by Nathan Long
Now it was four hours past sunset, and Ulrika was seeing signs that the conclave might finally be breaking up. About a quarter of an hour before, a Reiksguard knight had slipped out one of the temple’s service doors and crossed to speak with the Reiksguard captain in charge of the companies who had formed an unbroken ring around the temple since Karl Franz had entered it. After that, while one of the companies remained on guard, the other had formed a column in front of the temple, not thirty paces from the statue upon which she hid, and the horses of Karl Franz and Schwarzhelm had been brought to the base of the wide marble steps, where they waited for the return of their masters.
In the orange flicker of several hundred torches, the crowd waited as well. As far as Ulrika could tell, they had stood there all day, through the heat of the afternoon and the chill of the evening, all for one more brief glance of their Emperor when he once again strode out through the temple doors and rode away. Ale and sweetmeat vendors had roamed the crowd all day, while enterprising hawkers sold badges and tin coins with Karl Franz’s profile stamped on them, as well as flags, cockades and even paper fans with the Imperial colours. Consequently, the mob was in a festive mood.
There were however, others slipping through the crowd that spread fear rather than cheer, and who seemed to trail a tail of silence and dread after them like some lodestone comet – witch hunters, skulking among the onlookers in squads of six or seven, their wide hats low and their long coats flaring as they searched for signs of heresy or revolt. The people shrank back and averted their gaze at their approach, then stared nervously after them as they walked on.
Ulrika stared at them too. It was to them that she would be surrendering after her charade began, and they were not known for their gentle hospitality. She hoped Karl Franz would be quick, and make her stay with them as brief as possible.
As if sensing her thoughts, one of the witch hunters looked up at the statue of Magnus the Pious and seemed to look straight at her. It was Meinhart Schenk! She shrank back into the shadow of the old hero’s upraised hammer and stayed absolutely motionless.
Schenk squinted myopically and rubbed his chin, then continued on with his men. Ulrika let out a breath. If he had seen her before time all would have been lost.
With a huge, hollow boom, the great doors of the temple began swinging open, and more Reiksguard marched out, swords held before them, to secure the steps. Ulrika’s chest tightened and a chill of dread ran up her spine. This was it. The curtain was lifting. The comedy was about to begin. It was time to play her part.
As the last of the knights took their positions on either side of the steps, Karl Franz stepped out through the high, arched doors with his honour guard around him and Ludwig Schwarzhelm at his shoulder and stopped on the top step. It was almost impossible to tell that he was sick and weak with fever. He held himself square and proud, as an Emperor should. The cheering of the crowd was deafening, and the Reiksguard had to hold them back as they surged unconsciously forwards.
The Emperor saluted them with a smile, then raised his hands for quiet. Almost at once, he got it. The roar of the mob dropped to a whisper, and everyone waited eagerly for him to speak.
Ulrika beat him to it.
‘Karl Franz, Prince of the Reikland and Emperor of the provinces!’ She shouted as she leapt to the top of Magnus the Pious’s great granite head and drew her rapier. ‘You ran from me once, lord! So I return to challenge you again!’
All eyes turned to her, both in the crowd and on the steps, and her tongue nearly froze in her mouth at the attention. She swallowed thickly, then forced herself to go on.
‘I, Countess Gabriella of Lahmia, herald of the Queen of the Silver Mountain, request that you face me in single combat for the crown that sits on your head, and the Empire that lies at your–!’
A pistol shot drowned out her last word and the ball smashed into her upper arm, knocking her back and making her fight for balance on Magnus’s head as the pain dizzied her. She looked down. Captain Schenk was glaring up at her from under his hat, a long-barrelled pistol smoking in his hand, and his men were aiming more.
Ulrika stepped back, saluted the Emperor with her blade, then spun and dived into the crowd behind the statue.
A great roar shivered the air as she landed and rolled to her feet in the midst of the crowd – a thousand voices all screaming for her blood – but above their clamour she could hear the louder voices of men used to giving commands.
‘Kill her!’ came Schenk’s voice, harsh and angry. ‘Kill the vampire! In Sigmar’s name, destroy her!’
