Tales of the Old World (117 page)

The baron, gazing levelly from his throne at the wretched sight before him,
ordered the two guards holding the man by his arms to relinquish their grip. The
witch did not topple forward as expected, but stood, swaying, his eyes regarding
his tormentor defiantly. He spoke mockingly in a clear voice.

“Sir, I feel I must thank you. The pain your lackeys have inflicted upon me
is but a small price to pay for the months of nocturnal pleasure your sister has
bestowed upon me.”

The baron leapt from his seat, half jumped down the steps and struck the
witch across his face, hard with his gauntleted hand. The man staggered back,
laughing, fresh blood pouring from a cut over his eye.

“I would kill you here with my bare hands,” bellowed the baron, “if the law
did not demand that you, like all your diseased kind, should be put to the
fire.”

“Oh, sir, sir…” the witch cooed. “Rest assured I will not burn. My master’s
game will not allow it. I am to be the bane of your life. You do not even begin
to comprehend the horror of which I am capable.”

The baron found himself unable to look for long upon the man’s face, lest he
catch sight of himself in eyes as jet-black and soulless as a viper’s.

The witch cupped his hand to his ear as though listening for something. A
childish grin spread across his face. “Oh, sir. I believe congratulations are in
order. You are a father at last. And it is a boy.”

In the wake of the terrible events, the baron had forgotten about his wife’s
confinement. Before he could react, a lad, son to one of the midwives, came
scampering into the throne-room. He gave a hurried, unpractised bow and said,
excitably, “My lord, my mother bids me come tell you the glad tidings: that my
lady has been delivered of a son.”

Ordering the guards to clamp themselves back onto the prisoner, the baron
strode towards the door. Struggling against his captors, the witch started to
laugh once again.

“Baron! Hear me!” he screamed. “By the Dark Gods I lay a curse upon your
house! I will take everything from you, in time. First, though: your wife!”

The baron started to run.

“Go!” the witch shouted after him. “But you are too late. My master’s work is
already done.”

The midwives and servant-girls crowded round the newborn, cooing in
adoration. None of them thought to check on the baroness. The baron burst into
the chamber.

Responding to his presence by casting their eyes to the floor, the women
curtsied and murmured respectfully.

Rushing to his wife’s side, the baron took her hand in his. Her head turned
slowly to face him. Though drawn and tired from her ordeal, she wore a contented
smile.

It was then that he noticed the blood at the corner of her mouth. It trickled
out, a small amount at first, but grew steadily. The baroness appeared not to
notice, but continued to stare beatifically at her husband.

“Help her,” he said, unable to raise his voice above a hiss. The
servant-girls looked up. “Help her.”

Her head fell onto one side, a dead weight. Blood seeped slowly out, soaking
into the pillow and onto the sheet. Her body went limp. But for the soft
whimpering from the servant-girls, there was no noise.

The baron freed his hand from his wife’s lifeless fingers. Numb and shaking,
he crossed the room and picked up the child. He held it to his breast. A boy,
thanks be to the Lady. A son. An
heir.

The baron went immediately from the chamber, channelling his grief into
thunderous anger. In the cell, he rained blow after blow against the witch’s
body. Throughout it all, the fiend made no sound.

At last, breathing hard, exhausted, his knuckles scuffed and bleeding, the
baron stopped.

The witch sat up, as though refreshed, one eye completely closed with
bruising.

“You have a healthy son, my lord,” he said. “Such a shame that his life will
be so short.”

Powered by grief and fear, the baron launched himself again at the witch,
pinning him to the wall by the throat.

“You will speak no more!”

From his belt he took a dagger and, forcing the witch’s jaws apart, worked
his way inside the mouth, cut and carved for a second, then stepped back.

The witch slumped against the wall, blood cascading from his mouth. His face
was slack but his eyes still shone with mirth and malice.

While these events had been unfolding, a crowd of the kingdom’s finest
scholars had been gathered about the Lady Juliette. By now almost mad with
grief, the baron received their report in a state of great agitation. “How fares
my sister?”

All reluctant to speak, Blampel the beak-nosed physician was nudged forward.
One hand adjusting his skull-cap, he muttered a curse intended for his craven
colleagues.

