03 - Sword of Vengeance (16 page)

Ahead of him was the door, the only way in and out. When they
shut it, it was dark like no darkness he’d ever known. There, suspended, far
from help or salvation, he could reflect on the variety of pain they’d
introduced him to during the last session. He didn’t have the language to
describe it all, but he suspected they did. They knew all the ways of misery.
They were geniuses of their craft, masters of sensation. In comparison to what
they’d shown him, his former life now seemed impossibly stale and drab. He’d had
no idea that existence could be so raw, so unutterably acute, so agonising.

The door opened. Tochfel had trouble focussing. Was it her?
He could no longer decide whether he should scream or not. Being in her presence
was unbearable. Being away from it was unbearable. He’d been transformed in so
short a time. He felt his mouth hanging open, a line of drool running down to
his naked chest.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Steward.”

That wasn’t her voice. It was a man’s voice. A hunched,
slender man, bowed by a curving spine. Tochfel’s eyes weren’t working.
Everything was blurred. He tried to screw them into focus.

“Achendorfer?” he croaked, wincing as the tendons in his
throat rubbed against one another.

The man came closer. Uriens Achendorfer had changed. His
skin, always grey, was now as white as snow. The bags under his eyes hung
heavier than ever, purple and pulsing. His pupils were pin-pricks of red, and
lines of sutures ran across his sagging cheeks. He looked heavily altered. His
purple robes were loose, but when he moved they gave away the changes that had
taken place. Willingly or not, the loremaster had become something more, or
perhaps less, than human.

“What were you
thinking
?” asked Achendorfer
scornfully. His voice rattled when he spoke. “You must have known what was in
here.”

Tochfel ignored the questions. None of the others had asked
him questions. That was the confusing thing. Why torture him, if they didn’t
want to know anything? It was senseless.

“Where’ve you been?” Tochfel croaked again.

Achendorfer let slip a thin smile, and his cheeks ran like
fluid around his lips. “Here,” he replied, self-satisfied. “When Alptraum took
the Averburg, that was my signal. I had to bring the book here.”

“Alptraum?”

“He’s in number seven, and still not dead. Amazing, given
what she’s done to him.”

Tochfel felt a tear run down his cheek. That was unusual.
He’d thought all his tears had been shed. Perhaps something still lingered
within him. That was bad. If they discovered it, there would be more pain.

“Why?”

Achendorfer raised a heavily plucked eyebrow. “
Why?
Do
you really need to know that?” He shook his head. “This is power, Dagobert.
You’ve no idea what these people are capable of. What
she’s
capable of. I
was shown a fraction of it. The scrolls, the parchments, they mean nothing to me
now. Only one of them was important—the one I could bring to her. There are
rewards for those who know how to serve her. There are punishments, to be sure,
but rewards also.” The white-faced man grinned, exposing black teeth. “I am no
longer a petty man, Dagobert. She will make me a god.”

Tochfel found he wasn’t listening. Speech bored him.
Everything bored him. Only pain piqued his interest. That was all there was
left. He hated it, feared it, needed it. That was what they’d driven him to.

Another figure appeared at the door. Tochfel had no trouble
recognising her outline. There was something curved in her hand, shining in the
dark. As she approached him, Natassja patted Achendorfer affectionately on the
head.

“That’s right, my foul pet,” she said. “I have great plans
for you. Just as I have for all my creatures.”

Achendorfer shivered, whether out of pleasure or fear Tochfel
couldn’t tell. His vision started to cloud again. What was left of his skin
broke out into sweat. His heart, shivering beneath his open ribcage, beat a
little faster. Why didn’t he die? What malign force kept him sustained in this
living hell?

“And what do you plan for me?” he asked, eyes wide with fear,
locked on the approaching instrument.

Natassja smiled and began to work. “Something very special,”
she purred. “Something very special indeed.”

* * *

Dawn broke over Averheim. The sun peered through veils of
mist rising from the river, taking an age to warm the stone of the quayside
buildings. Even before the light made its way down to the wharfs men were busy
unloading and loading the endless train of barges. Orders were bellowed out from
overseers, and the cranes wheeled back and forth with pallets of iron bars,
brick and stone.