‘Alive!’ came Karl Franz’s voice, higher and clearer. ‘Take her alive! I will question her!’
Then, loudest of all, Schwarzhelm, as hard and deep as the bark of a cannon. ‘Surround the square! Do not let her escape! She is the Emperor’s prisoner!’
Around Ulrika the crowd shouted and pointed. Some of the braver ones edged in, clubs and daggers in their hands. Ulrika snarled at them, baring her fangs and lashing around with her rapier though her wounded arm protested mightily. They shrank back, terrified, and wailed all the louder.
Ulrika ran through them, swiping left and right and heading for the south edge of the square, but not too fast. Schenk and his men were behind her, parting the crowd with kicks and cudgels, and she didn’t want to lose them. At the same time, six mounted Reiksguard were ploughing through the crowd on the right, racing to close off a side street. If she timed it right, this would be perfect.
She ran towards the Reiksguard, holding out her hand. ‘Take me to the palace!’ she cried. ‘I must speak to the Emperor, in the palace!’
The knights turned towards her, raising their weapons and reaching for her, but as they got close she looked behind her, as if afraid of the witch hunters, and dodged past the Reiksguard into the side street.
‘Keep them away!’ she called. ‘I will not surrender to them. Only to you!’
‘Let us by, fools!’ shouted Schenk behind her. ‘You’ve let her escape!’
‘Leave her to us, you butchers,’ cried a knight. ‘She’s wanted alive!’
Ulrika darted into the crowd that filled the street and looked back, not wanting to get too far ahead. The witch hunters were pushing savagely after her and getting ahead of the knights, who seemed hesitant to crush honest citizens with their horses in order to go more quickly. Ulrika let out a sigh of relief. She’d done it. She made sure Schenk saw her, then darted into an alley too narrow for mounted knights to follow.
‘She’s breaking west!’ called Schenk. ‘After her!’
After several more blocks and a handful of near-misses, Ulrika ran into the back garden of a wealthy townhouse that butted against the Altestadt wall, sheathed her weapons, and started climbing, but slow, as if she was terribly wounded – which wasn’t far from the truth.
Heavy boots thudded around the house and a pistol shot splintered the stone by her head as she reached her bloody arm for another hand-hold. She fell back into the garden with a cry, and rolled up with her back to the wall, drawing and snarling like a trapped wolf as they surrounded her, swords and pistols at the ready.
‘I’ll not surrender to you, torturers,’ she rasped. ‘Take me to the palace. Bring me to Karl Franz. He is an honourable man.’
‘I’ll bring you nowhere,’ said Schenk. ‘You will die here, for the brothers you slew, for the lies you told, and the good man you corrupted.’
Ulrika swallowed, fear prickling her neck. She hadn’t accounted for this. Schenk was putting his personal vengeance above his duty to his order. This was not according to plan. Desperate, she sneered and gave him a mocking bow.
‘You offer me a quick death, captain? I accept.’ She spread her arms. ‘My words were for Karl Franz only. I am ordered to die before any other takes them from me.’
Schenk’s brow lowered. ‘Is that a challenge?’ He motioned his men forwards. ‘Take
her. Alive.’
A new fear welled up inside her as they moved in. Ursun’s teeth! She had miscalculated by bringing them to so private a place! She had made herself known to Karl Franz, and had put herself in the witch hunters’ hands instead of the Reiksguard’s, all as planned, but there were no witnesses here – no one to see her arrest. Karl Franz would not know the witch hunters had caught her! She would be taken to the Iron Tower and subjected to Schenk’s tortures while von Messinghof waited in vain for the Emperor to arrive. But he would never come, and Ulrika would never be rescued!
With a croak of sheer terror, she lunged for a gap between two of the templars, trying in earnest this time to get away. She cut the arm of one and sent him reeling aside, then punched the other in the face with the guard of her dagger, splintering his cheekbone, but a pistol fired behind her and she went down, her left leg suddenly unable to support her weight.
