This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery. It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders and soldiers, it isa land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forestsand vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reignsthe Emperor Karl Franz, sacred descendant of thefounder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades harry the wild southern lands ofthe Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things, the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods. As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs heroes like never before.

chapter one

THE PRODIGAL RETURNS

The smoke from a burning woman stung Ulrika’s eyes as she rode through Nuln’s western gate.

‘Leech!’ a shopwife cried.

‘Sigmar strike her down!’ roared a foundryman.

‘Burn the fiend!’ shouted an apprentice. He threw a rock and hit the woman in the face.

Ulrika looked from under her broad-brimmed hat at the poor wretch who writhed and shrieked on the pyre in the middle of the rutted street, fearing it might be one of her sisters, but the woman was no vampire. Ulrika could hear her heart hammering from across the street. She was only a girl who’d had the misfortune to be born with black hair and pale skin.

‘Let this be a warning to all bloodsuckers who seek to enter the city of Magnus the Pious!’ shouted a wild-eyed witch hunter to the mob that thronged around the pyre. ‘This is your welcome here! This is your doom!’

Ulrika was tempted to bare her fangs at him, just to see the look on his face, but instead edged her horse around the crowd, her head lowered, and continued on. Now was not the time to stir up trouble. There was too much of that already. Far too much.

For five weeks, as late spring turned into a swamp-hot summer, Ulrika had raced as fast as she could from Praag to Nuln, killing horses and bleeding gold in an effort to outrun the doom the von Carstein spy, Stefan von Kohln, had told her was coming to Countess Gabriella von Nachthafen, Ulrika’s mistress, but almost from the moment she had crossed from Kislev into the Empire, she had known she would be too late. In every city and town on the way south it had been the same – a vampiress quartered and burned in Wurzen, a plague of zombies in Kusel said to have been raised by a little dead girl in the woods, a cult that worshipped a vampire goddess in Talabheim exposed and hung en masse on a gibbet that served fifty at a time, the mayor of Wurtbad’s wife beheaded while the mayor wept and scratched at the scabs on his neck. And everywhere, everywhere, mobs and witch hunters and vampire hunters burning girls and houses and whole families on the merest rumour of unnatural hungers.

This was the doom Stefan had warned Ulrika of – the wholesale exposure of the Lahmian sisterhood that his Sylvanian masters had engineered in order to create a rising tide of hysteria that would throw the Empire into chaos and make it ripe for a Sylvanian invasion. And it was working. In every town and at every coaching inn, Ulrika had heard whispers of conflict and conflagration – Carroburg in flames, Kurt Helborg and his Reiksguard sent to quell riots in Middenheim, the River Aver running red from Sauerapfel to Streissen. There were even rumours that Emperor Karl Franz had been turned into a vampire and was going to war against the Elector Counts.

For Ulrika, the weeks on the road had been an agony of unknowing. Would Gabriella be alive when she at last returned to Nuln? Or had the Sylvanian spies, who had failed in their first attempt to kill and expose the countess, succeeded at last? Stefan had spoken of a ‘decapitating stroke’. Would Ulrika find Gabriella and Hermione and Famke headless? Would there be no Lahmian leadership at all in Nuln?

To make the torture worse, Ulrika had travelled most of the way at a crawl. The towns and cities were filled with roving mobs of torch-wielding fanatics, and the roads between the towns patrolled by citizen militias who stopped anyone travelling alone at night. Ulrika had been forced to abandon the coach Galiana had given her when she’d come to a road block just north of Averheim, and after that her speed was cut in half, for while she had been able to travel days as well as nights within the enclosed carriage, on horseback she’d only been free to move at night, and cautiously at that.

This last day had been the most maddening of all, for she had come within two hours of Nuln just as dawn was breaking, and had to stop. She’d spent the day wedged inside the cramped cellar of a recently burned shack on the edges of the Stirwood, kept awake by fears that only a few miles away, Gabriella might be facing her doom while the tyranny of the sun kept Ulrika from her side. At last, when the light through the cracks in the cellar door finally faded, she sprang out and rode off in a frenzy, desperate to reach Nuln’s gates before they were closed at full dark.

Now that she had arrived, however, Ulrika had no idea where to go. She knew that Lady Hermione, Gabriella’s superior in the Lahmian sisterhood, had given her the running of a brothel from which to gather pillow-whispered secrets – fuel for the Lahmians’ never-ending political intrigues. Unfortunately, Hermione had shut down the old brothel, the Silver Lily, when the witch hunters had discovered its madam was a Lahmian, and Ulrika had never been to the new one. She didn’t know where it was. She didn’t know its name. All she could be certain of was that it wouldn’t be in the same location – if it existed at all.

Ulrika growled under her breath. If she was too late there would be slaughter done. She would discover who had killed Gabriella and hunt them to the ends of the earth. They would pay tenfold for–

She clamped down on her rising rage. No need to start sharpening her claws until she knew Gabriella was dead. She must find the new house first. But how? Searching blindly wouldn’t work. Nuln was a big place, and had many brothels. She needed to ask someone.

She glanced around at the crowds that filled the Handelstrasse. At this hour, the shopkeeps, bankers and merchants were locking up their shops, offices and exchanges and heading home, while the barkeeps, broadsheet sellers and harlots were opening their doors, staking out their patches and displaying their wares. Lawyers and bookkeepers from the courts and counting houses hugged the edges of the streets as apprentices and students poured from the workshops and colleges and shoved merrily past them. Street-corner demagogues shrilled doom and death and ruin for all, while charm sellers offered garlands of garlic and witch root and phylacteries they claimed – somewhat dubiously – contained shavings of wood from the handle of Sigmar’s hammer itself to protect the wearer against the predations of bloodsucking fiends.

Who among these would know Gabriella’s house? More importantly, who was safe to ask? A Lahmian house would be a discreet, high-end establishment, far beyond the means of the hoi-polloi, for its purpose was stripping rich and powerful men of their secrets, but asking a nobleman where he wet his wick was likely to win only indignant denials and calls for the watch. Better on the whole to ask the competition.

She turned her horse south and made her way to the waterfront where the taverns were seedier and the vice more open. In an alley next to an establishment called the Blind Pig, she at last found what she was looking for and dismounted.

‘Hello, love,’ said the woman, sauntering out of the shadows and revealing an ageing face trying to look young. ‘Fancy a–’ She cut off with a scowl when she got a better look at Ulrika, and her voice lost all its sultry charm. ‘Whose drake are you, then? I don’t play that field.’

Ulrika held a crown up between two fingers. ‘Nor do I, fraulein. I’m only looking for a place you might have heard of.’ She held out the coin. ‘This is for hearing me out. There’ll be another for answering.’

The woman’s eyes widened at the gold, then flicked over Ulrika’s shoulder, her heart beating fast. She snatched the proffered coin and tucked it into her cleavage. ‘Ask, then.’

Ulrika sensed another heart-fire behind her, edging around her horse, which waited patiently at the mouth of the alley. She took out a second coin and held it up like the first, but let her other hand drop idly to the hilt of her rapier. ‘There was a place called the Silver Lily. My sister used to work there. I hear a lot of the girls moved to another place when it shut down, but I don’t know the name, or where it is.’

‘Yer sister, eh? She a Kislevite like you? What’s ’er name?’ asked the harlot.

‘Why should you care?’ asked Ulrika. ‘Do you know the place or not?’

‘Trouble, Millie?’ asked a rough voice behind Ulrika. The smell of beer and sausage came with it.

The harlot sneered. ‘Just a nosy drake asking questions, Gunter. Ready enough with the Karls, though.’

‘Is she indeed?’ asked Gunter, and Ulrika heard the creak of a leather glove tightening its grip on a weapon.

Ulrika drew her rapier and swept it behind her without looking, pressing it to Gunter’s thudding neck vein by sound alone. With her other hand she spun the second coin at the harlot’s face, then whipped out her dagger and had it to her throat before she had recovered.

Gunter dropped his cudgel as Ulrika looked back. He was big and broad, but sloppy, with a drinker’s nose and rotting teeth, and his eyes were crossed from staring at the blade under his chin.

‘Mercy, lass,’ he whimpered as blood trickled down his dirty neck. ‘Mercy.’

‘We wasn’t gonna scrag ye, honest!’ said Millie. She was bleeding too.

Ulrika licked her lips. Their fear was intoxicating, and the scent of their blood was making her dizzy, but there was no time. She had to find Gabriella.

‘You certainly weren’t,’ she said. ‘Try as you might. But I’ll not hold it against you if you answer my question. I’ll even let you keep the Karls.’

Millie swallowed, her eyes like saucers. ‘What… what did ye want to know again?’

‘The name of the brothel where all the Silver Lily’s girls went.’

‘The Chalice of Caronne,’ whispered Gunter. ‘Madame du Vilmorin’s place. On Mandredstrasse.’

Ulrika’s chest swelled with hope. Was that it? It had to be! She withdrew her rapier and dagger from their necks and wiped the blood off on their clothes before sheathing them.

‘There now,’ she said as they sagged against the walls of the alley in relief. ‘You see how it pays to be civil?’

She bent and picked up Gunter’s cudgel, a sturdy length of oak with an iron band around the business end. She was tempted to snap it in half with her bare hands, just to give them one more scare, but tales of that sort of trick got back to the witch hunters. Instead she only handed it back to Gunter, then swung up onto her horse and rode in the direction of Mandredstrasse.

Ulrika finger-combed her thatch of cropped white hair and tried to knock the dust off her mud-crusted travelling clothes as she waited for someone to answer the bell at the Chalice of Caronne. She wished she’d had time to change. The men she had seen coming out of the genteel townhouse’s front door and getting into their carriages had all been dressed in the finest court fashions, and all immaculately clean and turned out. She, on the other hand, looked like she had been sleeping in haystacks and graveyards, which, indeed, she had.

The door swung open at last, and a voluptuous middle-aged woman with auburn hair piled upon her head smiled out at her. ‘Welcome to the Chalice of Caronne, gentle–’ Her smile vanished. ‘We only serve gentlemen here, madam,’ she said in a clipped Bretonnian accent. ‘And you are neither.’

‘I’m not here for that,’ said Ulrika. ‘I must speak to the madam of the house. It is urgent.’

The woman started to close the door. ‘She is not at home. Goodbye.’

Ulrika thrust her hand forwards and stopped the door from closing, though the woman pushed with all her strength. ‘Wait. You must listen to me. I am her–’

The woman looked over her shoulder. ‘Hugel! Lemarne!’

Through the gap in the door, Ulrika saw two sedately dressed mountains stepping out of the shadows and balling their firsts.

‘Lady, please!’ she said. ‘I am a relative. Er, blood kin. I seek she who was once called Countess Gabriella.’

The woman paused at the name, then looked behind her as if consulting with someone. After a nod, she waved the guards back and opened the door. ‘Come in. Quickly.’

Ulrika breathed a sigh of relief and slipped through into the opulent entry hall, taking off her cloak. ‘Thank you. My horse is in the street. Can you–?’

She froze as she found a silvered dagger at her belly, held by a pale young beauty in a modest grey dress who had been hiding behind the door. She had black hair and green eyes – and no pulse. ‘Do not move, sister.’

‘What – what is this?’ asked Ulrika. ‘Who are you?’

‘Madame has asked,’ said the auburn-haired woman, ‘that any of her “kin” who call be put under lock and key until she is free to speak to them. Please remove your swordbelt.’

‘But, I mean her no harm,’ said Ulrika. ‘She knows me. I am her–’

‘If you will come with me,’ said the green-eyed vampiress. ‘You will be given the opportunity to explain yourself.’

Ulrika looked around at them all, judging her chances. She might be able to disarm the Lahmian, but the two huge guards had silver blades as well. She sighed and unbuckled her belt. She supposed, in the current climate, Gabriella’s caution was understandable. How was she to know who might try to walk through her door?

‘The countess is alive then?’ Ulrika asked. ‘Will you at least tell me that?’

A knock came on the door as the auburn-haired woman took her rapier and dagger. She motioned urgently to the Lahmian while she placed the weapons in a cloak room and turned to the door. ‘Please, mistress, take her away. We have customers.’

The beauty motioned Ulrika to a side door, and she went without protest, the behemoths following. Disrupting Gabriella’s business would not be a good first impression for a prodigal daughter to make.

At the top of a dark stairwell, the Lahmian stopped at a door and made a hard-to-follow motion with her hand before turning the knob. It opened into a carpeted, sconce-lit hallway with doors on either wall. From the floors below, Ulrika could hear the muffled sounds of laughter, lovemaking and song, but here all was quiet as the grave. The girl led Ulrika around a corner to a door, unlocked it and held it open. Ulrika hesitated at the threshold, for though it looked like all the other doors, behind the wood panelling it had a core of iron plate.

‘So nice to be home,’ she sighed, then stepped through and let the Lahmian close it behind her.

The room was small, windowless and warded. She could feel the power of the spells and see their shimmer in the corners of her eyes. It had a bed and a chair and that was all. No lamp, no candle, no water for washing. Ulrika didn’t mind the lack of light. She could see well enough without it, but it would have been nice to wash off the road grit.

She threw her cloak and hat on the chair, then lay back on the bed and unbuttoned her doublet, preparing for a long wait, but as she propped the pillow behind her, she heard footsteps hurrying down the hall, and a familiar voice raised in anger.

‘Kislevite? And short hair? Foolish girl! You have locked up Madame du Vilmorin’s daughter! Let her out!’

Ulrika sprang from the bed and stepped to the door. ‘Famke! I’m here!’

There was a clicking of locks, and a murmuring of apologies, and then the door swung open and Famke was standing there, as slim and beautiful as ever, her honey-blonde hair like a half-parted golden veil, behind which peered her anxious blue eyes.

‘Ulrika! It is you!’

They fell into each other’s arms and clasped tightly for the length of a minute while the dark-haired Lahmian looked on. At last they stepped back to look at one another, laughing and grinning. Famke was in the clothes she favoured in private, a Cathay robe of deep green and slippers to match, and though she looked no older than she ever would, there was a weariness and a worldliness in her eyes that Ulrika did not remember being there before.

Of course, there were some changes in Ulrika as well.

‘Your hair!’ cried Famke, reaching for it. ‘It’s white! What happened?’

‘I… I don’t know – not exactly. I fell in a river. Though the memory…’ She chuckled. ‘That went with the colour of my hair.’

Famke shivered and took her hand. ‘Sister, we feared you dead. I… I didn’t think you would ever come back.’

Ulrika looked down, embarrassed. ‘I feared for you too. All the way from Kislev I have heard of sisters being killed and exposed. I thought sure I would find you and the countess–’

‘She lives,’ said Famke. ‘Fear not. Though you were right to worry. It has been terrible here. The Strigoi and the murders were just the beginning.’ She looked into Ulrika’s eyes. ‘There is war, with the Sylvanians.’

Ulrika nodded. ‘I know. I fought one of their agents in Praag. I returned to warn you. I was told that Nuln would be the site of a “decapitating stroke”, and I feared that you and the countess and Lady Hermione–’

‘It isn’t us,’ said Famke. ‘We are not the target. At least not the primary target.’

‘Who, then?’ asked Ulrika.

‘Karl Franz,’ said Famke. ‘The Emperor is coming to Nuln, and the Sylvanians mean to assassinate him when he arrives.’

chapter two

LAHMIA BARES HER CLAWS

Ulrika stared at Famke. ‘The Emperor? They are going to kill him? Are – are you certain?’

Famke shrugged. ‘Our mistresses seem so.’

Ulrika sat down on the cot, stunned. ‘When Stefan… when I was told the Sylvanians meant to make an empire, I thought they only meant to steal ours, not…’

Famke sat beside her. ‘It is the Empire of men they wish to take,’ she said. ‘Countess Gabriella says they will use the Lahmians as scapegoats. While the humans tear each other apart looking for the secret vampires in their midst, they will attack from without. An army of the dead.’

‘Madness!’ said Ulrika. ‘This cannot happen. Something must be done!’

‘We are doing it,’ said Famke. ‘That is, the sisterhood is. All the Lahmians who have survived the witch hunts and exposures have been gathering here in Nuln to fight the enemy and stop the assassination. It will be war.’

‘Sister,’ said the dark-haired Lahmian from the door. ‘Are you certain you should be telling her this?’

Famke turned on her, cross. ‘Of course I am. It’s only Ulrika. Go back to your post, Astrid. I will see to her now.’

The Lahmian hesitated, then curtseyed and disappeared down the hall.

Ulrika hardly noticed her going. She was burning with a sudden excitement. ‘War! Yes! This is why I returned. We must strike back! Where is the countess? Take me to her.’

Famke hesitated. ‘They – they are still angry with you, sister,’ she said. ‘The countess has called you oathbreaker, and my mistress has called for your head.’

‘And I deserve their anger,’ said Ulrika. ‘I… I was foolish. But I will renew my vow to them, and I will prove my loyalty in battle. They can’t turn away a willing soldier, can they?’

‘I hope not,’ said Famke, and took her hand. ‘Come, they are in council. I will take you there.’

Ulrika staggered as she stood, then paused. ‘I’m sorry, Famke, would it be possible to feed before we go? It has been days since–’

Famke gasped, embarrassed. ‘Forgive me, sister! It is the first thing I should have offered. This way. My maid and I have been passing the time in Countess Gabriella’s library.’

After feeding from the maid, Ulrika followed Famke down a hidden stairway that descended through the storeys of the house, then continued far underground. It seemed to Ulrika that they were winding down not just through the earth, but through time as well. The composition of the walls changed the deeper they went, from wood to brick to stone, and more primitive with each turn of the stair, until, at the base, where the echo of dripping water filled Ulrika’s ears and the reek of mildew filled her nose, the steps seemed to have been carved not by pick and chisel, but by claw and tooth. Faint traces of crude symbols covered the tunnel walls, and a cold wind moaned through them that spoke of deeper reaches below.

‘How do the Lahmians know so much of the Sylvanians’ plans?’ Ulrika asked as she followed Famke along a curving passage. ‘Have they captured a spy? Have they intercepted some notes?’

Famke shook her head. ‘Not that I know of, though I am not told everything. I think it is more a guess – many small things that lead to only one conclusion. Behind every Lahmian exposure, the mistresses have found Sylvanian whispers, and Countess Gabriella believes them behind Karl Franz’s decision to leave Altdorf for Nuln as well. Our spies in Sylvania report an undead army massing on the border, and there have been mysterious troops sighted in the vicinity of Nuln too, moving only at night.’ She looked at Ulrika. ‘Some sisters disagree, but most believe these things point to an attack on Karl Franz in Nuln, followed by a full-scale invasion from Sylvania during the confusion that is sure to follow.’

As Ulrika nodded, pondering, she heard the muffled clamour of raised voices ahead of them, and after a bend in the tunnel they came to a pair of heavy wooden doors, thrown wide, and beyond them, a crudely cut, torchlit chamber with still larger doors on its far wall. At the first doors stood two female vampires in red robes over inlayed black armour. They had bare blades in their hands and went on guard at Famke and Ulrika’s approach.

‘Announce yourselves, sisters,’ said the one on the left.

Ulrika instinctively put her hand to her rapier, then realised it was still in the cloakroom next to the brothel’s front door. She grunted with annoyance. She felt naked without it.

Famke curtseyed. ‘Sisters, we are Famke, ward of Lady Hermione of Nuln, and Ulrika, ward of Countess Gabriella von Nachthafen, and bear news for our mistresses.’

The women stepped aside and motioned for Famke and Ulrika to enter. The antechamber beyond them was full of bodyguards and retainers, both vampire and human, all sitting on wooden benches in attitudes of wary boredom. Ulrika’s eyes widened to see them all. There were fighting men in a dozen different liveries, and representing not just the Empire, but Bretonnia, Estalia and Tilea as well, and nearly as many women, some dressed as ladies in waiting, some as novices of one of the cloistered orders, some booted and spurred like Ulrika, but all of them Lahmians.

‘How many mistresses have gathered here?’ murmured Ulrika, staring around.

‘More than a hundred,’ said Famke.

Ulrika blinked. She had not thought there were so many vampires in the whole world.

A tall, grey-robed woman inclined her head to them as they approached the inner doors.

‘Sisters,’ she said in a dry voice.

‘We have news for our mistresses,’ said Famke. ‘Word from Kislev.’

Ulrika smiled uneasily at that. Really, the only news was that she had returned. The Lahmians already seemed to know everything else.

The woman bowed and pulled open one of the doors.

A gust of angry debate poured through the gap as Famke and Ulrika slipped through, and continued to rise as the door closed quietly behind them. Scores of voices all spoke at once, and the echoing din sounded like the bickering of crows.

Ulrika shuddered as Famke took her hand and led her left around the shadowed outer ring of the massive chamber. The thousands of skulls that looked down from the high arched roof left no doubt what its original purpose had been, nor did the descending tiers that ringed a blood-blackened altar in its centre, nor the crude iron-barred cages set into the outer walls. This had been a place of sacrifice, though to what god or daemon, Ulrika could not tell, for all the statues that had lined the walls had been recently smashed to pieces.

‘Did the sisterhood know these catacombs existed when they bought the house?’ Ulrika whispered as she followed Famke.

‘It was the reason they chose it,’ said Famke, ‘though the seller knew nothing of it.’ She looked around at the altar and the symbol-scratched pillars. ‘We are not the first to shed blood in these halls, that is certain.’

Ulrika grimaced – recalling the blood-soaked rituals of the Chaos cultists she had fought in Praag – then did her best to shake off her unease. Whatever it had been before, it was now a parliament – a raucous council of the queens of the night, and Famke was right, there were certainly more than a hundred Lahmians filling the stone benches.

But though the number was surprising, it was the mad variety of forms they took that made Ulrika’s head swim. In her limited experience, she had known her sisters to appear both young and old, comely and coarse, serene and savage, but they had all looked human – at least most of the time. Here, however, though there were plenty of the expected proud beauties and regal noblewomen among the assembled, there were some who seemed to have turned their backs on every convention of civilised dress and manner, and still others who had abandoned their humanity altogether.

A woman the size of an ogre sat in the first row, entirely naked, with a blood-stiffened top-knot sticking straight up from her shaved head and swirling smears of gore decorating her bulging breasts and belly. A graceful, black-skinned sylph with folded bat-wing arms perched on a broken pillar behind the last row and watched the proceedings with darting red eyes. A withered corpse in bridal clothes from Sigmar’s time lay unmoving in an ancient coffin on the floor. Ulrika would have thought her truly dead but for the naked slave who knelt, chained, beside the box, trembling as bloody words were carved into her back by a floating stiletto while a second slave read them aloud, then waited while the wounds healed and new words were written over the first. A girl of no more than eight years sat on the back of a huge, eyeless and earless slave. Her auburn hair reached the floor. A figure so strange Ulrika did not even know if it was alive paced the upper tier. It might have been a woman encased entirely in delicate gold armour, or just as easily, it might have been an intricate golden automaton. Ulrika could see no flesh between the joins, nor eyes behind the lapis lazuli buttons that decorated the front of its helm. The mouth was like that of a ventriloquist’s manikin – a hinged, clacking thing with fangs of ivory behind ruby-red lips made of actual rubies.

But these strange individuals were only the most unusual among the arguing crowd. Even without them, Ulrika’s understanding of the spectrum of Lahmian society broadened with each turn of her head. There were warlike Lahmians in polished breastplates, and scholarly Lahmians in the black robes of necromancers. There were bestial Lahmians who looked as much like wolf-kin as women, and cloaked and veiled Lahmians who sat nested in webs of shadow. There were Lahmians who wore the robes and headdresses of priestesses of ancient Nehekhara, and others in furs and skins who would not have looked out of place riding with Kurgan marauders.

And in the middle of it all Ulrika at last spotted the Lahmians of Nuln, Countess Gabriella, Lady Hermione and Madam Mathilda. Gabriella and Hermione were dressed as usual as wealthy, respectable noblewomen – in powder-blue, and burgundy respectively – while Mathilda, as ever, wore black and looked like she had just crawled from her bed after an entertaining night. Hermione stood upon the blood-rusted altar, her eyes blazing and her pretty, pouty face screwed up with rage as she tried to shout the gathering to order. Gabriella and Mathilda sat side by side in the front row, watching and listening in alert silence.

Seeing Gabriella, Ulrika’s chest tightened with emotion, and she had the urge to run straight to her. She didn’t fancy elbowing through the middle of the circle to get to her, however, so instead she let Famke continue to lead her the long way around.

‘We can go no further until we root out the traitors in our midst!’ Hermione was shouting.

‘And who will do this rooting?’ asked a grave-pale crone in a high collar. ‘You? Did not four of your sisters die here? How do we know it was not you who sent them to the slaughter?’

‘A council must be appointed!’ said a beauty in a plain white shift. ‘We must have a vote!’

‘The sisterhood is a hierarchy!’ shouted the slave of the woman in the coffin, reading off the back of the slate slave. ‘The most senior should rule!’

‘Voting is for the weak,’ snarled the ogrish woman. ‘And the old ones are senile! Let us fight it out!’

‘Very well, Yusila,’ said a breastplated woman at the back, rising and glaring at her with a hand on her sword. She had an Estalian accent and looked like a heroine out of legend, with a proud, noble face and flowing brunette locks. ‘Let us. I would be happy to rid us of your vileness at last.’

The fat woman stood and shook fists like cannonballs while the rest of her jiggled and bounced. ‘Try it, Casilla, I’ll fold your armour up with you inside it, you jumped-up camp follower!’

Casilla’s companions, four other martial-looking women, shot to their feet at this and began hurling abuse at the big woman, which started others rising to shout them down, and still more to shout down the others.

‘Ursun’s teeth,’ whispered Ulrika as she and Famke reached the far side of the circle and started down the tiers towards Gabriella. ‘How long has it been going on like this?’

‘For three weeks,’ said Famke. ‘Every time more of them arrive, the whole thing starts again.’

Ulrika shook her head. It was like the wrangling that had gone on between Hermione and Gabriella and the rest of the sisters of Nuln during the murders, only magnified ten-fold. Perhaps that was why there were so few Lahmians in each city – too many in one place and they would kill each other.

Casilla and her swordswomen were down in the centre now, nose to nose – or rather nose to belly – with the giant vampiress, as a score of voices called for them to fight or sit down or take it outside, while Hermione hectored everyone from the altar. The dagger-writing of the woman in the casket was so emphatic that she was cutting her slate slave to the bone.

Then, as it seemed the assembly would collapse into utter anarchy, a blinding flash of moon-white light exploded directly above the altar, rocking the room with a deafening thunderclap and throwing Hermione to the floor. The Lahmians shielded their eyes and dropped into guard, turning in wary circles with claws and blades bared.

Into this wire-taut silence came the soft steps of sandal-shod feet. All heads turned at the sound, and watched in stunned silence as, out of the shadows near the main door, a slim, dark-skinned woman paced forwards with the solemn poise of a hunting cat. Beaded black hair was drawn back from her angular face and hung down between her shoulders in a heavy queue. She wore high, laced sandals, a royal purple chlamys pinned with a golden brooch at one shoulder, thick circlets of amber at neck and wrist, and nothing else.

Two towering women in bronze helms and breastplates and long, brigandined skirts followed her at a respectful distance. They had the pale eyes and powerful physiques of Norse shield-maidens and carried tall spears with glinting blades as long as Ulrika’s arm.

The spearwoman at the dark woman’s right stepped forwards and grounded her weapon as the Lahmians continued to stare. ‘All bow to Lashmiya of Mahrak, ruler of the Serpent Coast and emissary of the Queen of the Silver Pinnacle, the everlasting goddess of night and blood, Neferata of Nehekhara.’

The vainglorious introduction seemed unnecessary to Ulrika, for the Lahmians appeared to have known instantly who the woman was and, as they recovered from their shock, all bowed and curtseyed to her with nervous fervour.

Lashmiya and her bodyguards walked down the ring of steps to the centre of the room without looking right or left, while Hermione, still sprawled on the altar, staggered up and curtseyed convulsively, then stepped down and motioned for Lashmiya to take her place.

The emissary showed no sign she had seen her. She stepped up onto the bloodstained stones and turned to look at the silent assembly of women with heavy-lidded eyes as her Norse spearwomen came to attention below her. Closer now, Ulrika could see that she was of the Southlands, with full lips and a broad, flat nose – and was as beautiful and terrifying as a tiger.

‘Your Queen has heard your pleas for help in your hour of need,’ said Lashmiya in velvet-burred Reikspiel, ‘and sends you aid and comfort.’

A murmur of thanks rose from the benches.

Lashmiya talked over it. ‘She has heard that the Sylvanians have torn you apart and driven stakes through your hearts, that they have thrown open your secret places and exposed you to the murdering sun.’

There were more murmurs of agreement at this, but the emissary went on, a sneer curling her lush lips.

‘How disappointed she will be when I am forced to tell her that it was you who tore each other apart, you who drove stakes through each others’ hearts, and you who exposed each other to the sun.’

The Lahmians hissed and grumbled. Some of them stepped forwards, angry.

‘Mistress,’ said Hermione, curtseying again. ‘We do not turn on each other without cause. There are traitors among us. How can we proceed until we flush them out? Our every move will be known by the enemy!’

Lashmiya raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you concerned with traitors, or with rivals?’ She nodded towards the door. ‘I have listened here for over an hour, concealed in shadow, and have found it amusing how often those accused of treachery just happen to be in the way of the accusers’ advancement.’

The room went silent as the women realised they had been spied upon, then a great tide of protest rose, as each tried to defend her actions and denigrate the others. Ulrika blinked. Lashmiya and her guards had been there the whole time? Had she and Famke walked past them when they entered the room? That she had sensed nothing was no surprise. Her witch sight was little better than a human’s, but that none of the Lahmian sorceresses and necromancers in the room had sensed her either said much of Lashmiya’s power.

The emissary cut off the babble with a gesture. ‘Enough. This is nonsense. You are Lahmians. You know how to deal with spies. You feed them lies and turn them on their masters. What you do not know how to do – what you have forgotten – is how to unite in a time of crisis.’ She sighed. ‘Our gracious Queen humbly acknowledges the fault is her own. In these centuries since Sylvania’s last rising, she has let her daughters grow complacent. She has let them practice their intrigues upon each other, trusting that the fittest would rise, but in the process, she has allowed them to forget who the real enemy is.’

More murmured denials rose at this but Lashmiya raised her voice over them.

‘That will end here,’ she said. ‘We will not let petty family squabbles be the end of us. We will unite and triumph as we did three hundred years ago.’

The Lahmians applauded this gravely, and some called out, ‘For the Queen! For Lahmia!’

But as the cheers faded, the crone in the high collar stepped forwards, inclining her head respectfully. ‘Thank you for reminding us of our duty, mistress, and let me be the first to pledge to this new unity. But it does not change the truth that the traitors do exist, and must still be expunged.’ She turned on Countess Gabriella, snarling. ‘I know for a fact that this half-Sylvanian, the mother of the vile Krieger, has–’

Lashmiya thrust out a hand and the crone went rigid with pain. Beads of blood welled from the pores of her face and hands like freckles, and red tears spilled from her eyes. The chamber fell silent as her limbs and torso began to twist and fold, as if caught in a massive invisible fist.

‘I said enough,’ said Lashmiya, her voice calm while the old woman shuddered and hissed in agony. ‘There are traitors in every army, and spies in every court, but their presence must not be allowed to paralyse us while the enemy steals march upon march on us. We will discover them in time, but we will not wait to act until they are found. There is no time.’

She lowered her hand and the old crone collapsed before the altar, gasping and sobbing and curling up to hug her knees as ribbons of blood trickled down her wrinkled cheeks and dripped on the stone floor.

