by Nathan Long
‘That’s torn it,’ said Stahleker, fighting on grimly. ‘The cowardly bitch has killed us.’
‘Aye, it’s lost,’ said Ulrika. ‘We need orders. Hold here. I’ll go to Lassarian.’
She pulled back from the line and galloped for Lassarian’s mounted wights, who were trying to close the flank that Otilia had left exposed. Halfway there, horns echoed across the killing field. Ulrika winced. The castle and the camps had seen the Sylvanians and the Lahmians. They were making ready to defend themselves. The end was coming.
‘General!’ cried Ulrika as she pulled up beside him and added her sword to his against the Lahmians who attacked him. ‘We must retire! We cannot win!’
‘We cannot,’ said Lassarian. ‘But we can still give the count his victory.’
Ulrika backhanded a Lahmian with Wolf’s Fang, cutting though her helmet as if it wasn’t there. The woman veered her horse away, blinded by blood. ‘How?’
‘Otilia’s rout will draw the Reiksguard away from the castle as we wanted. When they engage us, I will send in the horrors and winged troops. Karl Franz will be driven out into von Messinghof’s ambush as planned.’
‘At the sacrifice of our lives,’ said Ulrika.
Lassarian laughed. ‘My steed flies, captain. I will not stay to the bitter end.’
‘And I?’ asked Ulrika, finishing the blinded Lahmian with a chop to the neck. ‘I have no winged steed.’
‘Hold until the horrors are away, then do as you wish.’
Ulrika grunted. With luck, Lassarian’s ploy might indeed send Karl Franz into von Messinghof’s waiting arms, but he was going to leave his troops to die. Why should she have expected anything else? A vampire cared nothing for resurrected skeletons, and still less for human mercenaries. She knew she should feel the same, but she couldn’t. The lancers were her troops now, loyal and true. She would get them out – somehow.
‘Very good, general,’ she said.
A distant screeching reached her ears as she started back towards Stahleker down the line, and she looked to the field. With Rukke at their head on a skeletal horse, the ghouls were flooding from the woods and bounding for the tents of the Reiksguard. What was the madman doing? The fall-back order must not have reached him!
But perhaps it was all to the good. If the ghouls could slow the Reiksguard for long enough – but no. Two figures in red and orange appeared at the edge of the camp and spread their hands. The rain-wet grass caught fire as if it were dry hay, and the flames raced at the ghouls like living things. Rukke threw up his arms as a wave of flames crested before him and made to crash down upon him. He–
A rider surged into the corner of Ulrika’s eye. She whipped around. It was Casilla again, smashing through the line to close with her. She slammed her warhorse into Yasim’s side, knocking her sideways and swinging her shining blade for Ulrika’s head. Ulrika countered, but barely. The blow glanced off Wolf’s Fang and rang her morion helm like a gong.
‘You won’t flee this time, coward!’ cried Casilla, as Ulrika’s head spun and their horses sidestepped into the crush of the battle. ‘We finish this here!’
Ulrika cursed. If she could land a solid blow with Wolf’s Fang, the fight would end, but the woman was quick. Ulrika aimed a strike at her neck, but she jerked back and hacked down at Ulrika’s helm again.
Still dizzy, Ulrika lurched aside to avoid it, but not quick enough. The blade smashed into her pauldron, crumpling it, and knocked her from the saddle. She crashed down beside Yasim, losing her helm, and took a kick behind the ear from Casilla’s horse. The world dimmed at the edges, and she didn’t know which way was up. Horses surged and trampled all around her.
Ulrika clutched weakly at Yasim’s stirrup as Casilla’s blade sliced towards her. She raised Wolf’s Fang to block, knowing it was too late, but Casilla gasped and faltered in mid-swing, and her strike barely scratched Ulrika’s breastplate. She looked frozen – her eyes wide, her jaw clenched. She tried to raise her sword for another blow, but was so slow that Ulrika, stunned though she was, stabbed up under her breastplate and pierced her guts.
