Bloodsworn

by Nathan Long

  Anger exploded through her shock, and as Otilia ripped her knife and hand free, Ulrika caught her by the neck instead, eyes blazing. ‘You burned Famke,’ she whispered, as they slid alarmingly towards the griffon’s rump. ‘You will die.’

  Otilia scrabbled frantically to halt their slide, dropping her dagger to clutch at the griffon’s scales. ‘You madwoman! We’ll both die!’

  The strap around Ulrika’s leg pulled taut as it reached its limit and she jerked to a stop. She smiled savagely at Otilia, showing all her teeth. ‘No, just you.’

  Otilia started to scramble back towards the saddle, but Ulrika caught her and stabbed her in the side with the witch hunter’s dagger. Otilia spasmed and tried to pull away, eyes wide, but Ulrika plunged the knife in again.

  ‘Mercy,’ Otilia whimpered, spewing blood across Ulrika’s breast. ‘Please, sister.’

  ‘Anything less than burning is mercy for you, bitch,’ Ulrika snarled, then pulled Otilia close and tore out her throat with her fangs. Otilia tried to scream, but the air in her lungs escaped through the hole, and she only hissed. Ulrika buried her face in the ragged wound and gulped down her blood by the mouthful.

  It was the rich blood of a vampire, distilled into an elixir of strength that surged through Ulrika’s veins like a spring flood. Stahleker’s blood had saved Ulrika’s life and partially healed her cuts and bruises, but Otilia’s blood was giving her Otilia’s strength and adding it to her own. She could feel the puncture wound in her side closing, and the bullet wounds in her arm and leg healing. Her muscles twitched and clenched with vitality. Her head was clear and her senses sharp. Gods of Nehekhara, if she drank it all she would be strong enough to wrestle a giant!

  No. No. She would be so bloated and sick that she couldn’t fight, and that was the last thing she wanted. Otilia was only a minor revenge. Her true vengeance was coming, and she had to be ready.

  She pulled her mouth from Otilia’s neck and pushed her away. The vampiress looked down at her with lust-glazed, half-conscious eyes, and reached a trembling hand to stroke her cheek.

  ‘Mistress,’ she hissed. ‘You feed so strongly.’

  Ulrika grimaced, revolted, and hacked at Otilia’s neck with Schenk’s dagger. It was a heavy blade, made for prying open coffins and punching through armour, and with Ulrika’s new strength behind it, it cut halfway through Otilia’s spine before it stopped.

  Otilia’s eyes bulged, staring accusingly. Ulrika struck again and cut through the rest. Otilia’s head bounced past her shoulder and rolled off the griffin’s back to the river below. Ulrika heaved her body after it, then sat up and caught the strap and began to pull herself back to the saddle. A few seconds later she heard a splash from below.

  ‘There is your mercy,’ she spat, then surveyed the river.

  Von Messinghof’s spell-sped barge had caught the one that bore Karl Franz, and the two rivercraft were locked in a deadly, spinning embrace, drifting rapidly beyond the walls of Nuln as flames consumed them. Figures milled across both decks, but the fighting was fiercest on the Emperor’s barge. Von Messinghof’s undead troops had surrounded the Reiksguard in the waist, and were keeping them from going to the aid of Karl Franz and Ludwig Schwarzhelm, who were back to back at the stern, being pressed to the rail by Lassarian and von Messinghof and a handful of Blood Knights. Of Emmanus she could see no sign.

  A dozen oarboats and sloops had set sail from the naval docks and were in hot pursuit of the barges, but they would not reach them in time. Karl Franz would be long dead before they came to his rescue.

  Ulrika spurred the dead griffon towards the floating battle, her jaw set. She had done this. When von Messinghof had been ready to admit defeat, she had suggested the mad plan that had put the Emperor’s neck within the reach of his blade. She had set the doom of the Empire in motion, and likely the doom of mankind as well. She had been glad to do it, for she had believed that it had been mankind, with its fear and ignorance and hatred, that had burned Famke beyond hope of recovery, and she had wanted vengeance upon it for its crime.

