[Von Carstein 01] - Inheritance

by Steven Savile - (ebook by Undead)

  Von Carstein held out his hand, palm up and made a slow lifting gesture. Baumann’s body twitched and jerked in response as the newly-dead muscles answered to his will. Less than a minute later Baumann was standing back in his place in the line, his head lolling back slackly on his slashed throat, the life burned out from his eyes.

  “In life or in death, general? I am quite serious.”

  “You… I can’t…”

  “Allow me to help you some more, general. You see I own you all. How I dispose of you is my prerogative. You should have thought about that before you crossed me. You, you, and you,” von Carstein said, selecting three of Posner’s vampires, including Skellan. “Choose one of the cattle and feed.”

  The three vampires came forward, looking over the line of prisoners. Few had the strength left in them to even look at them as they walked the length of the line, slowly, adding an edge of menace to the execution by drawing out the selection of their victims.

  Skellan stopped behind Fischer and leaned in to whisper in his ear: “You should have joined me, my friend, but it is too late now.”

  “Couldn’t even face me, could you?” Fischer said. They were the last words he ever spoke. Skellan sank his fangs into Fischer’s neck and fed greedily, sucking the very lifeblood out of him. Fischer’s body stiffened, spasmed violently and then slumped as the life left it. Skellan continued to drain every precious ounce of blood from him, swallowing the thick warm liquid hungrily.

  Along the line the two other vampires fed, then threw the empty corpses to the floor.

  Von Carstein raised the three dead men with an almost negligent flick of the wrist. Their bodies jerked and spasmed as the Vampire Count manipulated them back into their places in the line. Their movements were a grim parody of life.

  “Now, general. Pick one of your men.”

  Schliffen shook his head. “No. I won’t. This is… You are a monster. This is barbaric.”

  “Do not try my patience, general. Pick a man. If you don’t, I will.”

  Schliffen shook his head crazily, not willing to sacrifice any of his surviving soldiers.

  “Why do you insist in making everything so difficult, general?” von Carstein sighed. Very well, I will choose for you. You, come here.” The Vampire Count singled out a young man, no more than nineteen or twenty years of age. The young man shuffled forward. He sniffed. Snot and tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “It is your lucky day, soldier. I am not going to kill you but I am going to kill each and every one of your friends here. I want you to run back to the Empire and tell everyone that Vlad von Carstein is coming. Make them understand that I am hungry for blood and that I am tired with living in the darkness and shadows. I want you to tell them what kind of monster I am. How I executed the survivors of your army. I want you to tell them how I fed my pet vampires with your friends and how when everyone was dead and the ghouls had sated themselves I raised each and every one to serve me in death. Do you understand me?”

  The petrified young soldier nodded.

  “Then go before I change my mind.”

  The young man stumbled away, staggered and started to run. Von Carstein laughed at him as he slipped and fell, pushed himself up and managed four more steps before he fell again. He turned to Posner.

  “Kill them all.”

  “With pleasure, my lord,” Posner said. “You heard him men, feeding time!”

  The vampires descended on the line of prisoners in a feeding frenzy.

  In the chaos Hans Schliffen broke free his guard’s grip and dragged the wailing sword from the sheath at von Carstein’s side. The blade screamed a warning even as Schliffen brought it around in a brutal arc. It was all over in a single heartbeat. Posner saw the blow coming and tried to push the count out of the way but von Carstein stiffened and snarled at his warrior. That snarl froze on his dead face as Schliffen’s blow clove von Carstein’s head clean from his shoulders.

  The Vampire Count’s tainted blood sprayed out of the gaping stump.

  As one the risen dead fell where they stood.

  Posner reacted first, dragging his twin curved blades free of their sheaths and hurling himself at Schliffen. The general aimed another wild swing at Posner but the vampire danced beneath it and rose, snarling, both blades coming together to shear through Schliffen’s arms only inches above the wrists. Screaming in agony Schliffen stared as the stumps of his arms pumped out his lifeblood.

