Tales of the Old World (52 page)

Gilbert had a brief, very brief, moment to comprehend his mortal danger
before the boy’s sword penetrated deep into his stomach. Both fell to the floor
and blood poured from two wounds. Only the boy managed to stand, however.

It occurred to Gilbert, only in his very last moment, that in truth he had
never fully trusted the smith, and had been unsurprised when he had discovered
that the smith’s son was a troublemaker.

Like father, like son,
he thought, as he died.

The aftermath of the battle at the manor was a sad time in Montreuil. The
surviving sergeants, which turned out to be most of them, drifted away when it
was discovered that the Marquis would no longer be paying their wages. One
stayed on and married a village girl, when their affair was made public, and
another downed his weapons and installed himself at the mill, now that Gerni was
gone.

Tomas didn’t stay long in Montreuil and not all were sad when he left. Though
nobody was sorry to see the end of the Marquis, many thought that the cost in
lives was too steep, and that things had been bearable as they were. Tomas
didn’t say where he was going, though perhaps he told his mother.

The manor house stood mostly empty at one end of the village and fell quickly
into disrepair. It became custom in Montreuil, when a roof was leaking, or a
hinge fell off a door, for the villager in need to make a trip to the manor and
to take what he sought to make the repair.

The rose hedge slowly grew back, but was kept to a modest height, perhaps the
waist of a tall man, and on festival days in honour of the Lady the village was
covered in a garland of roses.

It was purely speculation on the behalf of some villagers that the new
flowers were brighter and more fragrant than those which had grown there before.

Count Rothenburg finished his gruesome tale with a wry smile and leant back
into the comfortable leather of his chair. As he viewed us over the rim of his
wineglass, the light of the fire glinted in his vivid blue eyes, and he gave a
mischievous laugh. “Well? Have I stunned you all into silence?”

There was a round of manly coughs and laughter, as we attempted to dispel the
sombre mood he had created. “
Bored
us into silence maybe,” chortled one
gentleman. “I’ve heard that story several times before, and at least once from
your own lips!”

“Aye,” said another, with an exaggerated yawn. “I think maybe you’ve been
enjoying a little too much of your own hospitality.”

With some difficulty I managed to rise from my chair and wander unsteadily
over to the window. The count’s cellar was stocked beyond the wildest dreams of
most of Nuln’s citizens, and we had spent the better part of the evening
attempting to make a small dent in it. As I gazed drunkenly out into the moonlit
splendour of Rothenburg’s ornamental garden, I struggled to remove the more
unpleasant details of his story from my memory.

Tales of unspeakable horrors and strange happenings seemed to have become the
mainstay of our conversation whenever we met. I doubt any of us could pinpoint
the exact genesis of this morbid tradition, but it seemed now that every
gathering was simply an excuse to plumb to new depths of absurd fantasy. I
shivered.

Bravado insisted that we make light of even the most shocking yarns, but I
could not help wondering where it might all lead. This passionate desire to
outdo each other made me somehow nervous.

Stories sometimes have a way of returning to haunt you.

“I have a tale,” murmured a voice from behind me, “though… though I am not
sure it is right that… that I should share it.”

A ripple of derisory laughter filled the room.

“Ho!” exclaimed the count, leaning forward in his chair, “what a coy
temptress you are, Gormont! ‘Not sure it is right’ you say! What a tease! Do
you take us for a bunch of prudes?”

I turned from the window and saw that the Gormont in question was a small,
anonymous-looking youth I had not previously noticed. He was sat away from the
light of the fire, in the shadows by the door, and was obviously very drunk. As
the party turned their attention towards him, he retreated back into the folds
of his huge chair like a cornered rat, and seemed to regret having spoken.

“Well?” demanded our host, obviously intrigued, “what have you to share with
us, nephew?”

“I’m not totally sure—not sure I should…” he whispered, shuffling nervously
in his seat.

There was an expectant silence, as we all waited for him to continue.

“I have brought something with me, you see…”

There was another chorus of laughter, and one of the guests began slapping
his thighs dramatically. “He has something with him! He has something with him!
Speak, boy! We demand entertainment!”

