The Empire Omnibus

by Chris Wraight

  The baron’s tent had the austere look of a monk’s cell. Beyond a few sheets rolled up in the corner there was just a small table and a couple of books. The four of them sat on the ground, just inside the door, as the rain drummed on the canvas stretched above their heads.

  ‘Something has changed in you since we last met,’ decided Maximilian, once they had finished exchanging the usual pleasantries. He peered closely into Wolff’s eyes. ‘And I don’t just mean a few extra grey hairs.’

  Wolff looked a little awkward under his friend’s intense stare and seemed unsure how to reply to so direct a statement. He glanced at Ratboy, as though ordering him to bite his tongue. Then he shrugged. ‘The last year or so has been difficult for everyone. I imagine we’re all a little changed.’

  The baron nodded, slowly. ‘That’s true, Jakob, but you of all people know how to find comfort in the sacred texts and scriptures. Your belief has been a constant inspiration to me whenever I felt afraid. I know the strength of your faith: it is as immovable as the earth beneath our feet; but I see some kind of doubt in your eyes that wasn’t there before.’ He leant forward. ‘Tell me, old friend, what’s brought you here, at this precise moment?’

  Wolff examined the back of his gloves, spreading his fingers thoughtfully and then clenching his fists, before meeting the baron’s gaze. ‘I entered the church at a very young age,’ he said quietly, ‘as you know. But I only intended to become a sacristan or an archivist of some kind. My interest was chiefly in the study of holy tracts and sacred artefacts, rather than in the martial aspects of our faith.’

  A look of surprise crossed Anna’s face and she moved to speak, but Wolff continued.

  ‘I only decided to devote myself to the life of a mendicant warrior priest as penance for what I believed was a terrible betrayal,’ he lowered his voice even more, ‘of my own parents.’

  Wolff paused, seemingly overcome with emotion at the memory.

  His three listeners waited patiently for him to continue.

  ‘However,’ he continued, looking up at Ratboy, ‘penance can only carry one so far. I’ve failed and abandoned so many stout-hearted friends that I began to feel a fraud. I felt as though my faith was built on foundations of sand.’ The baron shook his head urgently, but Wolff continued. ‘And then, to top it all, I recently discovered that the crime was never mine to pay penance for. It was another man entirely who betrayed my parents.’ He shrugged. ‘But, in a way, that discovery gave me a new resolve. The man I speak of is a cultist of the worst sort.’ He looked desperately at Maximilian. ‘And I believe he’s right here, marching in von Raukov’s army.’

  The baron shook his head. ‘This army is von Raukov’s in name only. The elector count was seriously injured during the recent defence of Wolfenberg. He’ll be bedridden for weeks, if not months.’

  ‘Then who’s leading you?’

  The baron smiled. ‘A great general indeed,’ he answered. ‘They call him the Iron Duke. He shares your surname, actually,’ he said with wry smile. ‘His name is Kriegsmarshall Fabian Wolff.’

  Helwyg shuffled slowly though the crowds as pavilions toppled all around him, crumbling to the ground in great billowing piles of muddy canvas. Even the thick hides that enveloped him could not hide the odd, jerking nature of his movements. The soldiers were too busy checking their weapons and readying the horses to pay him much attention, so he was able to snake undisturbed through the encampment. After nearly an hour, he reached the command tents: towering, bunting-clad behemoths that loomed over everything else. As he lurched towards the largest tent, the Iron Duke’s honour guard eyed him with distaste from beneath their lupine, sculpted helmets, but made no move to prevent him entering.

  Once inside, Helwyg fastened the doors behind him and looked around the tent to make sure it was empty. Then he approached an ornate throne, silhouetted against a row of torches at the back of the tent. He fell awkwardly to one knee and lowered his head respectfully, then climbed to his feet again and began to remove his grubby furs. They dropped to his feet in a stinking pool of sweat and mud and he stepped to one side, completely naked. Deprived of its protective covering, the extent of his body’s deformity was revealed. His limbs were crooked and twisted almost beyond recognition and the serpentine curves of his spine were clearly visible beneath his filthy skin.

