by Nathan Long
‘They said you would not raise him at all!’ sobbed Blutegel. ‘They said he was an embarrassment to you, whom you would kill as soon as I was dead!’
A look flashed across the count’s face that told Ulrika that was precisely what he had intended to do. He shook Blutegel. ‘They? Who told you this?’
‘The lady,’ said the steward. ‘The countess. She said that the Lahmians would honour the pledge that you did not. She said that once you were defeated, Rukke would be the ruler of all Sylvania. Not just a son to her, but a prince! A prince of the blood!’
Von Messinghof closed his eyes, still holding the steward off the ground. ‘You are a fool, Blutegel. Only women rule in the courts of Lahmia. She lied to you.’
‘Not the countess,’ said Blutegel. ‘She promised me.’
‘She bled you,’ sneered the count. ‘I should have smelled it on you.’ He tightened his grip on the steward’s collar, making him choke. ‘Tell me one thing before I kill you. How did they reach Ambosstein in time? I only revealed out final destination at sunset yesterday. There was no way they could have travelled from Nuln in four hours. The trip takes days.’
Blutegel laughed, a high, constricted giggle. ‘The white king!’
The count shook him. ‘What? Talk sense!’
Blutegel coughed, then rasped in a breath. ‘You were very clever, count, not telling us where we were going. But you left your chess pieces on the map after you had made your calculations. The white king was placed on Ambosstein. I knew where we were going before we left the Stirwood two days ago.’
‘Two days is still not enough time to get from Nuln,’ said von Messinghof.
‘Yes, but the Lahmians were already waiting at Arschel, thinking you would attack there,’ said Blutegel. ‘It took them less than a night to reach Ambosstein. Last night I only had to tell them your final placement.’
Von Messinghof snarled and shoved Blutegel back into the bulkhead. The steward’s head smacked the hard wood with a hollow thump and he slumped to the deck, groaning.
‘This is what I get for trusting humans,’ said the count, stepping over him and letting out his claws. ‘They always turn on you in the end.’
He drew back his hand, preparing to slash Blutegel’s throat, but a voice hissed behind him.
‘No, lord. Please.’
Ulrika, von Messinghof and the others turned. Rukke was pushing himself into a sitting position and wincing as he put weight on his mangled hand. He stared at his birth father with his one remaining eye.
‘Let me kill him,’ he whispered. It sounded like his windpipe was split. ‘It is he more than anyone who did this to me.’
Blutegel raised his head. ‘No, Rukke,’ he quavered. ‘I told you to stay out of it.’
Von Messinghof looked down at the young vampire. ‘You would kill your father?’
‘You are my father,’ breathed Rukke. ‘And I will prove myself worthy to be your son.’
The count looked at him for a moment, considering, then shrugged and kicked Blutegel across the floor to him. Rukke pulled himself up on top of his father like a broken spider, then opened his mangled mouth.
‘Please, Rukke,’ sobbed Blutegel. ‘I did it for you. I tried to save you.’
There was hardly an unbroken tooth in Rukke’s shattered jaw, but he bit down on Blutegel’s neck anyway, tearing his flesh with the ragged stumps. The old man screamed and kicked, but Rukke held him down and fed, slurping like a hag gumming soup as blood pooled on the deck beneath them.
Otilia and Lassarian turned their heads, revolted, but Ulrika couldn’t look away. She saw Blutegel’s struggles weaken and slow, and Rukke’s wounds begin to knit and scar. The biggest of them did not heal, however, and his hand and face and burned scalp remained gruesome and wet.
Von Messinghof looked down at them both, sad and grim. ‘You were a mistake from the beginning,’ he said softly. ‘Turned out of pity, not out of love. And now you have committed a crime beyond redemption. Your plight has caused your father, a better man than you would ever have become, to turn against me. Because of you, I have lost him.’
Rukke did not seem to hear, and kept feeding, oblivious.
The count sighed and drew his sword. ‘I admit the fault is my own, and you are as innocent of your crimes as a pup who chews a hole in a boot, but the mistake must be rectified. The death of your father must be avenged.’