‘Now,’ said Lashmiya, turning to the rest as if nothing had happened. ‘Report. What do we know of the Sylvanians’ plans, and what can we bring to bear against them?’

The assembled sisters hesitated, glancing uneasily at the fallen crone, but Countess Gabriella stood and curtseyed.

‘Mistress Lashmiya,’ she said, looking directly into the emissary’s eyes. ‘As you no doubt know, Karl Franz has left Altdorf and is travelling to Nuln. The stated reason is that he is leading his army to quell the “vampire uprising” here. The true reason is that Altdorf has become too dangerous. A terrible pox has swept the city, striking rich and poor alike, and has taken victims even within the Emperor’s palace. Rumours that the pox was spread by nobles who had slept with undead seductresses, and that Karl Franz himself is infected, have sparked riots and threats of assassination.’

‘And exposures too, mistress,’ said the long-haired child upon the back of the blinded slave. ‘All of my beloved sisters of Altdorf were found out, their disguises of wife, mistress and courtesan torn away. The mobs paraded their blackened bodies through the streets. They called it proof of a great vampire conspiracy.’

‘It is,’ said Gabriella. ‘Proof of a–’

‘Of a Sylvanian conspiracy,’ finished Lashmiya.

‘Yes, mistress,’ said Gabriella. ‘We believe the Sylvanians are behind all of it – the pox, the exposures, the uprisings that forced Karl Franz to send his most trusted guardians away from him. All these things were done to strip the Emperor of his defences and drive him into the open. They may even have had a hand in turning him towards Nuln.’

‘And you believe the Sylvanians mean to assassinate him here,’ said Lashmiya, ‘and throw the Empire into civil war.’

‘Yes, mistress,’ said Gabriella. ‘Thereby allowing the army that gathers in Hunger Wood to march in almost unopposed.’

‘The Sylvanians will have the empire of slaves they have always wanted,’ said the child-vampire. ‘And we will be cast out. Hunted and fugitive.’

‘Why Nuln?’

‘It is sound tactics, mistress,’ said Casilla, swaggering forwards with her hand on the hilt of her sword. ‘It would have been nearly impossible to strike at Karl Franz in Altdorf, among all his defences. Also here they will be able to accuse Countess Emmanuelle of his murder, perhaps even say she is a member of our sisterhood. Reikland will be forced to come out against Wissenland, and once that war starts, the other provinces will not stand by.’

Lashmiya nodded. ‘And what have you done to foil this plot? Besides fight like cats in a bag, that is? Do you know who leads the Sylvanians? Do you know their numbers? Where they are hiding? How they plan to kill Karl Franz? When they will strike?’

Again there was hesitation among the sisters, and again Gabriella spoke.

‘We know they are not quartered in the city, though they have agents here. We have sent swains and thralls into the forests around Nuln, looking for them. None have found any trace. They are likely hidden by sorcery.’

‘And you have not wrested the information from their agents?’ asked Lashmiya.

‘Many have talked before they died,’ said Gabriella. ‘But they did not know their master’s name, nor his lair. They claim to have met him in a different place each time, and did not see his face. None were privy to the full plan, and we have yet to piece it all together from the scraps.’

‘That is because Countess Gabriella has not given us all the scraps,’ said the crone who had faced Lashmiya’s wrath before, standing unsteadily. ‘And we do not know their leader’s name because she has not seen fit to tell us.’

Lashmiya turned blazing eyes on her, as mutterings swept through the sisters, but before the emissary could lash out again, the crone curtseyed demurely.

‘Forgive me if I incur your wrath once more, mistress, but was not sister Gabriella our Queen’s agent in Sylvania? Was it not her duty to watch and guard against just such schemes as this? How can she not have known this was coming? Unless, of course, she serves a master as well as a mistress!’

‘Enough,’ said Lashmiya again, as the mutterings became shouts. ‘Enough!’

The storm of argument cut off again as she glared at them all, moon-white energy crackling around her balled fists.

‘It seems the Sylvanians have learned Lahmian subtlety,’ she said, ‘while you have forgotten it. They have used whispers to turn you against each other, and you have not seen this for what it is. This will cease. From now on, only I have the right to brand someone spy or traitor. Any sister accusing any other of disloyalty will face my wrath. Is that clear?’

Disgruntled muttering answered her, and the crone turned her back.

Lashmiya nodded almost imperceptibly to her Norse guards. The spearwomen stepped forwards as one and stabbed the crone through the back and neck. She shrieked once, then crumpled to the floor in a welter of blood, her spine severed in two places.

‘Is that clear?’

‘Yes, mistress,’ chorused the Lahmians.

‘I am pleased to hear it,’ said Lashmiya, then raised her chin and addressed them. ‘For if we are to win this war, if we are to survive as a race, we must join together and work as one. And not only that. We must learn from the Sylvanians as they have learned from us. If they can learn intrigue, then we can learn war. We must remember that we too have fangs. We must remember that we can be strong as well as cunning, brave as well as deceitful, swift as well as secret. We have been backed into a corner, dearest daughters. Now it is time to bare our claws!’

The Lahmians cheered, and Lashmiya let them, then raised her voice again. ‘I will meet with you all individually, and hear your stories and complaints. Until then, you are dismissed, but know that my eyes and the eyes of our Queen are always on you. You may go.’ She saluted them with a raised hand, then stepped down from the altar and strode for the door again, her spearwomen following behind her.

The chamber erupted in nervous babbling as she passed through them, and the Lahmians rose and began to huddle in little groups. Ulrika and Famke, who stood where they had stopped when Lashmiya’s thunderclap had announced her presence, now relaxed and started towards Mathilda, Hermione and Gabriella again.

In the first row, Hermione was whispering urgently in Gabriella’s ear, looking as frightened as Ulrika had ever seen her. Gabriella held her arm, speaking soothingly, but as she turned her towards the exit, she glanced up – and looked straight at Ulrika.

Ulrika stopped, wary, as Gabriella stared. Would the countess curse her? Would she slap her? Would she kill her?

Gabriella walked up the stairs as Hermione and Mathilda turned to look after her, then spread her arms and embraced Ulrika, pulling her close.

‘Welcome home, daughter,’ she said. ‘I am glad you still live.’

Ulrika closed her arms around Gabriella’s shoulders and returned the embrace, her breast heaving with stifled sobs. How could she have left such unquestioning love? How could she have been so selfish as to hurt Gabriella and break the vows she had made to her? It felt good to be home.

‘You!’ said Hermione, following Gabriella up the steps. ‘I have been awaiting your return!’ She pointed a finger at Ulrika. ‘Hold her, sisters! This one I know is a traitor!’

chapter three

THE PRODIGAL’S REWARD

‘I have it from the sister whose mistress you conspired to murder in Praag,’ said Hermione. ‘You helped a Sylvanian spy enter her house and cut off her head.’

It was a short while after the assembly, and Ulrika stood at attention before Hermione, Gabriella and Mathilda in the countess’s rooms on the upper floor of the Chalice of Caronne. Two guards in the livery of the brothel flanked the door. Famke had been banished to another room.

Ulrika cursed inwardly at the accusation. So, the spiteful Mistress Galiana had decided to blacken Ulrika’s name in retaliation for refusing to remain in her service. She wasn’t surprised, but at the same time she had hoped for better treatment. After all, hadn’t she saved Galiana’s life at the end?

‘Mistress, I did not know he was a Sylvanian spy,’ she said. ‘And when I discovered it, I killed him.’

‘After he had killed Mistress Evgena,’ said Hermione. ‘And after your actions had exposed her and her sisters to the Tsarina’s agents and destroyed all their works.’

‘It was not I who exposed Mistress Evgena,’ said Ulrika, her voice taking on a defensive tone despite her attempt at composure. ‘The cultists we fought left her secret books out for the chekist to find – the same cultists that would have destroyed Praag and driven out the sisterhood had I not stopped them. I suppose Galiana made no mention of them.’

‘She mentioned that you led them to her house,’ said Gabriella. ‘She mentioned that your Sylvanian lover was one of them.’

‘He was not my lover!’ snapped Ulrika, then cut off. That was a lie – no matter that she wished it wasn’t. Stefan had been her lover, though it had only been another trick – like disguising himself as a cultist, like playing her against her sisters, like making her think he shared her view of the world.

‘Are y’sure about that, dearie?’ asked Mathilda, smirking. ‘Maybe if y’say it a little louder it’ll be true.’

Ulrika hung her head. ‘I was taken in, I admit that, and I apologise. But I avenged Mistress Evgena’s death in the end. I stopped the cult. That has to count for something.’

‘Very little,’ said Hermione. ‘The cult was likely of no consequence anyway, and the Sylvanian would not have found a chance to kill Evgena without your help. Regardless of your intentions, you did more harm than good – and I am not convinced your intentions were good.’

‘Mistress,’ said Ulrika, then looked to Gabriella for support. ‘Countess, I–’

‘And none of this takes into account what you did here,’ continued Hermione, interrupting her. ‘Running from your mistress after giving your sworn word that you would not. That alone would be grounds for your destruction.’

‘Sister,’ said Gabriella, sitting forwards. ‘I will bow to your decision on what she has done in Praag, but I would ask that you allow me to choose her punishment for what she has done to me.’

‘It wasn’t only to you,’ snapped Hermione. ‘She tried to woo my darling Famke into leaving too.’

‘Aww,’ said Mathilda. ‘How sweet.’

Gabriella sighed. ‘Please, sisters. I blame myself for all Ulrika has done. I should have left her behind when I was summoned to Nuln. She was too young to enter our society then, and she is too young now.’

Ulrika stiffened at this, but forced herself to remain silent. If Gabriella could lessen her punishment by calling her a child, so be it.

‘Her failures and mistakes are only those that all newly blooded make,’ Gabriella continued. ‘It is only that she made them in public, rather than in the privacy of our halls. If you will let me continue her education, I know she will grow to be an asset to our line.’

Hermione sat back into her chair, folding her hands together. Ulrika tensed. She could see that Hermione was looking for some way to refuse Gabriella that wouldn’t seem mere spite. Apparently their feud continued unabated.

At last Hermione smiled, her eyes glittering. ‘You are right, sister. Your protégée was and is too young, and cannot be held entirely responsible for her actions. Therefore, in these politically delicate times – when even your own loyalty is questioned – it would not be prudent to allow her to embarrass us further. So, until this war is concluded, and until you can give her the training she requires, I think it best that she be locked away where she can do no harm.’

Ulrika rocked as if she had been slapped. Locked away? At the eve of a war? Surely Gabriella would intercede.

But though the countess looked angry to be caught in her own words this way, she finally inclined her head. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Much as it pains me, I will keep her out of sight. She will not–’

‘Oh no,’ said Hermione. ‘I would not think of forcing you to imprison your own daughter. Your kind-hearted nature would suffer too much. There are cells beneath my house. I will make sure she has everything she requires – improving books, time for contemplation, blood.’

Gabriella looked up, eyes blazing. ‘Blood, is it? You have already stolen one of mine by drinking from him. You will not take my daughter in the same way. I will hold her!’

‘Let me keep her,’ said Mathilda, ‘if the two of ye can’t agree. O’course, there’ll be a fee–’

Ulrika was unable to keep silent any longer. ‘Mistresses, please!’ she cried. ‘I have travelled half the world to fight for you! When I heard that you were threatened I thought of nothing else but returning to defend you! I know I have made a mess of things. I know I am a failure at intrigues. But is it any wonder? Look at me. I am bred for war! Would you lock me away just at the moment when there is finally opportunity for me to do what I do best?’

Gabriella scowled. ‘Ulrika, please be silent. You do not help your cause with this outburst. I won’t let Hermione hold you away from me, but–’

‘Mistress!’ interrupted Ulrika. ‘The Queen’s emissary said it was time for Lahmia to bare her claws.’ She thumped her chest with her fist. ‘I am those claws! Let me fight, and I will give you victories. I will give you your enemies’ heads on pikes!’

Gabriella and Hermione looked at Ulrika in silence as she turned from one to the other, waiting for their answer.

‘Yes,’ said Hermione at last. ‘Much too young. She will stay with me.’

‘She will not,’ said Gabriella. ‘She is my responsibility. I will do what must be done.’

‘Have you heard anything I’ve said?’ Ulrika moaned. ‘Does it not make any sense to you at–?’

‘Daughter,’ said Gabriella, as cold as ice. ‘You will wait upon my pleasure in the strong room. And if you wish to be under my care rather than Lady Hermione’s, you will be on your best behaviour until I call for you. Am I clear?’

Ulrika twitched, and had to clamp her jaw against another retort. So, the imprisonment was to begin now. She bowed stiffly. ‘Yes, mistress. Very clear. Thank you.’

‘Good,’ said Gabriella, then turned to the guards at the door. ‘Hasselrig, Becker, escort my daughter to her cell, then bring the key to me.’

‘Yes Mistress,’ said the men in unison.

Ulrika squared her shoulders, turned on her heel, and strode to them, her extended claws tearing holes in the palms of her clenched hands.

Famke was waiting in the hall, and followed as the two men led Ulrika down the hall. ‘Sister, what’s happened? What did they decide?’

Ulrika curled her lip. ‘They are fighting over who will have the honour of jailing me for the duration of the war.’

Famke groaned. ‘But you are just the sort of sister we need. You have fought. You have led men.’

‘That counts as nothing against my rebellions, apparently,’ said Ulrika.

She ground her teeth as the strong room neared. It couldn’t end like this. She had not raced all the way from Kislev to sit in some stone cellar and read ‘improving books’ while the war went on without her. She had come to Nuln to fight. She had come to defend her mistress. They wouldn’t take that away from her.

A cold wave of guilt washed over her as she contemplated what such defiance meant. How could she break from her mistress not an hour after returning to beg forgiveness for breaking from her before? She was only digging herself deeper. She was only proving to Gabriella and Hermione that she was the untrustworthy child they thought she was. But if she didn’t, how could she show them what she could do? How could she prove that she was an asset to the sisterhood? This was her opportunity. She must take it.

They reached the cell, and the guard to her left leaned in to put the key in the lock. Without looking around, Ulrika back-fisted the guard to her right, putting all her unnatural speed and strength into it. He dropped like an unstrung marionette, and Ulrika punched the man with the key just above the ear before he could begin to turn to see what had happened.

‘What are you doing?’ gasped Famke as the second guard slumped.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ulrika. ‘I have to prove to them they’re making a mistake.’ She looked up. ‘You – you won’t call the guards?’

Famke shook her head, her eyes wide.

‘Will you come with me?’

Famke bit her lip and shook her head again. ‘I’m sorry. I’m too afraid.’

Ulrika nodded. She wouldn’t press her. Famke was a true Lahmian, bred to the parlour, despite growing up on the street before she had been turned. The world outside the cloistered walls was no longer hers.

‘Then I must go,’ said Ulrika. She kissed Famke on the cheek and turned for the door that led to the stairwell, then turned back again immediately.

‘The ward on the door,’ she said. ‘Can you unlock it?’

Famke hesitated. Ulrika sympathised. It was one thing to let Ulrika go. It was another to assist her. Finally she nodded.

‘Come.’

Ulrika followed Famke to the door and watched anxiously while she mumbled the unlocking spell and waved her hand over it.

A maid with a serving tray came around a corner and saw the fallen guards just as Famke opened the door. She squeaked and ran for Gabriella’s quarters, shouting, ‘Mistress! Mistress, there is trouble!’

Famke threw her arms around Ulrika and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Go, sister! My heart goes with you.’

‘I’ll come back with our enemies’ hearts in a box,’ said Ulrika. ‘They’ll have to thank me if I end their war for them, won’t they?’

Shouted orders and thudding footsteps came from down the hall. Famke pushed Ulrika through the door.

‘I hope so, sister,’ she said. ‘But, go! Go!’

Ulrika went, pounding down the stairs as sounds of pursuit came from behind and shouts came through the walls at each floor. At the bottom, she faced the door to the entry hall. It was locked – and not only locked but warded, just as above. She could feel the tingle of the spell’s shimmer as she threw her shoulder into it. It didn’t budge, and she could hear movement and urgent whispers behind it. She cursed. She was trapped, and the men were coming quickly down the stairs above her.

Ulrika looked around. There was a dark space under the stairs, cluttered with piled chairs. She ducked into it and backed into the shadows, then pulled her doublet up over her head to hide her white hair. She tried to think like a shadow, tried to blend with the dark.

The men thundered to the bottom of the steps and tried the door.

‘Locked!’ said one.

‘Did she go through?’ asked another.

‘She can’t have,’ said the first. ‘We’d hear fighting.’

‘Well, we didn’t pass her,’ said a third.

The men started looking around the bottom of the stairwell. Ulrika held perfectly still as one of them looked directly at her. He even dragged some of the chairs out from under the flight and looked behind them.

‘She’s not here,’ he said. ‘She must have gone through.’

‘But she can’t have,’ said the first man again.

‘We’d better check anyway,’ said the second. ‘Maybe they’re all dead at the door.’

The first guard cursed, then took a key from his belt. It shimmered the same colour as the ward. He turned it, and the door opened.

Ulrika launched herself from her hiding place as the guards started through, and smashed past them into the entry. The auburn-haired madam was there, trying to hurry a crowd of lavishly dressed young men out the front door as the Lahmian, Astrid, and the two liveried behemoths turned towards Ulrika.

‘Really, Madam Reme,’ one of the young noblemen was saying. ‘We will not be shooed out like relatives. This is highly unsatisfactory.’

‘It is only for your safety, my lords,’ said the woman. ‘An agitator has–’

She broke off as Ulrika dodged past Astrid, then ducked between the lunging tackles of the huge guards and ran for the alcove where she had put her weapons. The little room was filled with swords and daggers hung on pegs, but she found hers readily enough. They were the only ones that had seen any use.

Ulrika whipped her blade out and turned, fanning back Astrid, the two behemoths and the three upstairs guards as they surrounded the alcove, weapons drawn. Astrid had sharp silver cupped in her palm.

‘Was that the agitator?’ asked a young lord. ‘Is there going to be a fight?’

‘Very likely, my lord,’ said Madam Reme. ‘Now if you please–’

But the young men were drawing their weapons.

‘Oh no!’ said the one who had spoken. ‘We’ll not abandon our girls in the face of danger. Come on, lads!’

Ulrika smiled as the lordlings started crowding in behind the line of guards, hallooing like they were after a fox. This was perfect. Onlookers were just the weapon she needed.

‘Stop this, sister!’ whispered Astrid as Ulrika swiped at her again and stepped forwards. ‘You can’t escape! Surrender or it will be the worse for you.’

Ulrika grinned, showing just a hint of extended fang. ‘You will let me escape,’ she murmured. ‘Or it will be the worse for you. Shall I show these gentles my true nature? Do you want the Chalice of Caronne closed by the witch hunters?’

Astrid’s face fell, and she looked back at the young men, still trying to squeeze to the front. ‘You wouldn’t.’

‘I have little left to lose,’ said Ulrika.

‘Let her go,’ said a new voice, and Ulrika looked to the right.

Countess Gabriella was gliding down the brothel’s gilded stair with a handful of guards behind her. Her face was composed in a mask of amused condescension, but Ulrika could see the cold fury behind her eyes, and the ice of it froze her guts.

‘If the dirty little drake only wants to leave, why stop her?’ she asked, then curtseyed to the young noblemen. ‘Gentlemen, your chivalry does you credit, but don’t besmirch your blades on trash. Step aside and she will make no trouble, will she?’

Ulrika swallowed as Gabriella’s glittering gaze pierced her to the quick. ‘No trouble at all, madame,’ she said.

The young lords grumbled and complained, but the behemoths and upstairs guards moved them gently back and gave Ulrika a clear path to the open door. Ulrika squeezed out and backed towards it, keeping her blade up and her eyes moving, ready for any last-minute attack. It didn’t come. Gabriella and Astrid and Madam Reme merely watched as she edged out onto the front steps.

Gabriella saluted from the gilded stair. ‘Be careful, drake,’ she said sweetly. ‘The night is full of dangers.’

Ulrika shivered. That was a threat if ever there was. ‘Thank you, madame,’ she said, bowing. ‘I will.’

And with that, she turned and fled down the street. They would be coming, but in what guise, and how soon, she didn’t know. Gabriella had only let her escape the brothel to move the fight away from her clientele and keep up appearances, but the hounds had been loosed, of that Ulrika was in no doubt.

Ulrika needed to get to the lights and the crowds of the Handelstrasse. The Lahmians wouldn’t be able to attack openly there for fear of exposing themselves, and she might be able to lose them in the confusion, but there was a grid of dark, empty blocks between here and there – blocks of stolid townhouses, battened and shuttered against the night. If they struck here–

A white shape flashed in the corner of her eye. She turned, raising her rapier, and the figure slammed into her chest, knocking her flat. Ulrika’s head cracked the cobbles and the world broke into shards – a white hand grabbing her shirt front, cobbles scraping her back as she was dragged, the dark walls of an alley hemming in the night sky, angry eyes and fangs snarling down at her.

‘With this you have signed your death warrant, stray. There will be no prison for you.’

chapter four

DANGEROUS GAME

The shards of Ulrika’s consciousness fell back together to reveal Hermione crouching over her, naked as a cat, and reaching claws for her throat. Ulrika threw up her hands and caught Hermione’s wrists, but the petite beauty was impossibly strong, and Ulrika’s arms shook with the effort of keeping her away.

‘Did you think you were the only one who could fight?’ hissed Hermione, pressing harder. ‘Did you think because I wear petticoats and lace that I am weak? There is a beast within me as well, girl!’

‘A beast, aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘But not a warrior.’

She let go of both Hermione’s wrists at once, and, with all resistance suddenly removed, the vampiress fell forwards, off balance. Ulrika thrust her head forwards and bucked at the same time, head-butting Hermione and throwing her off with her long legs, then grabbed her sword and rolled to her feet.

Hermione was up as well, blinking but crouched to spring, and Ulrika could hear the clatter of hooves getting closer behind her. The swains from the brothel were coming.

‘Stand aside, mistress,’ said Ulrika. ‘I have no wish to hurt you.’

‘But I share no such wish,’ said Hermione, and leapt, claws and fangs bared.

For all her strength and speed, however, the Lahmian was tiny – a foot shorter than Ulrika and delicately built. Ulrika caught her in mid-air and slammed her into the alley wall, caving in the plaster and splintering the lathing behind it. Hermione flopped to the ground in a rain of rubble, stunned, and Ulrika ran.

At the other end of the alley, another naked form dropped from the roof to a crouch – Gabriella.

‘Daughter,’ she said, ‘listen to me.’

Ulrika dodged right and vaulted a high fence into a dingy garden. She knew better than to hear her out. Gabriella’s weapons were words. She would weave a honeyed net that would leave Ulrika trapped and helpless, and surrounded by her swains.

Ulrika jumped another wall then careened onto a side street, the sound of pursuit loud in her ears. The lights of the Handelstrasse were only a block and half ahead. She sprinted for them, grinning. Gabriella and Hermione couldn’t very well chase her there naked. If only they wore sensible breeches and doublets instead of floor-length dresses, they wouldn’t have to strip to fight.

Ulrika ran past a strolling couple and the open door of an ale house and heard the slap of bare feet slowing behind her. She looked back. Hermione glared at her from behind a low wall, but Gabriella had not given up. She was climbing the half-timbered front of a building, as agile as a monkey. A second later, Hermione vaulted after her. Behind them, Gabriella’s swains galloped closer.

Ulrika ran into the Handelstrasse and stumbled against the flanks of a surging mob – students, shopkeeps and ironworkers with torches and clubs and stakes in their hands, all shouting and going the same direction.

‘Burn the fiends! Show them for what they are!’

Ulrika pulled up, skin prickling. Ursun’s teeth! She’d run into a lynch mob! She glanced back, thinking to try another way, but Gabriella’s riders were spreading out to block the street behind her, and white shadows were flashing across the rooftops. Ulrika plunged into the flow. Terrifying as it was to be among the enemy, she could at least be certain Hermione and Gabriella wouldn’t attack her in the middle of such a crowd.

The swains were another matter. They pushed their horses into the human stream, trying to keep their eye on her and letting the current take them after her. She hunched lower, and hid behind a group of fanatics who carried towering straw effigies, crudely dressed to resemble vampires.

The mob swept north into the Reik Platz to join the great swarm of humanity that filled it nearly to bursting. Ulrika gagged as they packed close around her. The summer night was already as close as a sweaty blanket, but in the midst of the unwashed and all their torches, she felt as if she were in an oven full of dirty clothes.

Under the spreading branches of the ancient Deutz Elm, a man dressed all in black stood upon a barrel and raised a blazing wooden stake in the air. He was whom the fanatics had come to see.

‘They hide among us, friends!’ he cried in a clear, carrying voice. ‘Women of high estate, women of easy virtue, women of the gutter, they mask as all these things, seducing the weak, whispering in the ears of the powerful and recruiting the low to be their slaves.’

Ulrika eyed the speaker warily. He was a cut above the usual street-corner demagogue – a tall, fierce-eyed man of perhaps forty, with a rough-hewn but intelligent face and grey in his neatly trimmed black beard. He was outfitted something like a witch hunter, but without the hat, and with a bandoleer of stakes in place of the usual pistols, while a sledgehammer was slung through his belt instead of a sword.

‘Now they have cast off the mask!’ he continued. ‘Now they have revealed their schemes at last. They want us for slaves, friends! They want our Empire for their own!’ He pointed north. ‘In Wolfenburg the she-fiends killed the mayor and made the lord their swain! In Middenheim, the undercity crawls with their spawn!’ His finger swung to the underlit towers of Countess von Liebowitz’s palace, on the far side of the Altestadt wall. ‘And here in Nuln, the court is riddled with them! Painted jades who try to lure our beloved countess to their dark depravities!’

He drew his sledgehammer and raised it above his head beside the burning stake he held. ‘Well, I say they must be stopped! I say we must breach the Altestadt gate and drag the sluts from their perfumed beds! I say–’

‘There’s one now!’ shrieked a woman’s voice. ‘The drake with the short white hair! She’s a vampire, I’m sure of it!’

Ulrika spun, looking for the source of the shriek, and saw Hermione peering out from behind a chimney on a nearby rooftop, her hands cupped like a trumpet around her mouth.

‘Kill her!’ she cried from her hiding place. ‘Burn her! Show her a mirror!’

Rage burned in Ulrika’s breast at her words. Hermione was doing the very thing she had accused Mathilda and Gabriella of during the murders. She was revealing a sister to the mob.

A rising susurrus of whispers brought Ulrika’s attention back to the square. The crowd had drawn back, forming a circle of open space around her, everyone staring and murmuring, their weapons gripped tight in their fists.

She raised her hands. ‘Please, friends. I’m no vampire. I’m here like you, ready to storm the Altestadt. I–’

‘Kill her!’ roared the man in black, pointing his sledgehammer at Ulrika. ‘I can smell her foetid breath from here! She reeks of the grave!’

Ulrika locked eyes with him for the briefest of seconds, and saw blazing triumph in them, almost glee. Does he know, she wondered? Or does he only leap upon opportunity?

Now was not the time to dwell on it, for the mob was responding to his goad and surging in at her from all sides. Ulrika drew her rapier and dagger and flashed them around, driving them back, but cobbles and bricks flew at her from behind, cracking her on the head and shoulders, and the vampire hunter was shoving towards her, stake and hammer ready. She spun, looking for a way out, and saw Gabriella’s swains spurring their chargers through the crowd. Ulrika laughed. The fools would be the saving of her.

Ulrika plunged towards the first rider, stabbing into the crowd with a flurry of thrusts, and as he raised his sword over her, she pulled him from his horse by the belt and vaulted into the saddle before he had hit the ground.

‘Bring her down!’ roared the man in black, crashing ahead. ‘Bring her down!’

Ulrika lashed about her with her rapier and stabbed her heels into the horse’s flanks, making it kick as it surged forwards. The crowd fell back at the barrage of steel and hooves and moving horseflesh, but the man in black came on, stepping into her path and swinging his hammer. She parried the blow with her blade, and nearly dropped it. His strike had been so hard it stung her hand. He had the strength of a fanatic!

In the next second, however, she was past him and Gabriella’s swains rode him down as they gave chase, though even that didn’t quiet him. Ulrika still heard him crying for someone to bring her down as she spurred for the north side of the square with the swains angling after her. A quick look behind showed her Gabriella and Hermione leaping from roof to roof to do the same, and there was a third form with them – Mathilda bounding after them like a buxom wolf. Ulrika cursed. She had traded one problem for another. If she stayed with the crowd she would be torn apart for being a vampire. If she broke from them, she would be torn apart by vampires. She needed to hide. She needed to cover her white hair.

She turned the horse into a street that ran along the southern edge of the University of Nuln and sped on. The riders clattered in behind her, shouting at her to stop. The streets were quieter here, but not empty. Students in hooded robes walked in ones and twos, hurrying to cross in front of her on their way to the taverns and coffee houses on the south side of the street.

Robes? Perfect. But how to get one undetected? She needed a moment – even a second – with no eyes on her.

There was an alley on the left, a pitch-black slot between a tavern and a used book shop. It looked too tight to ride into, but she aimed for it anyway. Her knees cleared the walls with inches to spare and the horse floundered in a heap of rubbish, then cleared it and sped on. Ulrika did not go with it. As soon as she was out of sight of the street she slipped off its rump, then threw herself behind a stack of empty beer kegs as it thundered on.

Gabriella’s swains blurred past in single file, an arm’s length from her face, striving after her horse in the dark, and then they were gone. She breathed a sigh of relief. Now for a robe. A tavern full of drunk students should provide, but she couldn’t go back to the street and enter from the front. The roar of the mob was getting closer, and the three Lahmians would be watching from the rooftops.

She looked at the tavern. There was no door, but there was a fence around the yard behind it. She ran and vaulted it, and landed in a reeking puddle that had leaked from under the wooden walls of the privies. With a grimace she stepped to dry ground and wiped her feet. The back gate was beyond the privies to her right, and the back door to the tavern to the left. Did she enter the tavern, or–?

A painful retching came from the privies. Some poor fellow was returning his beer to the earth, and it sounded as if it was killing him. Her decision was made. She stepped to the door, grimacing. She hoped he hadn’t got any on himself.

With the heel of her hand, she snapped the wooden latch and the door flew open. A student knelt before the bench, his head over the hole, whimpering to Sigmar as he heaved and spat.

‘Occupied, curse you–’ he said, raising his head.

Ulrika lifted him by the shirtfront and pinned him to the back wall as the door swung closed behind her.

‘Take off your robe.’

He goggled at her, sputum dripping from his chin.

She put her dagger to his throat. ‘Your robe. Now.’

The boy pawed at his robe with trembling hands, trying to get it off, but was racked by another convulsion. Ulrika spun him around and shoved his head down the hole, wincing. Maybe she should have tried the taproom after all – or perhaps not. The mob was pouring down the alley beyond the fence, shouting, ‘Find the vampire! Kill her!’ and there were echoing shouts from the tavern. The students were picking up the cry.

When the boy’s heaving had finished she pulled him up again. ‘Hurry.’

‘Why’ya pickin’ on me?’ he slurred, slowly taking off the robe. ‘Can’cha see’m sick.’

Ulrika slammed him against the wall again and he went faster, then handed the robe to her. It was only slightly soiled. She shoved him onto the bench and pulled it on, covering her head with the cowl, then turned to go, but as she put her hand on the latch, she paused. She didn’t want the boy telling tales of someone stealing his robe, at least not for a while.

