03 - Sword of Vengeance (38 page)

Verstohlen sat on the edge of one such camp fire, cradling a
cup of beer in his hands and watching the men nearby as they noisily prepared
for the night. They slept in their cloaks, huddled around their own small fires,
laughing and telling obscene stories. Soldiers were the same across the whole
Empire. Verstohlen remembered how they’d been at Turgitz. Then, as now, he was
on the outside. Now, as then, men looked at him askance, questioning his
presence, unsure of his role.

A dark shape loomed up from the shadows and stood before him.
Unlike the rest of the troops, he didn’t hurry on by. Verstohlen looked up, and
his heart sank.

Rufus Leitdorf stood there, dressed in a breastplate and
greaves, a sword at his belt. He’d lost weight, and looked less bloated than
he’d done in Averheim. He still had the long hair and ruddy cheeks of old, but
there was a residual hollow expression that marred his fleshy face.

“Verstohlen,” he said, and the tone was cold.

Verstohlen sighed. The meeting had to happen sooner or later.
Perhaps best to get it over with now.

“My lord elector,” he said, inclining his head but remaining
seated. “Will you join me?”

Leitdorf shook his head.

“No,” he said. “That might indicate to the world that we were
friends. That is not the way of it, nor will it ever be.”

“I see.”

Leitdorf moved to stand in the light of the fire. His
features, lit from below, looked distorted.

“I have spoken to the Lord Schwarzhelm,” he said. Verstohlen
thought his voice was less haughty than before, and there was a gravity to it
that he’d never noticed in Averheim. “After reconciling with the Marshal, he
apologised to me. Profusely. I have accepted it. Do you have anything you wish
to add?”

“I’m glad you two made up,” said Verstohlen flatly. “You
don’t want to prolong a feud with Schwarzhelm.”

“Is that all you have to say? Gods, your arrogance knows no
bounds. Truly, I don’t know why you came back. You offer us nothing now.”

Verstohlen swept to his feet in a single, fluid movement. He
was taller than Leitdorf and considerably more deadly. Leitdorf, startled, held
his ground, and the two of them faced off.

“There were errors,” Verstohlen said coolly. “For these, I am
sorry. But you
lived
with her, Leitdorf. If she could deceive you so
completely, then perhaps you will understand why we made the decisions we did.”

“You should have contacted me. The war you started was
unnecessary.”

“Don’t fool yourself. If it hadn’t been me, she’d have found
another way to implicate you.” Verstohlen’s face edged closer to the elector’s,
lit with threat. “It might make you feel better to blame me for what took place,
but you’d do well to reflect on your own conduct. If you’d not taken Natassja to
your bed, there’d be no joyroot, and no corruption. We have erred, my lord, but
you set this thing in motion.”

Leitdorf’s hand slipped to his sword-belt.

“Even now, you dare—”

“I dare nothing. I state the facts.” Verstohlen shook his
head in disgust. He was too tired for this. “What do you want from me? Guilt?
Oh, I’ve got plenty of that. We both have. Every night when I close my eyes I
see Tochfel’s face. He tried to warn me. Do you know what they did to him? They
cut out his heart and replaced it with a ball of iron.
Your wife.”

Verstohlen looked away, filled with revulsion by the memory.

“So don’t try to pretend this is something you don’t share
responsibility for,” he muttered. “We’re all guilty, and we all had choices.”

Leitdorf removed his hand from his sword-belt. Verstohlen
expected him to fly off into some tirade. To his surprise, the man remained
calm.

“And you don’t think much of mine, do you?” he said.

“It hardly matters now.”

“I disagree.” Leitdorf raised his chin defiantly. “Whether
you can stomach it or not, Herr Verstohlen, I am the elector now. Kurt Helborg
leads my army, and Ludwig Schwarzhelm stands beside him. Soon my claim will be
put to the test, and this time there can be no doubt about its legitimacy.
Either we will die in battle, or I will rule Averland. Those are the only
outcomes possible. Which one would you prefer?”

Verstohlen smiled grimly.

“I have no wish to see you dead, Leitdorf. Nor, for that
matter, myself. But unless you’ve grown much wiser in a short space of time, I
have no wish to see a dissolute count ruling in Averheim either. I do not say
this to wound you, but your reputation does you no credit.”

Leitdorf returned the thin smile. “So others have said.” He
looked back over his shoulder. Near the centre of the encampment, Helborg was
conversing with Schwarzhelm and the other captains. “I see the warmth between us
has not grown. If you’d spoken to me thus in Averheim, I’d have had you driven
from the province in disgrace. Even now, a part of me would not regret to see
you leave.”

He took a deep breath. As his chest rose and fell, Verstohlen
noticed a book, wrapped in fabric and strapped to his belt. An unusual ornament
for the battlefield.

“I’ve changed, Verstohlen,” he said, “even if you haven’t.
Perhaps, when this is over, you’ll see the proof of it.”

Verstohlen paused before replying. There
was
something
different about the man. Not enough to be sure about, but hardly insignificant
either.

“Perhaps I will,” was all he said, and he returned to the
fire.

Holyman Eschenbach made his way down the spiral stairway in
the central shaft of the Tower. As he limped from one step to the next, the dull
rumble from below grew louder. The iron around him reverberated with the
drumming sound of machines turning in the depths. The lower he climbed, the
hotter it became. In every sense, he was coming to the source of things.

The stairs finally came to an end, and he stood at the base
of the Tower. A long gallery led away in front of him, shrouded in shadow. There
were doorways along either side, each with a different rune inscribed over the
lintel. At the far end was an octagonal chamber containing an obsidian throne.
There were no dog-soldiers around. The only noise was the muffled growl of the
machines and the endless rush of the fire as it swirled in the air outside.