She rolled over as she hit the ground and saw Schenk holding his second pistol, a grim smile on his face as his men swarmed around her, smashing her with cudgels and the butts of their guns. One cracked her between the eyes, and the moon-bright night went black.
chapter thirty-one
THE IRON TOWER
A glimmering point of pain dawned in the darkness, faint, but growing brighter. Another joined it, a second star coming out near the first. Then two more, glowing like hot coals. Ulrika could not tell what the pains were or where they touched her. She seemed an amorphous cloud, knowing neither up nor down, and burned by floating fires that drifted through her nothingness like windborne spores.
‘Is she secure?’
‘Aye, captain.’
‘Good. I’ll wake her.’
A harsh crack and searing agony flared across Ulrika’s middle, convulsing her, and the black void shattered, revealing red-edged stone and the silhouettes of men. She gasped and tried to sit up, but could not. Something held her at the shoulders, hips and knees, and her wrists and ankles were stretched to their full extent and circled in burning hard-edged pain. Was this a nightmare?
She strained her limbs, trying to force through the paralysis, trying to clear her head, to make sense of what she felt and saw, but the agony of her wrists and ankles made her head swim, and it was not her only pain. Every inch of her body ached and throbbed, and as she looked down at it she saw it was marbled with purple bruises and livid red cuts. The skin of her knees was completely gone, as if she had been dragged on them for miles – which was very likely the truth. Seeing the wounds, the memory of her capture returned, and the rest of the scene began to come into focus. She was indeed in a nightmare – a waking one.
She lay in a low-ceilinged stone room, stripped to her small clothes and bound spreadeagled to a rack with leather straps, and manacles at her wrists and ankles that burned with the foul black heat of silver. Three men stood at the edges of her vision, looking down at her. One was hunched and small and wore the robes of a monk, the second was a prune-faced old man, dressed in plain clothes of the severest cut but of the richest cloth, and the third was Captain Meinhart Schenk, and he held the cudgel.
‘Welcome to the Iron Tower, fiend,’ said the old man in a voice as cold and grey as river clay. ‘I must convey from the outset my deep regret that we will fail you here this night. The sacred duty of our order is to purify the wicked. With our holy implements we drive out the daemons that plague the souls of men, so that they can live better lives or die in peace. But as vampires have no soul, our ministrations will not save you, and for that I am truly sorry. You will die as you lived, an abomination, and will suffer eternal torment in the void.’ He looked sad for a moment at this, but then the corners of his mouth turned up in an insipid smile. ‘Know, however, that Sigmar will one day return to destroy the Ruinous Powers once and for all, and rid the void of its denizens. On that day, your tortured spark will be snuffed out and sweet oblivion will be yours.’ He patted her arm. ‘Be of good cheer, then. Your salvation is coming.’
‘Quicker than yours, you twisted old hypocrite,’ snarled Ulrika. ‘What hell awaits men who take pleasure from the pain of others?’
The smile sagged from the old man’s face and he turned towards the chamber’s heavy wooden door. ‘You may begin, captain. Bring me whatever information you obtain.’
Schenk saluted him as he walked out. ‘Aye, grand master,’ he said, then nodded to the monk. ‘To your quill, brother. Take down every word.’
‘Aye, captain,’ said the monk. He scuttled to a podium and climbed onto a high stool, then dipped a goose quill into a pot of ink and hunched over a parchment, ready to write.
‘Then take down this, brother,’ said Ulrika. ‘I will speak to no one but Karl Franz. The message I convey is from my queen, and a private matter between heads of state. Your tortures will only anger me and worsen my reprisals when I finally win free. Release me now and take me to the palace, or suffer the consequences.’
Captain Schenk snorted and began to circle the rack, slapping the cudgel against his leg with each step. ‘I see you have inherited the gift of blather from your silver-tongued mistress, but I will not be fooled again.’ He sighed. ‘There are so many things I wish to ask you – so much that remains a mystery from when we crossed paths before. But there are more pressing questions. Where is your mistress? Who attacked the Emperor at Ambosstein? Who is behind it all? Where should I begin?’