She turned back and punched him in the temple. He sagged against the wall, unconscious, and she stepped back out into the yard, weaving as if drunk. A quick glance to the rooftops from under her cowl didn’t reveal Gabriella, Hermione or Mathilda, but she couldn’t assume they weren’t there. She had to continue to act as if they were still watching.

She staggered through the back door into the tavern. A throng of students were hallooing and hurrying out the front door to join the hunt. Ulrika followed them out, and joined the tail of the mob, all stumbling and reeling as much as she was pretending to.

She tagged along behind them for several blocks, all the while sneaking glances at the roofs around them. Finally, satisfied that Gabriella and Hermione were not watching, she turned off into an alley, as if stopping to vomit, and let the parade go on as she slunk into the shadows.

She shook her head in dismay as she continued on. Only a few hours back in Nuln and she was on her own again, at war with her mistress again, hunted by her sisters again, but this time it would be different. This time she would prove herself.

This time she knew what she was doing.

chapter five

THE HIDDEN ROAD

For a time, Ulrika skulked around the Altestadt, searching for a safe place to hide during daylight hours, but then remembered she already knew one, and turned her steps towards Shantytown. Several times she had to wait in shadowed alleys for drunken, torch-bearing mobs to pass by before going on. The original mob seemed to have fragmented when its hunt for her proved fruitless, and now a handful of lesser mobs wound through the city like blind worms, looking for hapless victims to consume.

More than once she saw witch hunters as well, watching the mobs and their leaders with cold eyes, but doing nothing to deter them from their rioting. Once she saw Captain Meinhart Schenk, Countess Gabriella’s nemesis during the Strigoi murders, and shrank back, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. Schenk knew her face, and were he to see her now, he would realise that she and Gabriella, Hermione and Famke had not been the proper ladies they had pretended to be. Nor had they been massacred by ghouls as Gabriella had made it appear. He would resume his hunt for them, and that would only make the Lahmians’ grim situation worse. She slipped into the darkness and made a wide circle around him and his men before continuing on.

A few blocks later, just south of the corner of Messingstrasse and Hoff, she found the tenement with the black door and the white X that marked it as a plague house. The front door was still locked, and the back door, which had been months ago broken open by Murnau the Strigoi’s ghouls, was again boarded up tight. She smiled at that. The plague had come and gone years ago, but the people of the neighbourhood still shunned the house with a superstitious dread. Good. That was precisely what she wanted.

She left the boarded-up door untouched and scaled the wall. A broken window on the top floor had been smashed in by Murnau. She would make it her front door, so no one would see her enter or leave the place from the street, and no mortal man would be able to get in without her knowing. In fact, she would reinforce the doors below and set belled tripwires on the stairs just in case.

She eased through the splintered window and searched the place top to bottom. It was just as she remembered it – the top floor scarred and stained with blood and claw marks from the fight in which Murnau the Strigoi had killed Mistress Alfina, the one-time leader of the Lahmians in Nuln, but the rest undisturbed. On every floor she found room after room of desiccated plague-corpses in cots, with other bodies in white robes fallen among them – the Shallyan sisters who had been locked in with them to comfort them in their final hours.

Ulrika didn’t mind the corpses. They were withered and dry, and the smell of death faint and faded. She cleared a room of them and gathered what meagre furniture she could find from the other rooms – a pair of mismatched chairs, a table with a missing leaf, a small bed with dusty sheets, a few candles. The windows were already boarded up, but she covered them with blankets from the plague cots to make sure no sun stole through the cracks, and made certain there were no holes in the ceiling.

At last she took off her boots and lay down in the bed, thinking ahead. Tomorrow she must begin her search for the Sylvanians and their army, though she had no idea where to begin. The Lahmians had searched for them for weeks and hadn’t found them. How was she to find them when a coven of women well versed in sorcery, spycraft and rumour-gathering could not?

Ulrika’s guts knotted as she thought of it. Lying alone in a cobwebbed plague house, without an ally to turn to and no resources but the few coins in her purse and the sword at her side, her vow that she would bring Gabriella and Hermione the Sylvanians’ heads on pikes now seemed a childish boast. Still, she had to try. How else was she to make things right? How else was she to return home?

The next night was as hot as the last, but despite the heat, Ulrika pulled on her stolen student’s robe and drew up the stifling hood to hide her white hair, then set out to spy on the Lahmians. Her hope was that she would catch the Sylvanians also spying on the Lahmians, and would then be able to spy on them. This proved harder than she could have imagined. Even finding Lahmians to spy upon was turning out to be difficult.

She knew there were hundreds of vampiresses in Nuln, all gathered to combat the Sylvanian threat, but though she hunted through the Handelbezirk and watched the Chalice of Caronne for hours from a gable across the way, she saw nothing suspicious. No black coaches or veiled women coming or going from the brothel, and if there were Lahmian guards watching for spies, she did not see them, nor did she notice any Sylvanian spies observing the place from nearby rooftops or circling the block in disguise.

Ulrika didn’t understand it. The Lahmians were preparing for war. There should have been messengers going back and forth between Hermione’s mansion and the brothel. There should have been Sylvanian agents doing their best to intercept those messengers. No matter how hard both sides tried to hide it, there should have been some evidence of the trouble brewing under the surface.

Under the surface. Ulrika groaned.

Of course.

With witch hunters everywhere and rioting mobs stoning anyone who looked even remotely undead, both the Lahmians and the Sylvanians would be fools to do anything on the street. They would be deep beneath the city, playing endless games of chess in the dark.

Ulrika dropped from her perch and made for the nearest sewer grate.

An hour later, after much skulking and searching, creeping and climbing, Ulrika found herself far below the stinking brick channels of the sewers, crouching in a dank, claw-dug tunnel, musty with old animal stench, and leaning forwards to examine tracks in the dirt.

Overlaying old impressions, made by human-sized clawed feet and scaly tails, were dozens of more recent prints. Some were from the dainty pointed shoes of women, some were from the heavy square-toed boots of men, some were bare and some were strange and inhuman, but all had a dry cinnamon musk about them that Ulrika knew well.

Lantern light flickered on the curved earthen walls to her right, and footsteps and voices were approaching. Ulrika edged back into the side tunnel that had brought her there, and watched as an armed patrol heaved into sight around a bend. There was a Lahmian in flowing robes leading them, but the others were living men, all with lamps on poles held high over their heads. The Lahmian was chanting in a low voice and moving her hands in complicated patterns, and though her eyes were closed, she turned her head slowly from side to side.

Ulrika tensed. The Lahmian was using magic to look into chambers and passages that were hidden from her eyes – searching for spies. Ulrika turned and hurried up a side tunnel, moving as fast as she could without making noise. She took a branching right into a long passage and sped along it until she reached a low-ceilinged crawl space littered with long-dead skeletons, some human, some with tails and chisel-toothed skulls. The space had no exit. She turned back to the passage. If she tried to go back and find another way, she might enter the limit of the Lahmian’s sight. Had she got far enough away? She hadn’t enough witch sight to tell. She could only wait and hope.

Finally, after standing motionless amidst the skeletons for what seemed an aeon, the footsteps vanished into silence again. Ulrika let out a sigh of relief and crept back out to the big tunnel, then started along it in the direction the patrol had come. After only a few minutes, she came to a ward so powerful even her miserable witch sight could see it, a glowing barrier that stretched across the width of the tunnel. A ward like that must mean she was approaching the catacombs beneath the Chalice of Caronne. She edged as close as she dared and tried to see beyond it.

Ahead, the rough tunnel intersected with two others at the base of some ancient foundation made of massive stones. Piercing this cyclopean wall was a door, carved by later hands, and flanked by Lahmian guards with silver-tipped spears. This had to be the underground entrance to the Chalice of Caronne! Even as Ulrika watched, a trio of female figures stepped from the door and strode into a west-going tunnel, while a human man carrying a satchel trotted from a south-opening tunnel and was challenged by the guards.

Ulrika smiled. Here was the activity she had been looking for. This was the frenzied to and fro of war and espionage. It would be here that she would find Sylvanians lurking in the shadows, watching and trying to intercept messengers and follow Lahmian agents. All she had to do now was be patient and lie low and the spies would reveal themselves, and when they did, she would follow them back to their lair and discover their masters. Then she could return in triumph to Gabriella and give her what she needed to win the war.

Frustratingly, however, the Sylvanians did not reveal themselves. Though Ulrika searched every inch of the maze of tunnels and caverns and long-forgotten cellars that surrounded the brothel’s depths, she found nothing to indicate spies of any kind had been there recently, and though she lay in wait at various points along the most heavily travelled paths for a day and a night and another day, growing hungrier by the hour, she neither saw nor sensed anyone following any of the Lahmian agents or blood-swains that passed.

Were the Sylvanians ignoring the Lahmians? Did they hold them in such contempt that they weren’t bothering to watch their activities? Ulrika couldn’t believe it. They must be here. Perhaps she was simply unable to sense their presence. Were they hiding around her without her knowing? A chilling thought, but there was another possibility that disturbed her even more. What if the Sylvanians didn’t need to watch the brothel’s comings and goings because they had a spy on the inside? What if there was a Lahmian traitor? If so, Ulrika should be following her to a rendezvous with her Sylvanian counterpart, but who was she? In her hours in the dark, Ulrika had seen scores of Lahmians and swains go by on various errands, carrying papers, books and packages. It might have been any of them. Which one should she follow?

She picked a few at random, and got nowhere, returning again and again to her place near the catacombs, desperate and close to despair, but in the end, it wasn’t Lahmian traitors that gave Ulrika her way to the Sylvanians, it was her nemesis, Mistress Hermione.

She had seen Hermione and Famke come and go on several occasions, carried to and from the underground entrance to her mansion on a swain-borne litter, and had scrambled silently away each time, afraid Hermione’s powerful witch sight would sense her lurking in the shadows. But no matter how far away she ran, nor around how many corners, she could always hear Hermione’s shrill, ceaseless complaining echoing after her.

Hermione complained about everything – the fact that Ulrika had yet to be found, the colour of Famke’s dresses, the taste and manners of her Lahmian sisters, but most of all she complained about the fact that the Lahmian leaders were gathering under Gabriella’s roof instead of hers. ‘The cunning witch is meant to be assisting me, not taking over,’ she said once, and on another pass, ‘I shouldn’t be going to them. They should be coming to me. I am the leader here!’

Then, late in the afternoon of Ulrika’s second day in the tunnels, just as she was about to return to the surface to feed and try to think of another way, Hermione’s hectoring voice came once again down the tunnel, following Ulrika as she retreated. This time she wasn’t complaining about being away from the centre of things, or Famke’s failure to practise the lute, or Ulrika’s escape, but instead about the incompetence of her sisters and their swains.

‘Four hundred men and horses cannot just vanish!’ she cried. ‘Mistress Cherna saw them pass through Franzen two days ago under cover of night, and Gizel did not see them pass through Mikalsbad the next night, nor have they arrived in Nuln. Does that not suggest to you that they have taken to the woods somewhere in between?’

Ulrika could not hear Famke’s quieter reply, but whatever it had been, it did not seem to have soothed her mistress.

‘And yet these foolish chits say they have found no trace of them in the Stirwood!’ Hermione continued. ‘Are they blind? Where did they go? Human troops mean daylight raids. What if Sylvania plans to kill Karl Franz under the light of the sun? What are we to do then? These horse soldiers must be found and slaughtered!’

Hermione’s rant grew faint as the litter continued down the passage, but Ulrika had stopped listening anyway, for she suddenly knew what to do.

What seemed a dead end to the Lahmians was an open road to her. Trapped in their airless drawing rooms and locked into century-spanning court intrigues, the vampiresses had forgotten – if they ever knew – the mundane realities of war and soldiering, but Ulrika was the daughter of a Kislev boyar, and had been raised in the saddle. She had led her own company of Kossars. She had fought and marched in the wilderness and made all the preparations for lengthy campaigns.

She might not know the telltale signs that undead troops left behind. She might not know how to sense the presence of an invisible Sylvanian spy, but she knew that while living men and horses could vanish into a wood, they could not live in one unprovisioned. If the Sylvanians were hiding human cavalry in the forest near Nuln they could not sustain those troops with magic. They would have to be fed and watered. There would be meals for the men and fodder for the horses, and it had to come from somewhere.

She turned and started eagerly back for the passage that led to the sewers and the surface. This was a trail she could follow.

chapter six

EYES WITHOUT A FACE

‘Hay for four hundred warhorses, you say?’ asked the halfling.

‘Aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘Or it might be five hundred, or it might be three hundred. A large number, anyway.’

The halfling shook his head. He was a ruddy-faced little feed broker in Nuln’s hay market, in the Weston District, and stood on a tall podium from which he conducted his business. It was before dawn and the market had not yet officially opened, but the hay wagons were already coming in from the outlying farms, and stevedores were unloading and stacking the bales in a big brick warehouse behind him.

‘Naw,’ he said. ‘I’ve standing orders for that much with the city and with the Four Seasons coach line, but no new customers.’ He spat into the litter of straw that covered the hard-packed earth of the market square. ‘If I was t’get an order like that, I’d tell the Black Coats. The army likes t’know when big companies of horsemen are movin’ about in the vicinity.’

Ulrika paused at that, her skin prickling. She didn’t want anyone telling Nuln’s forces that armies were gathering in the woods. They might go and make a mess of things. This had to be her victory.

‘Yes,’ she said, then leaned in to speak in his ear. ‘Uh, tell no one, but the army is precisely who I am asking for. Countess Emmanuelle’s marshal has got wind of armed men mustering somewhere near Nuln, and is trying to find out where they’re hiding. Do you know of any brokers less reputable than yourself, who would be willing to take such an order, no questions asked?’

The halfling raised a shaggy eyebrow and gave her a sceptical glance. ‘A Kislev hoyden working for Old Longshanks? Pull the other one.’

Ulrika glared. She didn’t know the marshal of Nuln’s name, or anything about him, so she’d have to get by on bluster. ‘A Kislev Kossar, halfling, brought to Nuln to teach these clumsy southern oafs something of horsemanship. The marshal sent me here instead of his men because he doesn’t want it known the army is aware of the threat.’ She smiled conspiratorially and put a hand on the hilt of her rapier. ‘I tell you because I can see you are honourable, and will not betray the confidence.’

The broker’s eyes widened at the veiled threat, and he swallowed. ‘Oh, aye, fraulein, you can count on me,’ he said. ‘My best customers, the countess’s army. Never had a problem and they always pay up front. Always.’

Ulrika smirked. He might be scared, but he was still a halfling. She moved her hand from her hilt to her belt pouch and withdrew a gold crown.

‘And that will not change today,’ she said, and flipped the coin towards him with her thumb. He snatched it out of the air as quick as a snake striking.

‘Much obliged,’ he said. ‘Now, what was yer question again?’

‘Disreputable hay merchants,’ she said. ‘Someone who would take an order of fodder for four hundred horses and not tell the authorities.’

The halfling stroked his clean-shaven chin and pursed his lips. ‘Well now, there’re plenty o’lads around these parts who’d do a deal no questions asked, but not so many who’d be able to provide the quantity. Hmmm.’ He shot a look over his shoulder, then all around the square. ‘I’ve two names for ye,’ he said, leaning in. ‘Lanval the Bretonnian, across the market, and Bull Klostermann, down the way. Both o’em have big operations, and both ain’t too particular about who they do business with. Give them a try.’

‘I will,’ said Ulrika, and took out a second crown. ‘And in the name of the countess, I thank you.’

The halfling snatched the coin out of her hand before she could flip it, then gave her a sly salute.

‘Anything for the army, fraulein,’ he said.

An hour later, with the eastern sky greying and time running short, Ulrika crouched in the topmost loft of Bull Klostermann’s tall, narrow warehouse, where the hay was winched up on pallets to lofts stacked one above the next like tenement flats.

Lanval the Bretonnian had been a washout. She’d heard him mention many less-than-scrupulous deals while eavesdropping on a rooftop near the window of his warehouse office, but no mention of any recent or upcoming large order. He seemed more interested in selling second-rate fodder at first-rate prices than dealing with shady customers.

Bull Klostermann, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any dirty business going at all. Despite running his place like an ill-tempered pirate, sending his cringing crew scurrying up into the lofts with foul-mouthed curses, all his sales seemed to be going to legitimate customers, and she had heard no whisperings of back-room deals or ‘special’ shipments.

After a dull half-hour watching the hay-monkeys winching down pallets and setting them in the carts of clients, Ulrika decided to give up and hurry back to the plague house before the sun rose, but just as she started for the roof, she heard Klostermann turn down a big order.

‘Sorry, mein herr,’ he boomed. ‘Haven’t got that much on hand. Try Sauerapfel down the street. That halfling grafter always has more than he can sell.’

Ulrika paused and looked around. The buyer had asked for two hundred bales, and there were more than two hundred bales here on the uppermost loft – many more. And now that she thought of it, none of Klostermann’s crew had climbed up this far since she had entered. Was this the Sylvanians’ hay? Had she been sitting in the middle of what she was looking for all along?

She looked back at the narrow slot of sky through the vent. If she hesitated another minute it would be too late. The sun would rise over the rooftops and she would be burned alive, but what if the Sylvanians’ human servants came for the hay during the day? She couldn’t follow them if they did, but she could at least see their faces. She could hear their voices. That would be a start.

Ulrika turned away from the roof vent with a sigh, resigned to waiting out the day in the dusty loft, then climbed up into the rafters to find a hidden perch to rest upon. Spying was boring work. She would rather be fighting, but as her father had said on more than one occasion, you can’t fight the enemy until you know where he is.

The slap of feet on ladder rungs brought Ulrika’s head up, and she looked around. The light coming through the roof vent was just as dim as it had been when she had retreated into her corner, but now it was the harsh red of twilight instead of the gentle pink of morning. She had slept the day away!

At least the hay on the top loft was still stacked below her, though apparently not for long. The hay-monkeys were coming up every ladder, hooks and ropes and storm lanterns slung on belts and over shoulders, while Klostermann urged them on with ear-blistering exhortations.

‘Move your scrawny arses, you whore-son inverts, or I’ll feed y’yer own wedding tackle! Them wagons ain’t gonna load themselves. If we’re caught at this I’ll sell yer daughters to the excise men for a bribe – not that the poxy sluts would be worth a Tilean groat. Now, move!’

The warehouse men scampered to the top loft like terrified squirrels and began fixing ropes to hay pallets and then hooking them to the winches, which lowered them down to the ground floor with a constant creaking.

Ulrika slipped silently through the rafters to look down over the edge of the loft. On the ground floor, a line of wagons tailed out through the back door into the back yard while a pallet of hay was being lowered into the bed of the first in the train. She strained her senses towards the driver, who stood by Klostermann while an assistant at a table counted coins dumped from a bulging purse.

The driver was human – she could sense his heart-fire burning in his chest – but though he was dressed like a carter, his face was hard and scarred, and his muscle and posture were those of a professional soldier. The other drivers were the same. The question was, were they the soldiers she was looking for?

‘All correct?’ asked Klostermann.

His assistant finished counting the coins and nodded. ‘Aye, boss. It’s all there.’

Klostermann nodded to the driver. ‘Thank ye, mein herr. And if y’want to inspect the goods, yer welcome to have a look.’

‘No need,’ said the man, climbing up to his bench. ‘If you’ve cheated us, we’ll find another dealer, and you’ll find your head missing one night.’

Klostermann paled and babbled some response, but Ulrika didn’t hear it. She had her confirmation at last. The driver had a thick Stirlander accent, the same accent Roche and all of her sire Krieger’s servants had had. He was from Sylvania. These were men of the vanished cavalry. All she had to do was follow them and she would find the Sylvanian camp.

She looked up. A leap and a quick climb through the roof vent and she was gone. All she needed was something to draw the men’s attention while she did it. She looked around. Ah. Perfect. The withered corpse of a dead rat lay upon her rafter, not two paces away. She reached out and flicked it off and it dropped towards the ground floor.

‘Who threw that?’ roared Klostermann a second later. ‘Which one of you threw a dead rat at my head? I’ll flay the mangey hide off ye!’

The hay-monkeys all froze and stared down towards their fulminating boss, and Ulrika climbed silently out into purple twilight, Klostermann’s bellowings following her like a poisonous cloud. The first hay wagon was just starting south towards the Handelstrasse as she padded to the front of the warehouse.

‘Lead on, Stirlander,’ she said, grinning. ‘Lead on.’

She sprang to the roof of the next warehouse and then the next after that, following the progress of the wagon and the others that followed it like a circling hawk tracking the futile scampering of a rabbit.

They turned right on the Handelstrasse, and Ulrika gathered herself and jumped after them, aiming for a flat-roofed building across the wide street. It was a leap that tested the limits of her abilities, and she knew as soon as she kicked off that she was barely going to make it. She stretched her feet for the crenellations of the roof’s coping, but just before she landed, something dark flashed by above her and kicked her hard in the back, changing her trajectory and smashing her chest-first into the low wall instead.

Gasping with pain and shock, Ulrika scrabbled feebly at the slates as she slid backwards towards the drop. What had hit her? Where had it come from?

A booted foot stepped on her wrist, stopping her backwards slide.

‘I know you,’ said a deep voice above her.

She tipped back her spinning head. Standing at the edge of the roof where she should have landed was an indistinct figure. That he was tall and male and powerfully built she could see, but despite her night vision and unnatural senses, she could make out little else about him. He was silhouetted as if standing in front of the bright sun, his face strangely blurred and shadowed. All she could see of it was a pair of red eyes, glinting as if they reflected the bloody light of the twilight sky. Ulrika could be certain of only one thing about him. His heart did not beat.

‘You are the Lahmian who knows something of the art of war,’ he continued, in a voice as calm and certain as a king’s. ‘That is a dangerous combination. Too dangerous, I’m afraid.’

And with that he drew a long sword and raised it high.

chapter seven

THE OFFER

Ulrika wrenched her arm from under the vampire’s boot as the sword swept for her neck. She dropped backwards off the roof and the blade missed, which was a relief, but the street was four storeys below and closing fast.

She looked down. A sign, jutting out from the wall on an iron bracket, rushed up at her. She threw out her arms and caught it, badly. The bracket hit her in the ribs, folding her in half and stunning her, but her weight and momentum bent it and she began to slip off as the sign swung wildly beneath her.

With a dazed hand she clutched the bracket, then looked up through blurry eyes. The vampire at the edge of the roof was reaching down with his hands, and the darkness that obscured him was extending towards her like intertwining serpents. She looked around. It was still too far to drop, even for her, but there was a window in the wall beside her, shuttered tight.

Ulrika pushed up on the bent bracket, set her feet on the swinging sign, and kicked hard towards the window, punching with a gloved fist. The snaking darkness caught her as she launched, and her limbs went loose at its touch, but she had enough momentum to crack the shutters, and fell halfway through them. She scrabbled weakly through broken slats like a rat squirming into its nest to escape a cat, then fell into a dark, book-lined room and lay there, panting and prodding her ribs to see if they were broken.

The vampire’s footsteps creaked on the roof above her, then came a heavy impact outside the window. He had jumped to the bracket! Ulrika forced herself up, groaning, as he widened the hole in the shutters with his claws. The strength and sensation were returning to her limbs, but not fast enough. He would kill her if he caught her.

There was a table with fetters and leather straps in the centre of the room, and a door in the far wall. She vaulted to the door and kicked through into a narrow corridor, lined on either side with gold-inscribed doors – Dr Hironius Gatt: Physician. Professor Aelbert Olsonsson: Dentist and Bloodletter. It was a building full of leeches. Appropriate.

The vampire’s footsteps thudded in the surgery behind her as she ran. The dark hall ended at a central stair. She hurried up it, heading for the roof. She needed to elude her pursuer and return to following the wagons.

No. No she didn’t.

She slowed as a thought came to her. Why follow the wagons when she had a Sylvanian to question? Well, he might kill her, of course, but not if she struck first. She ran on and shouldered through the door at the top of the stairs. The rooftop was a grid of filthy pigeon coops. She raced through them, heading for the far edge, as the vampire’s muffled footsteps pounded up the stairs behind her.

At the end of the roof, she put a foot on the coping, but instead of leaping to the next building, she sprang left behind the last of the coops and backed into the shadows, trying not to sneeze or cough as the stink of pigeon droppings filled her nose.

The stairwell door slammed open and she heard the vampire stride out onto the roof, then slow to a cautious creep.

‘Have you gone, daughter of Lahmia?’ he asked. ‘Or do you hide from me?’

Ulrika edged silently behind the pigeon coop, peering through the wicker lattice as the birds ruffled and muttered in their sleep. He was following her footsteps in the dust, but though he studied the roof, his eyes never stopped flicking to the sides and his sword remained at the ready. At the edge, however, he stopped and searched the nearby roofs without glancing behind. Ulrika smiled, then stepped around the coop and charged his back, her arm bent in preparation for a thrust.

He dodged right with incredible speed, and she had to backpedal desperately to avoid sailing over the edge. His sword was in her face before she recovered, the blade slicing her cheek. A second cut came immediately after the first and she beat it aside with her dagger an inch from her breast, then crashed back into the last coop, waking the birds into squeaking fright.

‘A cat among the pigeons,’ purred the vampire as he advanced, his face still impossibly shadowed. ‘And with an alley cat’s claws.’

He slashed again, but she had recovered, and turned it with ease, then jabbed for his side with her dagger. He jerked back only just in time, then dropped into a more formal guard.

Ulrika smiled. She had surprised him. ‘I learned the blade on the oblast, Sylvanian, not in the alley.’

‘I know very well who you are, Ulrika Magdova Straghov,’ he said, circling. ‘You are she who killed poor crippled Murnau and foiled his vengeance on your sisters. I thought you had left the nest.’

Ulrika stared. ‘You know–?’ Then she understood. ‘You were behind it! You were the one who made Murnau attack us! The “voice” that whispered in his ear!’

She lunged at him, rapier thrusting for his heart. This was the leader of the plot! The true murderer of all the Lahmians in Nuln! If she could bring him to Gabriella, all would be forgiven. ‘Who are you? Where are you hiding your troops?’

The vampire knocked her thrust aside with a stinging block and parried her dagger with his hilt. ‘Isn’t asking questions pointless without your blade to my throat?’

‘It will be,’ Ulrika growled, and drove at him again, rapier and dagger darting like angry hawks.

He fell back before her blurring blades and she herded him between two of the coops. Now she had him! His long sword was a cutting weapon, and there was no room to slash in the narrow space. Every time he tried, wicker and feathers flew as it chopped into the cages. Her rapier, on the other hand, was made for point play, and she thrust it past his guard again and again, forcing him back and back.

Enraged, he swung all the harder, and caught his sword in the frame of a coop, sending a cloud of frightened pigeons flapping all around them. An opening! Ulrika skip-lunged through the wings and found flesh. Though the shadows that surrounded him hid the strike, she felt the resistance and heard him gasp, and when she drew her blade back, it was red.

The vampire broke for the roof’s edge. Ulrika batted aside pigeons and sprinted after him. At the north edge, he leapt, clearing an alley, and landed on the shingles of a peaked roof on the far side. She leapt too, then scrambled up the incline, slashing at his ankles as he clambered ahead of her.

He turned at the peak and chopped down. She veered aside and the blade bit into the shingles as she gained the peak too. They faced each other on the narrow ridge and went on guard. He pressed his hand to his side where she had pinked him.

‘You are wasted with the Lahmians, girl,’ he said. ‘A warrior should stand with other warriors and a Sylvanian should stand with other Sylvanians. Your sire was one of us. So should you be.’

‘My sire was an honourless coward,’ spat Ulrika. ‘And a warrior would not send a mad monster against his enemies instead of facing them himself.’

‘War is rarely fought by honourable means,’ said the vampire. ‘But it took strength and courage to defeat Murnau, and I admire you for it. More so than your “mistress” ever has.’

Ulrika snarled and sprang at him. ‘Leave my mistress out of this!’

He met her attack and their swords rang and glinted in the light of Morrslieb, which hung over the city like a diseased fruit. Free of the confining space between the coops, the vampire’s strength and speed were almost unassailable. No matter how quick and subtle Ulrika’s attacks, his long sword was there to block them, and struck out from the shadows that surrounded him like lightning from a black cloud. But she too was quick, and though his strikes hit so hard they numbed her hands, she turned them and maintained her guard.

Back and forth along the roof line they fought, neither able to gain advantage, and Ulrika found she was enjoying herself. Not since Raiza had she faced so skilled an opponent, but as thrilling as it was, it was also in deadly earnest, and she had to find a way to finish him before his strength wore her down.

Thinking of Raiza reminded her of the ruse the swordswoman had used against her when they had fought at Boyarina Evgena’s mansion. Would it work here? When the vampire beat aside her blade again, she let her point stray the tiniest bit out of line, as if she were growing tired and sloppy. When he struck a second time the blade strayed further, and a third time even further, before she recovered clumsily at his next lunge.

With his shadowed face and pupil-less red eyes there was no way to read his expression, but Ulrika thought she saw a shift in his shoulders that spoke of eagerness as he came in again. She obliged him by repeating the sequence, throwing her blade out of line more and more with each stinging parry, and at last he took the bait. As her point drifted to the right, he lunged at full extension, stabbing for her seemingly unprotected flank. Her blade snapped back into line in an instant, tipping the thrust aside just enough so that it passed her by, and she punched forwards, aiming straight for his neck.

He twitched to the right at the last second, and her point pierced his trapezius instead. It still hurt him. He fell back, cursing and trailing shadows, and rolled down the roof towards the low wall that separated it from the next building.

Ulrika leapt down at him, raising her sword, but he got his feet under him and humped over the wall, then scrambled, crouching and clutching his shoulder, over the next roof. Despite his wounds it was all Ulrika could do to keep up with him as he bounded on, heading east towards the University. Ulrika’s hunting instinct consumed her entirely as she raced after him. All other thought was gone. He was her prey, wounded and panicked, and she would bring him down. She would tear his throat out and bring his corpse back to her mistress as a trophy.

Finally, as they ran across the tops of the shabby student tenements to the north of the College of Engineering, they came to the Emmanuelleplatz, the north-south street that led to the Altestadt gate, and the vampire ran out of roof. He skidded to a stop as he topped the peak of the last building and saw the broad street stretching out below him – impossible to leap.

Ulrika hit him high in the back and brought him down in a jumble, clawing and biting and forgetting to use her blades. He fought back in kind as they slid towards the edge, then got a booted foot up and kicked her back. She crashed down, still sliding, then clawed to stop on the slates with a blackboard screech. Her sword was rolling towards the edge. She stood and snatched it up and advanced on him, her rational brain slowly wresting control from her instinct.

He was slower to rise, and though she could still see nothing of him but shifting shadows and red eyes, he left bloody handprints on the slates as he pushed himself up.

She put her sword point under his blurred chin and pressed him back towards the edge. ‘My blade is now at your throat,’ she said. ‘Who are you? Where are you hiding your troops?’

The vampire coughed, then laughed, deep and cold and not at all panicked. ‘You are as easily led as a cat with a bit of string, fraulein.’

‘And you are as easily caught as a mouse in a barrel,’ snapped Ulrika. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘By the time you get back to them, the hay wagons will be through the West Gate and you will not be able to follow, for the gate will be closed for the night. Nor will you get anything from me, for I do not fear your blade.’

‘No?’ asked Ulrika, and pushed the point another inch forwards.

But to her dismay, she felt no resistance this time, and the smudged outlines of the shadow-cloaked vampire began to blur into an amorphous cloud of smoke.

‘Perhaps some day I will teach you a true vampire’s tricks, daughter of Lahmia,’ said his voice, still as present as before, though his dissipating body was drifting away on the wind.