Eschenbach swallowed painfully, feeling his neck muscles
constrict around the pitiful trickle of saliva he was capable of generating. His
transformations had built up over the past few days. What he’d initially thought
of as improvements had turned out to be serious handicaps. For some reason, the
Dark Prince seemed displeased with him. Eschenbach knew of no cause for that—he’d faithfully served the elector since his coronation—but that didn’t make
the pain go away.

He knew his death was close. He could feel it stealing up
behind him, padding in the dark like a cat. The only question was when, at whose
hand, and how painful they’d make it. Some reward for the service he’d rendered.

Eschenbach shuffled forwards awkwardly, feeling his altered
bones grind against one another. The rooms on either side of him were deserted.
In the earliest days Natassja had conducted her experiments here, creating the
first of the Stone-slaves. Now she had whole levels of the under-Tower devoted
to her invasive surgeries, and the screams of the tormented and augmented echoed
into the vaults like massed choruses in a cathedral. Dog-soldiers had been born
in their thousands there, filled with bestial savagery and strength, utterly
loyal and without fear.

Other horrors had been made. He’d seen trios of handmaidens,
eyes glowing, scuttling through the lower reaches like a gaggle of bronze-tipped
spiders. There were men’s heads grafted on to women’s bodies, eyeless and
earless horrors stumbling around in the dark, lost beyond hope of rescue. They
had no conceivable use in the war, just amusement value for the queen.

The earliest augmentation chambers now lay abandoned, the
instruments lying where she’d left them, the tables stained with old blood and
the stone walls as cold and silent as ice.

“I see you, Steward,” came her voice.

It was as familiar as a recurrent nightmare. Eschenbach
shivered to his core. It came from the chamber at the end of the gallery.

There was no choice but to follow it. He limped forwards,
trying to ignore the residue of agony in the open doorways as he passed them by.

Natassja was waiting for him. She sat on the throne,
painfully elegant, searingly beautiful, radiating an aura of such terrifying
power and malice that he nearly broke down in front of her before managing his
first bow. Elector Grosslich had his powers, to be sure, but Natassja was
something else.

“Why are you here?” she asked. There was little emotion in
her voice. No anger, no spite, just a faint trace of boredom. She looked at him
with the same casual disinterest a man might use on a particularly nondescript
worm.

Eschenbach did his best to look her in the face.

“I was sent by the Lord Grosslich,” he rasped, feeling his
jaw nearly seize up with the effort.

“For what purpose?”

“He wished me to check on the progress of the Stone.”

“He is welcome to come himself.”

“Shall I ask him to, my lady?”

Natassja shook her head. The movement was so slight, so
perfectly poised. The queen seemed incapable of making a clumsy or
ill-considered gesture. She was flawless, the living embodiment of a dark and
perfect symmetry.

“No need. You may see for yourself.”

She raised a slender hand. Behind her throne the stone walls
shifted. Soundlessly, gliding on rails of polished bronze, two panels slid
backwards and out, revealing a roaring, blood-red space beyond. Something
astonishing had been exposed out there—even Eschenbach’s paltry skills could
detect the volume of power being directed from below. He held back, reluctant to
venture any closer.

“Take a look,” said Natassja. Her voice sang as softly as it
ever did, but the tone of command was absolute. If she’d ordered him to pluck
his own eyes out, he would have done it then without question. As he shuffled
into place, Natassja rose from the throne, her dress falling about her like wine
slipping down a grateful throat, and followed him.

The rear walls of the chamber opened out into the side of a
massive shaft. The scale of it took Eschenbach’s breath away. Sheer walls were
clad in dark iron, moulded into a thousand pillars, arches and buttresses.
Sigils of Slaanesh and Chaos had been beaten into the metal and shone an angry
crimson. A hundred feet below, the base of the shaft was lost in a ball of
slowly rotating fire. Above him, the columns soared into the far distance, lined
along their whole length with elaborate sculptures and gothic ornamentation,
before being lost in a fog of flame and shadow. Beautiful, terrible figures
carved from iron and steel peered out from lofty perches on the high walls,
their blank eyes bathed in flames.

Eschenbach knew without having to ask that the shaft went all
the way to the summit of the Tower. Whenever he’d had his audiences with
Grosslich, he’d been standing on top of it. The elector’s chamber was nothing
more than the fragile cap on this mighty well of fire. He wondered if Grosslich
knew that.

The air inside was a mass of roaring, rushing and booming
energy. Aethyric matter surged up the narrow space, pressing against its iron
shackles, throbbing and fighting to be released. Now, at last, Eschenbach knew
the purpose of the citadel. The whole thing was a device with a single purpose:
to conduct the will of the Stone, to magnify and condense it into a point, far
above the level of the city. As he watched the titanic levels of arcane
puissance balloon along the spine of the Tower, as he heard the roar from below,
he began to gain some appreciation of the scale of what had been achieved here.

“What do you think?” asked Natassja, standing by his side on
the edge of the precipice. The rush of flames licked against her ankles, curling
around her body like whips. The red light lit up her face, and her dark eyes
glowed.

“Magnificent,” murmured Eschenbach, for a moment forgetting
the pains in his mortal body. Beside this, nothing else seemed significant.
“It’s magnificent.”

Natassja looked like she barely heard him. She was gazing
into the shaft herself, eyes lost in rapture.

“This is what the suffering has achieved,” she murmured. “The
merest savage can inflict misery. We never act but for a higher purpose. The
Stone is roused by agony. It
is
agony.”

Eschenbach listened, rapt. Natassja ignored him, speaking to
herself.

“Every spar of this Tower, every stone of it, is in place for
a reason. There lies the true beauty of this place. The
necessity
of it.
Only that which is necessary is beautiful, and the beautiful is all that is
necessary. That shall be my creed, when all is done here.”