Ulrika strained at her bonds as Schenk stroked his lantern jaw in a parody of thinking. For all her brave words, she was terrified of what was to come, and panic welled within her like a swift tide, drowning all rational thought. If Karl Franz didn’t know she was taken she would be trapped here forever. Nightmare visions whirled behind her eyes. What could torturers do with a subject that couldn’t die? She wouldn’t have to go to the void to be tormented for all eternity. The witch hunters could keep her here for generations, flaying her and burning her and breaking her bones but never granting her death. Gods of her fathers, she had to get out! She had to get out!
‘Well,’ said Schenk at last. ‘Let us start simply. What is your true name?’
Ulrika hesitated, afraid to make something up for fear of being hit for lying, but knowing that he would also hit her if she refused to talk. Should she tell him her real name, then? Why not? What did it matter? Her family was dead. Schenk could do no harm with it. But some instinct made her pause nonetheless. If she told him one thing, it would be that much harder not to tell him the next, and the next after that. And why should she tell him anything at all? It wasn’t as if he would let her go once she had told him all he wanted to know. She would be tortured no matter what she said or did. And if that was the case, why shouldn’t she frustrate him as much as possible?
‘Countess Emmanuelle of Nuln,’ she said, curling her lip.
Schenk’s face turned red with rage, and he raised the cudgel over her left hand, but just as he was about to smash it down on her knuckles, footsteps and angry voices sounded outside the chamber. Schenk paused, the stick still raised.
‘She is our prisoner, mein herr,’ came the grand master’s voice, high now, and strained. ‘Her interrogation is ours to perform.’
‘She is the Emperor’s prisoner. You hold her against his direct order,’ said a much lower voice, and Ulrika breathed a sigh of relief, for it was that of Ludwig Schwarzhelm.
Two figures entered the chamber – the old man first, backpedalling and gesticulating as he talked, and second, the champion, a head taller and twice as broad. He was so big that his mere presence seemed to push Captain Schenk back from the rack.
‘We hold her for the Emperor’s safety,’ said the old man. ‘She is a dangerous, black-hearted fiend, and cannot be allowed to enter his presence.’
‘And is she so dangerous that you must keep her arrest a secret from him as well?’ asked the champion, looking down at Ulrika with his ham-hock hands on his hips. ‘When precisely were you going to inform
us that you had her?’
The old templar drew himself up. ‘Champion, we have been dealing with fiends of this nature for centuries. You must trust us to determine when it is safe to share what we know of them.’
Schwarzhelm turned a cold eye on him. ‘Templar, it is never safe to hide what you know from your Emperor.’
Ulrika looked past them as the grand master shrank back, trying to see if there was anyone else coming through the door. There was no one. Nor did she sense any heart-fires approaching. Had Schwarzhelm come alone?
‘Where is Karl Franz?’ Ulrika croaked.
All eyes turned on her and Schenk slapped her across the mouth with all his strength. ‘Do not speak until spoken to, fiend!’
Schwarzhelm waved him away, then stepped to her, glaring down over the great black cascade of his beard. ‘I’ll not let the Emperor within miles of you, fiend. Whatever your scheme, he won’t be part of it.’
‘No scheme,’ said Ulrika, spitting blood from her split lips. ‘A challenge. Sword to sword for his Empire.’
‘Oh? And what do you offer in return? What will you give if you lose?’
‘Secrets,’ said Ulrika. ‘I know who sickened the Emperor. I know who put this game in motion. I know why. But I will only tell Karl Franz himself, and only if he defeats me.’
‘I am the Emperor’s champion, fiend,’ said Schwarzhelm. ‘When he is threatened, I do his fighting for him. He is not threatened here, as you are already defeated, so I will not fight you. But you will still tell me your secrets.’
He held out his hand to Captain Schenk. ‘Your cudgel.’
Ulrika’s guts sank as the witch hunter handed over the rod. She hadn’t thought things could get worse, but Schwarzhelm was twice as strong as Schenk. He wouldn’t just bruise her and break her skin once he got to work. He would break bones. He would hurt her in ways that no amount of blood could heal.
‘Champion!’ she blurted. ‘This is not honourable! I have made a formal challenge in the prescribed manner, and you answer it by attacking me while I am bound and defenceless?’