That seemed to pierce Rukke’s blood-fogged brain. He pushed himself to his knees by his father’s corpse and looked up at von Messinghof with his remaining eye.
‘Huh?’ he said.
The count swept off his hideous head with a single stroke of his sword. It bounced away, and Rukke’s torso slumped across his father’s corpse, almost as if they were embracing.
Von Messinghof turned away and cleaned his sword on his kerchief, then sheathed it. ‘Take the son out and throw him overboard,’ he said to the men who had brought him in. ‘The father will be buried with all the rites of his cult when we land again.’
The men scurried to put Rukke’s body on the blanket as von Messinghof turned to Ulrika and inclined his head.
‘Thank you for exposing the traitor,’ he said, ‘though I wish it could have been anyone else at all.’
Ulrika bowed in return. ‘I’m sorry, lord.’
He waved that away. ‘Leave me, all of you. Sleep. Ready yourself for tonight when we reach Arschel. I must think what is to be done. We will have no other chance.’
Ulrika rose and stepped to the door with the others, and held it open for them. Otilia gave her a look of pure poison as she passed.
‘Lady,’ asked Ulrika as she followed her out, ‘what precisely have I done that has angered you so?’
Otilia turned back and looked her up and down with eyes like ice. ‘You are here.’
Ulrika stared after her as she stalked away.
Lassarian laughed. ‘You should have named her traitor. The count wouldn’t have minded feeding her to Rukke nearly as much.’
Ulrika woke to a crash and scream. Her quarters, little more than a closet with a hammock hung from its ceiling, shared a bulkhead with von Messinghof’s cabin and the crash had come from there, and now there were the sounds of a struggle.
‘Lord!’ she cried, then half-fell from her hammock and grabbed her rapier as she stumbled out into the gangway, dressed only in breeches and shirt. It was still day. Sun filtered through cracks in the deck above. Von Messinghof’s door was half-open, and the dim light showed kicking limbs. She shouldered in, sword at the ready, then skidded to a stop, staring.
The count was bent over a prostrate man in a travelling cloak whose heels kicked the floor in weak spasms. Von Messinghof’s fangs were in the man’s neck, and his claws were bared and bloody. It occurred to Ulrika that she had never seen him feed before.
‘Lord,’ she asked, ‘is all well?’
Von Messinghof looked up, and a grimace of chagrin twisted his face. He lowered the man to the ground, then snapped his neck.
‘It – it is nothing,’ he said, wiping his lips. ‘I have only killed the bearer of bad news.’
‘Bad news?’
Otilia and Lassarian came in behind Ulrika, both in robes, as the count crossed to his chair and slumped into it.
‘Lord,’ said Otilia, ‘what has happened?’
He waved at her and Ulrika and Lassarian to sit, but when they did, he said nothing for a long time, staring at the corpse of the man he had just killed, still slowly leaking its life blood onto the boards.
‘Karl Franz has reached Nuln,’ he said at last. ‘He did not stay in Arschel. He did not rest. He did not stop to eat or drink. He and his retinue rode straight through without a break and arrived at the gates of Nuln an hour before sunset.’ He sighed. ‘It is the end. We are done.’
Ulrika, Otilia and Lassarian looked at eac
h other, uncomfortable. Otilia licked her lips nervously.
‘Is there no way, lord? Surely we have entered Nuln before.’
Von Messinghof looked up at her, eyes blazing. ‘He is not just in Nuln! He is in the palace of Countess Emmanuelle, with all her soldiers and magisters and priests added to his own! I have no army strong enough to break down those walls and defeat his defenders. Nor is there any trick that will draw him again into the open. He knows we are after him! He is on his guard!’ He laughed wildly and pointed at Ulrika. ‘You! You are wanted dead or alive as the Queen of the Lahmians, of all things! There are descriptions of you being raced to every village, inn and roadwarden along the Nuln-to-Altdorf road! No. It is impossible. Karl Franz might as well be on Mannslieb. We will not reach him.’
Otilia lowered her head, chastised, and Ulrika and Lassarian sat silent, afraid to speak. The count stared again at the corpse for a long while, then spoke again without looking up.
