by Nathan Long
‘Fiends have no honour and deserve no courtesy,’ said Schwarzhelm, then shot hard glances at the witch hunters before returning his eyes to her. ‘But I can give you this. When you have told me what you have to tell, I will not leave you alive. I will part your head from your neck, and spare you the hospitality of your captors.’
‘Herr Schwarzhelm!’ cried the grand master. ‘You cannot make this offer. Such a prisoner is too valuable to kill so quickly!’
Ulrika looked into Schwarzhelm’s eyes. There was no duplicity there. He meant what he said. He was offering her a way out. It was little enough, considering that she was doomed to eternal torment once she died, but to suffer centuries of torture before her inevitable fate? A swift death was still preferable. Despite the temptation, however, she could not yet drop the game. She must still try to make the plan work.
‘A kind offer, champion,’ she said, as he raised the cudgel over her left shin. ‘But I will still speak to no one but Karl Franz.’
‘Then speak,’ said a voice from the corridor.
Everyone turned, and Ulrika looked up in surprise. In her agitation she had not sensed his heart-fire nor heard his footsteps, but Karl Franz, Prince of the Reikland and Emperor of the provinces, was striding into the room with four Reiksguard at his back, his eyes flashing with anger and his skin glistening with fever.
The reaction of the other men in the room was instant and abrupt. Schenk and the grand master went down on their knees and lowered their heads. The monk fell off his chair. Schwarzhelm stepped between Karl Franz and Ulrika and spread his arms.
‘My liege,’ he said, ‘you must not be here. It is too dangerous. Please, depart, and I will return to you with what she knows.’
The Emperor snorted and stepped around him. ‘I am not a child, Ludwig. I do not need my wolf trussed and drugged so that I might kill it with my little bow.’ He looked down at Ulrika, his gaze quick and inquisitive. He was a tall, straight-limbed man, with a face kinder and more open than she would have expected upon one who wore such a heavy mantle. His kindness could not be mistaken for weakness, however. Steely resolve and keen intelligence blazed from his eyes like the light of the sun, and only the sheen of his skin and the gauntness of his cheeks betrayed his hidden illness.
‘I like my information raw and first-hand,’ he continued. ‘Not filtered through intermediaries, no matter how well intentioned. How can I rule an empire when I am not told what goes on within it?’
Ulrika gave an inward sigh of relief as he circled her. He had come. She was saved. The plan was back on track. She strained her senses for signs that the last stage had begun. Nothing yet, but it would come. She would be free, and the killing could begin.
Karl Franz leaned casually against the torture rack and smiled agreeably down at her. ‘Now then,’ he said. ‘All that you have said so far is a lie, I know that. You are no herald, and no Lahmian. You were attacked by Lahmians as my men escorted me from the fight below Ambosstein. I also know that most of the vampires in this “revolt” were as discomfited to be revealed as their neighbours were to find them in their midst. Something is going on, but it isn’t yet a war, and we are not fighting the enemy we are meant to think we are fighting. So…’ He reached out and brushed a lock of blood-matted white hair from her brow. ‘Who are my true enemies, and what do they want?’
A deep shudder went through the stones of the tower, so faint and distant that the men in the room didn’t feel it. Ulrika did, however, for even the slightest movement jolted her bruised and punctured limbs, and she knew what it was. It was the beginning of the end. She smiled up at Karl Franz.
‘We are your true enemies, Emperor,’ she said. ‘And we want your head.’ She laughed as his carefully casual expression curdled, to be replaced by angry contempt.
‘I thought you had secrets for me, fiend,’ he said. ‘Not empty threats.’
A heavier rumble shook the chamber, and this time the men felt it. They looked up, grasping their swords.
‘I did have a secret, my liege,’ Ulrika said, grinning. ‘But it is now revealed. You should have listened to your champion. You have walked into a trap, and it is closing as we speak.’
chapter thirty-two
TWISTING THE KNIFE
Ludwig Schwarzhelm grunted as if he’d been hit. He stepped to Karl Franz and took his arm in a white-knuckled grip. ‘Come, my liege. We must leave here – now!’