She stepped to the edge of the roof, slashing wildly. ‘Come back, coward! Face me blade to blade!’

A knot of darkness grew in the centre of the cloud, and before Ulrika realised the threat, it shot out and struck her in the chest. Her limbs went weak and she fell back onto the slates, unable to move as the smoke drifted above her.

‘It would be wisest to kill you,’ said the cloud, ‘but I meant what I said. You are wasted with the Lahmians, and I could use someone who knows them well.’

‘G-g-go… walk in the sun,’ said Ulrika, forcing the words through her frozen lips.

The cloud chuckled. ‘If ever you change your mind, return to this roof. I will find you.’

Ulrika found she could move the fingers of her right hand, and she gripped them around the hilt of her rapier, but before she could find the strength to lift it, the cloud had drifted away.

‘S-s-stop…’

‘Farewell, Ulrika Magdova Straghov,’ came the distant reply. ‘Until we meet again.’

Morrslieb had dropped a full handspan towards the horizon before she could rise and walk, and as the vampire had predicted, by the time she reached the West Gate the wagons were long gone and the gate shut tight for the night.

Ulrika started for home, sore and sick and chagrined, and wishing vengeance upon the faceless vampire with every fibre of her being.

Ulrika stepped through the broken window into the top floor of the plague house and froze. Someone had been here. There were fresh footprints in the dust, and they were not hers. She drew her rapier and dagger and crept for the corridor, straining all her senses. She felt no heart-fire and heard no shifting, but that was no guarantee the intruder had come and gone. It might be the Lahmians. It might be the shadow-faced Sylvanian. It might be anything.

The belled thread Ulrika had stretched across the entrance to the stairs had been snapped, and the bell lay in the dust. It seemed her visitor was not particularly well versed in spycraft. Or perhaps they didn’t care for subtlety.

Ulrika started down the stairs, blades at the ready. As she neared the floor she had claimed for her own, she heard a faint rustle of fabric coming from her room. She froze. They were waiting to ambush her. She smiled, showing her fangs. Well, she wouldn’t disappoint them.

She padded towards the room’s closed door, silent as snow, then kicked it in and leapt inside, slashing to the left and right.

A figure at her table leapt up, gasping, and put a frightened hand to her breast. It was Famke, dressed in sober skirts and hooded cloak. She had been in the middle of scrawling a note.

‘Sister!’ breathed Ulrika, sagging with relief. ‘What are you doing here?’

Famke recovered from her shock and stepped towards her, her green eyes pleading. ‘Ulrika! You must flee! Hermione knows where you are. She is sending our sisters to kill you!’

chapter eight

THE MAZE

Ulrika burned with embarrassment. For all her supposed worldly knowledge and skill as a warrior, the Lahmians had tracked her down in only a few days, and were now closing in. Then another emotion broke through her shame as she realised what Famke’s presence meant.

‘You shouldn’t have come. You’ve put yourself in danger.’

‘Do you think I could stand by and let you die?’

‘But how did you know where to find me?’

‘I told you. Hermione knows. I overheard her spy telling her where you were.’

Icy prickles shivered Ulrika’s skin. ‘If Hermione finds out you’ve–’

Famke thrust out her lower lip. ‘I don’t care what she knows! She’s mad. She grows madder every day. If I had the courage–’

A creak of floorboards brought Ulrika’s head up and she gripped Famke’s arm. They froze and listened. Something was moving above them, but so quietly that had Ulrika’s hearing not been unnaturally keen she would not have heard it. Another creak and shift of weight, then a footstep, soft as a feather. Someone had climbed through the broken window – someone who knew their business.

Ulrika led Famke into the corridor, trying to be as silent as the intruder, but for all her willowy delicacy, Famke was as ungainly as a colt, and made squeaks and thuds with every step. At the stair, Ulrika turned her down towards the ground floor. She did not want to fight the assassins, not with Famke in tow, and, really, not at all. If she was to some day return to the sisterhood, she could not afford to get Lahmian blood on her hands now.

A sharp snap from below froze them in their tracks. Someone had just broken the lock on the front door. Then a screech of wood came from the rear of the tenement. Someone else was prying the boards from the back door.

Ulrika cursed under her breath. ‘Back the way we came. Hurry.’

Famke started up the stairs again, making too much noise, and Ulrika followed, straining her ears above and below. The soft steps coming down had quickened, and from the ground floor she heard the faint ring of swords drawing from scabbards.

Abandoning stealth for speed, Ulrika pushed Famke roughly into her room. There were two windows on the exterior wall, both shrouded and boarded up. She vaulted her bed and kicked the planks of the nearer window as hard as she could. A few snapped and fell away, taking the black drapes with them, as cries erupted outside. She kicked again.

Female shouts came from above and below, and the silent footfalls turned to pounding bootsteps. Ulrika tore away a last board and looked down into the alley. A handful of well-armed blood-swains craned their necks at her. Some had pistols.

‘There!’ shouted one.

Ulrika jerked back as an iron ball splintered the frame. Jumping down was not an option, but across? There was a window in the tenement opposite, shutters open to the sultry summer night.

‘Turn, stray,’ said a voice behind her. ‘I’ve heard you can fight.’

Ulrika turned. Mistress Casilla, the Estalian Lahmian who had confronted the fat vampiress at the sisterhood’s council, stood in the door, rapier drawn and a cruel smile making a mockery of her noble features. She was dressed this time in breeches and boots, with a heavy leather jacket over her doublet. Two similarly dressed women pushed through from the hall behind her.

Ulrika went on guard. ‘Famke. Jump across.’

‘But–’

‘I will follow. Go.’

Casilla seemed to notice Famke for the first time. ‘It’s the shrew’s get. She warned the prey.’ She motioned her companions forwards. ‘Kill her too. We cannot countenance traitors.’

‘I am not a traitor!’ cried Famke. ‘But I’ll not stand by and–’

‘Famke!’ Ulrika barked. ‘Go!’

With a snarl, Famke went, rucking her skirts and leaping out the window as the three Lahmians charged, rapiers extended.

Ulrika hooked a toe under her bed and upended it at them. Casilla tripped as she tried to leap it, and the woman on the left got her feet tangled in the mattress as it flopped to the floor. The third Lahmian, however, dodged all and came on. Her form was faultless, but very salon de fence. Ulrika trapped her blade in a high bind and kicked her knee sideways.

She went down with a cry and Ulrika jumped back, then spun and sprang through the window. Another pistol cracked as she flew across the narrow alley, but too late. She landed in a tiny room filled with screaming children.

Famke was just getting to her feet in the centre of the nursery, staring around in horror. The place was a nest, ankle-deep in dirty blankets, gnawed bones and human excrement, and a dozen gaunt children were waking up and shouting in fear.

‘Ma, come quick! Someone’s come through th’window!’

‘Out!’ said Ulrika, and pulled Famke towards the door.

She kicked into a second room and knocked down a stringy woman in a filthy nightshirt who was coming to see what was the matter.

‘My babies!’ she shrieked as Ulrika trampled her, searching for the exit.

Heavy thuds and fresh shouting told Ulrika that the Lahmians had followed. She found the flat’s door, a sturdy board with a lock and a wedge stuck under it, and tore it open by force, then ran through with Famke and slammed it behind her.

They were in the tenement’s narrow stairwell, a square, laundry-webbed hole that reeked of piss and rotting food. Ulrika could hear the heavy clatter of the blood-swains thudding up from below. No going down, then. She took Famke’s hand and pounded up the rickety stairs towards the roof, Famke holding up the hem of her long dress so she wouldn’t trip. Below them, the door to the filthy flat slammed open again and the three Lahmians burst out, then followed, silent and swift.

Ulrika stumbled as a tread cracked under her left foot. The stairs seemed made of matchwood and spit. It would be a miracle if they didn’t crash through and fall to their deaths. The thought brought her up short. No. It would be a miracle if the Lahmians did!

As they ran on, Ulrika looked closer at the steps. They were nailed at top and bottom to the landings and support posts, but the wood had warped with age and was pulling away from the nails. She could see the whole construction sag with every step they took. She looked down. The Lahmians were only one landing below. Not much time.

At the top of the flight, Ulrika stopped and began kicking as hard as she could at the join where the steps met the landing. The wood splintered and cracked under her unnatural strength, and started to separate. Famke saw what she was doing and joined her, kicking at the wall-side join with her slippered feet.

Casilla uttered an Estalian oath and she and her sisters redoubled their speed. Ulrika kicked harder, but the join was stronger than it looked. It still held as the Lahmians reached the bottom of the flight. The moment they started up, however, it listed sharply to one side, and they froze, clinging to the handrail. Ulrika laughed, exultant, but the flight caught on something and stuck. Casilla let out a held breath and the Lahmians continued, cautiously now, swords out.

Ulrika gave up kicking and readied her weapons. At least she had the high ground. ‘Famke, get back.’

Famke withdrew as Mistress Casilla advanced up the last few steps, her blade extended towards Ulrika’s breast.

‘Come, child, let us test your–’

She broke off as the stairs slipped another shrieking inch, and she threw her arms wide for balance. Ulrika was not slow to take advantage. She kicked Casilla in the chest and sent her flying back into her companions. They caught their mistress and stopped her from falling, but the weight of the impact did what Ulrika and Famke’s kicking had failed to, and separated the flight from its supports. With a splintering of wood, the steps peeled from the wall and plummeted away, taking the three Lahmians with them. The whole mess smashed through the flight directly below, then continued on down the well in a cloud of dust and flying splinters.

Ulrika and Famke laughed, then ran on. At the top, the stairs ended in a landing with a ladder that went up to a hatch. Ulrika went up first, and forced open the hatch, then helped Famke onto the roof.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘They’ll never follow us now.’

But as they ran down the slope of the roof and leapt to the next, they heard a shrieking above them, so high and thin that Ulrika doubted she would have heard it had she still been mortal.

‘Up here! Up here! They’re heading east!’

A winged shape was circling above them, silhouetted against Mannslieb’s white light. It had a bat’s leathery pinions, but the body of woman. Ulrika recognised her as another attendee of the Lahmian council – the bat-like woman who had perched on the broken pillar and observed in silence. Well she was silent no more. She was crying Ulrika and Famke’s location to her companions at the top of her lungs.

And her companions had heard. Ulrika looked down as she and Famke leapt another alley, and saw the Lahmians’ swains spilling out of the tenement, covered in dust and scratches, and pelting down the street in the direction the bat-woman had indicated.

‘We have to go to ground,’ said Ulrika. ‘We have to hide from the sky.’

‘I know just the place,’ said Famke, turning south. ‘This way.’

Ulrika followed, a bit uncertain. ‘What place is this? How do you know it?’

Famke flashed a grin over her shoulder. ‘Don’t you remember? I was born here. These streets were my home until Hermione took me in. Come on.’

Ulrika ran after her, hopping from roof to roof, as the bat-woman cried out above and the human hounds chased through the streets below. Very quickly, the rooftops grew steeper and in worse repair, and the streets and alleys narrower and even more convoluted. Soon, Ulrika could not even see the ground between the mouldering eaves of the buildings.

‘This is the Maze,’ said Famke. ‘My home. They say a man can live his whole life on the streets of the Maze, and never once see the sun. Come. Down here.’

She stepped to the edge of a roof that looked down into a deep well of darkness formed by the backs of four dilapidated buildings, and leapt down to an awning-covered porch that had apparently been fixed to the building with tarred rope and prayer.

Ulrika jumped down after her, afraid she would crash right through, but the balcony held, and Famke ripped open the shuttered window that served it as a door and went in.

‘They’re going down!’ shrieked the bat-woman from the sky. ‘South-west! South-west!’

Famke led Ulrika through a filthy flat, crowded with ranks of sleeping men and women, and thick with black lotus smoke, then down through the tenement, which made the one they had first entered look like Countess Emmanuelle’s palace. The stairs were patched and sagging, and missing treads on every flight, and the walls were black with rot and mildew. Men, women and children slept on the landings, and crude drawings on the doors to the flats advertised the services provided by those who lived within – bloody knives, severed limbs, smoking pipes, exaggerated female torsos. Furtive figures shrank back into open doors as Famke and Ulrika hurried by. The place was as hot as an oven and stank of dung, decay and pipe weed, with a sweet overlay of rotgut gin.

‘You were born here?’ she asked incredulously. It seemed impossible that anyone so beautiful had come from such ugliness.

Famke nodded. ‘And I’d be here still if my father hadn’t whored me to one of Lady Hermione’s blood-swains. He told her of me and she stole me away.’

They reached the ground floor and Ulrika peeked outside, looking for the Lahmians. The street – more like a muddy ditch between buildings – was narrower than the hallway she stood in, and just as dark. It crooked off in both directions so she couldn’t see more than twenty paces either way, and was dotted with hunched figures scurrying by like rats along a baseboard. In the distance she could hear the sounds of bitter argument and rough merry-making, and further off, the thud and clash of a fight, but of the Lahmians she heard and saw nothing.

‘This way,’ said Famke, and led Ulrika to the right.

Ulrika looked up as she followed, afraid she would see the bat-woman circling above, but Famke had not lied. It was almost impossible to see the night sky. The gap between the buildings narrowed as they rose, each overhanging storey leaning closer to its neighbour than the one below. In addition, balconies, awnings, laundry lines and plank bridges stretched from wall to wall, making a haphazard layered ceiling that showed only scraps and slashes of sky.

‘This is perfect,’ she said. ‘I wager I could walk in daylight here.’

Famke grimaced. ‘Not I. I burn even in the last purple of twilight. The curse is harder on me than most, so Lady Hermione says.’ She shrugged. ‘No matter. I know a hundred places here to wait out the day.’

After a few more twists and turns, Famke led Ulrika down crumbling stone steps into a street slightly wider than the others. It might once have been a major thoroughfare, but over the years, the upper floors of the towering slums on either side had been built out and added onto and braced against each other to such an extent that now it seemed a subterranean cavern, with only a zigzag crevasse between the overhanging upper stories to let in a shaft of moonlight.

Ulrika worried briefly that even that might be enough to reveal them to the bat-winged watcher, but at street level, the cover was complete, for a ragged junk market filled the space from wall to wall, and each stall extended filthy awnings that overlapped each other like the patches of a quilt.

A sob escaped Famke as she stepped under them and looked around at the chaos of sweltering, torchlit commerce that surrounded them.

‘Is something wrong?’ asked Ulrika.

‘I’m home,’ she said, swallowing with difficulty. ‘I’m home.’

Ulrika could see little to be homesick for. The shopkeeps and their stalls and the customers and their clothes all looked like they had been dunked in the sewers and then dried in the sun. Every face was gaunt and sick, and she saw more missing teeth, missing eyes and cropped ears than in a battlefield surgery. The merchandise on sale was filthy and broken – cracked plates, chipped cups, broken furniture, patched clothes, and meat and vegetables that looked like they had been scraped from the cobbles of better markets after a long hot day. She had been in a dozen cities in the Empire and Kislev, and had never seen a slum as sorry as this. But home was home, she supposed. Famke certainly seemed to think so.

‘This is where I came to escape my father,’ she said, starting through the labyrinth of stalls. ‘There was a little boy, Ham, and a girl named Retta, and some others. We would run around, nicking things and playing cat and rat with the costers. It was great fun.’ She pointed to a public well that looked like it hadn’t worked in a century. ‘That well was the border. Anything on the other side of it belonged to the Ashes Mews gang. We would fight them all the time.’ She smirked. ‘Well, Ham and the others would fight them. I just threw rocks.’

A stall caught her eye. ‘Oh! Frau Neff is still here. She always had the best pastries. Day-olds from a fine shop up on the Handelstrasse. We robbed her blind, poor old dear.’

Famke started forwards like she was going to talk to the old woman, a withered hag with a few mouldy, fly-covered tarts on a board in front of her.

Ulrika caught her arm. ‘Are you certain it’s wise to get reacquainted?’

Famke paused. Her face fell. ‘I… No. No, of course not.’

Ulrika nodded towards a man who was selling wooden stakes and cloves of garlic and tin badges in the shape of the hammer of Sigmar. ‘The panic has spread here as well. We’d best keep to ourselves as much as–’

She froze as she saw movement on the far end of the street – just a flash of dark hair and the gleam of a rapier’s pommel seen through the forest of tents and awnings, but enough.

‘The Lahmians,’ she whispered. ‘They’re here. Pick one of your hidey holes and let’s away.’

Famke nodded and backed behind a tent, out of sight of Casilla and her swordswomen, then beckoned Ulrika towards an arch between two buildings on the east side. It led to a branching maze of alleys, courts and mews so tangled that Ulrika gave up trying to remember their path after the third turning.

Finally, they stopped at a tenement that looked like all the others, but for the fact that the front door had been bricked up, and it seemed even closer to utter collapse than its neighbours. Famke looked both ways down the narrow street, then stepped quickly to an even tinier alley that ran along its left side. A dark arch pierced the side of the building, revealing stairs that twisted down to a cellar door.

‘What is this place?’ asked Ulrika as they started down.

‘Mother Ruin’s black hotel,’ said Famke. ‘A bolt hole for those who need to lie low. If you pay, she asks no questions – and gives no answers. I – I hid from my father here once, until I couldn’t pay.’

Famke rapped on the door once, then twice, then three times. A brick in the wall next to the door vanished inwards and eyes peered through the hole.

‘Whaddaya want?’ said a rough voice.

‘A room.’

The eyes looked Famke up and down, taking in her fine clothes and cloak. ‘Are y’sure y’don’t want the palace, fraulein?’

Famke sighed and threw back her hood. ‘The clobber’s a con, y’clot. I’m from Rag Court. Now let me in.’

The eyes blinked as Famke’s refined diction dropped like a veil and the harsh accents of her youth reasserted themselves. The brick was replaced, and a second later, bolts were drawn back and the door swung in. A scarred old bruiser gave Famke and Ulrika a grin and a salute as he waved them in.

‘Sorry, chit. Y’look like the real thing. Mother’s in the cage. Speak to her fer lodgings.’

‘Ta.’

Famke led the way down a brick-walled corridor which opened into a large, low-ceilinged room that looked something like the taproom of a tavern, but without any of the cheer. It had tables and benches, and the smell of stale beer and staler food mixed with the smoke from the lamps hanging from its blackened oak beams, but the few men and women who sat at the benches talked in low whispers if they talked at all.

Eyes at every table followed Famke and Ulrika as they started towards a window set in the far wall. Ulrika didn’t like it. What eyes saw, tongues might tell. She wanted to turn around and leave, but this was Famke’s world. She supposed she must know what she was doing.

The window looked like a teller’s cage in a dwarf-built bank, with sturdy stone around it and heavy bars protecting it, and a slot at the bottom for passing items through. A bent old hag in a dirty night-robe sat behind it, smoking a pipe. The stink of tobacco and gin came through the bars like a fog.

‘Who’s this, then?’ she asked, squinting with rheumy eyes. ‘Why it’s little Famke. Sink me if y’ain’t lovelier than ever, dearie.’

‘Hello, Mother,’ said Famke. ‘I’m glad to find you well.’

‘Heh. As well as can be at my age, but I haven’t seen you since before yer pa died.’ She grinned, showing toothless gums. ‘Didn’t have anything to do with that, by any chance?’

Famke laughed nervously, but the crone carried on without waiting for her to answer.

‘Not that I’d blame ye if y’did. A right bastard, he was, and good riddance. But now, ye’ll be wantin’ a room, eh? Fer you and yer dashing drake?’

Ulrika smiled at the flattery and gave a bow.

‘Aye, Mother,’ said Famke. ‘A night or two.’ She pulled a thin gold bracelet from her wrist and slipped it through the slot.

‘Well now,’ said Mother, picking it up and holding it an inch from her eyes. ‘This might do. Anyone likely t’be comin’ after ye?’

Famke exchanged a look with Ulrika. ‘No, not likely.’

Mother Ruin smiled slyly. ‘Not likely, but possible. Well, the rent’s double for trouble.’ She snapped her tobacco-stained fingers. ‘One more bauble, but you’ll have it back if there’s no fuss.’

Ulrika scowled. A bracelet like that would have paid for a week’s lodging at a Handelbezirk inn. Two such for two nights was outrageous. Famke, however, made no complaint, and passed a delicate wrist chain through the slot.

Mother nodded, satisfied, then pulled a skeleton key off a board at her side and slid it through. ‘Third floor, second door on the left. Food and drink and privies down here. If ye need a surgeon, no questions asked, I know the best. It’ll cost ye, but he’ll do the job. If y’want to stay longer, y’pay in advance. Mother takes gold and silver, not promises. Savvy?’

‘Aye, Mother,’ said Famke, taking the key. ‘Thank you.’

She and Ulrika turned and started for a stairwell that opened on the left side of the room. Again eyes lifted to them as they passed, but mostly to Famke. The men stared with undisguised lust, mouths agape. The bolder ones leered and winked and murmured sly come-ons. Ulrika knew Famke was beautiful, of course, but in Lahmian society she was just one of many. Here however, she was like a queen walking through a leper colony, and like such a queen, she began to draw her skirts close about her and shudder with revulsion.

‘Steady,’ said Ulrika, putting a hand on her elbow.

Famke straightened and went on, but whispers followed in their wake and she began to shake again.

‘That’s Leibrandt’s daughter,’ said one. ‘Didn’t recognise ’er with ’er clothes on.’

‘And without ’er ankles by ’er ears,’ chuckled another.

‘Made good money for ’er pa ’fore he died,’ said a third. ‘Wouldn’t mind ’er doin’ the same fer me.’

Famke spun on the man, eyes blazing. ‘No man will sell me again, d’ye hear! My father died for it, and so will any other pimp who thinks to try!’

Everyone looked up. The room went silent. Ulrika crushed Famke’s arm and urged her on. ‘Move. Now.’

A heavyset older man with a sagging face stood. ‘Y’killed yer pa, then, chit?’

Mother Ruin banged on the bars of her cage with a cane. ‘Never you mind what she did. Yer all villains here, and yer all under Mother’s truce! Any what makes trouble for any other under my roof gets tossed to the gutter, no matter who’s looking for ye. Savvy?’

The men all settled reluctantly back into their seats at this reminder, and Ulrika hurried Famke into the stairwell. The moment they started up, she groaned and put her hand over her eyes.

‘I should have kept walking.’

‘Forget it,’ said Ulrika, leading her up the stairs. ‘What’s done is done. We’ll lock ourselves in. All will be well.’

Famke nodded, distracted. ‘I’m too hungry to think straight. Running to find you. Running from Casilla. I’m dizzy with it.’

‘And I,’ said Ulrika. ‘Best, though, to wait until you can go back to Hermione and your maid. Feeding in the city is an uncertain business.’

Famke raised her chin. ‘I’m not going back.’

Ulrika stopped and looked at her. ‘What? Famke–’

‘No. I’m done with her and her intrigues. Sending Casilla after you was the last straw.’ She fixed Ulrika with shining green eyes. ‘You remember how you asked me to run away with you? I’m ready now. I don’t want anything to do with them any more.’

Ulrika hesitated, thrilled and uneasy at the same time. She had wanted Famke to come away with her, back when she had wanted to turn her back on Lahmian society entirely, but things were different now, and perhaps even more difficult.

‘It’s harder than you think, Famke,’ she said. ‘There are no swains to feed from out here, no coaches and rich houses to shield us from the sun and the cattle. And – and I still hunt the Sylvanians. We might be attacked at any time.’

Famke waved an angry hand. ‘Forget the Sylvanians! Forget the Lahmians! Leave them to kill each other and let us run away together like we always talked about.’ She held up her wrist. A dozen more delicate gold bracelets circled it. ‘Look! I can pay our way anywhere. We’ll go to Bretonnia, or Tilea! We’ll go to Cathay!’

Ulrika stared into her eyes, momentarily caught by her dream of freedom. Aye. Why not just run? There were better places than this. Why not leave behind all the convoluted conflicts that tortured their hearts? Why was any of it their responsibility? They hadn’t asked for it. And yet–

Drunken footsteps thudded on the stairs above them, waking Ulrika from her reverie. She put her hand to her rapier, thinking they might have overheard, but the man staggered past them like a sleepwalker and continued down to the ground floor.

Ulrika took Famke’s hand. ‘Let’s talk in our room.’

They climbed to the third floor and unlocked a stifling closet, just big enough for two grimy cots and a chamber pot. Before Ulrika could close the door behind them and turn the key in the lock, Famke started up again, as excited as a child.

‘Listen, beloved,’ she said. ‘I have it all planned. We’ll wait out the day here to be sure that Casilla has left, then go to the docks tomorrow night and buy passage on–’

Ulrika held up her hands to stem the tide. ‘I can’t, Famke. I’m sorry. I can’t leave them.’

‘But – but why not? You must hate them worse than I.’

‘I…’ Ulrika sighed. ‘I hate them for their stubbornness, yes – for not letting me fight, but Gabriella is my mistress. I vowed to protect her – to bring her the Sylvanian leader’s head. I will not break that vow. I have broken too many of late. I have to prove myself to her. I will prove that I can be loyal without being chained.’

Famke lowered her head.

Ulrika squeezed her arm. ‘I will see the world with you some day, Famke. But for now you should go home.’

Famke knotted her hands together. ‘You make me ashamed, sister. I have also made vows. My mistress may be mad, but she is my mistress. I’d not let the Sylvanians kill her. If only she’d–’ She broke off angrily, then looked up at Ulrika. ‘Let me stay with you. Hunt beside you. I have something to prove too.’

‘Are you certain? It will be hard.’ Ulrika nodded towards the basement. ‘You saw what awaits you in the world of men.’

Famke nodded. ‘That won’t change my mind.’

Still Ulrika hesitated. That was only a small taste of what living outside the shelter of the sisterhood would thrust in Famke’s face. She had no idea. She would be much safer at home, but at the same time, how could Ulrika force her to go back to a life she herself hated?

‘Very well,’ she said at last. ‘Then tomorrow we will find a new place and begin our war.’ She lay down on her cot. ‘Now get some rest.’

Famke lay back too, but pressed a hand to her breast. ‘I hope I can. The thirst is strong.’

Ulrika smiled weakly. It was strong in her too. ‘Consider it your first lesson in living away from home.’

A low moan stirred Ulrika from a dream of chasing a loping shadow over endless rooftops. She couldn’t tell at first if the moan had been in her dream, or if it was one of pleasure or of pain, then it came again. It was in the room. Was Famke having a nightmare? It sounded too low to be her, too masculine.

Ulrika’s eyes opened, the fog of unconsciousness rapidly dissipating in a wave of panic. A man in the room? Was someone attacking Famke? She turned her head and reached for her rapier, then froze.

There was indeed a man in the room – one of those who had winked at them as they had passed through Mother Ruin’s common room. He was sprawled on Famke’s cot, a look of feeble bliss on his pale, sweating face, as Famke hunched over him, sucking greedily at his neck.

chapter nine

INNOCENT BLOOD

‘Famke!’ cried Ulrika, bolting up. ‘What are you doing?’

Famke raised her head, her eyes dreamy. Blood ran down her chin to her neck. She smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Ulrika. I wasn’t going to keep him all to myself. I would have woken–’

‘I don’t care about that!’ snarled Ulrika. ‘What are you doing feeding at all? Do you want to get us killed?’

‘Oh, that’s all right.’ Famke waved a tipsy hand behind her. ‘There’s a window. We can throw him out. No one will know it was us.’

Ulrika clenched her fists to keep from punching the idiot girl in the mouth. ‘No? And how did he get here? Did you go down to the common room and lure him up? Did you go to his room? Did anyone see you?’

Famke laughed. ‘Of course not. I’m not a fool. He came here. Knocked on the door with coins in his hand.’ She smiled, showing bloody fangs. ‘How could I refuse him?’

‘Famke…’ So many different admonitions were whirling in Ulrika’s head that she didn’t know which to speak. ‘Famke, you… you must take more care. How do you know he hasn’t told anyone he was going to see you? How do you know someone won’t come looking for him? When he winds up dead below our window, don’t you think people might begin to wonder?’

‘But, I…’ Famke trailed off, her brow lowering. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. I was so thirsty, I didn’t–’

Ulrika closed her eyes. ‘This is what I meant when I said it would be difficult living away from your sisters. You are used to feeding when you wish, upon whomever you wish. Out here, you must think first. Can you drink without discovery? Is there a quick escape? Will the victim be missed? Do you need to disguise your bite marks?’

The blooded man raised a hand to Famke and cupped her breast through her robe. ‘’S a dream,’ he mumbled. ‘A beautiful dream.’

Famke slapped his hand with a cry of disgust, then shrank away from him. ‘Oh, Ulrika. I am a fool. I didn’t think. What are we going to do?’

‘That is a very good question.’ Ulrika thought for a moment, then sighed and stood. ‘We are going to do just what you said. We are going to throw him out the window, then pretend nothing happened. We will stay here until tomorrow night, pay our respects to Mother Ruin on the way out, and go find permanent lodgings. If anyone asks about–’

She broke off as she saw that the man had spilled blood on Famke’s bed – a lot of blood. Famke followed her eyes, then hissed with fright.

‘Oh no!’

‘Forget it,’ said Ulrika. ‘We’ll turn the mattress. I’ll wager it’ll be years before anyone turns it again. But first, have you had your fill?’

Famke looked at the man, who was mewling and cradling his slapped wrist, then nodded, looking nauseous. ‘More than enough. Gods.’

‘Then let me finish him.’

Famke rose and Ulrika sat next to him. She felt nauseous herself as she took him in her arms. This was not how she liked to feed. She hunted only predators, and she had no idea if this man was one. On the other hand, now that Famke had made his death inevitable, it would be wasteful not to feed on him. If trouble were to come from this, she would need all the strength she could muster.

She lowered her mouth to his unwashed neck and bit where Famke had bit. The sour taste of his skin quickly vanished as the sweet salt of blood filled her mouth. She drank it greedily, closing her eyes as the warm comfort of it spread through her limbs and filled her cold, empty centre. No matter how many times she fed, and no matter how much control she had learned, the sensation was always overwhelming. She always had to hold herself away from the brink, lest she plunge into red oblivion and never return.

‘Haino, come on!’ came a voice from the hall. ‘Finish wettin’ yer wick and let’s be off! We’ve work to do!’

Ulrika jerked her teeth from the man’s neck and looked to the door, fighting to clear her head. Booted feet were coming closer. Ulrika sensed three heart-fires.

She looked to Famke as she reached for her sword. ‘What is his name?’

Famke’s eyes widened. ‘I – I didn’t ask.’

Ulrika looked down at the man. His eyes were half-closed and his mouth slack.

She shook him. ‘What is your name?’

‘Dr-dr-dream…’

‘Haino! Where are you?’

‘Quiet out there!’ came a muffled voice from another room. ‘People are trying t’sleep!’

‘Mind yer own business! Haino! Tuck it away and let’s go!’

The voice was right outside the door. Ulrika muttered a curse, then snapped the man’s neck and padded silently to the window, buckling on her swordbelt as she went. She tore away the curtains and was relieved that it was still night outside. Relief turned to panic, however, when she saw the window was barred. Perhaps it was to keep intruders out, perhaps it was to keep patrons from slipping away without Mother Ruin’s knowledge, perhaps it was to keep them from throwing bodies into the street. Regardless, the window was gridded with heavy iron. She grabbed the bars and pulled. They creaked in their frame, but didn’t move. She could get them out with a little time, but she didn’t have a little time.

‘Famke!’ she whispered. ‘Help me!’

Famke obediently joined her and grabbed the bars. A knock came at the door as they strained together.

‘Haino, wake up! Y’don’t come, y’don’t get a share.’

The window frame split with a splintering screech and the bars pulled out an arm’s length at the top.

