Tales of the Old World (94 page)

“Protect the count,” Reiner said to Valen and Vaust. The brothers took
Gunther between them to an alcove at the back of the room.

With a bellow of rage, Setti-Ra emerged from the trapdoor opening.

Halbranc lunged forward, thrusting the burning torch into the creature’s
body. It hurled the templar aside. The torch clattered to the ground, and was
smothered. Flames licked over the aging corpse but died quickly.

Sigson stepped forward, the holy book of Morr in his hand. “In the name of
Morr, I compel you,” he uttered, his voice loud and powerful.

The creature stopped as if suddenly held by an invisible bond.

“I compel you,” Sigson repeated, stepping towards it, arm outstretched, his
open palm facing towards it. Mikael and Reiner thrust their torches at the
beast. Sigson screamed and fell to the ground as Setti-Ra broke his hold.

Though the undead thing burned, the flames were dying out quickly.

“Force it into the tapestry,” Mikael cried, launching himself at the
creature. At the same time, Halbranc rammed into it with his shoulder and Reiner
tackled the beast’s legs. It toppled, slowly like a felled tree, tearing at the
huge portrait that caught alight with the remaining flames licking its body. The
tapestry pulled free and smothered the foul creature, fire spreading eagerly now
over the corpse, as it thrashed and flailed for terrible unlife.

Flames mirrored in his eyes, Gunther looked at the burning form of his
father, at the tapestry destroyed and his family history with it.

With the knights of Morr encircling it, the creature gradually stopped
struggling and slumped down amidst a pall of foul smoke as it was burned to ash,
the spirit of Setti-Ra banished along with it.

“Please,” Gunther rasped, tears in his eyes, “put him out.”

It was dark in the infirmary. Mikael stared from one of the windows onto the
town below. The rain had abated at last and the waters were dispersing. Workers
shored up the earthen banks, to make certain they would hold. Across the
darkened sky, there was a light to the south as the sun began to rise. Looking
back into the room, he saw Lenchard was awake. Reiner and the others waited
silently in the shadows. Sigson was by the witch hunter’s side. “You owe us some
answers,” he said.

Lenchard’s head bore a thick bandage and his face was covered in small cuts
and bruises. He winced as he smiled back at the warrior priest.

“There is a cult called the Scarabs,” he relented. “Fanatical men, they
worship the Tomb King Setti-Ra, believing the heart of he who defeated their
king would bring about his resurrection.”

“Gunther’s father,” Sigson asserted.

“Yes, but they need the living heart and since Falken Halstein was dead, they
came for his son,” Lenchard said, getting up out of bed.

“Krieger could not have known that Setti-Ra had inhabited the body of Falken
Halstein; such a body could not sustain an undead lord. I was wrong; Krieger
came here with a mission, not for revenge but to kill Count Gunther and take his
heart. He stumbled upon the creature and it killed him, and so we are still no
closer to finding the cult,” he continued, strapping on his weapons.

“We,”
said Reiner coldly.

From a pouch by his bedside Lenchard produced a scroll of parchment, which he
gave to the captain.

“This is a missive from your temple,” he explained as Reiner read it,
“stating that you and your knights are seconded into my service until the cult
is found or it is deemed fit to release you.”

Sigson laughed mirthlessly and walked out of the room.

Reiner sealed the scroll up and handed it back to Lenchard. “So be it,” he
said without emotion and left after Sigson. Slowly the rest of the knights
followed. Mikael was the last. As he was about to leave, Lenchard said, “It’s
Mikael, isn’t it?”

Mikael nodded.

“Tell me, Mikael,” the witch hunter said, his expression curious, “how did
you know about the desert? I heard you speak of it to the count.”

A pang of anxiety rose suddenly in Mikael’s chest. He thought only the count
had heard him.

“I overheard it,” he countered, backing away.

“Of course,” Lenchard said, watching the young templar as he followed after
his comrades. “Of course you did.”