Verstohlen watched the activity from his shabby rented room
on the east side of the river. From two storeys up he had a good view of the
operation. As he watched, he began to wonder how he’d missed the signs. Some of
the crates were clearly full of arms. One of them spilled open on landing,
revealing scores of curved swords, all wickedly fashioned with trailing spikes.
They were no ordinary Imperial manufacture, and he could bet they hadn’t come
from Nuln.

Verstohlen let his gaze run down the long harbourside,
watching as the gathering dawn brought more activity. There were soldiers
everywhere. How had he not noticed the increase in their numbers? Where did
Grosslich get them from? It seemed like every street corner had a group of
surly-faced guards, all wearing the absurd crimson and gold of the elector’s
personal army. There must have been several hundred of them, milling around,
threatening and cuffing the merchants doing their best to unload cargo. The
Averlanders seemed to have learned not to talk back.

He turned from the window. He needed to get some sleep. It
wouldn’t take them long to find out where he’d gone. Even now he guessed that
his rooms in the Averburg had been ransacked. Perhaps they’d slipped deathflower
into his food. That would be a real spy’s death.

Verstohlen rubbed his eyes. The room around him was grim. The
sheets were stained and stinking, and there were long lines of grease down the
faded walls. He walked from the window and sat down heavily on the bed, ignoring
the cocktail of unsavoury aromas that curled up from the linen. All night he’d
been kept awake by the shouts of gamblers in the chamber below, steadily getting
drunker and more violent. Not that he’d have been able to sleep much anyway.
He’d kept his dagger and pistol close to hand and sat watching the door until
the dawn.

There was a knock.

“Come,” said Verstohlen, cocking the pistol and placing it
under the sheets.

The fat landlord, a man with as many chins as he had rooms,
waddled in. He wore an apron that might once have been white, but now had been
stained the colour of thin gruel. In his hands he carried a mug of small beer,
long past its best and reeking of spoilage.

“You’re awake, then,” he grunted, placing the mug on an
unsteady table and wiping his hands on the apron. “You’ll be wanting food?”

“No, thank you,” said Verstohlen. If the food was prepared
here, then he wouldn’t need to worry about assassins. “I won’t be staying
another night. Prepare my account, and I’ll settle it this morning.”

The landlord looked at him blankly. “Suit yourself,” he
muttered. “It’ll be five schillings.”

The price was exorbitant. He’d have balked at paying it even
in a refined inn. For a moment, he considered challenging it, then changed his
mind. He needed to keep a low profile until he could get out of the city.

“I’ll bring it to you as I leave,” said Verstohlen. The
landlord hung around, as if waiting for something. “Was there anything else?”

The fat man coughed and looked down at his hands. “Maybe, if
you’re not having food…” He trailed off.

“Yes?”

“I can get it for you. Cheap price. Best this side of the
river.”

Verstohlen looked at him coldly. If joyroot was available
even to scum such as this, then the last pretence at controlling the trade must
have been abandoned. Grosslich was flooding Averheim with it, just as before.
Was he in it with the Leitdorf’s? Or had he taken it over? So much still to
unravel.

“No,” said Verstohlen, his voice quiet and controlled. “A
little early for me.”

The landlord shrugged and shuffled out again, closing the
door behind him clumsily. Verstohlen pulled his pistol out from under the sheets
and looked over the workings. It was important that everything operated
flawlessly. Unless he could get out of the city soon and find his way north
undetected, he knew he’d be using it soon enough.

Rufus Leitdorf watched as the land around him became steadily
more familiar. The gorse and heather stretched to the horizon in all directions,
rustling gently under a ceaseless wind. The air was sharper than it had been in
the lowlands, and in the distance the peaks of the Grey Mountains were just
visible, lost in a haze of blue in the far south. A low tide of mist rolled
across the depressions in the land, shifting and miasmic, torn into tatters as
the breeze across the moors ripped it away. In the far distance there were
ruins, tall towers of age-whitened stone marching across the horizon. No human
hand had built those places, and no human dwelt among them now. In the vast
space between mankind’s scattered settlements, there were still plenty of
ancient secrets lying dormant. Drakenmoor was replete with them.