‘Sigmar, what was that?’ came the voice from hall. ‘Is he doin’ a bunk?’

‘Kick it down!’ cried another. ‘He’s off t’sell us out!’

As shoulders and boots slammed into the door, Ulrika and Famke heaved again, and the bars pulled out another two feet, but remained stuck in the frame at the bottom.

‘Once more!’ said Ulrika.

As they pulled, the door crashed open, splinters flying, and three men in thieves’ black flooded in, blades drawn. Ulrika spun from the bars and drew her rapier. Famke crouched, snarling.

The men stopped dead, their eyes moving from Haino on the bed with blood trailing down his neck, to Ulrika and Famke at the window with blood on their lips.

‘Fiends!’ cried the first in, a broad man with a bushy beard. ‘They’re fiends!’

‘Kill ’em!’ barked the second. ‘Before they kill us!’

The third bolted into the corridor, screaming. ‘Vampires! Call the witch hunters! Vampires!’

Ulrika cursed as she darted forwards to meet the two thieves’ attacks. Already she could hear doors opening all over the floor, and people shouting questions. There was no repairing things now. She and Famke couldn’t kill everyone in the black hotel. They would have to flee.

She ran the thieves through the arms and legs and they fell back next to their dead companion, squawking in pain.

She turned back to the window. ‘The bars again, Famke. Hurry.’

They pulled again, but more footsteps thudded in the corridor and Ulrika looked back to see a crowd of armed toughs staring through the door in horror. She turned to fight them, but with a shriek of rage, Famke tore the bars free at last and hurled them at the crowd.

They smashed end-on into the face of the lead tough and he fell back into the rest, knocking them into the hall.

‘Well done!’ cried Ulrika. ‘Now, fly! Fly!’

Famke hopped into the splintered window and sprang for the roof just across the narrow alley. Ulrika followed right on her heels, and then, for the second time that night, they raced across the rooftops under Mannslieb’s pale, pockmarked face.

Vampire panic spread rapidly through the Maze as the tenants of Mother Ruin’s hotel poured out into the winding streets and up onto the roofs in pursuit of Ulrika and Famke. Fortunately, it seemed that Casilla and her swordswomen and the bat-winged sylph had retired, and they saw nothing of them as they hurried south.

The whole of Nuln north of the river seemed too hot for Ulrika and so she led Famke across the Great Bridge into the Faulestadt, and there took the first shelter they could find, a rat-infested attic in a partially collapsed tenement. Ulrika dragged a dirty old rug over them to hide from the shafts of sunlight coming through the holes in the roof and they lay together, Famke shivering with shock and despair.

‘I thought I would be safe in my old home,’ she sniffed. ‘I know it like I know myself. No one could find me there if I didn’t want them to. Now – now I can never go back.’

Ulrika put her arms around her. ‘You couldn’t anyway. You know that. They’re not your people any more.’

‘Too right, they’re not!’ snarled Famke. ‘Filthy gutter trash. I should have blooded the whole Maze!’

A sick unease oiled into Ulrika’s stomach at Famke’s fury. She had noticed her coldness before. Famke hated men, and could think nothing but ill of them, but she was so sweet-natured in all else that it had never occurred to Ulrika that the girl might not share her beliefs about how a vampire should conduct herself.

‘Famke,’ she said hesitantly. ‘The man you bled–’

‘I shouldn’t have done it. I know. I should have waited.’

‘Well, aye, but this is something else. Did – did he force himself upon you? Did he threaten you?’

‘Eh? No. I told you. He had coins in his hand.’

‘Right, but – but if you had refused him, do you think he would have…?’

Famke cocked an eyebrow over her shoulder. ‘What are you on about?’

Ulrika paused, embarrassed. She didn’t want to say she didn’t approve of Famke’s habits, but if they were going to live together, maybe it was best to say it now, rather than let it fester.

‘I am particular in my feeding,’ she said at last. ‘I would not have fed from him.’

Famke shuddered. ‘Neither would I. I don’t like men, even to feed from. But–’

‘I mean I only prey on predators. Killers of innocents.’

Famke paused, then giggled. ‘You’re being funny. You’re having a laugh.’

‘I made a vow.’

Famke turned in Ulrika’s arms so she could face her. ‘But – but why? I don’t understand.’

Ulrika shrugged. ‘I don’t want innocent blood on my hands,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t want to be a monster.’

‘They are not innocent,’ said Famke. ‘You saw them. They hate us. They would kill us without mercy. Why shouldn’t we do the same to them?’

Stefan had said the same thing, and had poked holes in Ulrika’s counter-arguments with offhand ease, but he had been entirely heartless. Famke had always been empathetic. Perhaps Ulrika could make her see it her way.

‘There are pragmatic reasons for it,’ she said. ‘As you have just seen, killing indiscriminately stirs the cattle, something no Lahmian wishes to do, while killing villains strengthens the Empire, and we require the Empire to be strong because the sisterhood shelters within it, but…’ She ran her fingers through her cropped hair and went on. ‘But I admit those are only rationalisations. I hunt predators because I do not wish to prey on the weak, no matter what they think of me. Their hate is born of fear, and I do not blame them for it. Nor will I enflame it. They have too much to be fearful of already.’

She found Famke staring at her. ‘You still want to be human.’

A lump came to Ulrika’s throat. ‘Don’t you?’

Famke laughed again, harsh this time. ‘I shed my old life as soon I could. Ha! If Hermione hadn’t offered me undeath, I would have taken an ordinary one. I had the poison ready, and was only waiting for the moment when I could feed it to my father before I fed it to myself when she came and took me away.’

Ulrika blinked, but before she could say anything, Famke pushed out of her embrace and looked her in the eye, her limbs trembling with sudden emotion.

‘You were never weak in life, were you? You were a noble’s daughter. You learned the sword. You could ride and fight. I was a mouse. A pretty little mouse. I know what your weak and innocent do to those weaker and more innocent than they are. Sewage flows downhill, they say. So do beatings. Everybody swats at a mouse.’ She held up her hands and sprung her claws. ‘I am a mouse no more. I am a cat. Now it is I who swats mice!’

If vampires could weep, tears would have been streaming down Famke’s face. Instead, dry sobs choked her and her lower lip quivered and twisted. Ulrika instinctively took her in her arms again.

‘I didn’t know,’ she said. ‘You told me, but I didn’t understand. I’m sorry.’

Famke clung to her, shaking, and Ulrika stroked her hair. What a fool she was to think that a girl from the Maze would see life the way she did. Mercy and compassion were the province of those noble few who had them to bestow. The poor didn’t have the luxury. She felt embarrassed, as if she had sneered at someone for not knowing what fork to use at dinner when they didn’t own a table.

‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I have no right to tell you who to feed upon. You must do as you will, but… but…’

‘But you wish I wouldn’t,’ said Famke, into her shoulder.

‘I haven’t even the right to ask,’ said Ulrika. ‘But if you would let me do the hunting, I – I promise you won’t go hungry. There is no lack of wicked men in the Empire.’

Famke laughed at that and raised her head to look into Ulrika’s eyes. ‘You are the one person in this world I’d not want to hurt, sister. If my way would hurt you, then…’ She smirked. ‘Then, happy hunting.’

Ulrika hugged her again and kissed her forehead. ‘Thank you, Famke. Thank you.’

chapter ten

WINGED HORSES

‘We must be careful,’ said Famke as she and Ulrika walked the streets of the Industrielplatz the next night, searching for a permanent place to stay. ‘The Faulestadt is still under Madam Mathilda’s rule. The burning of the Wolf’s Head set her back, but she’s opened a new place called the Foundry, and her gang is as strong as ever. Half the whores and bravos south of the river are beholden to her.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Ulrika. ‘And where do the other half live?’

‘Mostly at the docks. An old Tilean mob has run the waterfront for centuries. The harlots and thieves there pay them tithe. Mathilda doesn’t want a war stirring things up, so she leaves them be, though she has spies among them.’

‘Naturally,’ said Ulrika. ‘Still, it seems a safer bet than squatting on the she-wolf’s doorstep. Let’s go see what we find.’

And after a few hours prowling the neighbourhood around the docks, they did find something – the cavernous cellar of a fire-ravaged stonemason’s workshop, one ruin among many within a blackened neighbourhood burned down months ago in the riots that had spread after the witch hunters had set fire to the Wolf’s Head. The tenements above the workshop had collapsed in the fire, flattening it and leaving a storey-high mound of charred timbers and cracked shingles, but the cellar underneath, where the masons had kept their finished works until delivery, was sound and secure, and accessible only through a small hole in the floor. Ulrika found no recent tracks outside the place, and no signs of squatters within, so she bowed to Famke’s pleas, and declared it their new home.

Famke had loved it the moment she lay eyes on it, and Ulrika had to agree that, despite the stale smoke stink and the burnt rafters and the cracks in the vaulted ceiling, the cellar had a certain solemn majesty about it. Cobwebbed columns lined the walls, while grave monuments and half-finished winged statues rose up like a shadowy host on all sides, and a few pin-hole spears of moonlight stabbed down through the darkness to set the dancing dust motes ablaze. If one didn’t know the ruins that mouldered above it, one might think it the burial crypt of some ancient castle, or the chapel of a deserted monastery.

Ulrika made a door for the entry hole by covering it with a thick slab of stone so heavy only someone with a vampire’s unnatural strength could lift it, then helped Famke clear wreckage to the sides of the chamber.

As they worked, Famke chattered happily about stealing carpets and tables and beds and filling the place with candles and lamps and draperies, but Ulrika was more interested in returning to the hunt. As romantic as the cellar might be, it would only be their home until they had flushed out the Sylvanians and returned to their mistresses. They would be home again soon – that is, if she could find another lead.

‘So, our mistresses have still not found the Sylvanian camp?’ she asked, interrupting Famke’s dissertation about table linen.

Famke pursed her lips, then swept her hair back from her dirt-streaked forehead. She had shucked her beautiful dress and was in her blouse, with her petticoats hitched up through her stays. ‘They are certain they are in the Stirwood, north of the city, but it is a big place, and none of their spies have come back from its depths.’

Ulrika shook her head. ‘Why don’t they just whisper a rumour of these invaders in Countess Emmanuelle’s ear and let the Army of Nuln find them?’

‘Emissary Lashmiya believes the exposure of any vampire, even a Sylvanian, is a danger to us all, and wants to keep the war a secret,’ said Famke. ‘She also believes the Sylvanians would counter by exposing all the Lahmians in Nuln.’

Ulrika sighed. ‘So do our sisters just sit on their hands and wait? Have they no leads at all?’

‘Too many,’ said Famke. ‘Rumours that the Stirlander mobsmen who run the bearpits are Sylvanian spies. Rumours that the Sylvanians are hiring Faulestadt harlots to be camp followers for their men. And more than rumours. Mistress Englehild, who you saw lying in her coffin in the council chamber? She is our greatest seeress, and has several times sensed the presence of a powerful Sylvanian in the city.’

Ulrika nodded. ‘I have faced him – fought him. He is strong. Their leader, I think.’

Famke’s eyes widened. ‘You faced him and lived? He – he has killed some of our best.’

Ulrika shrugged, uncomfortable. ‘I think perhaps he allowed me to live, but how many has he killed? And have our sisters never been able to follow him?’

‘They were all killed at once,’ said Famke. ‘Four sisters and some swains. One sister escaped but was too grievously wounded to follow.’ She set down her end of a blackened beam and wiped her hands on her petticoats. ‘Mistress Englehild had sensed that the Sylvanian was close to the brothel, and Mistress Ludwina organised a hunting party, taking two of our finest warriors and our two most sensitive seeresses – besides Mistress Englehild, of course, who cannot leave her coffin – to track him down and kill him.’ She shook her head. ‘Mistress Ludwina was the only one who survived, and then just barely. It was an ambush. The Sylvanians slaughtered the sisters before they could defend themselves. Mistress Ludwina fled for her life with a sword wound through her belly and another through her neck. She was nearly dead by the time she returned to tell us what had happened.’

‘An ambush,’ said Ulrika. ‘Someone told the Sylvanians.’

Famke nodded. ‘That is what most believe. That was why they were all arguing so fiercely about traitors when I brought you to the council chamber. Everyone accused everyone else.’

Ulrika chewed her lip for a long moment, thinking. The story was stirring familiar echoes in her memory. ‘It was Mistress Ludwina,’ she said at last. ‘She is the traitor.’

Famke blinked at her. ‘But how could it be? She nearly died. The Sylvanian’s sword thrust almost severed her spine.’

‘Almost. Nearly,’ said Ulrika. ‘But she has recovered, yes? And she burns with the desire for vengeance. She rages louder than all the others against the Sylvanians. She wants to gather more of your best and go again after the killer.’

Famke frowned. ‘You know her?’

‘I know the ruse,’ said Ulrika. ‘The Sylvanian I fought in Praag was a master of it. He wounded himself to make me think he had fought against our enemies, while in truth it was he who had brought them down upon us. He raged against the Sylvanians when all the while he was one himself.’

‘That… that may be,’ said Famke. ‘But sometimes the ones who shout the loudest are truly the most committed. How can you know?’

Ulrika crossed to her doublet and swordbelt and began to pull them on. ‘If this Mistress Ludwina had not been the leader of the hunting party, perhaps I could believe she was not a traitor. But you say she organised it. She selected your best warriors and best seeresses – those who would be most useful in your war against the enemy – and they are the ones who died. Now she wants to gather more of the best for another sortie. Don’t you see? She plans to systematically murder the Lahmians who are the greatest threat to her master by drawing them into ambushes.’

Famke pursed her lips. ‘In truth, Countess Gabriella and a few others whispered the same, but not in council. Mistress Ludwina holds secrets on everyone. None dare speak against her for fear of their disloyalties being exposed.’

Ulrika smiled, showing her fangs. ‘Well it is good, then, that we are already cast out, isn’t it?’ She turned for the rope that they had hung from the hole in the ceiling. ‘Come. Let us find her. She will lead us to our enemy.’

As Ulrika and Famke left the ruins that surrounded their hideout and started in the direction of the Great Bridge, they saw three figures walking towards them on the dark street and went on their guard. The silhouettes were all of shapely women, though one wore men’s clothes and had a rapier at her side. Ulrika laid her hand on her hilt, fearing the Lahmians had found them, but as they got closer she sensed their heartbeats. Still that was no guarantee, was it? They might be Mathilda’s swains.

‘Evening, lovies,’ said one of the women, giving them a once-over. She wore a revealing red dress and had her hair hennaed an improbable maroon. ‘Ain’t seen you around before. You new to the game?’

‘The – the game?’ said Ulrika.

The women burst out laughing.

‘Y’don’t have t’play innocent with us, dearie,’ said a hollow-eyed blonde. We’re all on the stroll here.’

‘Flash clobber,’ said the mannish one, nodding approvingly at Ulrika’s clothes. ‘Did y’nick that blade?’

Ulrika grunted with understanding. The women were harlots and their drake, and had mistaken Ulrika and Famke for the same. She was about to try to answer in kind when Famke beat her to it, reverting to her old accent as she had when she had talked her way into the black hotel.

‘Sorry, pet,’ she said. ‘Dead tired, we are. A pack o’ Tilean pikemen hired us earlier. Twenty o’em. I feel like a pin-cushion.’

The harlots all laughed and made lewd retorts, but the maroon-haired one kept an appraising eye on her.

‘Y’stayin’ around here, then? In them ruins?’

Famke laughed. ‘Oh no, just ducked in fer a wee. We – we’re actually looking fer a place, if y’know one.’

Maroon-Hair folded her arms. ‘Who d’ye work for? That Foundry mob?’

Famke shook her head. ‘Nobody now. We was tricking north of the river, but didn’t fancy the rent. Who’s boss down here?’

‘See Turo at the Laughing Bear,’ said the blonde, nodding back the way they’d come. ‘The Valantinas run the docks, and they don’t care for freelancers.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Famke, waving goodbye. ‘We’ll see him now. Ta for the warning.’

‘See that y’do,’ said Maroon-Hair as she started off the other way with her friends. ‘We don’t care much fer freelancers either.’

‘Were they hunting for us?’ Ulrika asked out of the side of her mouth as she and Famke walked off. ‘Or was that as straightforward as it seemed?’

‘I don’t know. They’re not from Mathilda’s mob. That I’m sure of. I would have smelled it. But…’ Famke shrugged.

Ulrika looked back and saw that Maroon-Hair was looking back too. Was it the natural suspicion of a whore guarding her turf, or something more sinister?

‘We’ll be very careful when we return,’ she said. ‘And if we find them skulking around, we’ll find another place.’

Famke pouted. ‘I like our place.’

‘As do I,’ said Ulrika. ‘But I like living more.’

Mistress Ludwina was not one for rapiers and kneeboots. As Ulrika and Famke watched her emerge from a hidden door in an alley near the Chalice of Caronne, they found her dressed as a juggler, with another Lahmian as a singer, a third as a dancer, and a trio of hulking swains dressed as their bodyguards and tip collectors. Ludwina wore a mask, parti-coloured rags, and a low-cut bodice that showed off ample curves. Her fellow performers were likewise attired. No one would ever remember their faces.

Ulrika smiled as she and Famke followed them at a distance. Their disguise was a good one for gathering information. Performers could go anywhere in the city and enter almost any establishment, high or low, and listen to the gossip around them as they did their show. The question was, were they spying for the Lahmians, or did they have some other purpose?

Ulrika and Famke followed them from the rooftops as they paraded along Handelstrasse, then slipped down to observe them from the shadows when they entered some tavern to perform for the customers and chat them up afterwards. They were excellent entertainers, and Ulrika had to remind herself that she wasn’t there to watch them spinning knives and turning handsprings, but to see if they made any clandestine assignations while they were at it.

At a place called the Elm, she caught Famke grinning like a child as she watched Ludwina juggling lit candles.

‘Enjoying the show?’ she asked.

Famke shrugged, chagrined. ‘It isn’t that. It’s that I’m here. Free. There are no locked doors around me. I can go where I please. I can run across the roofs and walk through the streets.’ She swallowed. ‘I can’t tell you how I’ve missed it.’

Ulrika pressed her hand, an answering lump forming in her throat. ‘I know the feeling well. When first the countess let me out to hunt down Murnau it was like I was drunk. The wind on my face. The stars overhead. The chance to stretch my legs. But… you must beware. That first time, I got so drunk on freedom I forgot to hide from the sun and nearly burned to death.’

Famke’s eyes widened. ‘I will remember, sister.’

An hour or so later upon a street of prosperous taverns to the east of the Gunnery School, Ulrika and Famke watched from the roofs as Ludwina and her companions exited a tavern called the Third Wilhelm. They were turning south when Ludwina suddenly stopped and looked north as if she saw something, then turned and whispered to the others. They split up immediately, calling ‘goodnight’ to each other as if parting for the evening, but then spreading out and moving in the direction Ludwina had indicated by alleys and parallel streets.

Ulrika let the others go and kept her eyes on Ludwina, who took to the rooftops as her companions moved ahead at street level. Ulrika and Famke slipped from roof to roof to keep up with her, but stayed well back, afraid she might be able to feel their presence with senses other than hearing and sight.

Half a block on, Ludwina paused and looked around. Ulrika and Famke ducked, afraid she had noticed them, but she stepped to a chimney and knelt beside it for a moment, then moved on.

Famke started ahead again, but Ulrika held her back. ‘We need follow no further,’ she said, nodding at the chimney. ‘That was the whole purpose of this expedition.’

‘What did she do?’

Ulrika shrugged. ‘Left a note? Made a mark? Whatever it was, she separated from her companions to do it, so it is most certainly something of which the Lahmians would not approve. Wait until they move on, and we will find out.’

They stayed where they were until they saw Ludwina rejoin the others on the street below and make a great show of cursing when they shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads. She led them off in a hurry to the west, as if in pursuit of some quarry, and Ulrika at last rose and made her way with Famke to the rooftop and the suspect chimney.

They crept around it, prodding its bricks and examining it from base to top until Famke paused.

‘Here,’ she said, and pulled out a loose brick, then handed Ulrika the slip of parchment behind it.

Ulrika unrolled it. It was a list, written in what looked like Tilean or Estalian. Whatever it was, Ulrika couldn’t read it, but some of the names were untranslated – Stirwood, Lashmiya and Sommerzeit, which was the name of the month that was fast approaching. There was also the initial K, which might stand for the Emperor, Karl Franz. She held it out to Famke.

‘Can you read it?’

Famke peered at it, then shook her head. ‘It is ancient Tilean. I’ve learned some from Mistress Hermione, but not enough.’ She pointed to a word. ‘That is “to go”, or maybe “went” or “will go”. Hmmm. With some time, I might be able to work out more.’

Ulrika rolled it up again. ‘It seems obvious she is telling the Sylvanians the Lahmians’ plans, but the details aren’t as important as who it was left for, and the fact of her treachery.’ She tucked the parchment into her belt pouch, thinking, then turned to Famke. ‘You will stay here and watch the chimney to see who comes to retrieve it, then follow them when they leave. Do not approach them or attack them. I only want to know where they go. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sister,’ said Famke. ‘But where will you be?’

Ulrika grinned. ‘I am going to give this parchment to Countess Gabriella.’

Famke gasped. ‘You’re going back to the Lahmians?’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t be staying. I’ll meet you back at the cellar.’ She gripped Famke’s arm. ‘And remember, be careful when you go back. If you see those harlots about, or anybody else, don’t go in. Go back to that filthy attic we stayed in the night before last. I’ll find you there.’

‘Yes, sister,’ said Famke.

Ulrika patted her arm, then turned to go, but Famke held her back and kissed her on the cheek.

‘I am glad I ran away with you,’ she said. ‘I am happier now than I have been since Hermione let me kill my father. I should have come away when you asked me the first time.’

Ulrika remembered back to her trip to Praag, and shuddered. ‘I’m glad you didn’t. It was nearly the death of me. But I’m glad you’ve come away now. It is good to have someone to fight beside.’

She kissed Famke in return, then turned and sprang for the next roof, elation filling her breast. What a difference having Famke with her made. Though she hadn’t known it until now, what had been missing since she had left Gabriella was a companion to share the good and the bad with. She had thought she’d had it with Stefan, but he had been playing her for a fool, pretending to be her friend in order to get close to the Lahmians of Praag. There was no such worry with Famke. They had been friends from the moment they had met, and were of like minds about their position in the world, and in Lahmian society. She was the best friend Ulrika could have hoped for.

chapter eleven

THE MORNING SUN

Though part of Ulrika wanted to stride straight through the Chalice of Caronne’s front door, then fight her way to Countess Gabriella and personally deliver the evidence of Mistress Ludwina’s treachery to her on bended knee, she knew she shouldn’t do it. First, she didn’t want to get caught, and second, fighting and possibly killing her erstwhile sisters would not play in her favour when she ultimately wanted to make her triumphant return to Lahmian society.

If she didn’t deliver the note personally, however, how could she ensure that it would actually get to the countess? If the brothel were riddled with spies, it might never reach her, particularly if Ulrika wrote ‘For the Countess’s Eyes Only’ upon it. Indeed, anything addressed to ‘Countess Gabriella’ was likely to be suspected. On the other hand, if she didn’t mark it as important in some way, Gabriella might wait to open it. How could she alert her without alerting her staff?

Then she had it, and hurried to the row of inns near the College of Barristers. At this time of night, they were the only places she could be sure of finding pen, paper and envelopes. She purchased the necessities from the night clerk at the Wig and Gavel then sat at a corner table and composed her letter, which was brief and to the point:

Mistress,

As proof of my loyalty, I present this treachery, delivered into the hands of your enemies by Mistress Ludwina, of your own house.

Your daughter,

Ulrika

Then, with her best imitation of a masculine hand, she inscribed the envelope:

To Madame du Vilmorin

From Felix Jaeger, Esq.

Regarding Our Recent Acquaintance

Ulrika smiled. To anyone who didn’t know Felix, the name and subject line would suggest a recent visitor to the brothel writing with either a complaint or a compliment, but to the countess, who had helped Felix and Gotrek slay her errant blood child, Adolphus Krieger, and foil his plans, it would suggest some new development on that front, which she would find entirely unwelcome in present circumstances. She could not help but open it as soon as she received it, and when she did…

Ulrika folded Mistress Ludwina’s roll of parchment and tucked it into the envelope next to her note, then sealed it with wax from the candle on the table. She then returned to the night clerk and took out some coins.

‘I need this delivered, tonight,’ she said. ‘Can you have a boy take it over? And he must not know who it came from, am I clear?’

The clerk looked at the coins on the counter – two gold crowns – a fortune. His eyes widened.

‘Certainly, madam!’ he said. ‘I will see to it right away.’

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘I shall be watching to be sure you don’t speak of me. If you do, I will take back the envelope, and the coins.’

‘No fear, madam. No fear.’

Ulrika returned to her table as the clerk rang the bell and a sleepy boy stumbled out from the back. With her inhuman hearing she heard the clerk tell him where to deliver the envelope – and that was all. The boy took it and left on his errand. A moment later, Ulrika rose and saluted the clerk, then followed the messenger.

After making sure the boy made it safely to the Chalice of Caronne and delivered the envelope into the hands of Madam Reme, Ulrika started across the city towards the rooftop where Famke waited, hoping she might find her still there. But as she sped back across the shingles, Ulrika was reminded of another roof, and her steps slowed.

The shadowy Sylvanian had told her to return to the rooftop where he had vanished when she was ready to join his army. She had meant to go back the very next night and pretend that she was eager to turn her coat, but then Famke had come and the Lahmians had attacked the plague house, and she had been on the run ever since.

Well, if he had heard any rumours of that night, then perhaps he would believe she was ready now. She ran to the building on the west side of the Emmanuelleplatz and climbed to the roof. He was not there. She settled in to wait. He did not come. She got up and paced around. Still he did not come. She paced some more, and then, on the ridgeline of the roof, found a note, finger-written in the black coal soot that coated the slates.

‘Not until you have changed your mind.’

Ulrika cursed the vampire’s smug prescience and looked around, glaring into the night.

‘And how do you know I haven’t?’ she called.

There was no answer.

She dropped down to the street again, cursing the time she had wasted, and began heading once again for Famke. But as she came around a corner she found the street around a Shallyan hospital blocked by an angry mob, and heard a remembered voice raised in fiery oratory.

‘The sisters of mercy serve Shallya no more, my friends!’ the voice cried. ‘They have traded the dove for the bat and their healing herbs for belladonna. They have been corrupted by foul fiends in female form, and now feed on those they once healed.’

Ulrika’s lip curled. It was the charismatic vampire hunter that she had seen before in the Reik Platz, and who had nearly been the death of her when he had set his followers after her. He stood on the steps of the hospital, dressed as before in black, with a bandoleer of stakes across his chest, his huge hammer held aloft in one hand and a torch in the other.

‘Break down the doors and drag them out!’ he was shouting. ‘Burn their foul nest. They must be exposed for the bloodsuckers they are!’

Ulrika stared at him as she edged around the crowd, marvelling at the stupidity of mankind. With war coming, and sickness, maiming and death soon to follow, the Shallyans could be the one thing that kept the city alive, and yet this fool wanted to destroy them. Amazing.

‘Strike!’ he cried, turning and pointing his torch at the hospital doors. ‘Strike in the name of the Empire!’

Aye, thought Ulrika, disgusted, in the name of the Empire, strike a blow for the enemy. Well done, friend. But as she turned away and started to push through the last few onlookers at the edge of the mob, she paused, a cold prickle running up her spine. Had she imagined it? She looked back. There had been something, something in the way the firebrand had pointed his torch, something in the way he had moved and turned, that seemed familiar to her. Was she just remembering her previous encounter with him? No. It wasn’t that. It was his posture, the way he held himself, she had seen it before. He stood like he was a king, like all he surveyed was his to take.

A dagger of poisoned ice pierced her heart. The Sylvanian – the vampire with the shadowed face, the enemy she had just gone to look for upon the rooftop where he had defeated her. He was the firebrand! And he had fallen into her hands like an answered prayer!

She edged closer, just to make sure. Yes. It was him. Now that she knew to look, there was no mistaking him. He had the same build, the same stance, and his voice, though raised to a fever pitch now instead of purring smooth threats, had the same rich resonance. Ursun’s teeth! In two leaps she could – but no, he was too powerful, and the crowd would tear her apart the moment she attacked him. He was untouchable here. She would have to follow him until he was alone – indeed, she would follow him until she knew where he made his lair. The more she learned of him and his methods before she killed him, the more she could bring to Gabriella when she brought her his head.

And so she slipped again to the rooftops and watched, sickened, as he and his mad followers stormed the Shallyan hospital and dragged out sisters and patients alike, beating and stoning them and then fighting the city watch when they finally arrived as the place blazed behind them. But though revolted, she felt at the same time a certain appalled admiration for the Sylvanian’s methods.

Killing the Shallyans had seemed stupidity when she thought it was a living man calling for their deaths, but for an enemy of the Empire it was brilliant. Disguised as a staunch upholder of Imperial values, the Sylvanian could attack the very institutions that made the Empire strong. With the Shallyans decimated and feared as Lahmian dupes, disease would run rampant. And his previous tirade, where he had suggested that Countess Emmanuelle’s court might be riddled with vampires, had been calculated to sow dissent among the masses, causing them to mistrust their leaders and make them less likely to defend them. He was the enemy within, making sure the centre would collapse when the invaders attacked from without. It was vile but brilliant.

As the watchmen started to drive the mob back, the Sylvanian slipped away with a few lieutenants, vanishing into an alley as the rest of his followers fell to cudgels and tip-staves. There he whispered to his comrades and they dispersed. Ulrika wished Famke was with her so she could follow one of the others. Instead she could only follow the leader, and even that proved difficult. Despite her speed and her heightened senses, she had difficulty keeping him in sight, and had to play a delicate game, leaping from roof to roof to keep up with him, but not getting so close that he could sense her.

She had hoped he would quickly go to ground, but instead he moved about unceasingly for the rest of the night, stopping at a tavern to rile up the drinkers with talk of vampires in high places, murdering a sergeant of the Army of Nuln in a cul-de-sac and leaving obvious bites on his neck, ranting on a street corner about how the watch could not protect the Sisters of Shallya from a crazed mob, writing with blood from his finger upon the front door of a wealthy townhouse, ‘Vampires live here!’ and then, after the city had gone to sleep and the streets were quiet, meeting with a handful of shadowy conspirators – all human by their heartbeats – in the cellar of a gutted building in Shantytown.

Ulrika thought this last might be his hiding place, but when the meeting broke up a while later, he left too, which she thought was wise. It would not do to have untrustworthy underlings know one’s true abode. Even the most loyal might give him away under the witch hunters’ brands and thumbscrews.

After that he made a patrol of the Neuestadt, wandering every neighbourhood south of the Altestadt wall and pausing here and there to observe various houses and check various places as if looking for left messages or packages.

Finally, just as the grey of dawn was lightening the east, he made his way to the Halbinsel District, where he knocked upon the door of a modest townhouse not far from the barracks of the Army of Nuln and was let in. Ulrika wasn’t sure the place was his final destination, and so watched it for as long as she dared, but as the sky turned from grey to pink and he still hadn’t come out, she decided she must have found his lair at last, and hurried across the bridge into the Faulestadt with a grin splitting her face. She couldn’t wait to tell Famke the news.

She’d found her nemesis, she knew his disguise, she knew where he lived and how he operated. With Famke’s help she could follow his conspirators and learn his network, then catch him, kill him, and bring his head and the details of his organisation to Gabriella and Hermione. She laughed out loud at the thought. The look on Hermione’s face would be worth everything that had come before.