‘I will die for this. The von Carstein punishment for failure is death. I will return to Sylvania and make my report and await my execution. You, however, need not suffer my fate. Lassarian, I would advise you to find a new master, in Bretonnia perhaps, or farther south. Somewhere Sylvania is not at the moment casting its eye. Otilia, Ulrika, you may do the same if you wish, or you might try your luck with the Lahmians. They will be the best protection against his wrath – for a while at least. I am sorry I dragged you into a debacle. I meant to elevate you all. You would have been the heroes of the new order. Now… now it will be someone else’s turn to usher in the Sylvanian Empire.’
He stood and crossed to the travelling trunk that held his belongings. ‘I will put ashore before Nuln. Your service to me ends there. Go where you wish. Do what you will.’
There was another long silence, then Lassarian snorted and stood and strode out of the cabin. Ulrika was about to follow him when Otilia bit her lip and spoke again.
‘Lord, please. I do not want to leave you. You are my master. You are my–’
‘I am your doom!’ snarled von Messinghof. His claws dug into the lid of the trunk. ‘No one will live who stays with me. Now go before I strike you. Both of you!’
Otilia stood with a sob and stumbled to the door. Ulrika rose and started after her, the image of herself knocking on the door of Gabriella’s brothel and begging to be allowed to be a Lahmian again making her shudder, but as she reached the door, she paused, for the stray thought had rubbed against another and kindled a tiny ember of an idea in her head.
‘Lord,’ she said, turning.
‘I asked you to go,’ growled von Messinghof.
‘Lord, what if I knew a way to lure him out?’
‘There isn’t one.’
‘There might be. You said it earlier, and it might work.’
The count looked up at her, his brows lowered in annoyance. ‘Stop speaking in riddles. What did I say?’
Ulrika put a hand to her breast. ‘I am the Queen of the Lahmians, wanted dead or alive.’
chapter thirty
THE BAIT
Von Messinghof stared at Ulrika, then stepped towards her, his hands trembling. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me!’
Ulrika took an involuntary step back. ‘Last night, as we fought his Reiksguard, I heard the Emperor calling to his champion to take me alive. You’d said that we were to make it appear the Lahmians had assassinated him, so I had announced myself as herald of the Queen of the Silver Mountain. He – he wanted to interrogate me. He wanted to know the Lahmians’ plans. If we were to let him know where I was…’
A glow appeared in von Messinghof’s eyes that looked very much like the light of hope, but then it died. ‘No,’ he sighed. ‘It was a good thought, but it won’t work.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it will not be the Emperor who comes. If he truly does want to interrogate you personally, he will send the Reiksguard to fetch you, and you will be dragged back to the palace, put in the deepest dungeon, bound in silver chains and subjected to tortures that will make you wish that you were not immortal. You will not draw him out. You will only succeed in trapping yourself.’
Ulrika cursed. He was right, of course. She couldn’t very well ask Karl Franz to rendezvous with her and expect him to walk into her trap unaccompanied. But there had to be some way they could use her as bait.
‘Lord, if I might make a suggestion?’
Ulrika and von Messinghof looked up. Otilia had reappeared in the door, an uncertain expression on her face.
Von Messinghof scowled. ‘What is it?’
Otilia stepped back into the room. ‘You know the story of the rabbit who begs not to be thrown in the briars? What if Ulrika does the reverse?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked the count.
‘What if she asks to be imprisoned in the palace? What if she seems almost eager to go?’
‘You mean to make it seem that I intend some mischief there?’ asked Ulrika. ‘So that they fear to let me in?’
‘Exactly,’ said Otilia. ‘They would be forced to lock you up elsewhere, and if Karl Franz wanted to question you, he would have to visit you there.’
‘But that is no better,’ said von Messinghof. ‘They could lock her up anywhere. We would have no way to plan our attack beforehand.’
Otilia smiled, cold and cruel. ‘You would if she allowed herself to be caught only by the witch hunters. There is nowhere they would take her except the Iron Tower.’