  “Bind him and burn him,” Posner rasped. “I want the man to suffer.”

  Two of Posner’s vampires dragged the screaming general through the mud to where a third was lighting a brazier. When the flames leapt to angry life they forced Schliffen’s bloody arms into them. The stink of burned flesh and the general’s shrieks filled the air. The vampires ignored Schliffen’s screams and held his arms in the fire until the stumps were dry and caked with charcoal, the wounds cauterised.

  Posner came over to where Schliffen lay curled up on the floor cradling the blackened stumps protectively to his chest.

  “You’ll wish you were already dead, soldier. The count might have offered you a mercifully quick death. I won’t.” There was no sign that Schliffen heard him. Posner turned to the three vampires standing around the brazier listening to the general’s juices spit and crackle in the roaring fire. “Four horses, bind the man to them arm and foot… and then lash the damned animals until he’s been ripped limb from limb. Do it slowly. I want him to know. I want him to feel it as he is pulled apart. It is the least I can do for the count.”

  He turned his back on the whimpering general. He walked back toward the white pavilions where the rest of his vampires were done feeding on the prisoners. Their thirst for blood slaked the vampires threw the corpses to the ghouls to finish.

  He smiled to himself. He would take von Carstein’s signet ring and use it as a sign of power, to validate the transition between one ruler and the next. And then there was the crazy bitch von Carstein had saddled himself with, Isabella. He would take her too. He would make her scream his name: Herman Posner, Count of the Vampires!

  The land would hear her screams and quake at his coming.

  Posner had expected to see that sycophant Ganz weeping over von Carstein’s body, tearing at his hair and wailing, but Ganz was gone.

  More worryingly, there was no sign of von Carstein’s corpse.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  King of Dust

  ESSEN FORD, SYLVANIA

  Winter, 2010

  Ganz fled from the battlefield, carrying the dead count’s body and severed head in his arms as he stumbled toward the safety of the trees.

  His grief was absolute.

  He staggered forward, talking over and over mindlessly, saying the same things.

  “It will be all right. It will be all right. It will be all right.”

  No matter how many times he repeated the promise a distant part of him knew that things could never be all right again. Von Carstein was dead. His count was dead.

  He cradled the lifeless body in his arms.

  It seemed inconceivable that a wreck of a man like Schliffen could slay the Vampire Count in his moment of triumph. It wasn’t right. Von Carstein was man of vision. He saw beauty in all things. In all…

  That wasn’t true. That was his grief speaking—it was all he could hear. The world around him was dead. A wasteland. The Vampire Count had proved his ruthlessness and in doing so turned Alten Ganz into a cold-blooded killer. He couldn’t think for the incessant yammering of his guilt inside his head. On and on and on. Snatches of conversation came back to him, and in every one at least one voice was always the count’s. Tears streamed down his face. Tears of grief and guilt. He had seen Schliffen wrestle free of his guard’s grip and lunge for the count’s sword but he hadn’t done anything. He had simply stood there and stared like a rabbit caught in the hunter’s sight, waiting for the killing blow to thud home. If he had done something… if he had at least tried… the count might still have been
alive.

  He had no idea what he was doing.

  Ganz plunged blindly into the forest, stumbling into tree trunks and tripping over trailing roots. Thirty paces in, where the undergrowth thickened into an impenetrable tangle, he fell to his knees and laid the dead Vampire Count on the blanket of mildewed leaves and rotten twigs. He knelt there sobbing until the grief dried itself out and there were no more tears left to fall.

  He arranged the count’s clothes, making him look presentable. The count was always so careful with his appearance. He held the dead man’s head in his hands. Brushed the long black hair back so that it didn’t fall across the eyes, and laid it reverentially in place Ganz couldn’t bear the look of shocked betrayal in the count’s dead eyes. He reached out and closed them. Von Carstein’s skin was cold. Far too cold for someone who had died such a short while ago, he knew.

  “But he didn’t just die… He’s been dead as long as I have known him.”

