by Nathan Long
‘Don’t play coy, girl,’ said Ulrika softly, reaching out a hand. ‘You know my smell. Your master has been riding with my kind for months.’
The horse edged back. Ulrika stopped and waited. When she settled, she stepped forwards again. This time Yasim let her approach, though she was still nervous. Ulrika laid her hand on her and stroked her firmly until her ears and eyes quieted.
‘That’s it,’ Ulrika murmured. ‘You’d rather ride than stand, no matter who’s on your back, eh?’
She laid the blanket over Yasim’s back and squared it just behind her withers, then set the saddle over it, still murmuring soft words. The girth was next. She attached it to the billets, went around to her left and reached under her belly to pull the cinch through the buckle on her other side. When it was tight, she slipped the bridle over Yasim’s head and slid the bit into her mouth. Next she let down the stirrups and adjusted their length, then swung up into the saddle and turned Yasim in a tight circle.
Stahleker nodded. ‘You can ride, then.’
‘I have led a rota,’ she said, then pointed Yasim’s head towards the rope gate. ‘Come. I want to feel her run.’
Stahleker scowled. ‘I’ll have to find guards for you, so you don’t escape.’
Ulrika laughed. ‘On a horse like this, who could catch me?’
He patted the pistols tucked through his belt. ‘Then I had better come with you.’
Ulrika gave Yasim her head and she surged down the overgrown track like a red wind, easily outdistancing Stahleker on his wiry Ostermark charger. She was lithe and graceful on her dainty hooves, and when Ulrika raised up in the stirrups and hunched forwards so that her head was down along the side of her neck, it really did feel like she was riding the wind. She smiled. Having ridden a winged monster, she should not have found this half as thrilling, but there was something about the nearness of the ground and the trees whipping by that added a sense of danger and excitement. In the sky there were no obstacles to clear, so what was there to do? Where was the challenge? Here she could crash or spill at any moment. Here a root or fallen tree or low branch could wreck her and break her bones. It was glorious.
‘You’re getting close to shooting distance!’ called Stahleker from behind her.
Ulrika looked back. The Sergeant had a pistol out and was training it at her back, but he was so far back, and it was so dark under the trees that he was unlikely to make the shot, and in another few strides she would be around a bend in the track and out of his line of fire entirely. She grinned. She wondered if he could hit her. Yasim seemed fast enough to outrun a bullet.
She reined in and slowed to a walk as Stahleker thudded up to her.
‘Just testing her gallop, sergeant.’ She patted Yasim’s neck. ‘No need to worry.’
‘My only worry would be hitting the horse,’ said Stahleker. ‘That’d be a damned shame.’
Ulrika looked at him, curious. ‘You don’t fear me. Nor do you worship me like so many of the others.’
Stahleker shrugged. ‘No sane man ain’t afraid of something that can rip his head off without breaking a sweat, but, well, we’ve been riding for the counts for a long time, and you get used to it, you might say.’
‘You are vassals of the Sylvanians, then?’
Stahleker spat. ‘We’re nobody’s vassals. It’s strictly business with the counts. When they need cavalry they can count on instead of their knee-quaking serfs or them skull-headed heavies, they call on us, and pay good money too.’
‘So you have no qualms about siding with those whose express wish is the destruction of your Empire and the subjugation of mankind?’
‘What has the Empire ever done for us?’ asked Stahleker. ‘We was simple horse breeders once – leastwise our fathers’ fathers were – raising our herds on the Ostermark veldt, but what would happen? Every time the Empire went to war in the north they would steal our horses for remounts and plunder our stores for forage, and never a pfennig in exchange. We was to give it up for the good of the Empire. And when the hordes came south? Same story. Rape and pillage and slaughter, and the Reiklanders cowering in the south and tellin’ us it’s our duty to hold the border.’
Ulrika nodded. It had been a similar story in her father’s lands.
‘After too much of that we had nothing left to take, and so took to takin’ ourselves, to get by.’ He snarled. ‘That’s when the Empire finally took notice. We was branded horse thieves and bandits and driven south out of our own lands into the Eerie Downs. Well, there was no farming to be done there at all. Plants don’t grow right. So we became what they called us, bandits, thieves, and worse, and spent a lot of time slipping across the Stir into Sylvania when the excise men came hunting.’