Ulrika’s eyes widened. She bared her fangs. ‘Lord,’ she said, turning to von Messinghof. ‘This is not a plan to assassinate Karl Franz. This is a plan to destroy me! She has tried to turn me over to the witch hunters before.’
‘How is this an improvement?’ asked von Messinghof, glaring at Otilia. ‘A tower on an island in the middle of the Reik, well fortified and accessible only by two bridges?’
Otilia shrugged. ‘You wanted a way to know in advance where Ulrika would be taken. I have given you one. For the rest, I know not. As you have told me, I am not a tactician.’
‘Clearly,’ said von Messinghof.
But now gears were turning in Ulrika’s head. What if the island’s defences could be used to their advantage?
‘It might work, though,’ she said. ‘Here.’
She crossed to von Messinghof’s desk and took up a quill, then dipped it in ink. Von Messinghof and Otilia followed and watched as she drew on a scrap of parchment the two banks of the Reik, then a circle between them to represent the Iron Tower, and finally the two bridges, one connecting it to the north bank, another linking it to the south.
‘The tower is also accessible by river, lord,’ she said, drawing an arrow in the middle of the Reik that pointed to the island. She dipped her quill again and crossed out the bridges. ‘And if you were to somehow remove the bridges, it would be very difficult for anyone to come to the Emperor’s aid, once he set foot upon it.’
Von Messinghof’s eyes were glowing again. He chewed a finger absently as he looked at Ulrika’s simple map. ‘We have the barges. We can land them on the island with no difficulty. He would be surrounded and cut off.’
‘If we can remove the bridges,’ said Ulrika.
‘Aye,’ said von Messinghof. He turned and began to pace, then waved them away. ‘Go tell Lassarian I am not done with him after all. And wake Nuncio Emmanus. I believe I finally have a use for his considerable power.’
Ulrika bowed and Otilia curtseyed, then they turned and left the room.
In the hall, Otilia touched Ulrika’s arm. ‘It is a very brave thing you have volunteered to do,’ she said, smiling. ‘Very brave.’
Ulrika swallowed as she walked off. Though Ulrika had been the one who suggested it, she suddenly felt that she had somehow fallen into a trap of Otilia’s devising.
Two nights later, as Ulrika looked down at a veritable army of witch hun
ters and Reiksguard from where she perched upon the two-storey-high statue of Magnus the Pious in the centre of Nuln’s magnificent Temple District, the same feeling returned to her. Why had she suggested this insanity, and how was she going to live through it?
In the end, the most difficult aspect of the plan had not been the bridges – their destruction was apparently well within Nuncio Emmanus’s abilities – but rather picking the proper place and time for Ulrika to reveal herself. It had to be arranged so that the witch hunters would grab her before the Reiksguard had a chance, yet she also had to be certain that Karl Franz would hear of her capture. It would be pointless – fatally so – to allow herself to be taken into the Iron Tower without the Emperor knowing she was there.
Finally, after securing inside information about Karl Franz’s itinerary through his network of spies, von Messinghof had decided that the best time and place for Ulrika to make herself known would be on the Emperor’s third night in Nuln. He was to meet with Nuln’s arch lector of Sigmar, as well as the grand master of the Templars of Sigmar – the witch hunters – and representatives of the other cults, in a grand conclave at Nuln’s massive temple of Sigmar, to discuss the vampire crisis and to attempt to arrange a coordinated strategy to fight it. The conclave was taking place at the temple rather than the palace in order to give the public a chance to see Karl Franz pray in all the pageantry of state and be publicly saluted by the arch lector as the epitome of all Sigmarite virtues and a true friend to Nuln.
That day at noon, accompanied by Ludwig Schwarzhelm and two companies of Reiksguard, the Emperor had left the countess’s palace and marched through the Altestadt to the Temple District as cheering crowds lined the streets, then he knelt and prayed on the steps of the great temple. After that, he had been crowned with a golden laurel and gifted with a silver chalice by the arch lector, then stood and looked imperial while the arch lector read a long speech of welcome. Finally, after saluting the roaring crowd that had gathered at the base of the temple steps, he had gone within, and the real work of the day had begun.