I peered through the smoky gloom to get a clearer view. There was a manic
quality to the boy’s expression that seemed to go beyond mere drunkenness; he
was obviously torn between an eagerness to impress his audience, and fear.

For several more moments he prevaricated and evaded, and soon the haranguing
of the group reached such a deafening volume that even the servants began to
look nervous.

“Very well,” he shouted finally over the din, looking somehow triumphant and
terrified at the same time, “I will speak!”

A grin spread across the count’s handsome face and the room grew quiet. I
looked around at the circle of rapt faces. The combined effect of the wine and
the glow of the fire gave us the appearance of hungry daemons, leering over a
defenceless prey. I knew all too well the urbane derision that would greet the
conclusion of the boy’s tale, yet we were all, to a man, desperate to hear it
relayed.

“I must beg of you that this go no further!” hissed Gormont dramatically.

The count rolled his eyes as this cheap showmanship, but shooed his servants
from the room nevertheless.

Gormont cleared his throat nervously and began. “My family has employed the
same physician for decades,” he said, turning away from us to rummage in a bag.
“Gustav Insel. You may have heard of him?” He turned to face us questioningly,
holding up a few scraps of paper. “This is his journal. Well, some of his
journal, that is. Do you swear to secrecy gentlemen?”

“Get on with it boy!” cried the count in an imperious tone, which caused
Gormont to flinch.

“Very… very well,” he stammered. “I’m sure we all understand these matters
require discretion.”

We nodded impatiently, without the slightest idea what he was talking about.

“Yes, Gustav Insel. When I was a child he treated me for every imaginable
ailment, and has bled my family regularly for almost every year of my life.
Every year, that is, until last year. We heard rumours that he had gone abroad,
or been killed even, and my father was forced—at some inconvenience—to find
another doctor. However, just a few months back, he returned and the change in
him was awful to behold.” An expression of almost comical dismay came over the
boy’s face. That a man can be so altered, in the space of a year is hard to
comprehend.

“I would not have given any credence to this,” he continued, holding up the
papers, “were it not for the fact that some of the incidents mentioned seem to
have a basis in actual facts. Ships’ records and the like seem to concur; and
the baron he describes is no fictional character—I have made some enquiries,
and not only did he exist, but also he did indeed disappear in a most mysterious
fashion. And the foreigner—Mansoul—I have discovered that he also exists.”

“I cannot bear this!” exclaimed the count, striding across the room and
snatching the papers from Gormont. “We’ll all be in our grave by the time you
start the first paragraph! Let me read the thing myself!”

Gormont seemed too shocked—or too inebriated—to resist, and Rothenburg
marched back to his seat with the journal. He turned the papers over in his
hands a few times, and then began to read: “It is only as a warning to others
that I tell this morbid tale…”

It is only as a warning to others that I tell this morbid tale. For myself, I
would wish nothing more than to wipe the whole tragic affair from my memory.
However, my duty is clear, and I could not, in all conscience, allow these
terrible facts to go unrecorded. Even now, only months after my return to the
south, those events which have so haunted my every waking moment are already
becoming indistinct and hazy. It is almost as though such terrible visions are
too much for a mortal mind to comprehend; like worms they writhe and twist in my
thoughts—elusive and serpentine, eager to avoid a closer inspection. But I
will pin them to these pages with my quill. My tale must be told.

We set sail from Erengrad on the good ship
Heldenhammer
in the year
2325. As ship’s surgeon, and close friend of our intrepid employer, Baron Fallon
von Kelspar, I was blessed with a cabin that was merely unpleasant rather than
uninhabitable. The damp seeped through the bed linen and the rats nested in my
clothes, but to have a bed of any sort was enough to earn the enmity of our
swarthy Kislevite crew. They eyed me resentfully from within their fur-lined
hoods.

Still, if it is possible for me to remember any stage of that doomed
expedition with fondness, it would be those first few days. The baron wore the
air of a man possessed, and his enthusiasm was infectious. Even the Kislevites
seemed affected by it. The whole ship’s company was charged with his fervour.