In the hall, the knights of Morr were making ready to leave, checking weapons
and armour before heading out the keep and Galstadt for good. The Black Knights
had clearly worn out their welcome, and as they fixed blades and tightened
belts, a small group of Knights of the Fiery Heart had gathered. The Morr
worshippers were standing opposite them, clustered close together, Halbranc
putting himself deliberately between Vaust and the glowering Sigmarites. Mikael
stood next to the giant, alongside him was Valen. Sigson was sat down, reading
his prayer book, while Reiner and Lenchard, who conversed quietly in a nearby
corner of the room, waited for Count Gunther so they could observe the proper
etiquette for their departure.

As far as Mikael was concerned, it couldn’t happen soon enough, his eyes on
Garrant, as he and the other knights exchanged dark glances.

“Doubtless, they are making sure we leave,” Halbranc chuckled.

Mikael was about to answer when a door, thudding insistently at the far end
of the hall from a strong draught running through the keep, distracted him.
Something about it was odd, slightly incongruous.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” he said. “This is taking too long.” Mikael
walked quickly over to Garrant, trying to ignore the glare of Reiner, who had
been listening to the witch hunter. Sigson saw the young templar too, and put
down his prayer book.

“Your lord,” Mikael asked the Sigmarite. “Where is he?”

Garrant was slightly perturbed by what he perceived as insolence, but
something about the young templar’s tone got his attention.

“He’s in the chapel,” Garrant said, pointing to the door at the end of the
room. “A priest offered to bless his father’s ashes.”

“What priest?” Sigson asked, suddenly appearing next to Mikael.

“From the town,” the Sigmarite explained. “An old blind man.”

The templar and warrior priest looked at each other, with grave faces.

“Show us this chapel,” Mikael said urgently.

The chapel was a small room, little more than an antechamber from the great
hall. Inside, there was a stone altar on top of which was an urn containing
Falken Halstein’s ashes. Count Gunther lay next to the altar He was dead, his
heart removed from his chest. A scarab beetle had been carved into the flesh of
his left cheek.

“The blind man,” Mikael said to Sigson, abruptly aware that Reiner and the
others had followed them.

“What?”

“The one that stumbled into Reiner at the gates,” he said, pointing at his
captain. “He addressed him as ‘noble lord’. How could he have known he was a
knight if he were blind? I saw him on the ridge during the flood, but thought it
was my imagination.”

“You’re right.” Lenchard spoke with a hint of resignation, standing in the
doorway. “We have been fools; a second Scarab cultist.”

Sigson bent over near the body.

“The blood is still warm,” he said, looking up at Reiner. A look of disgusted
anger passed briefly over the captain’s face. “Get to the gates,” he ordered.

By the time they reached the gatehouse, it was too late. The guard was
already dead, his body propped up on a wooden stool. Protruding from his neck
was a curved bladed dagger that bore a gold scarab hilt. Lenchard examined it.

“They are taunting us,” he said bitterly to the knights of Morr standing
around him. “Get the horses,” he told them, rushing out of the gatehouse,
heading for the stable yard. “They have the heart and the means with which to
resurrect Setti-Ra. We must find the cultists trail. We ride, now!”

The knights followed after him, mounting up quickly and racing through the
gates. Driving his steed hard, Mikael looked to the lightening horizon and felt
time suddenly ebbing away as if an hourglass were turned and they were all
slipping through it.

As High Zar Surtha Lenk gathers his Kurgan horde for
their advance into south, the zars of his warbands compete with one another to
gain the honoured and most prestigious rank of Shyi-Zar.

It was dawn in late winter. The sky was a blur of mauve darkness, broken in
the east by a rind of approaching daylight, and the twin moons, like discs of
fire-lit bone, were sinking to their setting places. A dawn like any other,
thought Karthos, a cold and unforgiving sunrise, but his sorcerer said
otherwise. This was an auspicious daybreak. A special time. A time that heralded
the future.

Dutifully then, Karthos had woken the men early, kicking away their furs and
growling their names. Sullen, they rose, and saw to the fire, which had sunk
down to glowing embers in the last part of the night. Karthos took a swig of
spirits to warm his belly. The warrior rings around his broad arms were as cold
as ice upon his skin.

“What is he doing?” asked Odek. The sorcerer was now on the headland
overlooking the camp, walking in slow circles around the goat he had brought
with them from Kherdheg, murmuring words they couldn’t hear. The goat, its
headrope staked to the ground, was bleating.