The Emperor stared at Ulrika, a mixture of fury and admiration in his eyes, as he let the champion pull him away. ‘Aye,’ he said, distracted. ‘It seems we must.’
Another tremor struck, strong enough now to sway the men on their feet. Dust sifted down from the ceiling.
The Emperor snapped out of his bemusement and strode to the door of the chamber ahead of Schwarzhelm, the four Reiksguard surrounding them.
The old templar stepped after them, calling to Schenk and the monk. ‘To your stations! Wake the barracks! We are attacked!’
The monk hurried to obey, picking up the skirts of his robe and running past the grand master into the hall, but Schenk drew his sword and approached Ulrika, a mad light in his eyes.
‘You led me to this,’ he rasped. ‘You tricked me into trapping the Emperor. Well, you won’t live to see your victory, you–’
At the door, the grand master stopped dead. ‘Captain Schenk! What are you doing?’
‘Killing her as I should have long ago,’ said Schenk, raising his sword.
The old man leapt at him, surprisingly quick for his age, and caught his arm. ‘Captain! No! I command you! She has told us nothing! If all goes for the worst, she will be our only link to the perpetrators. She must live!’
Schenk held firm for a long moment, but at last let out a breath and lowered his sword. ‘Very well. She will live, but she will wish it were otherwise.’
And with that he drew his dagger, a sturdy main gauche, and before the old templar knew what he was about, he stabbed it neatly between two of Ulrika’s ribs on her left side and sank it deep. Ulrika howled and bucked, but he wasn’t done. With a savage wrench, he twisted the blade so that it sat edge-on between the two ribs, flexing them apart, then left it there.
Ulrika screamed and flinched, then screamed again, for every movement she made, even the tiniest twitch, brought fresh pain from the wedged blade.
Schenk grinned down at her as the old templar pulled him anxiously away. ‘You should pray for my safe return, fiend, or that knife may stay sheathed there for eternity.’
‘Enough, Schenk. Enough,’ hissed the old witch hunter. ‘We must go.’
The captain nodded and they strode out the door, leaving Ulrika alone – and in blinding agony.
She fought not to black out. It was no part of her plan to stay here and hope for rescue while the final battle raged above her. Of course, now that she thought about it, she really hadn’t had a plan for this part of the scheme at all. She remembered having visions of snapping her shackles with a twist of her wrists and ripping out the throats of terrified witch hunters, but in her visions, the shackles had been iron, and she hadn’t had a knife in her ribs, or bullet wounds in her shoulder and calf. She hadn’t been recently battered to a pulp. She wondered if she would even be able to walk if she managed to get off the rack. Still, she had to try.
She craned her neck to look at her hands. The pain of just that small movement nearly sank her, and she had to clench her teeth and wait while flickering blackness retreated to the edges of her vision. When she could see again, she saw that the manacles around her wrists were thick circlets, crushingly tight, with chains that went down through holes in the wooden rack. Biting her cheek against the pain, she tugged experimentally on one, and the other pulled flat against the wood. They were linked. If she snapped one, both hands would be free, but snapping them seemed nearly impossible. If they had been solid silver she might have pulled them apart with ste
ady pressure, for silver was soft, but they were silvered steel. Nor did the chain between them have enough play for her to twist it until it broke. No, there was only one way to do it, and even if it worked it would hurt more than anything since her fall into the Reik a lifetime ago.
A colossal rumble shook the tower, ten times the strength of the earlier tremors, and before it faded, a second struck, just as strong. Ulrika screamed as the rack bounced and pebbles pattered all around her. Then she heard terrified shouts from above, and she grinned through the pain. Emmanus had done his work. The two bridges connecting the Iron Tower to the banks of the river had collapsed, brought low by powerful incantations of entropy that piled centuries of weathering upon them in the space of a few minutes, loosening their mortar, cracking their stones, rotting their timbers until they fell apart of their own accord. The jaws of the trap had closed. Karl Franz and his few troops were hemmed in on the island with von Messinghof’s barges disgorging an army of the dead to surround him. No rescue could come in time now. The count would have the Emperor’s head. His plan would succeed, but not without her! She had to be there! She had to be in at the end!