  Of course, mankind had burned Famke, but Ulrika could no longer blame them – not entirely. Von Messinghof had manipulated them, just as he had manipulated her, using their fear and ignorance and hatred to turn them against ‘the other’. No matter who set the torch to the kindling, it was the count who had struck the flame, and it was he who would pay – with his life, and his dreams.

  In the greater scheme of things, she cared little one way or the other if Karl Franz died. Emperors and Tzars came and went and the world went on. But because his death was von Messinghof’s greatest wish, Ulrika would stop it. She would save the Emperor and kill the count, and make him know why.

  She heard the distant rattle of gunfire, and a second later heavy impacts thudded into the dead griffon’s body and wings. It slewed sideways in the air, losing altitude. Ulrika cursed and hauled on the reins to pull it up. She had been so intent on catching the barges that she had forgotten the naval ships.

  A line of handgunners on the deck of the lead boat was tracking her as another line knelt and reloaded. A flash of flame and smoke drew her eye to the boat’s swivel gun, and with a sickening rip, a two-pound shot tore through the griffin’s right wing.

  ‘Fools!’ cried Ulrika. ‘I’m going to save your Emperor!’

  The horror listed dangerously to the right and lost even more altitude. The water was getting much too close, and they were still several hundred yards from the barges.

  Ulrika spurred the thing savagely, jerking at the reins. ‘Hold together, you beast!’

  It regained a little height as it straightened out, climbing to the height of a ship’s mast, but the wind was rattling through the holes in its wings and tearing them wider with every sweep. More gunfire popped from behind, but Ulrika was long out of range. Her only enemy now was gravity.

  She eyed the burning barge, yet two hundred yards ahead, and now with its nose pointed towards her. She could still look down at it, could still see Karl Franz and Schwarzhelm at the stern, holding their own against Sylvania’s finest, but she was sinking fast.

  ‘Up, you misbegotten bag of bones!’ shouted Ulrika. ‘Up!’

  Men at the prow were shouting and pointing and raising long guns at her, but the battle beyond them went on unheeding, a mad dance of the living and the dead, chopping each other to pieces in the midst of a maelstrom of fire.

  Ulrika’s spurs tore scales from the griffon’s flanks as the horror dipped below the level of the rail, and her vantage vanished.

  ‘Up! Damn you!’

  With a last mighty beat of its ruptured wings, the undead griffin lifted itself again and topped the forward rail by inches.

  The handgunners fell back, firing into its belly as it wallowed over them, and then, with a groan that was almost a sigh of relief, it crashed nose-first to the deck and slammed into the middle of the melee, knocking flat Reiksguard, Blood Knight and wight alike with its wings, and crushing still more under its stitched-together body before it finally skidded to a stop in a smear of black ichor.

  Ulrika launched herself from its back like an Estalian bull dancer and sprang over the heads of the intervening knights and undead.

  ‘Hold them, brothers!’ she called to the Blood Knights as she landed beyond them, then sprinted to the stern, passing the body of Nuncio Emmanus, burned to a cinder with a dead bright wizard’s throat clutched in his charred black hands, and scooping up a decapitated Reiksguard’s long sword as she dodged through burning debris.

  Since her last glimpse, the fight at the stern rail had divided into two. On the port side, Lassarian and a handful of Blood Knights had separated Ludwig Schwarzhelm from the Emperor, and hemmed the champion within a ring of flashing steel. On the starboard side, von Messinghof fought Karl Franz alone, sword to sword, as sheets of flame billowed all around them. It was almost too easy.

  Despi
te his centuries of swordplay and his inhuman strength and speed, the Sylvanian was having trouble dispatching the plague-stricken mortal man. The few times he managed to slipped past the Emperor’s guard, his blade hardly scratched Karl Franz’s armour. Worse, whether it was the proximity of the fire around them, or some ward or relic that the Emperor wore, something was slowing the count, and he had a deep gash on his arm and another across the chest to show for it. He was driving Karl Franz inexorably back, but it was taking all his strength and concentration to do it. He didn’t seem to sense Ulrika behind him. It would take but a single thrust from her to kill him and save the Emperor, but where was the satisfaction in that? She wanted the count to see it coming, and to know why she did it.

  ‘Lord,’ she said, stepping behind him. ‘I escaped.’