“I fear the news is not good, my lord,” he said at last.

The baron nodded at him to elaborate.

“The lady has lost her mind. Human speech and reasoning are beyond her. Never
before have I seen madness consume a person so swiftly.”

Stroking his neatly-trimmed beard with a hand still spattered with the
witch’s dried blood, the baron said, “And what of her dabbling in witchcraft? Is
she an innocent party or am I to put my own flesh and blood to the flame?” He
looked across. “Tertullion?”

The portly mage, who had been hiding at the back of the group, guzzling from
a wineskin left over from the banquet, shuffled drunkenly forward. He dabbed at
his food-encrusted whiskers and steadied himself against a pillar. “My lord. As
my friend, the learned man of medicine, has already rightly diagnosed, the Lady
Juliette is quite insane. I am of the opinion that because of this, her
innocence or otherwise in this matter is now an irrelevance. Any of the Dark
Ways that may have been imparted to her by her foul consort are now surely lost,
along with the rest of her humanity.” This was typical of Tertullion.
Long-winded, wordy. And wrong.

For come the dawn, the guards found within the cell, not the witch but the
Lady Juliette, her state of mind greatly improved. Somehow fully clothed, she
stood holding the trail of her silken dress up, so as to avoid the filth of the
floor. Giggling like a young girl, she uttered a single dark word.

Two of the guards fell, screaming, to their knees, eyeballs liquefying,
bubbling from the sockets. The third guard, swinging blindly with terror, lopped
her head neatly from her body. Escaping from her neck with a hiss like steam,
blood sprayed the dirty walls and showered the straw-strewn floor.

Blinking blood out of his eyes, the petrified guard stared at the crumpled
body before him as it twitched its last. Juliette’s head lay at an angle, partly
obscured by the straw, her fine, dark hair framing an expression of surprise.

The witch, her master, was not to be seen for many years.

Though he was born into a house of sorrow, the baron’s son, also named
Gregory as had been the custom for the first-born son for ten generations, grew
into a healthy and well-adjusted boy. His father put at his disposal the finest
academics. He soon became the first male member of the line who could read and
write, and in several languages, too. But it soon became apparent that the
warrior-blood burned brightly within. As adolescence approached, it was to
jousts and sword-play that he turned. Even the books he read were tomes dealing
with tactics and warfare.

Eager to encourage this aspect of his son’s life, the baron put him under the
tutelage of Sir Gilles. Though already into his fourth decade at the boy’s
birth, his sword skills knew no equal and, in the trials, he could still keep
several far younger opponents at bay. But it was his tales that made Gregory
love him.

Gilles’ questing had taken him all over the Old World and beyond. He had
fought alongside dwarfs against orcs and goblins in the World’s Edge Mountains,
done battle with Sartosan pirates, slaughtered beastmen and mutants within the
forests, even driven a skaven horde back into the heart of its foul subterranean
nest. Every time Gilles spoke of these adventures, Gregory’s face lit up in rapt
attention.

Shortly before his twelfth birthday, he asked Gilles why he was not allowed
to leave the castle.

“That is your father’s decision,” Gilles said in his soothing, deep voice.
“And you would do better not to question it.”

But something in the Grail Knight’s pale, blue eyes, told the young heir to
do exactly the opposite.

“You have been filling his head with your tales!” the baron roared. Gilles,
kneeling before the throne on the flagstones, lifted his bowed head.

“I meant no harm by it, my liege.”

The baron, about to shout again, felt suddenly foolish. He put one hand
against the side of his head, where the hair had already grown prematurely grey.

“Get up, old friend,” the baron said, sadly. “I am sorry.”

Gilles got to his feet and looked his master steadily in the eyes. “No
apologies are necessary,” he said. “But I must ask you why you are so opposed to
your son’s request?”

“Because I will not allow him to leave this castle,” said the baron. “And
this hunting party he craves? Into the forest? No.” He sighed wearily, adding,
“It is for his own protection.”

“That is as maybe,” Gilles said. “But do you not think it more dangerous to
cosset the boy, to leave him ill-prepared for the dangers he may face?”