Leitdorf had been sent to the secret castle twice in the
past, once as a child when there was a threat of assassination against him, and
once as a teenager. The second time he’d travelled on his own account, albeit
surrounded by household servants, Averburg officials and a retinue of armed
guards. Growing up as a prince had given him precious little solitude. He found
it hard to recall any occasions where there hadn’t been members of the elector’s
court hovering around, waiting to take orders from him or pass on new
requirements from his father.

That world, the one of privilege and prestige, had slipped
away so fast. Less than a month ago it had seemed like the trappings of true
power were firmly in his grasp. He and Natassja had planned so much together,
and Averland looked set to have another Leitdorf at its helm.

He let his gaze drop from the horizon. The memory of Natassja
was painful. Like a drug, being away from her was hard. He hadn’t realised,
perhaps, how much he’d relied on her, how far the preparations for conquest had
been hers, and how many of his considerable resources had been diverted into her
policies. The joyroot had been her creation. He had no idea where she’d sourced
the first samples. Perhaps he should have inquired more carefully.

For all her wisdom and perceptiveness, it hadn’t helped them
when the hammer-blow fell. No doubt Grosslich had tracked her down by now, and
she languished in one of the dungeons of the citadel. Somehow he doubted her
spirit had been broken, but feared her body might have been.

It was unpleasant to dwell too much on that. He had failed
her, and he had failed his family. The experience of the entire Empire turning
against him, seemingly on the whim of Schwarzhelm and his damnable spy, had
shocked him to his core. He should have paid more attention to his lessons in
diplomacy. The old fool Tochfel might have been worth listening to more
carefully.

The situation with the Reiksguard was even more puzzling. He
could understand well enough Grosslich’s desire to have him hunted down and
killed, but to extend it to the Emperor’s own troops? That was bravery bordering
on folly, and in the long run such arrogance would surely cost him dear. He’d
never have dared such a thing himself, even if matters in Averheim had gone
otherwise.

Leitdorf looked over his shoulder at the carriage, shaking as
it was dragged along the uneven tracks towards Drakenmoor. He knew the Marshal
was recovering. The knights’ morale had lifted as a result, and they now went
more proudly than before, as if defying Grosslich’s pursuers to find them. It
was amazing what the presence of a commander could do for his men.

Leitdorf found himself reflecting on what his own vassals
thought of him. The closest to him, soldiers like Klopfer, were surely dead now,
caught in the ruin and confusion of Averheim. Even if they hadn’t been killed,
none of them would have rushed to fight by his side again. He knew his temper
had driven half of his allies away. Like his father, his blood ran hot, ever
ready to spill out into some petulant tirade. He’d never been forced to confront
the consequences of that, to examine himself against the measure of other,
better men. Now, when he looked in the mirror of introspection, he saw a petty
character, a bully and a tyrant.

A shadow passed across him. Skarr had drawn up alongside,
controlling his horse with an enviable ease.

“You look troubled, my lord,” he said, and his severe face
twisted awkwardly into something like a smile.

Skarr had become less brooding since Helborg’s partial
recovery. The preceptor still held him responsible for the events of the
Vormeisterplatz, but an uneasy truce had developed between them. At least he was
being referred to as “my lord” again.

“I’ve only been here twice,” replied Leitdorf. “And yet it
feels like home. I can’t tell you why.”

Skarr shrugged. “I like this place too,” he said. “The air’s
healthier. I can see what your father was thinking.”

They rode on in silence for a while. Tangled copses of
black-thorned briars passed by as the horses trod the winding path. The calls of
birds, or something like birds, echoed in the distance, faint against the
vastness of the open sky.

“You know, he wasn’t the madman everyone says he was,” said
Leitdorf at length. “He had a temper, but he wasn’t mad.”

Skarr said nothing.

“When he came up here, he was more himself.” Leitdorf found
himself suddenly wishing to explain everything, to make it clear why things had
turned out the way they had. “Everyone said the same about him. It was Averheim
that made him angry.”