He nodded back towards camp. ‘That’s when the counts found us. Their own vassals live in fear of them, and ain’t got much spine or sense – slaves think like slaves, aye?’
‘Aye.’
‘So they need someone who won’t bend a knee to them, and we’re it. They pay and we fight. Simple as that.’
‘Well,’ said Ulrika, ‘I hope there’s something left to spend your money on when they win.’
‘If they win,’ grunted Stahleker. Then he frowned at her. ‘You don’t sound like you want ’em to.’
Ulrika shrugged. ‘I am here for vengeance. I want to get my blade wet. The rest doesn’t matter.’ She turned Yasim around, suddenly angry, then dug her spurs in. ‘I’ll see you back at camp,’ she called, then galloped away as fast as she could.
Morgenthau arrived the next evening, having marched all day while carried in a coffin by his followers. His force was little more than a warband, though a fearsome one. Two hundred human spearmen, thirty armoured and mounted wights and as many Blood Knights, and a host of ghostly drifting shapes that hid in the shadows beneath the trees and exuded a bone-chilling cold that made even Stahleker’s hardened veterans huddle close to their fires.
The reunion was not a happy one. Kodrescu came out of his tent as Morgenthau’s hulking, armour-clad pall bearers set down his coffin and removed the sable shroud that covered it, then opened the lid.
The vampire that rose from it looked like he had Strigoi blood, for he was bald and misshapen and hideously ugly, though he had gone to great pains to try to disguise these things in his manner of dress. He wore a beautifully embossed suit of gold and red armour that used broad pauldrons and flaring gauntlets to try to hide his hunched shoulders and elongated arms, while the face plate of his helm was formed to look like the face of a noble god. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be heard clearly in it, and had to take it off to speak, revealing a shrivelled, noseless face with upthrust underfangs jutting from a mouth like a dagger cut. Worst were his eyes – bulging, red-rimmed orbs the pink of an albino rabbit’s. Von Messinghof had called him the ablest tactician of the traitors, but also the least sane.
‘Disobedient fool,’ snarled Kodrescu as the vampire bowed before him. ‘Did I not tell you to stay and wait?’
‘I dared not, lord,’ said Morgenthau in a voice like tearing parchment. ‘I could pretend no longer. When I stood by that prating weakling, I only wished to slit his throat. Had I stayed, I would have given myself away.’
Kodrescu’s eyes flared. ‘So your excuse for disobeying me is that you cannot control yourself? You are weaker than he.’
‘Give me a battle and I will show you how weak I am!’ cried Morgenthau. ‘He plots and spins and tells me to wait, and you do the same. I came to the Empire for slaughter! Not to sit in the Stirwood and spin wool. I want to fight!’
Kodrescu sneered. ‘And how am I to trust you in battle when you can’t obey the simplest of orders?’ he asked. ‘How am I to know you won’t charge across the field at the first provocation and leave my flank undefended?’
‘I know the art of battle!’ Morgenthau declared, defiant. ‘I need no schooling in–’
‘I should feed you to Wolf’s Fang for this disobedience,’ said Kodrescu, patting his ancient sword. ‘But I would not wantonly kill a lord of the night. Instead I will only feed myself. Bare your neck.’
Morgenthau stared in disbelief. ‘What! What did you say to me?’
‘Your blood needs cooling,’ said Kodrescu, stepping towards him. ‘And your loyalty needs strengthening. This will achieve both.’
Morgenthau snarled and shrank back, his hand going to his sword. ‘You are not my sire. I will not submit to you. If you want my blood you will have to win it.’
Kodrescu took another step. His hand did not go again to his sword, but the jewelled pommel seemed to glow with eagerness. ‘I am your leader, and you have cost me time and advantage. If you do not bare your neck to me, you will sate Wolf’s Fang’s hunger and someone else will command your troops. Now stand.’
Morgenthau swallowed, his pink eyes darting around at the crowd who watched the drama unfold. ‘You would humiliate me in front of the others? In front of my men?’