With a savage jerk, Ulrika punched forwards with her right fist, trying to snap the manacle chain. Agony erupted across her knife-pierced side at the sudden movement, and her wrist burned as the silver abraded it.
When she could think again, she looked at her wrist. No change. With her hands high over her head, it was impossible to generate enough force. Grinding her teeth and trembling like a whipped dog, she tried again anyway, pressing her left wrist tight against the rack so that the right would have as much slack as possible, then snapping forwards as hard as she could. This time she passed out, but when she woke and raised her head, she saw that the link closest to the manacle had pulled apart a fraction of an inch. She groaned. She would almost have preferred that nothing had happened so that she could give up. Now she had to make another attempt.
Two more tries and two more blackouts and it was done. She heard the ping of the broken link bouncing off the flagstone floor as oblivion closed over her, and when she woke again she could lower her arms. That was nearly as painful as what had come before, and was accomplished in hissing, cursing inches, but at last she brought them to her sides and raised her hand to the main gauche.
Just touching the pommel made her cry out, and wrapping her fingers around its hilt darkened her vision again. She closed her eyes and steeled herself. If it were to be done, it would be best done quickly. With a Kossar curse she jerked it straight out, and…
…woke up a moment later with her left arm hanging over the edge of the rack and her hand empty. She cursed. She must have dropped the dagger in her faint. Fortunately, she had claws, though they were not nearly as efficient at cutting thick leather straps. What would have taken seconds took minutes instead. At least the pain in her ribs had diminished to a throbbing ache instead of razor-bright agony, and when she sat up, she only had to clutch the edge of the rack and fight swirling nausea, and did not pass out again.
Now all that was left were her ankles. With a grinding twist, she reached down to the floor and hooked the main gauche by its ring guard, then bent to her feet. She grimaced as she saw the mess that Schenk’s second bullet had made of her left calf. It looked like a messy bite. She wondered if she could even walk.
She stuck the point of the dagger into a link of the manacle chain and twisted. It was a good blade of finest steel. The link bent and parted, and the chain rattled through the holes in the rack. She was free, though the silver manacles still encircled her wrists and ankles, and her flesh beneath them was blackened and flaking like burnt paper.
The pain of it was excruciating, dizzying, but there was nothing she could do. She hadn’t the time or strength to tear them off. She had to get to the fighting. She lowered her legs to the floor and stood, then held on to the rack for a long second as the chamber swam around her.
When the motion stopped, she looked around. The room was bare but for the rack and a few other instruments of torture. The rest of her clothes were nowhere to be seen. Nor were her weapons. No matter. She had Schenk’s dagger, and would find more weapons as she went. She limped to the open door, her left leg barely supporting her and her chains rattling after her, and looked into the corridor. It angled around dark corners in both directions, but Karl Franz, Schwarzhelm and the witch hunters had all gone right when they exited, so she did too.
Coming muffled through the stone as she limped on were the sounds of fighting and death. Men were bawling orders and shrieking in terror. Beasts were roaring. Guns thundered and steel clashed and the tower shook. Then, much closer, Ulrika heard stealthy footsteps and the low voices of whispering men. She sensed their pulses a second later – ten of them, their hearts racing, moving in a cluster.
She slowed. They were just around the next corner. She saw the light of their lantern casting shadows on the opposite wall. She would jump them, smash the lamp and bite and drink as they flailed in the dark. The blood would give her the strength to fight the rest.
The footsteps stopped, and she heard the clatter of an iron door rattled in its frame.
‘Locked,’ said a voice. ‘Damn. Go back and see if one o’them corpses had a key.’
Ulrika gasped with relief and stumbled around the corner. ‘Sergeant! It’s me!’
Behind a door of iron bars Stahleker and his men looked up, bloodied and bruised. They had been in a fight.
‘Captain!’ barked Stahleker. ‘You live!’