  Von Messinghof darted a look back before returning to his fight. ‘Well done,’ he gasped. ‘Help Lassarian kill that cursed juggernaut. The Emperor is mine!’

  ‘Lord,’ said Ulrika, ‘Otilia told me who betrayed Famke to the witch hunters.’

  The count faltered, but only for the briefest of seconds, then renewed his assault on Karl Franz, who fought silently, and with complete concentration.

  ‘I merely forced a lesson you needed to learn,’ said von Messinghof without looking back. ‘That humans are not to be trusted. Only when we rule them will we be safe.’

  Karl Franz slipped a cut through the count’s defences during this oration, and gashed him across the wrist. Von Messinghof snarled and redoubled his attacks, slashing in a blind fury.

  Ulrika took another step. ‘Lord, the vampires I encountered in your service were without exception backstabbing plotters who sought nothing but their own advancement. The – the humans, however–’ She choked as she remembered Stahleker handing her his braid. ‘The humans were brave and true to their word, and – and I wish to all the gods I have lost that I was still one of them.’

  Von Messinghof laughed as he drove Karl Franz back. ‘But you are not! You are a vampire, and your brave humans would slay you for it! Your only hope for a future is my master, who will give you a world in which you are not hunted or staked or–!’

  A staggering impact knocked him sideways and sent Ulrika staggering towards the flames. The barge had slammed backwards into an outcropping of rocks that thrust from the river bank, sending everyone reeling. Karl Franz crashed into the rail and a falling spar struck his helmet, clubbing him to the deck and stunning him.

  Von Messinghof regained his balance first and lunged forwards, laughing, to smash the sword from the dazed Emperor’s hand, leaving him helpless as the stern ground against the rocks and the entwined barges fishtailed around to smash side-on into the bank. From both decks came thuds and crashes and cries of pain and surprise.

  ‘Hate me if you will,’ said von Messinghof to Ulrika as she recovered, ‘but I am your salvation. This is your salvation. Kill me and your “honourable” humans will cut you down. You will die the true death. Your eternity of torment will begin.’

  Ulrika hesitated as the Karl Franz struggled to stand and Von Messinghof put his blade to the Emperor’s throat. Her mind flashed back to the silver-manacled rack in the cellar of the Iron Tower, to the flames that had consumed Famke, to the hundred other horrible things men had done to her and hers. Mankind was cruel, there was no doubt about that, but the count was crueller. Whatever they might do to her if they caught her was nothing to what he had already done.

  ‘I am ready,’ she said, and stabbed for von Messinghof’s spine with her sword.

  The count spun and slashed it aside before it connected, then thrust for her chest, snarling. ‘Fool! Our empire will be better without you!’

  The thrust was swift, and nearly struck home, but Ulrika was swifter. Filled with righteous rage and Otilia’s blood, she had never felt stronger or more alive. She parried the blow an inch from her sternum and riposted with a thrust of her own, punching through von Messinghof’s plate and piercing his chest where the muscle connected to his sword arm.

  The count pulled away, roaring, and raised his sword two-handed. To Ulrika he moved as if through honey, slow and clumsy. She blocked the strike and kicked him barefoot in the chest – straight into the fire.

  The count fell backwards into a pile of blazing crates and immediately started to burn, his centuries old skin going up like paper. Still, he tried to stand, tried to crawl from the flames.

  Ulrika snarled and stepped forwards, kicking him back, then reached into the fire and stabbed down, pinning him to the deck, though the flames licked at the leather of her witch hunter’s coat and burned her naked feet and hands.

  ‘For Famke,’ she said, then sprang back, stamping and beating at her burning coat as von Messinghof writhed and shrivelled in the flames.

  A cold blade touched her throat. She turned. The Emperor had recovered, and held his sword to her neck. She swallowed, then straightened and met his gaze.

  ‘You are my prisoner, vampire,’ he said. His voice and hand were steady though she could see that sickness, pain and concussion were crippling him. ‘You will submit to me and we will continue the conversation that the closing of your trap interrupted.’