“I have made my decision,” the baron rumbled.

The hunting party took place a week later, on the occasion of Gregory’s
birthday. Though he had relented, the baron was leaving nothing to chance. A
retinue of men-at-arms and bowmen, as well as Gilles and his company of knights
and squires, all accompanied the noblemen down into the forest. Also, for his
magical abilities only, the old bore Tertullion was carried on a litter with the
party, his white, oval face flushed with the wine he drank.

They rode away from the shadow of the Chambourt, to an area where direct
sunlight broke through the canopy of leaves. Riding between Gilles and his
father, Gregory jabbered with excitement.

“Will we hunt boar, father?”

“Yes,” the baron said. “With the lance.”

The boy turned to Gilles. “And deer? I would like to test my archery skills
on a moving target. Will we hunt deer?”

“Undoubtedly,” Sir Gilles said with a laugh. He flashed a smile across at the
baron, and was pleased to see that he shared his good humour.

Tertullion, his goblet refreshed by a servant-girl, bobbed alongside on his
cushion.

“I must say, my lord,” he slurred, “that the effect of this hunting party
upon the young prince, already a fine figure of burgeoning manhood, can only be
beneficial.” He raised his drink. “A capital idea.”

It was to be the last wrong thing he said. The arrow entered through his
eyeball, cracked his skull apart, and left through the back of his head.

He was but the first.

“Beastmen!” cried one of the soldiers from the front. Horses whinnied as a
volley of arrows came from the trees. Screams. The thud of arrowheads on
shields.

Pulling the reins of his steed in tight, Sir Gilles quickly assessed the
situation. Arrows were coming from all around. They were surrounded. He spurred
his house through the confusion of panicked noblemen, to the men-at-arms.

“Form up! Form up!” he yelled. “Shields high!”

At his word the bowmen scurried forward, taking up places behind the pikes.
They fired a volley into the trees. Bestial cries of their victims rang out.
Pulling his visor down, Gilles peered into the murk. The shadows moved;
suggestions of horns and hooves, tentacles and twisted, Chaos-tainted limbs.
This was no opportunist beastman raid, he realised. They were well organised.
And there were hundreds of them.

Screaming in their foul, ululating tongue, the enemy burst forth from the
trees. Wave after wave fell to the bow and the pike, but each time a gap was
left. Under Gilles’ command, the soldiers shored up, but the protective circle
was getting ever smaller. And the arrows kept coming from all around.

Gilles looked across at Gregory. To the boy’s credit he showed no fear. His
face, as he kept close to his father, was fixed with a look of stoic
determination. He was calm. He had his wits. He would make a fine warrior.

A clamour of clashing armour from one side of the circle announced another
attack. The beastmen were concentrating on one area. They hacked at it, burst
through, splintering shields and cleaving skulls, cutting down bowmen. They were
in.

His horse rising onto its hind-legs, Gilles raised his sword skywards, gave a
rallying cry and went to join the fray. An arrow found a gap in his mount’s
armour-plating, piercing its side. It fell sideways. Unable to free his foot
from his stirrups in time, Gilles went with it.

He heard the crunch as his leg dislocated. His sword snapped in two as it
connected with a rock. Fighting against the pain, Gilles was unaware of the
beastman, a stocky hunchback with the head of bull, standing over him with a
club. Raining blow after blow against his armour, it beat him into the
blackness.

Gilles awoke to find himself bound. He had been stripped of his armour and
was lying on a slab of stone, his arms and legs pinioned by ropes. He was
covered in bruises. Blood had dried over his head. His broken leg was numb and
would not move. From a torch set on the wall, he could see that he was in some
sort of cave. The vicious points of stalactites jutted out of the darkness above
him.

“Sir Gilles?” a voice called. It was hoarse as though from sobbing.

“Gregory?”

Gilles craned his head, wincing against the pain. The lad, tied to another
slab of rock, appeared unharmed. He was trembling, his face once again that of a
frightened boy.

A man entered the room. Towering, his head almost touching the jagged roof,
Sir Gilles recognised him of old. He had grown his long hair back. The witch.