  Ganz folded the count’s arms across his chest.

  The von Carstein signet ring was caked in blood.

  It could have belonged to anyone; enough blood had been shed that night, von Carstein in the thick of the fighting. But it didn’t belong to just anyone, Ganz knew. It was the count’s blood.

  The thought of taking the ring, keeping it for himself, entered his mind.

  “Robbing the dead’s not right,” he muttered.

  Ganz gathered leaves and branches to cover the count’s body. The ground was too hard for him to dig even the shallowest of graves with his bare hands so instead he made a cairn, piling dead leaves, branches and stones over von Carstein’s body to protect it from hungry animals.

  He stood over the cairn. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. So he did nothing.

  “Goodbye.”

  He walked slowly back toward the white pavilions.

  Posner was struggling to subdue Isabella. She was in a rage the like of which Ganz had never seen before. She frenziedly tore at her own hair, at her clothes, and at anyone unfortunate enough to be within arm’s reach. Three of Posner’s vampires lay in the pool of tainted blood at her feet. Her claws had shred their faces and her fangs had ripped their throats out.

  Ganz couldn’t begin to imagine how she felt, her love, her eternal love, cut down in a single blow. Surely the loss would unhinge her already fragile mind.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Of Swords and Ashes

  ESSEN FORD, SYLVANIA

  Winter, 2010

  Posner’s rise was bloody and brutal.

  He cut down any and all that stood against him.

  Loyalty amongst the lords of the undead was not a natural thing; the shadows had grown dark in their hearts. They were kindred but that didn’t mean they would even so much as shed a tear for a fallen brother. Few would miss von Carstein and all, without exception, would relish the opportunity to rise in his place. That lack of basic loyalty to the old count and his widow meant that few around the camp grieved. While Isabella sobbed her heart out and railed against the heavens at the unjustness of it all, each in their own way were wondering and planting hooks that might lead to alliances and in turn power. They hungered for it.

  There is no vampiric society, no aristocracy or blue-blooded royalty amongst the undead. Vampires crave power, and through strength and cunning they take it. Frailty is punished by death: final, true death. There is no natural succession amongst those left behind. No birthright. No passing of the torch from generation to generation. Power is taken with strength.

  Herman Posner understood that.

  He walked through the subdued camp, seeing the alliances taking shape around him. Seeing potential pockets of rebellion rising up. Before they could bear fruit he crushed them. Those who refused his right to rule the dead were given one chance, a choice, much as Vlad himself had done only hours before with the cattle.

  Where von Carstein had said “Serve me in life or serve me in death,” Posner offered a slight variation to his brothers: serve me in life or serve me with your death.

  His men culled the ranks of the vampires that night, shedding the weak and those most loyal to the old guard. The killing left behind a core he could, in some small way, trust.

  It was not a luxury he would rely on.

  Treachery, Posner knew, lay close to every vampire’s stilled heart.

  Still, he savoured his moment of victory.

  He would find Isabella and make her an offer she would be a fool to refuse, cementing his place as the new count.

  With the worst of the storm gone, and the rain drizzled out, the night was brightening. Storm clouds had blotted out the stars but they returned as a restless wind chased the clouds away. The wind rustled and mumbled through the encampment. A ruddy glow came from the embers of the campfire the vampires had built to burn the various parts of Schliffen’s corpse. The dying light cast a reddish glow over the faces of the vampires who still stood around the fire ring, watching the murderer burn to ash and smoke. They had not spoken or moved as long as the fire had been burning.

  Posner left them to their vigil.

  He drew back the flap on the main pavilion and ducked inside.

  The pavilion was opulent with gothic splendour. The count, as ever, had surrounded himself with things of great beauty, rugs from Amhabal and Sudrat in distant Araby, scents in the oil burners from Shuang Hsi in far-off Cathay, decorative clamshells from Sartosa, bone candelabra hand-carved in Ind, and much more. Von Carstein had been a collector. He had gathered souvenirs as others gathered memories. Posner picked up a jewelled egg von Carstein had stolen from the palace in Praag.