  He began to scratch at the greasy strands of hair that crowned his head, digging his fingers deep into his scalp with such force that streams of dark blood began to flow quickly over his face. He showed no sign of pain though, and as his dirty fingernails sliced under the skin, he pulled it away from the bone. A thick flap of scalp came free with a soft tearing sound. He pulled it forwards, down over his face, to reveal a mass of blood-slick feathers beneath. The streams of blood became rivers as he wrenched open his chest cavity, spilling his organs across the ground in a steaming mass, revealing his true form: a small, willowy man, covered in blue iridescent feathers that shimmered as he moved. He stretched to his full height and sighed with relief. ‘I’ve found him,’ he said, with a proud smile spreading across his thin, avian features.

  ‘Are you sure?’ came a low voice from the throne.

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ piped the creature. He stepped closer, wiping the blood and sinew from his feathers. ‘It was your brother. I heard his name quite clearly: Jakob Wolff.’

  A tall, slender knight rose from the throne and stepped slowly into the torchlight. His face was long and aristocratic. The flames were reflected in his coat of burnished mail, and in the jewels that adorned a leather patch over his left eye. He stepped towards the feathered man and took his head in his hands, stooping to plant a passionate kiss on his bloody forehead. ‘Then your soul is assured its place alongside mine in eternity, Helwyg.’ He twirled his elegant, waxed moustache between his fingers and turned away from his servant. ‘How did you discover him? Is his presence widely known?’

  Helwyg skipped lightly after him. ‘In all truth, lord, he found me. I’d given up the search. I was planning to return this very morning and inform you that you must be mistaken. Then, as I took a brief nap, just outside camp, he stumbled across me, looking for a guide.’

  Fabian’s shoulders shook with laughter. ‘How delicious are the devices of our master?’ He looked down at Helwyg. ‘And who knows of his presence?’

  ‘As you predicted, kriegsmarshall, he made straight for the Knights Griffon and has approached no one else.’ He shrugged, ‘Wolff is a common enough surname, and in a gathering of this size, no one will guess at any connection. He wouldn’t be foolish enough to openly accuse you. Apart from maybe to his pious friend, Maximilian; but what could they do alone? Who would believe them? After all your glorious victories, these men would slit the throat of anyone who spoke against you. And how could Jakob prove you’re his brother?’ Helwyg looked up at his master. ‘You don’t even look alike.’

  Fabian nodded and a smile lit up his hawk-like features. ‘It’s true, I always did take after mother.’ He returned to his throne and sat down. ‘You’ve done well, Helwyg. I now have my brother exactly where I wanted him. Whatever he has planned, it’s safest that I keep him close to me. Watch him closely. At all times.’ He looked up at his servant. ‘You can’t leave like that though, Helwyg,’ he said, nodding to the shimmering feathers.

  Helwyg’s narrow shoulders slumped dejectedly and he pouted. ‘I’ve been limping around in that warrener’s body for weeks,’ he said, wrinkling his nose. ‘And he stank even before I killed him.’

  Fabian narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Very well,’ muttered Helwyg, peevishly. He scoured the shadows of the tent and after a few moments he pounced, flying across the room in a blur of talons and feathers. There was a muffled squeak and then a rat scampered out of the darkness. It nodded its head once at Fabian and slipped away, through a small gap at the bottom of the tent doors.

  Fabian leant back in his throne with a sigh of
satisfaction. Then, he lifted his patch to reveal a running black sore where his eye should have been. The scab glistened with moisture and it swelled and bulged as a shape began to move beneath it. After a few seconds, the scab parted like a small mouth, dangling strands of white pus over a black, featureless orb. ‘O Great Schemer,’ said the general, ‘guide me.’ The orb began to roll in its socket, as it perceived a torrent of shapes and colours. For a while the general could not discern anything beyond the vaguest outlines and textures, but soon he began to make out specific images: tall, crooked trees, looming over a gloomy forest path; an ancient grove, throbbing with eldritch light; a narrow defile, clogged with weeping, dying men and finally, a glittering, winged knight bearing down on him with a long sword in his hand. A breeze slipped beneath the canvas walls and became a whisper, calling to Fabian from the shadows. ‘Deliver me from Mormius,’ it said. ‘Send him to the abyss. I will raise you up in his place.’

  ‘But master,’ replied Fabian, gripping the arms of his throne. ‘What of my brother?’