The huntress spasmed as Wolf’s Fang fed, and could not pull away. Ulrika hauled her from the saddle, slamming her to the ground, then chopped down with all her might. The dread blade sheared through her bevor and her neck, and her head of long black curls tumbled to the ground.
It was only then that Ulrika noticed faint purple lines – like constricting ropes – fading from Casilla’s slumping body. Magic! Someone had bound her and weakened her blows! Ulrika looked up, and into the eyes of Countess Gabriella, shoving through the Lahmian line towards her upon the back of a white palfrey, a nimbus of purple fading around her hands and a hood over her head against the rain.
Ulrika staggered back against Yasim, raising her seething sword as confusion boiled in her breast. ‘What are you doing? Do you want to kill me yourself?’
Gabriella held out a hand. ‘I want you to be my daughter again. I want you to come back.’
Ulrika snarled. ‘To what? Prison? Death by silver or sunlight?’
‘Your exposure of the traitor, Ludwina, helps your cause. And I will keep you safe, I promise you.’
‘Aye, in some hidden tomb.’ Ulrika laughed, harsh, then mimicked Gabriella’s soft voice. ‘It will only be a century, beloved, before I can let you out. It isn’t so long to wait.’ She swiped Wolf’s Fang at Gabriella’s proffered hand. ‘Get away if you don’t want to die. I am free here! Free!’
Gabriella’s sad eyes turned hard in an instant. ‘You have traded a mistress for a master. Where is the freedom in that?’
‘When he has won, and we rule as we should, I shall have the freedom of the world!’
‘Little fool,’ said Gabriella, pityingly. ‘Your master is dying as we speak – caught by the other half of our force. You will have the freedom of the grave if you do not come with me now.’
Ulrika opened her mouth for another retort, then realised the import of what Gabriella had said. The other half of her force? There were more Lahmians ambushing Von Messinghof and his Blood Knights in the wood below the castle! The count could indeed by dying, and not only that, if Karl Franz and his retinue fled the castle, he would be too busy to stop them. The Emperor would slip the trap.
‘Cunning,’ said Ulrika as she vaulted back into her saddle. ‘I don’t know who you’ve tricked into betraying us, but they will pay, and so will you.’
‘Ulrika, wait,’ said Gabriella. ‘I–’
Ulrika wheeled away, ignoring her. Gabriella’s weapons were words. If she listened, she would be undone. She turned Yasim towards Lassarian, calling at the top of her lungs. ‘General! Don’t loose the horrors! Karl Franz must stay in the castle.’
She was drowned out by a blast of horns from the killing field. Through the trees and the downpour she could see them coming, scores of knights in the white and red of the Reiksguard, backlit by the grass fire that still raged behind them. Some were half-armoured and hastily dressed, some were hardly dressed at all, but they had come to the wood to defend their Emperor, and they were all armed to the teeth. A thunderclap rocked the ground and a ball of white light, like a miniature sun under the rain clouds, roiled into being, shining its glare into the wood and sending long black shadows racing across the ground from the trees.
Both the Sylvanian and Lahmian forces paused at the noise and the light, seemingly realising for the first time how vulnerable their position was. Then, as one, the assembled Imperials raised their weapons, roared their battle cries, and charged for the trees.
Ulrika turned towards Lassarian again, but it was too late. Though she couldn’t hear him over the din of hooves and battle cries, she saw him wave his hand at the hovering black cloud of shapes that lurked in the branches of the trees over his head.
‘No!’ Ulrika cried. ‘Stop!’
No one heard her. She couldn’t
hear herself. She lunged forwards on Yasim, but the cloud was already moving, swooping down and breaking into individual haunts and wraiths and banshees that shrieked straight at the oncoming knights. They bit with jaws like yawning pits and raked with claws like ghostly sabres, then rose up like leaves on an updraft and swept towards the castle, a swarm of monstrous bats and flying abominations coursing down from the rumbling sky.
‘No!’