The madness of the city seemed to have started early south of the river, for as Ulrika crept through the burnt swath on her way to the stonecarver’s cellar she heard the cheering and jeering of an angry crowd in the distance. She paid it no mind, however, and concentrated on making sure that no one was lurking around the ruins. She saw nothing and sensed no heart-fires or pulses, so ducked through the broken timbers of the workshop to the stone that covered the hole to the cellar.

It had been moved aside.

Ulrika’s first thought was, Damn the girl! Does she want to be discovered? Why didn’t she close it behind her? Then she noticed a dozen boot prints in the dusty rubble around the hole, and when she looked within, saw other ropes hooked to the rafters next to the one she had tied there. Ice filled her guts. What had happened? And when? Were the intruders still there? Had Famke been there when they came, or was she still making her way home?

She pushed her senses down into the cellar – no heartbeats – but that was no guarantee of safety. If the Lahmians had found them again they could be lying in wait and she would hear nothing.

Ulrika slid down a rope so fast she might as well have jumped, landing with a thump and puff of dust. She drew her rapier and dagger and stared around into the darkness. There was no one she could see, but there were many places to hide. She took a quick circuit of the chamber, checking behind every statue and looking into every alcove. No one was there, but by the mound of blankets that had served her and Famke for a bed, she found blood on the floor, still wet, and the signs of a struggle.

The ice in her stomach turned to lead, and her ribs seemed to clench like a fist. Someone had taken Famke. But who? And where?

The roar of the distant crowd filtered down to her, carried on a breeze, and over it, faint but sharp, like the scream of a hawk, a voice she knew.

Ulrika scrambled back up the rope and out of the hole in a blind rush, then sprinted in the direction of the roaring. It was coming from the dock-side tenements that bordered the burnt swath – the neighbourhood the harlot and her friends had been heading for when they had met. Ulrika pelted for it, vaulting fences and bounding over rubble in a crazed panic as Famke’s shrieks and the shouting of the crowd got louder and clearer – and the light of daybreak brighter and more painful.

Finally, as she skidded around a last corner, she found the source of the cries, and stopped in horror. In a little square, bordered on two sides by tenements, and on the other two by burnt ruins, a jeering crowd of Faulestadt slum dwellers had gathered around an old and weathered pillory where a handful of witch hunters in wide hats and long leather coats were stripping Famke naked and locking her into the stocks, directly in the path of the rising sun.

chapter twelve

ETERNAL VENGEANCE

A burnt-out building cast its shadow over Famke, shielding her from the poisonous light, but the sun would shine through its gutted windows in mere moments, and already, in just the faint grey ambience of dawn, she was writhing in pain, her skin steaming and reddening.

Ulrika plunged forwards, drawing rapier and dagger and kicking through the crowd to leap for the low platform of the pillory. The witch hunters turned at her approach and reached for swords and pistols, but not quick enough. She ran the first through before he cleared his blade, piercing his steel breastplate like it was paper, and knocked two more off the platform with slashes and kicks as the crowd screamed and backed away.

‘Famke! I’m here!’

She chopped at the iron lock that held the wooden halves of the stocks closed as Famke turned terrified eyes to her.

‘Ulrika! Oh, gods! Please…’

Famke pulled against the stocks but she was already sun-sick and could not break them. Ulrika slashed again, biting deep into the bolt. One more strike would do it.

A crack to her left deafened her, and a punch like a mule-kick knocked her sideways. She crashed down at the edge of the platform, pain blossoming in her thigh and making her nauseous. She’d been shot. She looked up, panting with shock, and saw the oldest of the witch hunters advancing on her, a smoking pistol in one hand and a glass globe filled with blessed water in the other. It was Templar Captain Meinhart Schenk, who had nearly exposed Countess Gabriella and Lady Hermione during the troubles with Murnau the Strigoi.

‘We’ve flushed another,’ he said, then stopped dead as he saw her face. ‘You! I know you, fiend! You were that woman’s lady in waiting. I saw you dead!’

‘And I’ll see you dead,’ sneered Ulrika.

She surged up, ignoring her screaming thigh, and slashed the globe from his hand, then thrust for his chest. A witch hunter with an eye-patch knocked her blade aside and he and Schenk squared off against her, shoulder to shoulder, blocking her way to Famke, while behind her, the other two climbed back onto the platform, aiming pistols at her back. She was surrounded.

‘Ulrika! It’s coming!’ screamed Famke. ‘It’s–!’

A sliver of sun lanced through a window in the ruined building and struck Famke’s naked shoulder like a brand. She shrieked and jerked, trying to pull away as her flesh sizzled.

Ulrika dived between Schenk and his man, slashing left and right as the two men behind her fired and bullets whizzed over her head. She came up again beside Famke with Schenk and Eye-Patch falling behind her, great cuts in their legs, but as she chopped again for the lock on the stocks, the witch hunters who had fired at her surged forwards and tackled her off the platform.

‘No! Famke!’

Ulrika lashed out as the two men tried to pin her down, stabbing one in the throat with her main gauche and braining the other with the guard of her rapier. Above her, Famke’s shoulder was in flames. With a sob, Ulrika wrenched the long coat from the second man’s shoulders. Every movement was pain. The ambient light was cooking her too now, and her bullet wound felt a furnace in her thigh – hot and throbbing.

Schenk and Eye-Patch limped towards her across the platform, trailing blood and plucking more globes from their bandoleers. She ducked down and pulled harder, but a roar from behind made her look behind.

‘Get her! Kill her! She’s one too!’

The crowd was coming for her, the maroon-haired harlot and her friends in the lead, knives and clubs and brass knuckles in their fists. Ulrika tore the witch hunter’s coat free at last and lashed out at them, cutting some and driving more back, but the rest pulled her down in a frenzy of fear.

‘Fools!’ roared Schenk. ‘Stand aside! We have her!’

The crowd did not hear. They swung and kicked and flailed at Ulrika like terrified children. Ulrika howled with rage. They were keeping her from Famke, holding her back as the blade of sunlight carved across her sister’s naked body. Now it was searing her head and neck, blackening her cheeks and lips and burning her long blonde hair to the roots. She was no longer screaming, though her mouth was wide and her neck corded.

With a shriek of frustration, Ulrika shot out her fangs and claws, letting the beast within her surface completely. The crowd fell back gasping, terror trumping their rage, and she bounded onto the platform, straight at Schenk and Eye-Patch as they hurled their glass globes.

She swept one away with her stolen leather coat and hacked at Eye-Patch, severing his right leg above the knee. He toppled, screaming, as the other globe shattered on her blade. The water splashed her, burning like acid, but then the sun rose fully from behind the obstructing building and struck her in the face, and that pain faded to nothing beneath the agony of the blinding white light.

Famke arched and jerked like she had been struck by lightning as the sun bathed her from head to toe. Flames were licking up all over her naked body.

‘Sister!’

Ulrika bashed past Schenk, knocking him to the planks, and reached Famke at last, her own pain forgotten. She threw the long leather coat over Famke’s head, then chopped again at the lock. It shattered and she tore the stock away, then caught Famke as she fell. She could hear her blackened flesh crackling as she cradled her.

Ulrika bundled Famke in the coat and leapt from the platform, scattering the crowd again, and stumbled desperately for the truncated shadow of the building that had earlier protected her. She shuddered with relief as the blessed shade covered her, but they were far from safe. It was full day now, and there were enemies all around, and the pain of her burns was unbearable. How could she get Famke away? She looked up. Schenk was still down, clutching his knee, but the witch hunter she had dazed was up again, holding his head and limping around the platform towards her, while the crowd reassembled its courage and advanced behind him.

‘Stay back!’ he cried, thrusting a hand behind him. ‘This is templar business.’

They obeyed and Ulrika sneered. The fool had just doomed himself, and perhaps saved her and Famke in the bargain. With the crowd at his back, he might have brought her down, but alone…

She looked at the building behind her. There were gaps in the walls where falling rubble had collapsed them, and the interior was dark but for a few stray beams of light piercing it from the other side. She hefted the whimpering Famke over her shoulder and darted in, then hurried through the shattered rooms, dodging the sun rays as she heard the witch hunter shout after her.

Towards the front, where the walls were mostly collapsed, there was too much light, but there was a room off the central corridor, no more than a closet, the walls of which were whole, and she ducked into it, then set Famke down.

‘Hold on, sister,’ she said. ‘Just another minute.’

Famke didn’t answer, but just lay where she had been put and stared at the ceiling with cloudy white eyes.

Ulrika looked at her helplessly, then turned to crouch by the closet door. The witch hunter’s cautious bootsteps were echoing through the darkness, and she could sense his heart-fire through the intervening walls. He was getting close, creeping and pausing, then moving on. He entered the corridor. He reached the door. He thrust his blade in, then edged in after it, on guard, staring over her head into the darkness.

It was too easy. Ulrika caught his neck and yanked him down to slam his head against the floor. He went slack and let go of his blade. She threw it into the corridor, then bit his neck and drank – only a few gulps to fight the pain of her burns and the weakness of her limbs – then she dragged him back to Famke.

‘Here, sister,’ she said, laying him down next to her. ‘Drink. Heal yourself.’

Famke didn’t move, didn’t even acknowledge her, just continuing to stare at nothing.

‘Famke, please. You must feed.’

Ulrika got her arms under her and rolled her over so that her mouth was against the witch hunter’s neck where she had bitten him. Still she did nothing, only whispered wordlessly. Ulrika cursed, then took her dagger and slit the witch hunter’s carotid artery lengthwise and lifted him so that it pumped over Famke’s mouth. Some got in, but she did not swallow, and instead started to choke.

Ulrika threw down the witch hunter and turned Famke’s head, sobbing with grief and terror. Why wouldn’t she drink? She was going to die.

More bootsteps entered the building, and she could sense a handful of agitated heart-fires coming closer. The mob was coming after all. She had to get out. She had to get Famke someplace where she could recover.

With shaking hands, she tore off the bleeding witch hunter’s leather coat and struggled into it, then took his hat and pulled the wide brim of the hat down as far as she could. The footsteps were getting closer, converging towards her. She wrapped Famke in the other coat as best she could, then put her over her shoulder, picked up her rapier, and turned to the door.

Someone was just outside, creeping cautiously forwards. Their lantern cast swooping light on the walls. Ulrika leapt into the corridor, roaring and slashing at the lamp. In the last flash as it fell from his hands she saw it was Schenk. He cursed and fell back as her blade bit into his wrist, and she ran on, heading for the front of the building and the sun.

Cries and halloos followed her as she crashed through the rooms, then she leapt through a break in the wall and landed in the street. Instantly the sun beat on her, as hot and heavy as a molten anvil, but the thick coat and wide hat kept her skin from burning, and she staggered on, Famke now twice as heavy.

A dozen Faulestadters poured out of the building behind her, howling and gaining rapidly, invigorated in the sun where she was crippled by it. She squinted around to get her bearings. The Eisenstrasse, the Faulestadt’s main east-west street, was just to her left. She careened that way, praying to her father’s gods that she would find the salvation she sought, and, yes! Not half a block on a covered coach was coming her way, a coachman in livery cracking on its horses.

Ulrika ran towards it, then veered into the street in front of it.

‘Stop!’ she shouted, pitching her voice as low as she could. ‘Stop in the name of the temple of Sigmar!’

The coachman’s eyes widened in alarm and he pulled up sharply, making his horses rear and throw their heads.

Ulrika pointed at him but kept her head low so he couldn’t see her face under her hat. ‘I require the use of this coach in the pursuance of my duties to the temple. You will take me to the Altestadt!’

A balding head stuck out of the window of the coach, and looked around angrily. The man was richly dressed, with the gold chain of a guild officer around his neck. ‘What is this?’ he bawled. ‘Peitr! Why have we stopped?’

Ulrika tore his door open and hauled him out by the collar, then climbed into the coach with Famke over her shoulder as he fell face-first into the mud. The dozen Faulestadters were turning the corner and running forwards, shouting at the coachman to stop. Schenk limped doggedly behind them, reloading his pistol as he went.

‘Ride them down!’ shouted Ulrika as she lay Famke on the leather bench. ‘They are cultists! They have killed many witch hunters!’

‘But–’ said the coachman.

‘Ride them down!’ roared Ulrika. ‘Or are you a cultist yourself? Are you interfering with a templar of the Order of the Silver Hammer?’

‘No! No!’ cried the coachman, and whipped up the horses with a will. They were just getting under way when the Faulestadters reached them. Ulrika threw open her door and hacked wildly at them as they tried to leap on the running board. They fell back, but as the coach turned north, Ulrika saw Schenk aiming his pistol at her. She ducked back and the ball splintered the door frame beside her, then they were away and the horses were picking up speed.

Ulrika sank back upon the bench and let out a sigh, then looked at Famke, next to her, and swallowed hard. Famke’s face, peeking out from the under the heavy leather of the witch hunter’s coat, was a black, shrunken skull. Her teeth showed all the way to her gums, and her sunken skin was cracked and falling away to reveal cooked meat below. Ulrika would have thought her dead but for the faint pained hissing she made each time the coach bumped over a rut.

Ulrika reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, then stopped. Any touch would likely bring her pain. She leaned down beside her instead.

‘Please don’t die, Famke,’ she whispered. ‘I am taking you home.’

Famke did not respond.

Ulrika directed the coachman to the service alley behind Hermione’s Kaufman District mansion, and told him to wait, then wrapped Famke tighter in the leather coat and gathered her up in her arms. The movement jarred a cry of anguish from her, and her eyes flared open. They were rheumed with a white fog, but she seemed to recognise Ulrika nonetheless.

‘Sister,’ she hissed in a voice like dead leaves rattling. ‘Sister, I did as you said. I looked before I went home. There was no one. No one!’

‘I’m sorry, Famke,’ said Ulrika, a lump forming in her throat. ‘They must have–’

‘They came. They knew I was there. The whores and the witch hunters. They knew!’

‘And I will kill them,’ said Ulrika. ‘Every last one of them. You will be avenged.’

Famke didn’t seem to be listening. She closed her eyes again, and her skin cracked as her face twisted into a mask of grief. ‘I wish…’

‘Aye?’

‘I wish I had never met you,’ she whispered. ‘I wish I had never left my mistress.’

Ulrika’s guts turned to lead and her arms trembled. ‘But – but, Famke…’

Famke’s head sank back into the depths of the voluminous coat and the tension went out of her charred limbs. She had lost consciousness again. Ulrika almost shook her to wake her again, wanting her to explain what she had said, but now wasn’t the time.

She kicked out of the coach and carried Famke to Hermione’s carriage gate, then jerked at the service bell. The sun beat down upon her unmercifully as she waited, cooking her head and shoulders through her coat and hat, but she bore it without flinching. She deserved the pain for failing to save Famke. She deserved it for telling her to go home without her. She should have been there! She should have protected her!

Footsteps approached and a little window opened in the service door. One of Hermione’s handsome swains looked out, wary. ‘What do the witch hunters want here?’

Ulrika raised the brim of the wide hat. ‘It’s Ulrika, Gabriella’s ward. I have Famke with me. She is badly wounded. Open the gate. She must get out of the sun.’

The man blinked, surprised, then looked back towards the house. ‘One moment,’ he said, then started away at a run.

Ulrika cursed. He was going for reinforcements. There would be a fight while Famke lay untended.

‘You fool! She is dying!’

The steps ran on.

Ulrika ground her teeth with frustration. She would have to leave. It was the only way the swains would see to Famke instead of attacking her. She lowered Famke to the ground in a shadow beside the gate, then turned to the coachman, who watched her every move with terrified attention.

‘Your cloak,’ she said, snapping her fingers.

He hesitated only a second, then pulled off his cloak and handed it down to her. She took it and laid it over Famke, then started to tuck it around her, but raised voices and footsteps from behind the gate made her look up. The swains were coming back.

She lowered her head to Famke. ‘Sister,’ she said, ‘I promise you. I will not return until all who have hurt you are dead.’

Famke made no response. Under her cover of cloak and coat she lay as still and silent as death. Ulrika took a last look at her draped form, then spun and hopped back into the coach.

‘Drive on!’ she barked. ‘Back to the Faulestadt. Hurry!’

The coachman whipped up the horses just as the carriage gate opened and the swains starting shouting after her.

Famke’s last words to her tore at Ulrika as the coach took her under the High Gate and rattled her through the Neuestadt.

‘I wish I had never met you.’

That Famke had said it was understandable. Had she never met Ulrika, she would never have left the safety of Hermione’s house to warn her of Casilla and her Lahmian assassins. She would never have agreed to run away with Ulrika and attempted to live on her own without the protections of the sisterhood. She would never have gone into the city alone at Ulrika’s bidding.

Ulrika curled up on the bench, sobbing and raking herself with her claws as Famke’s burnt hair and charred, skeletal face flashed through her mind again and again. It was her fault Famke had burned. Ulrika was the worldly one, the one who had travelled to Praag and back on her own, without the shelter of a closed coach or a swain to feed upon. She was the one who knew how to survive in the world of men. She should have been there to watch over Famke. How could she have left her alone? What a fool!

And the worst of her foolishness, it seemed to her now, was that she had thought that there was any good at all in mankind. They were kindness itself if they thought you were one of their own. They would invite you into their homes, feed you, aid you, fight beside you, but the moment you showed even the slightest hint of being ‘the other’, whether you were a different species, a different nationality, even if you were just from another village, their fear of the unknown would take over. They would brand you enemy, monster, fiend, and call for the witch hunters, without ever taking the time to discover if you were good or bad, noble or corrupt, hero or villain. They didn’t care. You were other, and therefore you were to be burned. How could she have thought any of them worth saving?

As the coach rumbled over the Great Bridge, Ulrika saw through the gap between the drawn curtains, the witch hunters’ rust-black Iron Tower a half-mile to the east, thrusting up like a mailed fist from the rocky island upon which it sat in the middle of the Reik. The place was their prison, their torture chamber and their headquarters. She curled her lips at the sight of it and extended her fangs. Schenk would be there, somewhere. She would like to hunt him through its dark corridors, him and all his rotten brethren, and paint its walls with their blood.

‘The Faulestadt, witch hunter,’ called the coachman as they thudded off the end of the bridge. ‘May I return to my master now? I–’

‘No!’ barked Ulrika. ‘To the dockside, near the Laughing Bear. And go slow.’

She would have her vengeance upon the witch hunters soon enough, but there were others who needed to die first.

Ulrika feared at first she wouldn’t see them. Harlots and drakes were like vampires, at least in one regard – they only came out at night. And, of course, they’d had a long night of it, leading the witch hunters to Famke and watching her burn. But at last she saw them, the blonde and the maroon-haired one and their drake. They were in a group of other Faulestadt residents, shop-keeps, street hawkers and gangsters, and it looked like they were telling the story of their exploits to the eager crowd.

‘Stop here,’ Ulrika called.

‘Witch hunter,’ came the coachman’s voice. ‘I beg you. I–’

‘Stop here!’

The coach stopped, pulling to the side a block from the gathering.

‘Now give me your lanterns,’ said Ulrika. ‘Light them and hand them down to me.’

‘Yes, witch hunter,’ he said, sullen.

A minute later, a shaking hand lowered two coach lanterns to the window. Ulrika took them and set them on the floor, then returned her attention to the whores, waiting. Her pain came back to her as the minutes ticked on. Her face was an agony of blisters from her seconds in the sun, as was her right hand and wrist, from where the blessed water had splashed them, while the dull ache of the pistol wound in her thigh throbbed in counterpoint. In her haste to get Famke to safety, she had not fed properly, and she was starving and weak and nauseous with sun-sickness. But it was only what she deserved, and she welcomed the pain as a penitent welcomes the lash. She hoped it would eclipse the agony in her heart.

Finally the harlots and the drake finished telling their story and started off down the street, yawning and leaning on each other, seemingly ready for bed.

‘Follow them,’ called Ulrika. ‘The two whores and their companion. But at a distance.’

‘Aye, witch hunter.’

The coachman crawled his coach after them as they continued down the Brukestrasse, then turned into a side street. Two blocks later, they entered a narrow shadowed alley.

‘Pull to that alley!’ barked Ulrika, picking up the lanterns. ‘Quickly!’

The coachman geed the horses and trundled to the mouth of the alley. Ulrika exploded from the coach, drawing her rapier and holding the lanterns behind her as she ran. The harlots and drakes were thirty paces ahead, but Ulrika halved the distance before they had even turned, and she was among them before they could cry out.

She hacked at the hand of the drake as she tried to draw her blade, severing a finger and thumb, then slashed the faces of the whores and cut their legs as they turned to run. In seconds they were all on the ground, wailing and cursing in pain and fright. She could have killed them all in another second, but she didn’t want them to die so easily. Unlike herself and Famke, who would suffer the eternal torments of the damned once their unlife ended, these vile children might know oblivion or even bliss in the halls of their gods when they died. Their last minutes, therefore, should be something they would remember for the whole of their afterlives.

She moved among them quickly, hamstringing each with quick flicks of her rapier so they could not crawl away, then dragged them into a rough pile and raised one of her lanterns high.

‘No!’ shrieked the blonde. ‘Please! I beg you!’

‘Did you listen when Famke begged you? Did you stay your hand?’ Ulrika’s voice cracked. ‘I saw you! You laughed when she was burning! You laughed!’

Ulrika smashed the lantern down on the skull of the drake and it shattered, spraying them all with glass and volatile oil. They screamed and tried to drag themselves away using only their arms, but Ulrika tore the cover from the other lamp and touched its flame to them. Flags of fire flitted across them like orange butterflies, and their screams became shrieks. Ulrika laughed, then shattered the second lantern and poured its oil all over them.

They writhed and flailed like pinned snakes as their skin bubbled and hissed, but they could not escape the flames. Ulrika backed away, triumphant in her vengeance, then for some reason gulped out a sob and ran as the flames blazed higher and higher behind her.

At the mouth of the alley, the coachman stood, staring past her as she came.

‘Away!’ she cried, as she neared him. ‘Back to your seat, quickly!’

He stepped back, his face white and set, and shook his head. ‘I – I do not believe you are a witch hunter,’ he said. ‘I do not believe you are even a man.’

‘Of course I’m a witch hunter,’ choked Ulrika. ‘Witch hunters burn people. Do you not see them burning?’

The coachman took another step back. ‘I’ll not take you further. I want none of this business. Just let me go back to my master. I’ll say nothing–’

Ulrika sprang forwards and caught him by the front of his doublet, then yanked him back into the alley and punched him in the face with the cage of her rapier. She felt no pang of remorse as she sank her fangs into his neck and drank. It was true that he had been nothing but a bystander in this, dragged into it when she had needed an escape, and he had done her bidding with little complaint, but that didn’t make him innocent. Despite his promise that he would say nothing, she knew he would speak of it. She knew he would tell his master, or the witch hunters. She knew he was no better than the rest. Famke had been right. There were no innocents.

A scream from the street brought her head up. A cabbage-seller was cowering behind her barrow, pointing at her.

‘Vampire! It’s killing him! Help!’

More people were coming at the woman’s screams. Ulrika cursed and broke the coachman’s neck, then turned and sprinted down the alley, dodging wide to avoid the pyre of blackening bodies that partially blocked it.

Ulrika lay curled up in a tiny wedge of space in a slant-ceiling attic of a mouldering tenement, hiding from the shouting rioters that strode through the streets below, searching for her and baying for her death.

It was hours later, and the coachman’s blood had done much to heal her blistered skin and cracked ribs, but it had not soothed the burning agony of her heart. Indeed, with her other pains receding, that ache seemed all the worse. Killing the whores and their drake had brought her a swift, savage joy, but it hadn’t lasted. How could it when Famke was still a blackened skeleton and still blamed Ulrika for her fate – and when Ulrika still blamed herself. The handful of deaths hadn’t been enough to ease such a multitude of hurts – not nearly enough. They were but a few drops of blood vanishing into a raging black ocean of pain. It might take the deaths of hundreds, thousands, the death of a city or a nation, to finally drown Ulrika’s agony. She bared her teeth. She wanted the world’s throat under her fangs so that she might drain it dry, and as she lay there, she suddenly knew who could give it to her.

She knew where she needed to go.

chapter thirteen

THE TEMPERED BLADE

‘So, you have changed your mind at last.’

Ulrika spun around, hand on her hilt. A dark figure stood on the roofline above her, shrouded in shadow. She hadn’t heard him approach, but then she could hardly hear anything. A steamy summer storm had broken over Nuln before sunset, sheets of warm rain dropping straight down out of the sky without a breeze to stir them. The noise of it on the roof was a deafening hiss. Why couldn’t it have come a day earlier? Why couldn’t it have blocked out the morning sun?

‘There’s no need to hide your face, Sylvanian,’ Ulrika sneered. ‘You are the “vampire slayer” that set the crowd after me. And he who goaded them to burn the Shallyan hospital.’

The Sylvanian walked down the slope of the roof and the shadow slid from him like he was stepping out from under a ledge. His face was as she remembered it, hard and strong, with a trim black and grey beard, but the fanaticism that blazed in his eyes when he addressed a crowd was replaced now with cold amusement, and he was no longer dressed like a vampire hunter. Now he wore black riding gear and the boots and spurs of a cavalryman under a long rain cloak.

‘Observant as well,’ he said in his rich, resonant voice. He was half a head taller than her, and broad in the shoulder. ‘I knew I was right about you.’

‘And I am certain I am right about you.’

‘Yet you are here,’ he said, pushing wet locks out of his eyes. ‘Your heart full of fury and ready to join me. Why?’

Ulrika’s fists clenched. ‘Vengeance.’

‘Upon whom? Your sisters? Your mistress? Those who burned your beloved Famke?’

Ulrika stepped back, staring. ‘How do you know about that?’

‘The sisterhood have been talking about nothing else,’ said the vampire. ‘My spies – the ones you have not yet exposed – have told me you are wanted dead. Even your mistress has agreed.’

Ulrika swallowed. ‘Have they – did they say if Famke…?’

‘She lives, but the burns are very severe. She may never heal.’

Ulrika’s heart clenched. Every fear that had plagued her since she had left Hermione’s gate had been realised. Ulrika could not imagine a more horrible fate for Famke. And it was her fault.

She raised her eyes to the Sylvanian, shaking with rage. ‘All of them,’ she said. ‘I want vengeance on all of them. The humans must die for their close-minded fear. My sisters must die for driving us out when we had done nothing, and my mistress must die for turning her back on me and going along with their idiotic edicts. And Lady Hermione. She above all must die. If not for her spite, I would still be in the arms of Lahmia, and Famke would be whole.’

‘Then I could almost thank her,’ said the Sylvanian. ‘For without her spite, I would be deprived of a brave and capable blade. That is, if you are truly here to join me.’

‘I am,’ said Ulrika.

‘Are you certain?’ asked the Sylvanian. ‘Our aim is to kill the Emperor, Karl Franz, and prepare the way for my master’s invasion. Are you willing to aid us in this? Are you willing to kill a paragon of human virtues and cast the world of men into a storm of war and revolt?’

The faces of the mob that had watched Famke burn rose up in Ulrika’s mind, leering, laughing, hateful. ‘There are no human paragons,’ she spat. ‘They are frightened children who lash out at what they don’t understand. I would see them all burn.’

The Sylvanian raised an eyebrow. ‘Even the innocents? The women, the children, the men of peace?’

‘There are no innocents,’ said Ulrika. ‘Women are no better than men, and every child grows to be a fool just like his parents.’

‘And you would have no qualms about facing your sisters in battle? You would not stay your hand against your mistress?’

‘My sisters are a pack of backstabbing cats,’ sneered Ulrika. ‘And my mistress will not stand against them though she knows them for fools. She is no better than the rest.’

‘You do not answer my question. Would you fight them?’

‘Aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘With a will.’

‘Even the countess?’

Ulrika hesitated, but the Sylvanian had said that Gabriella had agreed with the others that she should be killed on sight. ‘Even the countess.’

The Sylvanian nodded. ‘I see no deception in your heart or mind. Your hate and anger are real, though it remains to be seen whether they will cool in time. For now, however, you are a finely tempered blade, still hot from the forge, and if you wish it, I will put that keen edge to use.’

Ulrika inclined her head. ‘All I have wanted since my return to Nuln is to fight. I am ready.’

The Sylvanian held out a black-gloved hand. It was dripping with rain. ‘Then welcome to your true family, Ulrika Magdova Straghov. You are home at last.’

Ulrika shook it. ‘Thank you, my – uh…’

He clicked his heels together and bowed in cavalry fashion. ‘Count Grigor von Messinghof, ruler of the Verbogenwald and leader of the vanguard of Sylvania Arisen.’

‘Lord count,’ said Ulrika, bowing in return. It felt good to bow again instead of curtsey.

‘Come, boyarina,’ said von Messinghof, and started up to the roofline again. ‘You wanted to find my encampment. I will take you there.’

Ulrika hesitated, bemused. ‘General, the city gate is that way.’

He smiled down at her. ‘There are more ways out of the city than the gates, boyarina.’ And with that he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, so high that Ulrika doubted she would have heard it without her unnatural hearing.

The sound of heavy wings boomed above her and for a moment the rain stopped. Ulrika ducked, then stared as a monster from nightmare circled down towards the roof, a rotting horror with the flat-nosed head and leathery wings of a giant bat, but the powerful, leonine body and eagle-talon foreclaws of a griffon.

That it resembled so noble a beast made its obvious corruption somehow more revolting. Scales like cracked yellow fingernails covered its body in place of fur, though patches of them had fallen out, revealing shrivelled grey chicken-skin beneath, while a thick mane of matted dreadlocks drooped around its head like a fringed hood, and its wide, inverted bat mouth was choked with dangling, suckered tentacles that made it look like it was half-way through eating a squid.

At first Ulrika thought that the bat head and wings were mutations, but as it landed beside von Messinghof, she saw that they had been stitched on to the griffon with thick cord, and that the joins were seeping black ichor. The smell of the beast close up made Ulrika’s eyes burn. It stank like a sewer full of dead snakes, and the dead, empty eyes that looked out at her from under its dripping locks sent a shiver down her spine.

The general patted the monster’s scale-armoured shoulder, then pulled himself up into a complicated saddle that was perched upon its neck so that it wouldn’t interfere with the movement of its wings. He held down a hand to Ulrika. She hesitated.

‘Come,’ said von Messinghof. ‘It won’t hurt you.’

‘I am more concerned that it might fall apart.’

The general laughed, a rich rolling sound. ‘You needn’t fear for that. My necromancy is strong. It is not as broken as it looks.’

Ulrika was still less than confident, but took his hand and let him pull her up behind him.

‘Hold tight,’ he said, then spurred the beast in the neck. It bunched itself under them, then bounded to the roof end and sprang into the air, beating its wings in powerful sweeps.

Ulrika’s stomach plunged into her guts as the roof edge vanished and the ground dropped away below them. She had flown before, upon Malakai Makaisson’s airship, but this was an entirely different experience. There she had been encased in an iron and brass gondola, and had felt strangely disconnected from the distant ground sweeping by below its portholes, almost as if it had been a painting of the landscape. Here, with the rain lashing her face, and the muscles of the undead bat-griffon-thing straining and flexing beneath her, and nothing to keep her from falling but her arms around von Messinghof’s waist, there was no disconnection at all. She was surrounded by the world, naked to it, and unnervingly aware of how high up and how fragile she was.

It was terrifying, and at the same time as exhilarating as anything she had ever done. She had thought that nothing in the world could compare with the joy and freedom of riding a horse at full gallop, but this might beat it. The beast could swoop and bank, rise and fall, cross any terrain at dizzying speeds. No wall could block its way. No river could slow it down. With a steed like this Ulrika might go anywhere – across the seas, to the tops of the mountains, behind enemy lines, to Praag and Altdorf and every place she had ever wanted to go.