‘You humiliate yourself with your bleating,’ said Kodrescu. ‘Stand.’
Morgenthau froze, gripping his sword, as Kodrescu took a final step and stood before him. Ulrika could tell from the way his fingers twitched on the hilt that Morgenthau was contemplating attacking, but something – Kodrescu’s magnetism, or his reputation as a duellist – made him hesitate, and after a moment, he released his grip and stood, his head bowed, then motioned to his pall bearers. Two stepped forwards and removed his elaborate bevor with practiced speed, and he turned under the collar of his gold-embroidered doublet.
‘You steal dignity from me, my lord,’ he said, turning his head. ‘I will not forget–’
Kodrescu shot his hand out, faster than Ulrika could see, and jerked Morgenthau close, then sank his fangs into his naked neck like a wolf tearing at a doe. Morgenthau shrieked in fear and struggled, but Kodrescu crushed him in a bear hug, pinning his limbs, and he grew still.
Ulrika stared, fascinated and appalled. She had experienced the feeding of one vampire upon another before. It had been love-making – the mutual sharing of blood, strength and pleasure. This was not. Having won fear from his victim, Kodrescu fed as calmly as a doctor examining a wound, and though Morgenthau shuddered, Ulrika thought it was from shame rather than enjoyment – or perhaps it was both. This was dominance, pure and simple – the leader of the pack making an upstart submit in front of the other wolves.
She had little sympathy for Morgenthau. Though she understood his wish for action, what he had done was indeed foolish and deserved punishment. At the same time, what Kodrescu was doing was foolish as well. A good leader would not make a subordinate look weak in front of his men. This had nothing to do with strengthening Kodrescu’s army, and everything to do with bolstering his pride. She was beginning to understand why von Messinghof, who these strutting wolves saw as weak, had been given command of Sylvania’s advance force. And yet, to echo Morganthau, she had not joined the Sylvanians to help a spider spin webs of intrigue in the woods. She had joined so she could run with the wolves, and Kodrescu was a wolf.
When he was finished feeding, the general pushed Morgenthau back so that he fell sprawling into his coffin, half-conscious.
‘Take him away,’ said Kodrescu to the pall bearers. ‘We march within the hour.’
The general’s troops had begun to break camp the moment Morgenthau’s scouts appeared, and so were ready with time to spare, while Morgenthau’s force had remained in march formation, allowing the combined army to get under way before the sun was more than an hour set. The speed came at a cost, however. Though Morgenthau’s undead knights rode on without complaint, his hundred human spears were nearly spent after marching all day, and many fell out and collapsed along the track.
Kodrescu, as Ulrika rode up and down the line with him, inspecting the order of march, didn’t seem to care. His horse trampled a fallen spearman under its hoofs, and he rode on without looking back.
‘Aren’t you concerned about diminishing your strength?’ asked Ulrika.
‘Swiftness is more important,’ said Kodrescu. ‘We are a day late now as it is. I must take the monastery and the town that serves it and raise their dead, then return to the Stirwood to lead them against von Messinghof before he makes his attack on Karl Franz. Morgenthau has slowed me enough already. I will not allow his cannon fodder to set my pace.’
So that was his plan. ‘I see you mean to keep your promise to the general – to the letter.’
Kodrescu grinned. ‘Aye. I will bring him the dead of the town and the monastery just as he asked – then shove them down his throat.’
‘And you do not fear the battle will weaken your own force before you go against Karl Franz?’
‘Von Messinghof is weak,’ said Kodrescu, raising his sculpted chin. ‘When he sees what I have brought against him, he will capitulate. And if he does not, I will crush him. He will hardly have a chance to strike back.’
Ulrika rode on, silent, as Kodrescu took his place at the head of the column. Now she knew what von Messinghof had asked her to discover. Now she could slip away, steal the winged horror from where it was penned, and report back to him. But on the other hand, what good would it do? The general could prepare for Kodrescu’s coming, but he wouldn’t know his strength. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until after the battle at the monastery and report the state of his forces once the dead had been raised? Or was that just an excuse not to leave?
chapter nineteen
THE SPIDER OR THE WOLF
A few hours before dawn, a Blood Knight scout came racing back down the track and saluted Kodrescu.