  It was surprising the things von Carstein had chosen to keep near him during the march on the Empire. The egg was priceless, like so much of von Carstein’s art. It had a name… Azovu? Posner marvelled at it. The egg was carved from a solid piece of heliotrope jasper, and decorated with yellow and white gold scrolls set with brilliant diamonds and chased red gold flowers. There was a tiny drop ruby clasp that opened to reveal a miniature replica, in gold and diamond, of Arianka’s glass tomb. There was a perverse irony in the design. He assumed it was Walpurgis’ work. The man was twisted enough inside that he would have made a truly great vampire.

  He put the egg back on the wooden dresser where he had found it.

  In this tent alone there were treasures enough for him to live like an Emperor for years.

  He had no use for von Carstein’s trinkets.

  Only his power.

  The count had possessed a page from one of the nine great books of Nagash. If he had one page there would be more, surely. Posner could only imagine the possibilities those books would open up if a single page could raise the dead into an unstoppable army.

  That was the kind of power that Posner craved.

  Real power.

  Not petty little treaties and pacts that relied on backstabbers to remain trustworthy.

  Von Carstein’s wailing sword lay on the table in the centre of the pavilion. The man’s blood was still on it, dried into a caked layer like rust on the dark blade. Posner picked it up and examined it in his hands. The sword let out a gentle keening moan.

  Posner smiled, hefted the sword and tested it with a few quick swings. The balance was exquisite, quite unlike anything he had ever wielded. It was as though the blade itself possessed a will of its own; its preternatural balance and timing no more than its own selfish lust for blood and slaughter. After four dizzyingly fast passes, high and low parries and thrusts, the wailing blade was crying out for blood and Posner found it almost impossible to lay the blade aside. It was inside his skull crying out to be fed. He dropped the sword and backed away from it in disgust.

  The thing was alive.

  A vampiric sword for a Vampire Count; it was a bloody partnership forged in the pits of Morr’s underworld for sure.

  “What do you want?”

  He hadn’t even seen Isabella huddled in the corner, clutching one of her dead husband’s shirts to her heaving br
east.

  “You,” Posner said without a trace of irony or passion.

  “I can smell him on it,” Isabella said, lost for a moment in the sensory deception of the shirt. “He’s still here. He hasn’t gone. He hasn’t left me.”

  She was a wretched mess huddled on the floor, pressed up against the edge of von Carstein’s elaborately carved coffin. Her eyes were rimmed red and the veins showed bluely through her pale skin. She looked like death.

  Posner knelt down beside her and reached out tenderly to brush her hair back where it had fallen into her eyes. “He’s gone. I can’t believe it either but he’s gone. Now it is time for you to stand up and be strong, Isabella. Beautiful Isabella. There isn’t a creature out there tonight who wouldn’t see you dead, do you understand that? You are the last link to the past, to Vlad. They would bury you beneath a Sigmarite temple if they could.”

  She shook her head violently, reacting to his tone if not his actual words. He looked deep into her eyes but she showed no sign of understanding what he was saying. She had receded somewhere deep inside herself. He didn’t know how to reach her. All he could do was talk.

  “I can help you,” he said, trying to put as much conviction into his voice as he could. “Walk out of here with me. Stand by my side. Join with me and none can stand against us. I can protect you from them, sweet beautiful Isabella. I can keep you safe. I can be your count.”

  “No,” she said, wriggling around beneath his hand. “No. No. He wouldn’t leave me. No. He’s coming back. He loves me!”

  Posner did his best to stifle his exasperation. He stood and hauled her up to her feet.

  “Come out with me. Let them see us together. You don’t have to say anything. Just stand there and be beautiful, Isabella. Can you do that? Can you do that for me?”

  “No,” she said again.

  Posner slipped his arm through hers. “Lean on me.”

  “No.” It was as though it was the only thing she could say. An endless stream of denials. No. No. No. No. No.