Ulrika punched her saddle. The disaster was complete. Everything was ruined. The haunts and winged horrors would bombard the castle with terror and leather-winged death and drive Karl Franz out. He would race down the slope, slip through the ambush and escape. Or worse, he would see von Messinghof fighting the Lahmians and decide to strike from the rear. The count’s army could be wiped out entirely here tonight. Her dream of freedom would die.
‘Von Messinghof must be warned,’ Ulrika said to herself. ‘He must be saved.’
She turned her horse again, this time for Stahleker, and waved her sword over her head. ‘Through the Lahmians! Into the forest!’ she roared. ‘Leave them to fight the Imperials!’
Again nobody heard her, but she kept shouting it as she raced behind the lancers and the Reiksguard thundered towards them under the boughs of the first trees.
‘Into the forest! Through the Lahmians!’
Stahleker and the Ostermarkers heard at last, and the order rippled down the line. The look of panic that had gripped them when they had realised they would be trapped between the Lahmians and the Imperials was replaced by one of grim determination. They turned their backs on the Reiksguard charge and spurred at the Lahmians as hard as they could, fighting not to kill, but just to get past. Ulrika’s breast swelled with pride that they would do so terrifying a thing on her word alone.
Of course it was a massacre, at least at first. The Reiksguard ploughed into the backs of the lancers and many died with swords in their spines and the backs of their heads crushed by heavy maces. The air shivered with the screams of men and horses, and the ground shook with the thud of falling bodies. Those that survived that first impact, however, were through the Lahmians quicker than they expected, for the vampiresses too were having to fight the Reiksguard, and let the lancers by in order to protect themselves from the more heavily armed knights.
Ulrika took the Imperial charge face on, protecting Stahleker’s back as he and his men bashed a hole through the Lahmian line, and she nearly died from it. A visored knight the size of Kodrescu drove straight at her, a long sword in his fist that he wore chained to his wrist.
Only Yasim’s dancer’s grace saved Ulrika from being crushed like a rat under his enormous horse. She dodged aside at the last second and only rubbed shoulders with the destrier, instead of being rammed neck to neck. The knight swept his long sword at Ulrika as they mashed knees, but after Casilla, he was painfully slow, and she ducked it, then bit through his back armour with a backhand so deep that Wolf’s Fang ground against bone.
The knight gasped in pain and his horse crashed unruddered on into the Lahmian line, where he was struck down by a pair of vampiresses. But there were more behind him – many more. A mace struck Ulrika high on the leg, crushing her leg armour. She screamed and lashed around her desperately, chopping through arms and chests, but taking a blow for every one she gave. Her armour was scored in a dozen places and she bled from every limb. The pain in the leg was making her nauseous.
At the same time, Wolf’s Fang was drinking blood and glowing like the setting sun, and its red fury gave her strength. With a shriek like a hawk, she shot out her fangs and claws and snarled at the knights, letting out all the feral rage that the pain and betrayal and the ruin of their plans had built up in her.
It worked.
For the briefest of seconds, the knights froze at her savage outburst, unnerved, and she was able to break for the Lahmians. Before Yasim had taken two steps they were on her again, but two steps was all she needed. She slipped between a stunned knight and a dying one, then plunged past a Lahmian who was engaged with two more and found herself behind their line with Stahleker and the remnants of the lancers.
‘Now what?’ asked Stahleker. ‘Attack their rear?’
‘No,’ she panted, trying to pull the crumpled leg armour away from her crushed thigh. ‘The Lahmians have ambushed the count as well. We go to him. Out of the woods and across the killing field.’
Stahleker’s eyes widened as he turned his horse in the direction she indicated. ‘They knew everything! Not just where we would be, but our strategy as well.’
‘Aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘The traitor was in the tent when von Messinghof gave us our orders. I’m sure of it.’ She shot a glance back towards Lassarian, who was trying to break through the Lahmians just as they had done. ‘And I think I know who it was.’
‘My steed flies,’ Lassarian had said. ‘I will not stay to the bitter end.’ Of course he wouldn’t. He would fly to his Lahmian mistress, whoever she was – but only after making a good show of it, so he could come back and betray the Sylvanians again at another crucial moment.