‘A warband, general. A lord and his retinue, as well as a warrior priest and a handful of witch hunters. We counted thirty knights and an artillery train of three great cannon.’
‘They are hunting us?’
The scout shook his head. ‘They are not on our path, but crossing it. They travel from the direction of Wurstheim along a stream that leads to the Reik, and they fly Karl Franz’s colours above their own.’
‘They ride to join him, then,’ said Kodrescu.
‘We should hold here and let them pass,’ said Lady Celia. ‘We will need all our strength when we reach the monastery.’
‘Unthinkable,’ snorted Kodrescu. ‘They go to support Karl Franz. If we destroy them now we will not have to fight them later.’
‘Or face their cannon,’ said von Graal.
‘Precisely,’ said Kodrescu. ‘We will take them unawares.’
‘Lord,’ said the Blood Knight. ‘They will cross our path in less than an hour. There may not be enough time to lay an ambush.’
‘It will have to be cavalry only,’ said von Graal.
‘My lord!’ called Morgenthau, edging his horse up from behind. ‘Let me do this. Let me make amends for my past transgressions.’
Kodrescu turned a cold eye on him. ‘I am pleased you wish to do better, but I will not reward your folly by allowing you glory. Nor will I risk your grave knights.’ He turned to von Graal. ‘Take Stahleker’s lancers. If they die, they can be raised to serve again.’
Von Graal nodded. ‘At once, general.’
‘Lord,’ said Ulrika, ‘let me go too. I have vowed vengeance on all witch hunters.’
‘Please, general, no,’ said von Graal. ‘I cannot watch over her in the middle of battle. She would be a distraction.’
Kodrescu didn’t seem to hear him. He smiled at Ulrika. ‘Good. This will be a perfect opportunity to test your valour and loyalty.’ He turned to von Graal. ‘Watch her during the battle. I want to hear how she conducts herself.’
Von Graal shot Ulrika a murderous look. ‘Very good, general.’
‘You will not fight,’ said von Graal to Ulrika as he led Stahleker and his lancers to the ambush point in the trees on the forest side of the narrow
track that wound along the rushing stream. ‘You will stay behind our line with two men guarding you. If you attempt to join the fray, they will cut you down and I will claim you died at the enemy’s hand. Do you understand?’
Ulrika stiffened. ‘General Kodrescu has ordered me to fight.’
‘And I will say you did, but I cannot lead and watch you at the same time.’ He gave her a thin smile. ‘You needn’t worry. You will still rise in his eyes. I will give a glowing report of your valour.’
‘I don’t give a damn about rising in Kodrescu’s eyes. Witch hunters are my sworn enemies! I want to fight them!’
‘Not while I lead,’ said von Graal, and turned his horse from her before she could answer. ‘Sergeant Stahleker! Pick two men to watch the Lahmian. Keep her out of the way.’
The sergeant exchanged a flat look with Rachman, his skinny second-in-command, but only saluted. ‘Aye, lord.’
Von Graal’s plan was simple, and Ulrika was forced to admit, likely to be effective. Hidden by a cloud of unnatural darkness that would cloak their position, and accompanied by a host of hovering shades and wraiths, half of Stahleker’s lancers would charge out of the trees when the lord’s column came level with them, spooking them and striking them in the flank and driving them into the river. There, the other half of the horsemen would pepper the enemy with pistol fire from the opposite shore while they floundered in the shallows. Any that tried to regain the bank would be easy prey for the mercenaries’ sabres and lances. It would be a slaughter. Ulrika only wished she could be part of it.
Stahleker gave her a shrug as he and Rachman directed two men to hem in her horse behind their lines. They were just as aware as she that von Graal’s order was a joke. The lancers couldn’t stop her if she really wanted to join the fight.
‘Just don’t kill ’em when you make yer move,’ said Stahleker.
Ulrika smirked. ‘You are suggesting I would disobey a direct order?’
‘I know I would,’ said Rachman, and they started back to their places behind von Graal in the centre of their line.