There were, however, rumours of a scandal following closely on his heels, and
I heard it said that his journey to the north was one of convenience as much as
discovery. Certainly it was true that he seemed to show scant regard for the
family estates he had abandoned so suddenly, and he politely evaded any
enquiries about the baroness; but nevertheless, I could not doubt him. Seeing
him stood at the prow of the ship, leaning forward impatiently into the bitterly
cold wind, I found it impossible to harbour any suspicions as to his character.
In fact, with the ice freezing in his beard and the snow settling on his broad
shoulders, he looked more worthy of trust than any man I have ever served. My
faith in him was absolute.

We had made good headway around the coast of Norsca, but were in the midst of
a five-day gale when the first of many disasters struck. I was up in the slings
of the foreyard, struggling to hang on as the ship rolled and lurched, when out
across the churning black sea I spied a jagged shape rearing up from the
horizon.

“Land,” I called down to the deck where our captain, Hausenblas, was busily
bailing water with the rest of the crew, “to starboard!”

He rushed to the prow of the ship, and shielded his eyes from the snow. Even
from my perch up in the swaying spars, I saw the colour drain from his face and,
as he hurried back to his cabin, I clambered down the rigging with fear already
tightening in my stomach.

Moments later, the baron and I watched helplessly as he pored over his maps
and charts with increasing desperation. “Clar Karond?” he muttered.

“Can we be that far west? It cannot be!” Although the name meant nothing to
me, my fear continued to grow, and as I watched him wading through map after
map, filling the cabin with a storm of papers, I wondered what it was that I had
seen out there across the waves. What could have driven Hausenblas into such a
frenzy?

Finally, as his muttered curses seemed on the verge of hysteria, Kelspar
stepped forward and calmly placed a hand on his shoulder. “Captain,” he said,
“is there something you would like to share with us?”

Hausenblas whirled around to face the baron. Kelspar’s composed tone seemed
to calm him a little, but there was a wild look in his eyes and, as he replied,
he could not disguise the tremor in his voice. “North of the Empire all is
damnation and rain, baron, but a sailor of my years can—with the good will of
Manann—avoid the worst of the dangers…” His voice trailed off into silence,
and he looked distractedly out of the porthole.

“Yes?” prompted Kelspar after a few moments.

Hausenblas grabbed a crumpled piece of parchment and thrust it at the baron.
“It’s the Clar Karond peninsular!” he barked. “The storm has taken us too far
west! We’ve entered the Land of Chill, where the foul corrupted elves dwell!”

I gasped involuntarily. The ship’s carpenter had told me many tales and
legends concerning that cruel, mysterious race, and the look of fear in the
captain’s eyes banished any doubt I may have held about their existence.

“They’ll be on us like dogs within hours,” wailed Hausenblas, dropping
heavily into a chair. “We don’t stand a chance.”

Kelspar stood in silence for a few moments, seemingly lost in thought, then
he nodded and strode out into the raging storm.

With every ounce of his skill and experience, our captain tried to steer the
Heldenhammer
away from the coast I had spied, but Manann’s thoughts must
have been elsewhere that day and within hours, sinister silhouettes began
looming out of the tempest like ghosts. At first, as I peered out through the
falling snow, I thought we were being surrounded by great living creatures—terrible leviathans of the deep, with brutal slender claws and arched ragged
wings; but as they grew nearer, I realised to my amazement that they were ships.

They were like no ships I had ever seen before.

Their design seemed the work of some strange, incomprehensible mind; but
despite their hideousness, I could not deny that was also a perverse beauty to
them. The twisted curves and cruel lines were strangely sensuous, and graceful.

The charismatic baron had a way of making the impossible seem achievable, and
whatever the scheme, his men would leap to realise his every whim and fancy.
They were not fools, however. An expedition into the unforgiving north, from
whence few men had returned was something that required the necessary tools, and
from the bowels of the ship emerged an armoury fit to defend a small city:
swords, slings, muskets and the like were soon arrayed along the taffrail in
their dozens as the men prepared to engage the enemy. Beside them stood all of
the crew that could be spared—these were men used to hardship and war, living
so far north, and they would not give up their livelihood, or their lives,
easily.