  Ulrika darted a look around the barge without moving her head. The Reiksguard were finishing off the last of von Messinghof’s troops in the centre of the boat, and Schwarzhelm had killed all the Blood Knights and was driving Lassarian back, desperately trying to get around him to his liege. No one was close enough to stop her if she wished to kill the Emperor – and with the strength and speed she had gained from Otilia’s blood she was sure she could do it easily.

  But she didn’t wish it.

  Knowing von Messinghof and Otilia had been behind Famke’s burning, the rage against humanity that had boiled within Ulrika for so long cooled now to a simmer. She did not forgive them entirely, but she did not blame them either. Their kind and hers were inevitable opposites – predator and prey – though which was which changed in her head even as she thought it. In any event, she no longer wanted vengeance upon the whole race for the vileness of the few. All she wanted to do was leave.

  At the thought, a sudden longing filled her breast. No. Not just leave. She wanted to go to Famke. She had to tell her that von Messinghof and Otilia had been behind her burning, and that Ulrika had slain them. She had to tell her that she was avenged!

  She returned her eyes to the Emperor’s. ‘I will not be chained again.’

  Karl Franz pressed the blade harder against her neck. ‘I heard what passed between you and the assassin. You know who is behind this. You know all the players. I cannot let you–’

  ‘You cannot stop me.’

  Ulrika beat his sword aside with a lightning swipe and leapt back, going on guard. Karl Franz recovered and went on guard as, behind her, Ulrika heard Schwarzhelm shout, and his heavy boots thud closer.

  Ulrika gave the Emperor a fencer’s salute, then turned for the rail where the barge had run aground, meaning to leap to the shore. Schwarzhelm stepped in her way, his terrifying sword at the ready, and closed warily, his eyes glittering in the light of the flames. Off to one side, Lassarian lay headless and burning in the flames.

  ‘It is past time for you to die, fiend,’ Schwarzhelm growled.

  ‘Wait, Ludwig,’ said the Emperor.

  The champion stopped, but did not lower his guard.

  ‘Without chains, then.’ Karl Franz circled so he could look into Ulrika’s eyes. ‘Speak freely and be free. I heard your words. I heard where your loyalties lie. Tell me. What empire did the vampire speak of? Who was his master?’

  Ulrika looked at him, considering. She owed him and his people nothing. At the same time, she had sworn to destroy von Messinghof and all his works, and while she had killed him and foiled his assassination attempt, the invasion he had worked so hard for might still come if Mannfred von Carstein were allowed to continue plotti
ng his return. If she wanted to destroy everything von Messinghof had held dear, Mannfred’s plans too would have to be foiled.

  ‘Forget the Lahmian uprising, Emperor,’ she said at last. ‘Look instead to Sylvania. An old evil dreams there, ready to wake and grind the world beneath his heel again. Do not wait for him to reveal himself.’ She raised her chin. ‘Now, may I go in peace?’

  The Emperor hesitated, but Schwarzhelm took a step closer. Ulrika swallowed. Even with blood-strength filling her, she did not want to face him. He had killed Lassarian and his vampire henchmen single-handed, and looked ready to fight for hours more.

  ‘You cannot allow it, my liege,’ said the champion. ‘She is a fiend. She meant to trap you in the tower.’

  ‘And yet she saved me from my assassin, and did not attack me when she might have.’

  Schwarzhelm didn’t move. ‘My liege, she is evil by her very nature. You are the Emperor. You must embody the morals of the–’

  ‘She said that men were brave and true to their word,’ said Karl Franz. ‘To my mind, those are the morals of the Empire.’ He nodded, coming to a decision. ‘I gave my word. I will be true to it. Let her go.’

  The champion glowered at Ulrika through the smoke and flames, but at last lowered his sword and stepped aside.

  Ulrika inclined her head to Karl Franz. ‘Thank you, my lord.’

  She turned on her heel, gave Schwarzhelm a cold look, then leapt to the balustrade and sprang to the shore and away. Now, at last, it was time to find Famke and tell her of von Messinghof’s death!

  chapter thirty-four

  REUNION

  Every uniformed man in Nuln had gone to the rescue of the Emperor – the Army of Nuln, the city watch, the witch hunters, Countess Emmanuelle’s personal guard, all the various knights and lords who made up his train, all spilled out of the city and north along the river to the site of the burning barges in order to come to his aid.