‘East!’ cried Ulrika, tearing away the leg armour at last and tossing it aside as the lancers rallied around her. ‘Around the battle line and straight for the castle! Ride!’
chapter twenty-seven
SWORD OF JUSTICE
With the Lahmians and the Reiksguard fully engaged with each other, the first part of Ulrika’s plan was easily executed. She and the remaining lancers – still more than two hundred – threaded their way through the trees behind the Lahmian line, then wheeled around their eastern flank and turned south. Ten strides later, they burst from the tree line into the rain, and spurred their horses towards the castle at a gallop, four abreast.
Through the torrent and the drifting smoke, Ulrika could see a black cloud swirling over Ambosstein’s battlements – a swarm of monstrous bats, ghostly spectres and heavy-winged abominations that dived at the defenders and dragged them off the walls with their claws. The corrupted griffon that had once been Ulrika’s mount was tearing through the roof of the highest tower with claws like hay rakes. Men leapt screaming to their deaths in the face of shrieking horrors that pawed at them with frigid, insubstantial hands.
‘Don’t leave, Emperor,’ gritted Ulrika as she rode. ‘Lock down and wait it out.’
But it seemed that everything she wished for that night was to be denied her. Even as she spoke, the main gate of the castle swung open and a column of knights in the colours of the Reiksguard – more than a hundred in all – rode out and started down the zigzag road to the bottom of the hill.
Ulrika cursed. That was the end of it. The Emperor was riding away, and with von Messinghof engaged with the Lahmians, there was no one to stop him from leaving. All would be lost, unless…
With a flush of mad inspiration, Ulrika howled and kicked Yasim in the flanks, surging ahead while Stahleker and his men struggled to keep up. She would catch Karl Franz, she would stop him, she would kill him! The greatest coup in the history of the aristocracy of the night and it would be Ulrika Magdova Straghov who made it! No vampire had ever killed an Emperor before. That would change tonight!
With the lancers coursing behind her, Ulrika pounded across the rain-soaked field at full stretch, Yasim deftly dodging the blackened bodies of the ghouls that had died in the bright wizards’ arcane fire. They crashed through the shattered camp, swerving around collapsed tents and the bodies of ghouls and men, still locked in the embrace of combat even after death. Squires and grooms and camp followers fled before them, and were trampled under their hooves.
The castle gates were swinging shut as Ulrika and the lancers neared it, and terrified men stood in the gap, spears braced to try to keep them out. Ulrika laughed. What did they think she wanted with their castle when the white king was flying south? She turned for the road and the precipitous slope – and her laughter faltered and died.
Th
e Emperor and his retinue were already halfway down the zigzag road, making the second switchback, and starting towards the third. Their speed was slow, as it had to be. There was no way to make those hairpin turns at a gallop, particularly in the rain. And that was what had killed Ulrika’s laughter. She and the lancers would have to slow just as much to follow. She would never catch them. By the time she had wound her way down the hill, they would be on the flat, with fresher horses, and they would leave her in their dust. The only way to catch up to them would be…
Ulrika’s smile returned, wider and more savage than before. The hill down to the woods was rocky and loose, with only a thin cover of gorse holding it together, and it dropped at an angle steeper than a pitched roof. It would be madness to lead two hundred men down such a slope in the rain. But what had she to lose? All was lost already.
‘Yer crazy, bloodsucker!’ shouted Stahleker as he saw where she was looking.
Ulrika didn’t hear him.
‘Men of the Ostermark!’ she cried, raising her sword. ‘Follow me to glory!’
With a final spur to the ribs, Ulrika drove Yasim over the lip of the precipice and plunged down the slope at a gallop. There was no other way to take it. If she had tried to slow, the loose wet earth would have slid away beneath her. Instead she rode down in a spray of mud and stones and flying scrub, and to her joy and pride, she heard two hundred men following behind her.
She couldn’t look back. She needed every sense focussed forwards to keep herself upright and moving, but the sound was unmistakable – a deep avalanche roar of pounding hooves and tumbling stones and ten score throats howling savage northern battle cries.