  There was no reply, and as suddenly as they had come, the visions ceased. Fabian replaced the patch and sat back in his throne with a frustrated sigh. ‘Oh, Jakob,’ he breathed. ‘A promise is a promise, no matter how many years have passed. How can you dare to approach me, even now?’ He closed his uncorrupted right eye, and cast his mind back through the decades, to a distant summer’s day and a room in his father’s house.

  Chapter Twelve

  Blood Ties

  ‘Fabian,’ called a thin, musical voice. ‘Come and say hello to your brother.’

  Fabian stared morosely through a wide bay window onto the secluded valley outside. He was only fourteen, but already felt as though life had betrayed him. He pressed his face to the warm, leaded glass and as he looked out at the sunlit idyll of his parents’ estate, he wept. A glorious jumble of orchards and wildflower meadows lay sleepily across the hillside, surrounding the long drive that led down to the gatehouse, where the servants were unloading his father’s coach. He lolled back into a mountain of damask cushions and wiped away hot, angry tears. ‘I’m busy,’ he replied, picking up a book of folk tales that lay forgotten on the table next to him.

  An azure cloud of embroidered silk bustled into the drawing room. ‘Fabian,’ scolded his mother, frowning at him through her pince nez. ‘Don’t pout. We haven’t seen Jakob for months. Brother Braun said in his letter that he’s done exceptionally well in his studies.’

  ‘Really,’ replied Fabian, nonchalantly turning a page and refusing to look up from the book. ‘You do surprise me.’

  ‘Fabian…’ repeated his mother in a stern voice, gesturing to the open door.

  ‘Very well,’ he replied, accepting defeat and snapping the book shut. ‘Although I really don’t see why everything must stop at merest mention of the word “Jakob”.’

  He followed his mother out through the carpeted reception rooms and into the garden. The verges and borders were ablaze with colour and he immediately felt his nose tingle at the scent of the honeysuckle that trailed over the house’s pink-grey stone. He held a handkerchief to his face, in the hope it would give him some protection.

  The façade of Berlau house was covered with dozens of tall windows, and as the new arrivals approached, they had to shield their eyes against the inferno of light reflected in the glass.

  ‘Jakob,’ cried his mother, unable to contain her excitement at seeing her firstborn. She dashed across the small courtyard and threw her arms around the youth, smothering him with kisses. ‘I swear you look even taller,’ she exclaimed, hugging him tightly.

  ‘Margarethe,’ said the elegant, elderly gentleman next to Jakob. ‘Really – you’ll suffocate the poor boy.’ Even dressed in his mud-splattered travelling clothes, Fabian’s father looked every inch the nobleman. The nostrils of his long, aquiline nose flared at such a gaudy display of emotion and he ground his heel angrily into the cobbles. Despite his annoyance, though, he could not hide the proud gleam in his eye as he placed a hand on Jakob’s shoulder. ‘Let him change, at least, before you drown him in syrup.’

  Margarethe stepped back, and allowed the boy to head inside. ‘You are cruel to me, Hieronymus,’ she said, giving her husband a coy smile. Then, she nodded to the old priest waiting patiently next to her husband. ‘Brother Braun,’ she trilled. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  The man nodded his tonsured head. ‘Frau Wolff,’ he said, kissing the fingers she dangled before him. ‘The pleasure is all mine, I assure you.’

  ‘Come inside,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘You must be tired out in this heat. I’ll order us some drinks and you can tell me your news.’

  As the priest entered the house, he bowed to Fabian, who was slouched just inside the entrance hall.

  Fabian nodded slightly in reply but did not return the priest’s smile.

  ‘Busy as ever, I see, Fabian,’ said Hieronymus, as he approached his son.

  Fabian gave his father an ironic grin, before sauntering back into the house and following his brother upstairs.

  He found Jakob in the library, replacing a few books he had taken at the start of the summer. Unlike the rest of the house, the library was swathed in a cool gloom, and as Fabian approached his brother he squinted, purblind, at the texts. ‘The Relations of Matter and Faith,’ he read. ‘Sounds gripping.’

  ‘Hello, Fabian,’ replied Jakob, continuing to slide the books back into the dusty spaces on the shelves.