‘No,’ said Ulrika, reaching the door and catching herself against the bars. ‘But I am walking. I–’
As she said it, however, she wasn’t. Her legs gave out and she crashed to her ruined knees. The pain from her various wounds was too much and she curled up like a dead spider, groaning and heaving.
‘Taal’s horns!’ swore Stahleker, kneeling on the opposite side of the bars. ‘What did them witch burners do to you?’ He looked back at his men. ‘Find that damn key!’
‘We searched the bodies as we came, sergeant,’ said one. ‘There weren’t no key.’
Stahleker cursed and shook the door. The bars were an inch thick, and the lock set behind heavy steel plates. He looked at Ulrika.
‘Can you open it, captain?’
‘I can try,’ said Ulrika.
But as she pulled herself up the bars she knew it was impossible. Her wounds were too great. The pain was too much. Her silver shackles were making her weak. She braced herself anyway, and pulled with all her might. The hole in her ribs tore further and her blood sizzled as it welled from the bruises on her wrists and touched the silver manacles. She hadn’t moved the door an inch.
She bent over, dizzy. ‘I – I don’t think–’
Stahleker pulled up the sleeve of his leather jack and stuck his arm through the bars. She raised her eyes to him. His face was set and grim.
‘Drink,’ he said.
She stared at him, them shook her head. ‘No, sergeant. Not from you.’
‘There’s nothing else to do.’
‘No. It was Mags’ condition. I swore.’
He left his arm where it was. ‘I’m not leaving you here, captain.’
Ulrika glared at him. ‘There has to be another way. Go find some witch hunter. I’ll drink from him.’
‘There isn’t time.’ A cannon barked somewhere above and Stahleker looked up, then back down at her. ‘It’s not going von Messinghof’s way up there. Schwarzhelm brought fifty men with him when he came, and the Emperor brought forty more, plus magisters. There’s near the same amount of witch hunters as well, and they shot a flare towards the navy docks. There’ll be warships coming soon – and more men.’
Still Ulrika didn’t take his arm. She didn’t want Stahleker to become a swain. She didn’t want him fawning over her. He loved Mags. She didn’t want to be the death of that.
‘Yo
u are our leader, captain,’ said Stahleker. ‘Not the count. We didn’t come here to help him kill Karl Franz. We came for you. Now, drink!’
Ulrika closed her eyes, hiding the pain in them. Damn him! Did he think she could resist when she needed it so desperately? When it pulsed inches from her mouth? With a sobbing snarl she snatched his wrist and clamped her mouth to it, breaking the skin and sucking greedily.
His men cried out, but Stahleker waved them off.
‘Leave her be,’ he said, grimacing. ‘Leave her be.’
Relief flooded her as his blood coursed through her veins. She could feel the strength returning to her withered muscles, and the edges of her wounds knitting together. She could feel hot red fire burning along her nerves, waking her, filling her with vigour, readying her for battle.
Stahleker moaned and steadied himself on the bars with his other hand. Ulrika didn’t care. Her need was too great. She had to drink until the black char at her wrists and ankles faded to grey scars, until the torn muscle between her ribs and the punctured organs beneath them were healed.
No. No, she mustn’t. She mustn’t lose herself to her hunger, not with Stahleker. With a cry of frustration she tore her mouth away from his wrist and shoved his arm back through the bars.
‘Enough!’ she gasped. ‘Stay away! I – I–’
Stahleker sagged back into the arms of his men, his eyes clouded and a distant smile on his face. Ulrika glared at him, her borrowed blood thumping in her temples.
‘Snap out of it, sergeant!’ she snarled. ‘I won’t allow it!’ She rose and tore the silvered manacles from her wrists and ankles like they were paper, then gripped the bars. ‘Stand clear. Get him back.’
The lancers retreated, dragging Stahleker with them, and she pulled again on the door, just above the lock plate. It still didn’t move, but this time the bars began to groan and flex. Inside her, she could feel the partially healed knife wound tearing again, and her blackened wrists began to bleed, but she had the heart to fight the pain now, and the power in her limbs.
