softly.

  “They had the mark of the Changer upon them,” the man said. Gasps of astonishment broke out around him. “But they didn’t do me no harm.” The man looked around, nervously. “Fed me a meal, then sent me on my way, so they did. First hot food I’d eaten in a week!”

  A confusion of voices broke out, some raised in disbelief, some in hope. Petr Kuragin felt a sick chill running through him. Surely they could see that Rosporov had contrived all of this? Surely they could not believe a single word?

  But that was just it, the chill told him. We have fallen that low. They want to believe.

  Vaguely, he heard Rosporov’s voice running on, teasing out the sham that he was passing off as interrogation, and then the wiry man replying:

  “They knew we was starving,” he went on. “Told me they would come to the aid of the city, but the guardians of Erengrad wouldn’t allow it.” Shouts of outrage from the mass. Some voices—Lensky and others—were raised against them, but they were drowned out.

  “And, these so-called ‘monsters’—have they launched great assaults against our walls?” Count Rosporov demanded. His eyes were ablaze now, and white spittle flecked his dark beard. “No! I ask you again—who are our enemies here?”

  Kuragin turned and pushed his way back through the crowd. Once clear, it was all he could do to stop himself from running. He had stood and listened to it all—every lie and manufactured word of it—and had not spoken a single word in response. Guilt burnt in his chest, but his lips were fastened shut.

  As the sun began to set, the path started to track down, along the side of the valley, back below the tree-line. Stefan and Elena rode at the rear, Tomas ahead of them trying to converse with Bruno. Alexei Zucharov had taken the lead, impatient to make progress. His thirst for conflict was rarely slaked for long, Stefan reflected. After another hour or so they
had reached the point where the road forked. To their right, the clearer, beaten track led away towards the highway linking the Empire with its eastern border. To the left, a lesser trail marked the way up towards the cloud-wrapped peaks of the Middle Mountains.

  This was the point the priest had spoken of. Their way lay between these two, a path so overgrown as to be barely visible. This was the way that would lead them to the Forest of Shadows, and beyond, to Kislev.

  Alexei, out front, checked his horse momentarily at the fork and then turned briskly onto the road for the mountains. Stefan caught sight of what he was doing and pulled up short. “Wait—stay back with the others,” he instructed Elena. “He’s taken the wrong road.” He tightened his grip upon the reins and spurred his horse into a gallop. Riding at full pace he overhauled Alexei, pulling ahead of his horse then waving the other man down.

  “What’s the matter?” Alexei demanded, irritably.

  “I wanted to stop you before you went too far,” Stefan told him. “You’re on the wrong road.”

  Alexei looked back towards the crossroads he had just passed. “But the other way leads to the border road,” he said. “We agreed that even if the border was still open, the road through would be too conspicuous for us.”

  “So we did,” Stefan concurred. “We also agreed that we would avoid the mountains, and take the path through the forest. This is the mountain road.”

  By this time Elena and the others had caught up. “What’s wrong?” she asked them.

  “Nothing,” Stefan said. “Just a misunderstanding.” Now he was the one anxious to be getting on. He turned his horse around.

  “Just a minute,” Alexei said, shaking his head. “There’s no misunderstanding. Or maybe I misunderstood you when you spun us that fool’s yarn about creeping through the Forest of Shadows.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Stefan said, his hackles now rising. Alexei pulled a face that was half-derision, half-disbelief. “Gods’ breath!” he exclaimed “Haven’t you had enough yet of this infernal tangle of trees?”