  Fabian studied him. Since his revelation a few years earlier, Jakob’s passion for all things ecclesiastical had transformed him. Not just spiritually, either. His burgeoning faith seemed to have fed his adolescent body too. He now towered over his slender young brother, and there was a wholesome robustness about him that nauseated Fabian. He was a vision of perfect Ostland youth: even, white teeth; thick, black hair; broad, muscled shoulders and clear, intelligent eyes. Everything about him seemed designed to show the slight, bookish Fabian in an unfavourable light.

  ‘What’s dragged you back amongst us weak sinners?’ he asked, dropping into a chair. ‘I thought you’d end your days in that draughty ruin.’

  ‘Brother Braun’s temple is a little ramshackle,’ replied Wolff, coming to sit next to Fabian and starting to unlace his muddy jerkin. ‘But too many home comforts can be a distraction from contemplation.’

  ‘I’m quite fond of my home comforts,’ said Fabian, before breaking off into a series of hacking coughs. ‘Wretched flowers,’ he wheezed asthmatically, sitting bolt upright as he tried to calm his breathing.

  Jakob eyed his brother with concern. ‘Can I help?’

  Fabian shook his head and took a few more whistling breaths before replying. ‘You could pray, maybe,’ he gasped. Once he had wiped his streaming eyes, Fabian looked at his brother. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘While you’re contemplating, do your thoughts ever include the shameful state of your own family?’

  ‘Shameful? The name Wolff is a well-respected one,’ replied Jakob, frowning in confusion. ‘It has been for centuries.’

  Fabian gave a hollow laugh. ‘You’ve been away a long time, brother. Things have changed.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand you,’ replied Jakob, rising to his feet and eyeing his brother suspiciously. ‘But I can see at least one thing that hasn’t changed. You’re as angry and ungrateful as ever. Look at you – born into the lap of luxury and as bitter as a starving orphan. What have you got to complain about?’

  ‘Our father’s become a laughing stock, Jakob,’ said Fabian, flushing with anger. ‘Even a dullard like you, with your head full of prophets and miracles, must be aware of it. He thinks of nothing but the Sigmarite Church. While the stewards rob us blind, marauders are running unchallenged across our estates. The whole of Ostland is almost overrun and the elector count needs every sword he can get, but our father spends all his time praying.’ He clenched his fists. ‘And s
igning away our inheritance to charitable causes.’ He levelled a finger at his brother. ‘And all because of the sycophantic drivel Braun pours in his ear. He can’t think about anything useful since that senile old fool convinced him you’re some kind of holy protégé.’

  Jakob’s lip curled in a sneer of disgust. ‘Maybe if you didn’t spend your whole time reading ridiculous novels, you could achieve something with your life. Then you might not be so consumed with jealousy.’

  Fabian leapt to his feet and squared up to his brother; undeterred by the fact that his face barely reached Jakob’s broad chest. ‘The bailiffs all laugh at him behind his back, Jakob. They take wages for soldiers they sacked months ago, and leave the gatehouses unmanned. They pocket the profits from the harvest and tell him the crops all failed. But the old fool won’t believe me when I tell him what a bunch of crooks they are. Berlau is barely defended at all these days. But father just tells me about the new chapterhouse he’s funding or shows me a sketch of some new chancel in Wolfenberg that Braun has convinced him to pay for. He’s pissing all over our family name, Jakob. He’s forgotten his heritage. Another few years of this neglect and Berlau House will be as ruined as Braun’s temple.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for this rubbish, Fabian,’ said Jakob, turning to leave. He paused at the door and glared back at his brother. ‘You’re not a child anymore. You should learn to be a bit more respectful when talking about our father. He’s a good man.’

  ‘Really?’ replied Fabian, striding after him and jabbing a finger into his chest. ‘You think you can come back here, after spending months peering into your navel, and tell me what kind of man our father is?’

  Jakob grabbed his brother’s shoulders and slammed him back into the bookshelves. ‘Watch yourself,’ he whispered as leather-bound volumes thudded to the floor around them. ‘Sigmarite doctrine doesn’t tend to preach forgiveness.’ He pushed Fabian back against the shelves, so that the boy grimaced with pain. ‘Don’t take me for a pious sop. I’m still a Wolff.’