“He’s walking around that goat,” Karthos said. “And talking to it.”

Odek grinned. “With these eyes of mine, I see that much,” he said. He had
ridden with the zar for nine seasons, and it was as much Karthos’ phlegmatic
humour and unfailing dryness that kept him loyal as it was the zar’s potency in
battle. He knew many Kurgan who followed their zars out of fear and duty, but he
followed his out of respect and kinship. It was a bond that got as close to
friendship as it was possible to get in the blighted North.

“I wondered… why?”

“I know you did,” nodded Karthos.

“So… why?”

Zar Karthos turned to his second-in-command. “The sorcerer tells me this is a
special time. Moonset.”

“The moons set every day.”

“Indeed. But this is a day amongst days. One moon sets, then the sun itself
rises before the second moon can fall to its rest behind the plate of the
world.”

“This he says?”

“This he says, and I doubt him not. It makes this time sacred. The light of
the sun, he tells me, lets him see between the moons on this rare day. There are
answers to be read there.”

“Including the answer that we want?”

“That,” replied the zar, “is what I hope.”

The roused men had gathered by then, all ten of them. Koros Kyr, the standard
bearer; Bereng, the horn-blower; Tnash He-Wolf; Odagidor; Lokas Longham; Aulkor;
his brother Aulkmar; Gwul Gehar; Zbetz Red-fletch and Ffornesh the Dreamer. Furs
and cloaks about their wide shoulders, they stood by the warmth of the spitting
fire and watched the sorcerer at his rite.

One moon had set, its disc turning pale ivory then smoked silver as it slid
down into the haze until it was out of sight. Then a band of flame lit the
horizon, and the sun rose, heavy and copper, as if its furnaces had not yet been
stoked up.

All of the warband knew the significance. This was Tchar’s time. A time of
change.

From the headland, the remaining moon behind his head like a halo, the
sorcerer called to Karthos, and the zar hurried up the slope.

The sorcerer was called Ygdran Ygra. He was the oldest man Karthos had ever
known, thin-limbed and spidery, his skin lined with age. He had been sorcerer to
Karthos’ father when Karthos’ father had been zar.

“Take the blade,” Ygdran Ygra told Karthos. The proffered knife was a
sharpened curve of moonstone instead of the sorcerer’s usual silver dagger.

“Where must I strike?” asked Karthos. The goat bleated again, more shrill
now.

Ygdran Ygra pinched at his own slack dewlap, and for a moment the zar thought
he was being asked to butcher his sorcerer.

“The throat, zar, the throat,” the sorcerer instructed.

Karthos did as he was told. The goat ceased its noise. Ygdran Ygra had
powdered the grass with chalk, and when the hot blood came out, steaming in the
cold air, it ran and blotted amongst the white stalks.

“Good, good,” the sorcerer said, taking the slick blade back. He bent to
read.

“Well?”

The sorcerer looked up at the zar. There was a curious fire in his milky blue
eyes. “You must pledge,” he said.

A smile ignited on Karthos’ face. Down the slope, his men saw it, and
started cheering and whooping even before he could relate the news.

Well-fed on goat meat, they broke camp and rode into the rising day. There
was now an eagerness to the band that Karthos could feel. Sometimes a band
dragged and lingered, unwilling, unfocused. But now they were fierce, and fired
with a purpose. They were to pledge. Tchar had seen between the moons and
licensed them. Lokas Longham and Ffornesh the Dreamer began to sing a war-song,
full-voiced into the winter day.

This was how any zar wanted his warrior-pack. Vital, willing, indifferent to
danger. Karthos was forced to gallop his steed hard to keep at the head of the
charging group. He laughed into the cold wind.

They would follow him. Nothing would stand in his way. They would follow him
to eternity.

At the next valley top, they reined in. Below, across a league of gorse
heathland, lay the gathering place, staining the white sky with its smudges of
smoke.

Zar Karthos raised his left hand, fingers splayed, the sign that meant, “Let
us ride.”

And down they went.

Around the ancient lightning tree that marked the gathering place, the horse
clans had assembled in great numbers. Karthos had led his band to gatherings
before, but the scale of this meeting took his breath away. He had not known so
many men lived upon the plate of the world.