She looked down again, and saw the walls of Nuln passing beneath them, as well as the soldiers and cannons, wet and gleaming under the torches, and a prickle of unease disturbed her rain-whipped excitement.

‘Won’t we be seen?’ she asked.

Von Messinghof smiled slyly over his shoulder. ‘No one sees what I do not wish them to see. I was chosen to lead this army because I know how to hide things. I can hide my face, my spies, my true nature, a thousand men in the heart of the enemy’s lands. Hiding a winged beast and its riders is not so difficult. They won’t even hear us.’

And with that he turned the beast and sent it into a dive, so that it swooped over the heads of the soldiers on the walls. They didn’t look up, even when the wind of its passage ruffled their hair, and von Messinghof spurred away again, laughing, towards the endless dark line of the Stirwood, far to the north beyond the pale patchwork of Nuln’s cultivated fields.

Later, after they had flown over the dense steaming carpet of the forest for so long that Ulrika could not see its edges in any direction, von Messinghof pulled on the reins of the winged horror and it began to descend in slow spirals. There was no break or clearing that Ulrika could see, and she feared they were going to crash into the tops of the trees, but as they dropped closer to them, she saw that some were like the ghosts of trees, gauzy mirages through which she could just make out rows of tents and campfires.

Ulrika’s head spun as they dropped through the illusory canopy, then all became clear, and she could see and hear and smell the camp below them, a small city of tents, exercise grounds, corrals, smithies, kitchens and wagons that filled the hidden clearing and extended under the trees on all sides. Her chest tightened with emotion as the sights and smells overwhelmed her – the steady clang of the blacksmith’s hammer, the cosy stink of horse and hay and piss, the sight of soldiers hunched around their fires in the rain, cleaning their tack and weapons. After so long in Lahmian society, where all was perfumes and velvets and stuffy parlour air, this was paradise. She had grown up in camps like these, following her father on long patrols to Black Blood Pass or into the Troll Country to put down raiding marauders. She had slept in such tents, and woken to the bugle and the call to action. She had eaten by such fires, and shared jokes with such men. This was home to her, and she nearly wept to know that she was returning to it.

A handful of men came out to meet them as von Messinghof set the winged beast down in the exercise ground and swung down out of the saddle. He offered her a hand down, but she disdained it, and hopped to the ground on her own. She knew how to dismount, no matter what the steed.

‘Welcome back, lord,’ said an old man in the sober robes of a steward – and he was a man indeed, for Ulrika heard his heart. ‘I am pleased to see you safely–’

A leather-clad blond vampire with hideous scars on his face stepped in front of the man, cutting him off. ‘More Lahmian patrols, lord count,’ he said. ‘And they have a crone with them that can see through your shadows.’

‘You should not have stayed so long away,’ intoned a wraith-thin figure in a hooded white robe who hunched under an umbrella. Though Ulrika couldn’t see its face, it had no heart-fire. A vampire, then, though its voice gave no clue as to its sex. ‘Things here require your urgent attention. Kodrescu is threatening–’

‘Lord,’ said another vampire, this one tall and thin and imperious, with a fall of silver hair lank in the rain. ‘The honour you give Kodrescu should be mine. I am loyal where he is wilful.’

A heavy-browed human sergeant in the breastplate and boots of a lancer stepped forwards with a dented sallet helmet under his arm. ‘Lord, that feed y’brought from Nuln was rotten through. If y’don’t find us some decent fodder my horses are gonna–’

Von Messinghof stopped them all with a raised hand, then turned his back on them to speak to Ulrika. ‘Boyarina, forgive these clods their discourtesy. An army at war has little time for politesse, but I will make time.’ He bowed to her. ‘Welcome to my camp. It is an honour to have you here. May I introduce my advisor, Emmanus.’

The white-hooded figure gave Ulrika a dismissive nod, and looked about to speak again, but von Messinghof turned to the silver-haired vampire. ‘Lord Lassarian, one of my ablest generals.’

The general gave Ulrika an appraising look as she inclined her head, and von Messinghof moved on to the dignified older man and the scarred blond vampire.

‘And these are Blutegel, my steward, and Rukke, my… my captain of the guard.’

The steward bowed politely, while Rukke just glared at Ulrika with undisguised impatience.

‘Gentlemen,’ von Messinghof concluded, indicating Ulrika with a sweep of his hand. She noticed that he had neglected to introduce the human lance sergeant. ‘May I introduce Ulrika Magdova Straghov, late of Kislev and the cloisters of Lahmia, at last restored to her rightful heritage, a daughter of Sylvania.’

Ulrika felt their eyes upon her, weighing her, as they bowed again and muttered curt welcomes. She bristled under the cold scrutiny, but tried not to show her discomfort. It would be seen as weakness. She bowed in return, stiff and precise.

‘Now,’ said Von Messinghof, turning back to her. ‘If you wish to accompany me, we will discover how best to use your talents. Or if you would rather rest, I will have quarters found for you.’

Ulrika bowed again. She could not admit weariness either. She must be perfect from the start. ‘Thank you, my lord. I will come with you.’

‘This way, then.’

Von Messinghof turned towards the north edge of the clearing with his cloud of petitioners trailing after him, and started for a gap between two massive oaks. The gap had been fitted with an arched gate of twisting wrought iron, like the entrance to a Garden of Morr. Spearmen in grey and black livery flanked it, and grey banners hung from the branches above. Upon each was a simple insignia – a pair of red daggers crossed over a crenellated tower.

The spearmen hauled open the gates and von Messinghof strode through with Ulrika at his side. The older man and the vampires followed them through, but the spearmen crossed their weapons in front of the grizzled lance sergeant and would not let him pass.

‘We’ll be no good to you on dead horses, my lord,’ he called as von Messinghof walked on.

Von Messinghof ignored him and continued down a narrow corridor of overarching trees that hid the sky until they entered another open space. Ulrika stared as she stepped into it, for she had never seen the like. It too was a camp, but not like any she had ever been in before – certainly not like the honest, human bivouac in the clearing behind her. In the space of twenty paces she had entered another world.

Though trees had been removed to make a spacious glade, it was not open to the sky. Enough remained so that their branches still closed overhead, and to further ensure than no light reached the ground, an overlapping mosaic of blood-red draperies had been stretched between them, making a multilayered roof, on which the rain boomed like surf. Red-flamed iron lanterns hung on long chains from the branches, and their pulsing flicker beating against the roof silks made Ulrika feel like she was inside a giant heart.

Under this crimson canopy were a number of elaborate tents, each fashioned like a knight’s pavilion in the grandest chivalric style, with high, conical peaks and decorative trim and heraldic banners upon pikes stuck into the ground beside their curtained entrances. But where the tents of chivalry were every colour of the rainbow, here they were all red or rust, with trim of gold or black or violet. Suits of black filigreed plate were displayed under their banners, and finely wrought furniture of ebony and ormolu were arranged before them – chairs, tables and weird constructions of gears and chains and shackles that Ulrika didn’t care to guess the use of.

As strange as the clearing was, however, Ulrika found its occupants stranger. She saw a knight as tall and fine-boned as an elf, but with cold white skin and the white-blue eyes of a snow-wolf. A human boy, beautiful as a girl, combed the vampire’s blood-red hair as he lounged in a chair, while another boy manicured his nails, and a third polished his red lacquered armour. A female vampire, beautiful and dark, but with the ears of a bat, fed upon a half-conscious man who was slumped in her arms. Her servants were carrying away another, bled white and apparently dead. Three male vampires in rich robes stood around a young girl who had been hung upside down from a branch with a catheter inserted in her artery. They unpinched the tube and filled wine glasses with her blood, drinking as they talked. A far corner held an iron cage, filled with more young men and women, all naked and terrified.

Ulrika swallowed. ‘Is this why you don’t let in your human troops?’

‘Aye,’ said von Messinghof. ‘Even among the most loyal, few care to see us at our leisure. Do you find it shocking?’

‘It… it is not what I am used to.’

He smiled. ‘You will get used to it. It takes some time to accept that you can do exactly as you please. Here. This is mine.’

He stepped to a large grey tent with black trim and held open the curtain. Ulrika ducked through and he followed, with Blutegel the steward, and the two vampires behind. The interior was not as lush or unsettling as Ulrika expected. There was no inlaid furniture or crystal chandeliers or tapestry hangings, nor were there any children in cages or strangely constructed beds. To her relief the tent looked like a soldier’s tent, with a plain desk and camp chairs, weapon and armour racks, a wardrobe and a shelf full of books and papers to one side, and a map pinned to a large table in the middle. The only nod to von Messinghof’s true nature was the sturdy oak coffin that Ulrika could see through a door to a second room behind the first. For a brief second she thought she saw movement back there, but then a closer motion drew her eyes.

A vampire knight was rising from a chair by the map table. He was taller than von Messinghof, and more powerfully built, with a proud, cruel face and eyes like flame-lit onyx. He was dressed in blackened steel armour, as simple and perfect as a knife blade, and wore a mantled cape of red and white that draped to the ground. A sword with a red jewel for a pommel hung at his side, and even sheathed, the thing had the presence of a wild animal stalking loose in the tent.

‘Lord count,’ said the knight in a cold, controlled voice. ‘Your absence once again delays my going.’

Von Messinghof crossed to his wardrobe and took off his cloak and swordbelt without looking at the knight. ‘Nonsense, Kodrescu. My absence should not have kept you. My orders were clear.’

‘Indeed,’ said the knight. ‘But they were wrong.’

The others tensed, and Von Messinghof turned, fixing Kodrescu with a hard stare. ‘Wrong?’

The knight drew himself up. ‘I am your best commander, the greatest blade in your army, and you have me skulking through the woods to attack a monastery and a town of peasants to raise their dead? We have no need of more troops, lord general. We have no need of further delay. Let me strike Karl Franz’s train with four hundred Blood Knights and challenge him to single combat. Your goal will be accomplished and you will be able to start the invasion in earnest.’

Von Messinghof smiled thinly. ‘You have no shortage of bravery, Kodrescu, I give you that. And if you were to succeed, then the ground would indeed be prepared, but if you were to fail–’

‘I will not fail!’ barked the knight.

‘If you were to fail,’ said von Messinghof, patiently, ‘then all would be lost. The alarm would be raised and the borders closed against our main force. We must only strike when the outcome is certain, and we will make it certain by gradually weakening the Emperor’s forces and adding to our own while we wait for him to walk into our trap.’

He crossed to the large map on the table and looked down at it. Chess pieces were set upon it at various places. He pointed to the white king, which stood on the river road midway between Altdorf and Nuln. ‘Karl Franz is here with his Reiksguard and many other troops. He stops the night at every noble house along the way, to assure them of the stability of his rule and to take a tithe of their men to add to his army.’ He shrugged. ‘State troops and household knights don’t concern me, but–’ He swept his finger south along the river to where a white knight stood in the woods. ‘This is the Monastery of the Black Rose, a chapterhouse for the training of the Black Guard of Morr. It is imperative that they not be allowed to join Karl Franz’s–’

‘I know all this,’ snapped Kodrescu.

‘Do you?’ asked von Messinghof. ‘And yet you believe that I was wrong to order you to destroy them and raise their dead and bring them back to me?’

‘My way is better,’ said the knight.

The others in the room tensed again, but von Messinghof showed no anger. He only smiled. ‘Swifter, yes. Braver too, and with more opportunities for glory, but I am not after glory. I am after victory. If you do not share this goal with me, then I will accept your resignation here and now and you may go your way. But if you do want victory for our kind, then you will accept my authority and follow my orders to the letter. Am I clear, general?’

Kodrescu raised his chin, defiant, and held the count’s eye, then bowed. ‘Very clear, lord count. I will follow your orders – to the letter.’

And with that he turned on his heel and strode out of the tent. Von Messinghof stared after him, his face set and grim, until Lassarian, the silver-haired knight, stepped forwards.

‘You see, lord? Let me go in his place.’

‘He defies you to your face,’ said the advisor, Emmanus, from somewhere within his white robes. ‘He must be punished.’

‘And have him take his troops with him?’ asked von Messinghof. ‘No. Kodrescu may complain, but he would never disobey a direct order. His honour would not allow it.’ He turned to Lassarian. ‘I’m sorry, my lord. You are better used here. The camp needs your steady hand while I play at fox and hounds in Nuln.’

Lassarian bowed, not pleased, but resigned. ‘Very well, lord count. Then, by your leave?’

Von Messinghof dismissed him with a salute, then turned to the others as he left. ‘Forgive me, gentlemen. Your questions?’

The old steward bowed. ‘A list of concerns from the human troops, lord, but–’

‘More Lahmians,’ said Rukke, the scarred vampire, once again cutting the old man off. Ulrika saw the steward twitch with some emotion at the interruption, then smooth it over with a servant’s practiced calm. She was surprised that the emotion had not been anger, but something closer to pain.

‘They’re sniffing about the perimeter again,’ Rukke continued. ‘An old crone with strong witch sight and her protectors. They’ve found the wards and are trying to slip through undetected.’

The general nodded. ‘Let them. We will send a friend to welcome them.’ He turned to Ulrika. ‘I believe you when you say you despise your sisters, but it is one thing to hate. It is another to act on that hate. Go with Rukke and kill these Lahmians. I will speak to you again when you return.’

Ulrika stiffened. ‘You are testing me?’

Von Messinghof smiled as he turned to the white-robed vampire. ‘Think of it more as an initiation.’

‘He already has a lover,’ said Rukke as he and Ulrika moved through the dense, dripping woods.

‘Who does?’

‘Count von Messinghof. He won’t fall for you.’

Ulrika sneered. ‘You think that is why I am here? I came to fight. I came for vengeance.’

Rukke sneered in return. ‘A Lahmian who fights? I haven’t seen one yet.’

‘I am as much von Carstein as Lahmian. And I was a warrior before I was either.’

Rukke snorted. ‘We will see.’

They had headed south out of the Sylvanian camp at the same time as General Kodrescu and his company of vampire knights and human lancers had ridden north. The lance sergeant who had complained of bad fodder was one of them. Ulrika had looked after them enviously as she had followed Rukke. Kodrescu might be a pompous ass, but he was leading cavalry to battle, and fighting on horseback was her first and greatest love. Once she had proven herself to von Messinghof, then she would ride.

If Rukke was to be the one to grade her initiation, however, she wasn’t sure how she would fare. He didn’t seem to like her much. Despite the fact that she moved as swiftly as he, and as silently, he belittled her abilities and seemed to resent her presence. Was he jealous? Why should he be?

‘Are you his lover, then?’

He turned, snarling. ‘I am his son! He is my father in darkness!’

Ulrika shrugged. ‘The two things aren’t mutually exclusive.’

‘It is nothing like that,’ he said, and started through the trees again. ‘You know nothing.’

Ulrika followed, frowning. If it wasn’t that, it was certainly something. She could not imagine a cautious, far-thinking leader like von Messinghof deliberately giving the dark kiss to so unprepossessing a youth. Even without the scars that puckered the left side of his face and neck he would not have been handsome. He did not seem particularly bright, and couldn’t have much potential as a leader or his father would have given him a more prestigious position. Perhaps he had hidden depths.

A short while later, Rukke held up a hand and slowed to a crawl, sinking into shadow so thoroughly that even with her unnatural sight Ulrika had a hard time seeing him. The boy had inherited one thing from his father at least.

She crept after him as best she could until he neared a thicket of underbrush. She heard heartbeats within it and her hand edged to her rapier, then a choking death reek invaded her nose and she drew her weapon. Ghouls. She would know that rancid smell anywhere.

‘Put it away, fool! whispered Rukke. ‘You forget what side you’re on!’

A misshapen, snaggle-toothed head rose from the brush and looked at them.

Rukke hunched to it. ‘Where?’ he asked.

The ghoul pointed west, grunting, and Rukke continued on without giving it a second glance. Ulrika edged past it, grimacing with revulsion. It was hard to allow the thing to live. Ghouls had nearly killed Templar Holmann. They had nearly killed her. They were subhuman cannibals that should be slaughtered on sight.

She shuddered as the strangeness of her situation became suddenly overwhelming. What had she done? How had she come to be on the side of such horrors? Because the other side was just as horrible, her rage answered. Her erstwhile sisters might hide their vileness behind beautiful faces, but they were no better. Indeed they were worse. A ghoul was too stupid to betray anyone. Lahmians were more duplicitous by far.

After a few more moments of stealthy creeping, Rukke held up his hand again, then melted into the darkness between two close-set oaks. Ulrika crouched behind him, looking over his shoulder through gap between of their trunks. Twenty paces on, three Lahmians stood in the rain, waiting behind a fourth, a hunched hag in grey robes who stood with arms outstretched and fingers probing like a blind woman feeling along a wall for a door, though there was nothing before her but air.

No. There was something, though Ulrika, with her practically useless witch sight, could barely see it – a faint shimmer, barely distinguishable from the downpour, which wound through the forest like a filmy curtain hung among the trees.

The other three Lahmians waited with obvious impatience as the hag mumbled and moved her hands across the curtain. Two of them Ulrika did not know – a pair of wiry bladeswomen in the boot-tucked pantaloons and embroidered tunics of Ungol nomads, one with a string of severed ears around her neck and hooked knives in her belt, the other with a tight top-knot and a cruelly curved tulwar in her hand. The third, however, Ulrika remembered from the meeting in the Lahmians’ council chamber. She was impossible to forget – the towering, ogre-fat vampiress who had sat naked but for the smears of blood she had daubed on her white skin, and who had argued that leadership should be decided with trial by combat. Yusila, she had been called.

Ulrika swallowed. So much for an easy initiation.

chapter fourteen

SISTER AGAINST SISTER

Yusila was again naked, but not weaponless this time. Slung across her back on a cord was a tall spear. No, not a spear, but a sharp-pointed, fire-hardened wooden staff – a stake! Ulrika looked to the Ungol women. Bandoleers of stakes crossed their breasts. Ulrika shuddered. It was strange to see vampires outfitted like vampire hunters, but how else did one go to war against one’s own kind?

‘Will they see us through the ward?’ she whispered.

‘See and hear,’ said Rukke. ‘It blinds only witch sight.’

‘But once they are through it?’

‘The seeress will sense us, aye.’

And she will have magic, thought Ulrika. Despite Yusila’s intimidating size, the most dangerous of them was the hag, who could cripple Ulrika at a distance while she fought the others. She had to be dealt with first, but how? Ulrika doubted she could charge quickly enough to outrace her incantations, and if she hid in ambush, the hag would detect her.

‘Summon your ghouls,’ she said.

Rukke gave her a look. ‘You are to kill the Lahmians.’

‘And if I die? Are you enough to finish them?’ Ulrika looked behind her. ‘Or will your father step out from the shadows to catch us if we fall?’

Rukke glanced back as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. ‘No one watches,’ he said, though he sounded suddenly unsure.

‘Then summon the ghouls,’ said Ulrika. ‘Have them attack the seeress as soon as she parts the ward. They will be my distraction.’

Rukke looked like he was going to refuse again, then nodded and closed his eyes, murmuring under his breath. Ulrika didn’t wait for the result. She extended her claws and climbed the tree beside her, keeping its wet trunk between her and the Lahmians, then made her way branch to branch and tree to tree to a spot just inside the ward and just above where the hag was working to pierce it.

The magics of the barrier must have been as complex as they were powerful, for her brow was furrowed with concentration and her arms shook as she worked, scribing symbols in the air with one hand and probing hesitantly forwards with the other like someone feeling underwater for a sharp knife. In the corners of her eyes Ulrika could see nearly invisible churnings in the air around her, and a thinning of the membrane in front of her.

Then, like a hole poked in a stretched skin, an opening expanded in the shimmer and the Lahmian’s shoulders relaxed, though she held her hands firmly out before her.

‘It is open,’ she said. ‘Go through.’

The Ungols crept through like hunting cats, eyes every-where, and Yusila followed. It was the first time Ulrika had seen the big woman walk, and she was unhappy to see that for all her bulk, she strode with the powerful grace of a bear.

The hag was the last through, and as soon as she was within the barrier she paused, turning her head this way and that, then looked up.

‘Wait,’ she said.

Ulrika tensed as the Lahmians turned and the hag’s eyes roamed the branches, searching for her. Where were the ghouls? That jealous fool Rukke was leaving her to die! But just as the Lahmian found Ulrika through the leaves, a high shrieking echoed through the forest and a dozen hunched white figures bounded from the undergrowth on all sides.

Yusila and the Ungol women spun, raising their weapons, and the seeress flinched back. Now was the time! As the seeress raised her hands to blast the ghouls, Ulrika dropped down on her, driving her to the ground with her knees. Eyes bright with power and as deep as time glared up at Ulrika from the hag’s ancient face, nearly paralysing her, but her rapier was already slicing down, and instinct carried it through. It severed the hag’s neck like parchment and dry sticks, and Ulrika wasn’t crouching on an old woman’s body any more, but a pile of ash and bones.

‘Mistress Yaga!’ cried the Ungol with the knives.

She sprang at Ulrika, slashing, but a ghoul caught her leg and she stumbled into Ulrika’s thrust. The rapier sank deep. Ulrika twisted it in her guts, then jerked it out and turned for the others.

Yusila and the Ungol with the top-knot were moving to encircle her, the bodies of the ghouls behind them – dead and dying. A few lay butchered by blade cuts, while those who had faced Yusila were torn limb from limb and scattered in all directions.

Top-Knot glared at Ulrika and pulled a stake from her bandoleer with her off hand, holding it like a main gauche. ‘You have killed my mother. I will send you to her so she can torture you for eternity.’

Ulrika curled her lip. ‘I mat tvoja konskaya podstilka, Mujika,’ she said – a traditional Ungol insult that suggested that her mother was overly fond of horses.

The woman snarled and started forwards, but Yusila waved her back.

‘You’re Countess Gabriella’s brat,’ she croaked as they circled. Ulrika noticed she had yet to take her spear off her back. It appeared she preferred to use her fists. ‘She who burnt Hermione’s pretty porcelain dolly.’

Ulrika tensed at that, but held back. She wouldn’t take the bait.

‘I should bring you back alive.’ Yusila laughed, her pendulous belly and breasts quivering. ‘So she can have her way with you. You would be decades dying.’

‘And you would be decades in the killing,’ Ulrika sneered, turning again to keep them in front of her. ‘It would take a year just to cut through the fat–’

Arms wrapped around her legs and she stumbled. The gutted Ungol woman was still alive, and had caught at her as she stepped past.

Ulrika cursed and slashed down, lopping the woman’s left arm off at the elbow with a butcher-shop chunk. It was the distraction Yusila and Top-Knot had been waiting for. They charged in as the wounded Ungol screeched and clutched her gouting stump. Ulrika parried Top-Knot’s wooden stake, but her tulwar sliced her shoulder, and Yusila’s cannon ball fist struck her head a glancing blow.

Ulrika wobbled away, slashing blindly behind her as the world spun like a carnival ride. An angry roar and the sting of impact told her she had struck meat. She turned, blinking fog from her eyes, and saw she had opened a wide cut in Yusila’s bulging back flesh. Frighteningly, the wound was already puckering shut, leaving only a swath of dripping blood behind. Ulrika had never seen a Lahmian heal so quickly.

Yusila grinned, showing filed teeth like a ghoul. ‘No, girl. It won’t take a year to cut through me, just the rest of your life.’

She lumbered forwards again with Top-Knot spreading out to her left and her one-armed sister rising and edging to the right. The wounded Ungol looked pale, but the blood had stopped pouring from her stump, and she held a wooden stake steady in her remaining hand. Ulrika’s chest tightened. She couldn’t fight them all, but she didn’t want to call for help either. Rukke would tell von Messinghof she had failed. She couldn’t have that. She edged away and found her back against a tree.

‘I can smell your fear, girl,’ said Yusila.

‘And I can smell your fundament,’ spat Ulrika.

Ulrika put her dagger between her teeth and scrabbled up the trunk of the tree one-handed, pulling herself up onto a rain-slick branch and looking back. Top-Knot was following, vanishing into the branches of a tree on her right, while Yusila was hoisting One-Arm into another on her left. Immediately, they converged on her, springing from branch to branch like cats, One-Arm unnervingly surefooted despite her wound. She was still the weakest, however, and Ulrika gripped her dagger again, then ran along a twisting branch towards her, determined to finish her so she could focus on the others.

One-Arm crouched at a place where the branch split, waiting. Ulrika stamped as hard as she could, making the branch bounce, then lunged. Off-balance, One-Arm twisted to avoid the thrust, and fell into the split, dropping her stake to cling for dear life.

Ulrika raised her rapier to finish her, but the branch bobbed under her feet and she turned to see Top-Knot skimming along it, tulwar cocked back to slash. Ulrika skipped back and they clashed steel to steel over the dangling Ungol’s head, the branch dipping and swaying like a ship’s deck under their shifting feet.

‘That’s it!’ howled Yusila from the ground. ‘Knock her down so I can drink her dry!’

After the first pass, however, Ulrika knew she could beat the Ungol. Swift and deadly as she was, it was clear she was used to fighting from horseback. She had little experience facing rapier and dagger, and did not know how to guard against the off-hand stab. Of course, she did have one advantage. Her wounded sister had wedged herself between the two branches, and was swiping at Ulrika’s ankles every time she stamped by.

Ulrika kicked One-Arm’s head in passing, then lunged at Top-Knot, blocking her stake and tulwar before dipping her rapier and impaling the Ungol’s thigh. Her opponent fell back, hissing and swiping wildly, but Ulrika did not advance. Instead she spun and slashed down as One-Arm clawed for her foot.

The Ungol’s head fell to the ground as Ulrika parted it from her shoulders. The rest of her, however, remained wedged between the branches, twitching, as blood pumped from the stump of her neck.

Top-Knot shrieked with rage and bounded in again, slashing madly, and Ulrika could not stand before her fury. She backpedalled, then kicked off another branch and leapt up to a third. The Ungol followed behind, nimble as a cat, and they danced and ducked from branch to slippery branch, swiping and stabbing and sending chunks of bark spinning away as their steel struck wood instead of flesh.

Ulrika grinned with excitement. Here was a fight she could never have had alive. Her unnatural strength and agility let her spring and dodge with a grace no human could ever achieve – and she had an opponent to match her leap for leap and trick for trick, their blades flashing like steel lightning under the dark, wet canopy of the leaves. It was glorious.

The dream ended as something white blurred in the corner of Ulrika’s vision. She turned, and the limbless torso of a ghoul struck her full in the chest, knocking her off her branch and sending her bouncing down through the rest before she caught one amidships and folded over it like a dish-cloth. Her ribs bent almost to the snapping point at the impact, and her rapier flew from her hand to land beside Yusila, who guffawed up at her, a severed ghoul arm in one hand, ready to fling.

Ulrika groaned and fought to move, wanting to leap down and tear the grin from Yusila’s fat face, but she could hear Top-Knot hopping down towards her, branch to branch, and knew it would only be seconds before she stabbed her in the back.

Desperate, she struggled up off the branch, her arms shaking. Top-Knot landed beside her, stabbing with her stake. Ulrika let go and dropped towards the ground, then caught the branch again at the last second with her claws, and swung under and up, kicking out to smash her knees into the Ungol’s legs from behind. Top-Knot flailed and dropped her tulwar to catch another tree limb, but ended up stretched precariously between two, scrabbling to right herself against the slippery bark, as Ulrika pulled herself back onto her branch.

‘Drop, you fool!’ shouted Yusila.

Top-Knot dropped. Ulrika shot her hand out like a cobra and caught her by the collar as she fell. The weight was almost too much, but Ulrika braced and hauled her up, then plucked a stake from the Ungol’s bandoleer and stabbed her in the heart with it, pinning her to the branch.

Another hurled ghoul arm nearly knocked Ulrika off the branch as the impaled Ungol spasmed and gasped and shrivelled beside her. She caught herself and looked down. Yusila was bending to grab a dismembered leg.

Ulrika snatched another stake from Top-Knot’s bandoleer and sprang. The big woman spun, laughing, and batted Ulrika out of the air with the ghoul leg, sending her crashing into a tree trunk. Ulrika sagged to the base of the tree, groaning. The ribs she had bruised dropping onto the branch felt broken now, and her head rang like a bell.

The ground shook. Yusila was closing in, her bulk eclipsing the whole forest.

‘Your blood is strong, traitor,’ she said, reaching for Ulrika. ‘I want it for my own.’

Ulrika tried to roll away, but Yusila tore her stake from her hands and raised her to her gaping mouth. Ulrika dug her heels into Yusila’s belly, trying to hold herself away, but the behemoth’s strength was inexorable and her skin slick with rain.

‘Now, now, girl,’ she said. ‘It’ll all be over in a–’

Ulrika kicked her in the teeth, snapping a fang, and Yusila flung her away.

‘Little bitch!’ she roared, stomping towards where Ulrika had landed in a heap. ‘I would have done it gently. Now I’ll tear your arms off first.’

Ulrika dived for her rapier, lying a few yards away, and came up on guard, her legs wobbling.

Yusila laughed and came on. ‘You think that will serve you any better this time?’

Ulrika dodged left, slashing at Yusila’s arms as they reached for her, then tried to dart behind her back, where her long wooden spear still hung, but she was too hurt, and Yusila too fast. The behemoth turned with her, the wounds in her arms already healing.

She chuckled. ‘You are broken, traitor, and I am whole. My wounds heal. Yours do not–’

Ulrika feinted right, then darted straight in, thrusting high. Yusila swiped at the rapier, but in point-work at least, Ulrika was faster. She raised the blade over Yusila’s hands and jammed it between her fat lips.

Yusila roared as the blade burst from the back of her neck, and staggered away from Ulrika, reaching up to try to pull out the rapier.

Ulrika stumbled behind her and tore her wooden spear from her back. Yusila whipped around, but too late. Ulrika sprang and thrust. The fire-hardened point sank into Yusila’s belly and she screamed and stiffened. Ulrika leaned on the spear, driving it in deeper, then rode Yusila down as she toppled onto her back and lay gasping and transfixed on the forest floor.

The wood had not pierced Yusila’s heart, and so she still lived, but as Ulrika knew from experience, the pain would be paralysing. She rolled off Yusila’s bloated belly and stepped to her head, then wrenched her rapier from her mouth. Yusila’s wounds did not seem to be healing now, and a gush of blood erupted from her mouth.

Ulrika raised her sword high. ‘It will take the rest of your life for me to cut through your neck.’

‘You can’t do this,’ gargled Yusila as rain pelted her face. ‘I can’t die. I am Yusila the Immortal! I have lived for a thousand years! I–’

‘A thousand years too long,’ said Ulrika, and chopped down with her rapier.

It would have been fitting and dramatic if she had severed Yusila’s neck in one blow after such a statement, but it took another three strikes before the Lahmian’s head separated from her heavy shoulders and rolled so that her blind eyes stared up past Ulrika into the trees.

Ulrika sagged to her knees in the muddy mulch as a thousand years caught up with Yusila’s headless corpse and it began to collapse into gelid decay. She felt nearly as battered as when she had fought Murnau, but at least it was over and she had not died or called for help. She could hold her head high when she returned to–

A movement in the trees to her right brought her head up. Was it Rukke? No. He was to the left. Then who? Another glimpse as the figure passed between two trees revealed a woman’s shape – and no heart-fire. Another Lahmian! The initiation wasn’t over.

Ulrika pushed herself up, groaning, then ran after her, as silent as she could. She was not silent enough, however, for as she closed, she heard the woman curse and pick up speed. Ulrika’s blood, already roused by slaughter, coursed at the sounds of flight. She snarled and surged ahead, darting around trees and bounding over fallen logs.

