The Knights of the Divine Sword knelt in a circle, heads bowed in prayer, willing the souls of the fallen on their way. More than three thousand of their brothers would never lift a sword again. Their prayer became a song of farewell as they lifted up their heads, their hearts and voices breaking as they serenaded the dead.
The survivors of the Ostland Black Guard began gathering the bodies of their kin for the huge funeral pyres. There would be no night, only endless day as the red flame turned the black sky day bright. They moved the dead with tenderness and compassion, each one treated like the hero he was. More than two hundred Black Guard joined the flames.
The Priests of Taal moved through the carnage, bestowing blessings and prayer on the few who clung stubbornly to life, and offering guidance to the souls of the departed so that they might find Morr and know peace despite the brutality of their slaughter. They made no distinction between rank or duty, between the shredded hide of a woeful flagellant, religious zealot or crossbow wielder, musketeer and gunner, pike man and foot soldier.
They all deserved peace.
Kallad stood by the lakeside in quiet reflection.
The humans were gone now.
Martin had thanked him and offered his sorrow at the losses his people had suffered, and promised that dwarfs and men should stand together. They were stirring words, words that ought to have resonated within him. Kallad made the right responses and when they parted company it was as new friends.
But as Kallad remained, looking at the frigid waters of the icy lake where Mannfred had fallen, a single thought weighed heavy on his mind.
“Someone stole his bloody ring.”
He had a reasonable idea that he knew who.
The wolf.
It wasn’t over, not yet.
For all the dying, the deed wasn’t done.
Cahgur and Belamir joined him by the water’s edge.
“I could do with an ale, I don’t know about you?”
EPILOGUE
Buried Undead
Somewhere in the Old World
Kallad laid another course of mortar and set a brick down on top of it.
From his side of the growing wall Jerek said, “I heard a story once, an old lady told it to me.”
“Aye?”
“It was a sad tale. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I do now. It was about a boy and a girl. The boy fell on the field of battle to a bitter blow, his body cleaved in two, disgracing the family with his failure. “None shall grace him with sepulchre or lament, but leave him unburied, a corpse for birds and dogs to eat, a ghastly sight of shame,” proclaimed his father. The girl, his sister, gathered all of her courage and defied their father the king, standing proud. “I owe a longer allegiance to the dead than to the living. In that world I shall abide for ever,” she whispered, sprinkling grave dirt over her brother’s broken corpse. Livid, her father walled her up in his castle for he was a vengeful soul who did not like being shamed in any way.
“The woman who told me this story said it was my curse. I did not understand it at the time, but I do now. I know what it is to be trapped between both worlds—the dead and the living.”
“So you have taken her words to heart and made them your doom?” The dwarf knocked the errant brick into place, smoothing off the rough edges.
They were in an old ruin in wastelands far from Imperial civilisation.
“I have no alternative, dwarf, I cannot allow this thing to stay in the world unprotected. I cannot risk another uprising. I could not live with the death of the world on my shoulders.”
Jerek spoke the truth. There were no other options. If Kallad slew the vampire the problem of the ring would not go away. Dwarfs did not live forever and the memories of what had happened with the Vampire Counts would inevitably slip away, pass into history, into legend and finally, myth, losing the cold hard immediacy and reality of what the ring represented. There would always be another Skellan, another Mannfred, another Konrad. There would never be another Jerek. The man’s humanity was awesome. How it had held off the sickness of the blood curse, he had no idea.
“The ring doesn’t just need a guardian,” said Jerek. “It falls to me as the last surviving heir of Vlad to see that its evil is negated once and for all. I know with certainty what it represents, because I was there. I know what it can do. I will not die and leave it unguarded.”
Kallad set another stone in place. The wall was almost complete.
“Without feeding you will go mad.”
“Forget about me. Of the two of us, only one of us has an actual life to live.”
Kallad laid another brick, and another. The wall crept slowly higher.
“Farewell, Jerek. For all that you’re a bloodsucking fiend you are not a bad man.”
The vampire laughed as Kallad laid the last stone in place, sealing him in his immortal tomb.
The vampire stared at the wall, alone, and waited for a death that would never come.
Scanning, formatting and basic
proofing by Undead.
[Von Carstein 03] - Retribution Page 31