The woman stumbled and Ulrika closed the distance, then sprang and hit her between the shoulder blades. They went down in a flooded ditch and Ulrika flipped her over, pinning her arms beneath her knees and clamping her off hand around the woman’s throat as she raised her rapier.

‘Sorry, sister,’ she said. ‘You will not return to your–’

Ulrika froze as she recognised the face that snarled up at her. Though the hair was loose, and years had fallen from her fine-boned face, there was no mistaking the cold, haughty eyes. She had her hands around the neck of Lady Hermione’s treacherous housekeeper, Otilia Krohner, the woman who had betrayed Hermione, Gabriella and Famke to the murderous Murnau, as well as Meinhart Schenk and his witch hunters.

chapter fifteen

BLOOD RELATIONS

‘Turncoat shrew!’ hissed Ulrika, crushing Otilia’s neck. ‘I’ve dreamed of this day. I’ll tear you to–’

The thud of running boots brought her head up. More Lahmians? She would have to kill Otilia quicker than she wanted to.

Rukke burst from the trees, eyes wide, as she raised her rapier again.

‘Stop, fool! That is von Messinghof’s lover!’

Ulrika blinked at him, then looked again at Otilia as the world changed shape behind her eyes. She had been so thrilled to finally have the traitorous housekeeper at her mercy that she hadn’t even thought to consider what she was doing here. Of course Otilia wouldn’t have been with the Lahmians. Not after she had betrayed them. And of course she would be allied with von Messinghof. He had been the secret hand behind Murnau’s attacks, and she had been his spy. Ulrika remembered now how Otilia had railed at Hermione for not giving her the dark kiss, and how she had said that her master had promised it to her in exchange for betraying the Lahmians. And he had fulfilled his promise, it seemed, for here she was, youthful, beautiful and without a beating heart.

Otilia reached up out of the muddy water and removed Ulrika’s hand from her throat with a fastidious finger and thumb. ‘You have turned the same coat as I, stray,’ she said. ‘Will you tear your own throat out as well?’

Ulrika pushed up off her and stood, rage and confusion making it hard to speak. ‘I… I did not turn against the Lahmians until they turned against me!’

Otilia rose and scraped mud from her skirts. ‘Nor did I. I would have been loyal unto death had Hermione dealt honestly with me, but she did not.’

‘It’s not the same!’

‘In what way?’ asked Otilia, as cool as she had always been.

Ulrika opened her mouth, but then paused, trying to think. Before she could form a response however, Rukke stepped in.

‘Leave off, both of you. We are to return to the count.’

It was a long, silent walk back to the camp.

‘And your conclusion?’ von Messinghof asked.

Otilia shot a cold glance at Ulrika. They were standing, dripping, before him in his tent with Rukke off to one side and Blutegel, the count’s servant, brushing a coat in the background. The count sat at his desk, a book closed over a placeholding finger. He was dressed in a dark robe and Cathay slippers.

‘It was not a conclusive test,’ said Otilia. ‘She faced no one she knew or cared for. Had she fought Countess Gabriella or Lady Hermione–’

‘How did she fight against these?’ asked von Messinghof.

Otilia looked reluctant, but spoke at last. ‘She fought without hesitation or mercy, and did not give up when the odds were against her.’

‘Sound tactics too,’ said Rukke, then grinned. ‘And she spotted Lady Otilia when she was trying to hide.’

‘I was not trying to hide. I–’

Von Messinghof held up his hand. ‘She has proven herself to my satisfaction. You may go. Both of you. I will speak to her alone.’

Rukke saluted and departed, but Otilia hesitated, apparently surprised to be dismissed. She set her jaw, then curtseyed and stalked out.

Von Messinghof smirked. ‘I anticipated some friction there. You were surprised to see her?’

‘I – I shouldn’t have been,’ said Ulrika, remaining at attention. ‘But, yes.’

‘She is loyal and cunning and brave in her fashion, and I will make her my queen. But she is not suited to every task. Nor are my other officers.’ He waved a hand to indicate the tents beyond his canvas walls. ‘Great warriors and necromancers, every one, and with the pride and intelligence that will make them strong leaders when our master has conquered the Empire. But they have been too long in dark castles and ancient crypts. They no longer think like the living. They can no longer walk among them. You can.’

‘I don’t want to walk among the living!’ said Ulrika. ‘I despise them.’

Von Messinghof nodded. ‘If you didn’t you would be useless to me. But that is what makes you unique. You hate them, yet you are still of them. Even Otilia, who is more recently turned than you, lived cloistered with the Lahmians for too long to be comfortable in the outside world. Not you. You can go where the others can’t, and talk to humans who would run screaming to the witch hunters if my older companions were to speak to them. At the same time, because you are of the blood, you will not be subject to the jealousies that blood-swains are so often subject to.’

‘I am glad to be thought more useful than a blood-besotted dog,’ said Ulrika, very stiff. ‘Thank you.’

The count chuckled. ‘I originally thought to have you return to the Lahmians, so that you might pass me your mistress’s secrets. You could have replaced the spy you exposed.’

Ulrika looked up. ‘Mistress Ludwina was caught?’

‘And killed,’ said von Messinghof. ‘Your letter did its work well. Fortunately, I was careful to tell her almost nothing, so they got little out of her before they poured molten silver down her throat.’

‘How do you know this? They wouldn’t have–’

‘Another spy. One of several.’ He shrugged. ‘And they will have to be enough, for you would no longer be any use to me there. The sisters would kill you if you tried to return. Instead you will be my spy in the world of the living.’

Ulrika stiffened. ‘Lord count,’ she said, keeping her voice calm with difficulty, ‘you offered me vengeance when I came to you, against men. You offered me battle. I do not care for this sort of work. I want to fight. I want to ride men down and set fire to their cities, not skulk among them and slit their throats one by one.’

Von Messinghof looked at her for a long moment, as if weighing a decision. ‘It occurs to me,’ he said at last, ‘that I have not told you the full scope of our plans.’

‘A Sylvanian named Stefan von Kohln told me you planned to found an empire,’ said Ulrika. ‘That you would conquer all the Old World.’

‘The Old World is but a beginning,’ said the count. ‘My master is not content to rule only the dominions of men. Once Sylvania supplants Karl Franz’s Empire, it will become a target, and we must therefore quash those who would strike it, and whose blood is useless to us – the asur, the druchii, the dwarfs, the greenskins, the hordes of Chaos. When the time comes, your sword will never rest. We will not stop until the whole world is ours.’

Ulrika thrilled at a vision of never-ending battle, but something else the count had said jarred her.

‘Your master,’ she said. ‘You have said that before. So, you are not the future Emperor?’

Von Messinghof laughed. ‘If I am lucky, I might be given a city or a province to rule. No, I am merely the herald for one greater than myself. I serve the strongest and most noble of the lords of night, Mannfred von Carstein.’

Ulrika blinked, thinking that he mocked her. She knew of Mannfred von Carstein. She had heard of his reign of terror before she died, and read more of it since. Mannfred was the von Carstein who had led his army of fiends against the Empire during the time of the civil wars and nearly conquered it. He had reached the walls of Altdorf and the flanks of Middenheim, and was only driven back when the feuding provinces had united against him.

‘But – but Mannfred is dead,’ she said. ‘He was defeated at Hel Fenn three hundred years ago. Even vampire historians agree on that.’

‘Oh yes,’ said von Messinghof, smiling like a satisfied cat. ‘Mannfred is dead. There is no doubt about that. But death is not so fixed a thing when one is a von Carstein. He sleeps beneath the earth, dreaming of his return, while we, his servants, strive to make his dreams reality. When the way is finally prepared, he will wake, and his army will be waiting for him.’

Ulrika stared. He was not mocking her. Mannfred von Carstein would rise again! For a moment, her human instincts overcame her, and she felt the urge to go warn someone, to tell the Empire to defend itself, to send word to Kislev to prepare for invasion from the south. The most ancient and evil of man’s enemies was returning from the grave to drown them all in an ocean of blood.

But then, as if suddenly seeing the trick in an optical illusion, her perspective flipped, and her bloodlust began to rise. Von Messinghof’s war was not just some mad scheme by a few ambitious Sylvanian counts. It wasn’t just a pack of fiends hiding in the woods north of Nuln. It was what Stefan von Kohln had promised – the utter domination of mankind, and she was to be a part of it! The most ancient and evil of mankind’s enemies was returning from the grave to drown them all in an ocean of blood, and Ulrika would be riding in his train! She would never stop killing. Mankind would never stop paying. Her vengeance would be glorious.

Von Messinghof smiled. ‘You see it now, yes? You see what is being offered to you?’

‘I see it,’ said Ulrika. ‘And it is more than I could have hoped for.’

‘I am pleased to hear it,’ said the count. ‘But there is much groundwork to be laid before the dream can be realised, and it may require you to skulk and slit throats and walk among men before you are allowed to fight. Are you willing? Are you willing to do whatever needs doing to bring about our victory?’

Ulrika paused, chagrined. She had been selfish, saying she only wanted battle. She had been acting as if von Messinghof’s war had been staged solely for her benefit.

She nodded. ‘I am willing.’

‘Very good,’ he said, his voice suddenly harder, ‘for I can have no disobedience. Nor will I argue my orders with you. If you are with me, then you are with me completely, and will follow me without question. If you are not, then you die here and now, for you are too dangerous to live.’

Ulrika looked up and found his eyes burning into her. She swallowed. The cold monster that he usually hid beneath a veneer of charm had revealed itself entirely. It was terrifying.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Will you be a spy if I say you are a spy? Will you be a soldier or scribe or wagon master if I command it? Will you dig ditches?’

It took an act of will to return that soulless gaze, but Ulrika did it. She would not show fear. ‘I am a soldier born,’ she said, ‘and will disobey no order once my pledge is given.’

‘And do you give it?’

‘I do, lord. I am yours to command.’

Von Messinghof broke eye contact and the mask fell back into place again. ‘Excellent. I promise you won’t regret it. This war will give us both what we desire. Now, we must discuss your first assignment.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Blutegel! Find Lady Otilia and ask her to return. She will have a role in this as well.’

The old steward emerged from the shadows and bowed, then stepped out of the tent.

Ulrika stifled a protest. She had just promised to obey von Messinghof in all things, but… ‘Ah, Otilia and I will be working together?’

The count raised an eyebrow. ‘For eternity,’ he said. ‘So it is wise that you grow accustomed to each other now.’

Ulrika clenched her jaw. She had no real reason to dislike Otilia. Indeed, their mutual hatred of the Lahmians should have made them friends, but she couldn’t help it. Well, she would have to. In any company, there was always someone one was at odds with. A good soldier ignored them and did her duty.

Otilia glided through the tent flap and stepped before von Messinghof as if Ulrika wasn’t there. ‘Yes, lord count?’

Ulrika ground her teeth. Being a good soldier was not going to be easy.

Von Messinghof beckoned them to the map table. ‘To keep spies from betraying us, I have told only my blooded officers where I plan to strike the Emperor.’ He pointed to a dot on the map that appeared to be roughly a day’s ride north of Nuln. ‘The manor of Lord von Arschel, where Karl Franz will spend his last night before riding into Nuln the next day. I intend to make it his last night on earth. But–’ He looked up at them, his face growing grave. ‘But what I tell you now I have told not even my officers.’

Ulrika swallowed. Did he really trust her so much? It didn’t seem smart.

‘It is possible,’ he continued, ‘that we may fail to defeat Karl Franz at Arschel, and he may make it to the safety of Nuln. We must therefore provide for this contingency.’ He moved his finger to Nuln. ‘There is a doctor there, Countess Emmanuelle’s personal physician, Doktor Gaebler. A man above suspicion. As you know – or perhaps you didn’t, boyarina,’ he said glancing at Ulrika, ‘we succeeded in infecting the Emperor with a wasting sickness in Altdorf. A pox.’

‘The Lahmians told me,’ said Ulrika. ‘Yes.’

‘It won’t kill him,’ continued von Messinghof. ‘We want him to die in battle, and we want the world to think it was Lahmia who killed him. Failing that, however, he must die regardless, and Doktor Gaebler will be our hidden blade.’

He smiled. ‘The Emperor’s physicians and magisters have been unable to cure the disease, but Herr Doktor Gaebler will know the remedy, and as he is Countess Emmanuelle’s personal physician, he will be allowed to see the Emperor, and when he does, he will poison him.’

Ulrika frowned. ‘So no one will know Lahmia killed Karl Franz after all?’

‘Oh, they will,’ said von Messinghof. ‘For it will soon be discovered that Herr Doktor was a Lahmian dupe.’ He shrugged. ‘It is not quite the death we want, but it will suffice if the other fails.’

‘And what is our part in this?’ asked Otilia.

Von Messinghof smirked. ‘Well, the good doctor is not a Lahmian dupe yet.’ He tapped the map again, this time over a dot labelled Legenfeld, up the River Aver to the east of Nuln. ‘Gaebler has a son, Dierck, who he loves dearly, a captain in the garrison that holds the Legenfeld bridge. We will therefore kidnap the boy and send his father a note in his hand, as well as a severed finger.’ He looked up at them. ‘But there is a difficulty. If the boy is reported missing, the Emperor’s guardians may suspect that someone is trying to influence Gaebler, and Herr Doktor would not be allowed to treat him.’

Ulrika frowned. ‘But how are we to kidnap the son and not have him be reported missing?’

‘He will be reported dead,’ said Otilia.

‘Very good, beloved,’ said von Messinghof. ‘You learn well. He will die in a duel while defending a lady’s honour, then burn in a fire.’

‘And I am the duellist?’ asked Ulrika.

‘And the arsonist,’ said von Messinghof.

Ulrika paused, shuddering as the image of Famke burning in the sun came unbidden to her mind. ‘I do not care for fire.’

The general gave her a level look. ‘Understandable, but I thought you would relish the chance to burn men.’

Ulrika’s skin prickled. That turned things around. She smiled, baring her teeth. ‘I would, general. Thank you.’

‘Your place is in the barracks of the Blood Knights,’ said Otilia, as she led Ulrika across the glade to a plain black tent tucked behind the others. ‘Until you can afford a tent of your own.’

‘Or take a lover who has one,’ said Ulrika.

Otilia gave her a snide once-over. ‘I doubt that option will be open to you, but – best of luck.’

They stopped at the barracks door and Ulrika turned to give Otilia a parting shot, but a curious scene caught her eye. To the left of the barracks, Rukke sat on a bench outside a small private tent, feeding from a bruised and bloodied female slave, while Blutegel stood at a respectful distance, hands folded together in distress.

‘You must ask him once more,’ the old steward was whispering. ‘Again he brings another in and she is already above you. But I know he will listen if you but ask. He is a good man–’

Rukke snarled with bloody lips. ‘I will not beg! And neither will you. He will honour his promise when he sees fit. Your mewling will only poison him against me.’

Blutegel drew himself up. ‘I have said nothing. It is not my place. But you – you are his–’

Rukke swiped at him and sent him flinching back. ‘You don’t tell me what to do! Not any more! Leave me be, you filthy swain!’

Blutegel bowed and withdrew, starting back towards von Messinghof’s tent, his face a mask of misery.

‘What is between Rukke and Blutegel and von Messinghof?’ Ulrika asked Otilia, still staring at Rukke. ‘Rukke says he is von Messinghof’s get, but…’

‘He is von Messinghof’s mistake,’ said Otilia, rolling her eyes. ‘A kind gesture gone bad. Rukke was born Blutegel’s son, and the count turned him out of pity, not love.’

‘Pity? For him?’

‘For Blutegel.’ Otilia led her to the other side of the barracks, out of earshot of Rukke. ‘Blutegel has been the count’s loyal servant for fifty years, and though von Messinghof has offered, he has never wanted immortality. His wife died young, and he believed that if he became a vampire, he would never be reunited with her in the afterlife.’

Ulrika raised an eyebrow. ‘He is a pious man, yet he serves a vampire?’

‘He worships Khaine, as did his wife. He believes he will fight beside her in eternal battle when he dies.’

Ulrika tried to imagine the dignified old man as a warrior of the Bloody-handed God and found it difficult, but looks could be deceiving, as she well knew.

‘Rukke, his son, would presumably have gone to the same glorious afterlife when he died,’ said Otilia, ‘except that he was wounded defending von Messinghof’s lands from northern marauders, and afterwards began to change. You saw the scars on his face?’

Ulrika nodded.

‘Legs like those of a spider began to grow from the left side of his head. Blutegel was certain Rukke would not be allowed into Khaine’s halls because of his corruption. Instead, he would be cast into the void.’

‘So, he asked von Messinghof to turn him, so he would never die?’ asked Ulrika. ‘Why would the count agree?’

‘As I said, pity. He valued Blutegel’s loyalty and service, and it seemed the old man might kill himself if Rukke was not saved, so he turned the boy, tore out his mutations, and promised Blutegel he would treat him as his own son.’ She shook her head. ‘That was the mistake.’

‘The count has not followed through?’

Otilia snorted. ‘Would you?’

Ulrika looked back at Rukke, who had pushed away his victim, and now lolled on his bench with blood trickling from his half-open mouth like drool.

‘Von Messinghof schooled him and gave him every opportunity,’ said Otilia, ‘but he remains the lump he was as a man. The count has given up and put him in charge of his ghouls, promising to advance him after his “apprenticeship”, but it has been ten years, and he is still with the ghouls.’

‘It’s a wonder Blutegel doesn’t hate the count.’

‘He blames the boy. He is always at him to improve himself, but Rukke won’t hear him. He says von Messinghof is his father now. His true father – no matter that he treats him like a half-wit stable boy.’ Otilia slid sneering eyes at Ulrika. ‘The count seems to have a fondness for strays.’

Ulrika grunted at the cut, then returned it. ‘Aye, he does, doesn’t he.’

Otilia sniffed and started away from her. ‘I didn’t come to him, sister. He came to me.’

Ulrika was going to retort that von Messinghof had only gone to her because he needed someone to spy on the Lahmians, but then paused. The same could be said for herself. She let it go.

Ulrika lay on her cot in the dark of the Blood Knight barracks as the sun rose outside, staring up at the black canopy that shrouded her and wondering if she had made the right decision.

She had been right to leave the Lahmians. Of that she was in no doubt. Though a small, weak part of her wanted to run to Gabriella and beg to be taken back, she knew she could no longer be a Lahmian. They thought it possible to live among humans, to feed on them from within, like parasites. Ulrika didn’t believe that any more. After what had happened to Famke, how could she?

But did she want to be a Sylvanian? She liked von Messinghof well enough. He seemed honest to the point of bluntness about his goals and his reasons for recruiting her, but the rest of them? Those she had seen so far had been pompous blowhards more concerned with their personal glory than the war they were fighting. She had encountered such men before, and seen campaigns collapse because of them. Worse, Otilia was here, and already sharpening her claws. Did she want to spend eternity exchanging barbs with a poisonous, backstabbing turncoat?

Perhaps it didn’t have to be an eternity. Ulrika’s situation had changed so much in the last two days, who was to say it wouldn’t change again? For now at least, this would serve. She wanted blood and vengeance, and von Messinghof was giving it to her. Tomorrow she would find this Gaebler and she would show the humans that they were right to fear her kind. They would bleed. They would die. And in Famke’s name they would burn.

chapter sixteen

UNBOUND

As Ulrika looked down from the shadowed balcony that rose above the lamp-lit tap room of the River Troll the next evening, she had to admit that, no matter how much she might despise her, Otilia was the woman for the job at hand. Ulrika certainly couldn’t have done it. She only hoped she could do her job half as well.

The River Troll was a sprawling inn situated at the east end of the Legenfeld bridge, where the main coach road from Averheim crossed the river as it continued on to Nuln. It was also not far from the barracks of the Averland state troops who guarded the bridge and the town. Consequently, it was a busy, boisterous place, filled with merchants, pilgrims, river men, soldiers, and the gamblers and harlots who preyed upon them all. It was also the place where Captain Dierck Gaebler and his fellow Averland officers liked to come and drink.

An hour ago, just after Gaebler and his mates had entered and had their first pints, Otilia had staggered through the front door, her fine dress torn, and mud and blood on her cheeks. She told the tavern a grim tale of jumping from the moving coach of an honourless rogue who had intended to strip her of her virtue, and begged that she be allowed to stay until the next stage arrived, though she had no money to pay for food or board.

Otilia was not young-looking enough that she could pretend maidenhood, but instead acted the unfortunate widow of a nobleman, driven from her rightful home by her dead husband’s cruel relatives and hounded by unsuitable suitors. This was just the thing. If she had played a harlot or a merchant’s wife, the officers might have flirted with her and paid her way, but they would not have thought to defend her honour. A noblewoman in distress, however, stirred their hearts and imaginations. Dreams of rich rewards and titles bestowed fortified the lust her torn dress and shapely curves inspired. They were ready to die for her honour – or so they pledged over their pints – and Ulrika was ready to kill them. All, that is, except Captain Dierck Gaebler.

At a table near where the officers drank to Otilia’s health, seven Sylvanian soldiers talked quietly among themselves. They were human household troops from von Messinghof’s castle, led by a captain named Ruger – who Ulrika remembered as the false wagon master who had come for Bull Klostermann’s hay – and again they were in disguise, this time as bargemen – all but one. One of their number was a corpse, and hidden under a big cloak, he wore the uniform of an Averland officer of spears – exactly the uniform that Captain Gaebler wore.

Ulrika nodded and stepped back from the rail. It was time. Gaebler was drunk enough, and so were his mates. She slipped down the back stairs and circled through the coach yard to the front door, then hesitated, a queasy feeling stealing over her. She didn’t like playing parts. She didn’t like deception. She liked honest battle. Well, the deception wouldn’t last long, and there would be fighting at the end of it, and fighting would make everything else go away. With a sigh, Ulrika tugged down the brim of her broad hat, pulled up an unseasonable wool muffler to hide her face, and pushed through the door.

Otilia looked up as Ulrika strode into the inn, then cowered back, clutching Gaebler’s arm.

‘It’s him!’ she gasped. ‘He has come for me!’

Gaebler and the other officers turned and followed her gaze. Ulrika stepped in front of them but looked at no one but Otilia. She held out an imperious hand.

‘Come, chattel,’ she said, as gruff as she could. ‘You will not escape me again.’

Otilia turned to the officers. ‘Please, sirs,’ she quavered. ‘Do not let him take me. He has whispered unspeakable things to me. Unspeakable!’

‘He won’t take you anywhere,’ said Gaebler. ‘Never you fear, my lady.’

Gaebler stepped before Ulrika with the others. Their hands were on their hilts.

‘Be off with you,’ said Gaebler. ‘The lady does not wish your company.’

‘The lady,’ rasped Ulrika, ‘is mine by right. I paid for her. I will have her.’

‘Not while I live,’ said Gaebler, and drew his rapier.

His companions followed suit, and Ulrika faced five blades. She drew her own.

‘As you wish.’

All around them people started crying out and backing away. Otilia shrank back in feigned fear. Ruger and his fellow ‘bargemen’ turned to watch – all but the dead one. The barman crouched behind the bar.

‘Now, gentlemen, please!’ he cried. ‘Take it outside, I beg you!’

‘Somebody call the watch!’ called a woman.

‘Somebody call the garrison!’ countered a man.

That Ulrika did not want. Ruger had assured her that the enlisted men did not drink at the River Troll. They preferred the cheaper Count of Solland on the other side of the bridge. If they came running to the aid of their officers, however, she would have her hands full. She had to finish this quickly.

She lunged and pinked Gaebler’s sword arm immediately, then skipped back as he staggered, hissing, and the other four officers hacked and stabbed at her, shouting curses. Ulrika smiled under her muffler. After fighting Yusila and the vampiric Ungols these men were painfully slow. It was like they moved through water. She could have killed the four of them in a matter of seconds, but that would have been too quick. No one must suspect she was anything but human – and she had some destruction to cause first as well.

She parried the sword of a grandly moustached young lieutenant, then ran him through and kicked him off her blade into a table with a lamp on it. His bleeding body knocked the lamp to the floor, shattering it and spreading fire.

An older captain swung a stool at her. She ducked it and turned the blade he thrust after it, then shouldered him into a third officer. They went down in a heap in the blaze, then rolled out of it, bellowing and on fire.

Ulrika slashed at the head of the fourth officer. He ducked and she chopped through the bracket that held another lamp to the pillar beside him. It crashed to the floorboards and there was another pool of flame.

‘Fire!’ shouted someone. ‘Get water!’

‘Out! Out to the street!’ called someone else.

Captain Gaebler charged Ulrika, his arm bleeding but his composure recovered. ‘Wrecker! You’ll die for this!’

Ulrika parried his thrust with ease and sent him careening into Ruger and his men. Under the guise of helping the captain to his feet, they held his arms and punched him in the back of the head with brass knuckles. He sagged, and Ulrika lunged and stabbed, but though her blade seemed to pass through him, she made sure she only slid it along his ribs, piercing his doublet, but not his side.

‘Sigmar, he’s killed him!’ shouted Ruger. ‘Revenge!’

They dragged Gaebler behind the table, leaving the cloaked corpse where it sat. Ulrika kicked it, knocking it sprawling as she leapt onto the table after them, but Gaebler’s three remaining friends got in front of her and defended their exit.

Ulrika glanced around as they came. The place was nearly empty now, and the two fires she had set were spreading nicely, consuming the straw that covered the floor and climbing the pillars to the rafters. Ruger and Otilia were doing their part by knocking over more lamps as they followed the fleeing patrons towards the doors. Good. The place would be beyond saving in a few moments. Now she could kill the captains.

They leapt up onto the table, slashing and hacking and trying to crowd her off. Ulrika slipped her rapier under a clumsy swipe and punctured the throat of the first, then cut down the second with a chop that broke his clavicle as he tripped on his friend’s falling body. The third threw himself at her, trying to tackle her to the ground, but she stepped back and kneed him in the face, shattering his cheekbone, then stabbed him through the back as he collapsed before her.

‘Fetch more buckets! Hurry!’

Ulrika spun. The barman was racing towards one of the fires with a slopping bucket and more people were running in from the stable yard, carrying pots and pans they had filled from the trough. Ulrika snarled. They came with water to save a building – a dirty pile of sticks and plaster – but they would burn a living, thinking woman? Humans were scum!

She sprang from the table at the barman and hacked his head from his shoulders before he reached the blaze. The water from his bucket missed its mark, but his head rolled into the flames as he crashed to the floor. The other water carriers screamed in dismay at this and fled as Ulrika ran at them, slashing and howling.

‘Burn, you savages!’ she shouted as they darted back out the doors. ‘Burn as you burned her!’

‘Quiet, fool!’

Ulrika turned. Otilia stood by the back door as Ruger’s men bundled the now cloaked and hooded Gaebler out into the yard.

‘That is not what the count told you to say!’

Ulrika collected herself with difficulty and glanced around. She and Otilia were alone now, but for the bodies of the dead and the dying, and the flames were roaring all around them. Ulrika could hear the creaking and groaning of weakening timbers. It was time to go.

Otilia pointed at the corpse Ruger had left behind, smouldering at the edge of one of the fires. ‘Take the cloak and let’s be off.’

With her red rage ebbing, Ulrika suddenly felt the furnace heat of the flames all around her and shrank from it. She didn’t want to go any closer to the fire, but the final piece had to be put in place. She edged around the blaze, then grabbed the heavy cloak and tugged it off the planted corpse. The dead man was of roughly the same height and build as Captain Gaebler, but his face – well, his face was gone. Otilia had taken the precaution of having Ruger burn it off beforehand, just in case the tavern fire did not do its job. Ulrika wrapped the cloak around her shoulders to shield herself from the flames, then ran through the burning door into the yard after Otilia.

The men and women who stood around the inn were too busy staring at the flames to pay any attention to them, but they played their parts anyway. Otilia ran to Ruger and his men, shrilling for them to protect her, and when Ulrika stalked after her, Ruger brandished a pair of flintlock pistols.

‘Stay back, murderer!’

Ulrika slowed as he aimed them, then sprinted for the back fence as he fired one over her head. As she leapt it and trotted for the rendezvous point, a coldness crept into her guts. The image of the barman’s body lying on the wooden floor while his head sizzled in the fire returned to her, and she found it hard to push it out.

She snarled and ran faster. Fool! How could she feel sorry for him? Would he have stayed his hand against Famke? Of course not. He was a savage like all the others. He deserved to die.

They rode back to von Messinghof’s camp as they had come, along narrow lanes and back ways, and avoiding towns and villages as much as possible. Captain Gaebler was bound and gagged and slung over the back of a pack horse, a blanket hiding him, and Ulrika and Otilia wore heavy cloaks that made them indistinguishable from Ruger’s rough troopers.

It was not a comfortable ride. The rain of the day before had been replaced by a thick, muggy heat, and Ulrika’s hunger had been enflamed in the frenzy of slaughter and burning at the inn. She began to scan the rutted lane they hurried along for a house or farm or lone traveller.

‘What are you sniffing after?’ asked Otilia after a while. ‘Are we followed?’

Ulrika shook her head. ‘I must feed.’

‘You can’t hunt here, fool,’ said Otilia. ‘We want no suspicions raised about Gaebler’s “death”. No tales of disappearances or chewed necks anywhere near that inn. There can be no connection.’ She turned and snapped her fingers. ‘Ruger. Stop and bare your neck.’

‘Aye, lady,’ said Ruger, reining up. The thought of being blooded was making the man shake with desire.

‘No,’ said Ulrika, revolted. When she had seen Ruger dealing with Klostermann he had looked as hard as nails. Now he was quivering like a virgin. It was disgusting. ‘Ride on. I do not drink from swains. I want prey.’

‘Then go hungry,’ said Otilia.

Ulrika grunted. ‘I shall.’

But after another hour she could stand it no more. The need was making her dizzy, and she kept looking at Ruger and his men and finding it hard to keep her fangs from extending. Finally, when she found she was bleeding because her claws had pierced her palms, she spurred her horse to the front of the line.

‘Ruger. Stop.’

The captain pulled up, licking his lips. ‘You wish my neck, lady?’

‘No, damn you,’ said Ulrika. ‘I want his.’

She pointed to Gaebler under his blanket.

‘Aye, lady.’

Ruger obediently began to get off his horse, but Otilia trotted up on her mare.

‘No. She must not.’ She glared at Ulrika. ‘The count may want him unharmed.’

‘He said nothing,’ snapped Ulrika.

‘Maybe he assumed we had some common sense.’

Ulrika glared at her for a long moment, then looked at the blanket that covered Gaebler. She couldn’t stop her trembling now. She couldn’t keep her fangs in.

‘Captain Ruger,’ she said at last. ‘Dismount and follow me.’

‘Aye, lady,’ said Ruger.

Otilia gave Ulrika a smug smile as she led the captain into the darkness beneath the trees at the roadside. Ulrika fought the urge to bound onto Otilia’s horse and tear her throat out. Did she think she was abandoning her principals? She had no choice here. It wouldn’t happen again.

‘Your neck, captain.’

‘Aye, lady.’

Ruger pulled off his morion helm and tucked the collar of his doublet down inside his breastplate, revealing his powerful neck. There were bite marks there, but old and faint. He hadn’t been bled often.

Ulrika stepped close to him and gripped his arms. He stiffened. There was shame in his eyes, and fear, but she could smell his arousal. Ulrika’s nausea returned. This is what Friedrich Holmann would have been had she bled him. Hard on the outside, but weak on the inside. It infuriated her. She wanted to–

She did.

She sank her fangs into his neck with an angry snap, and had to catch him as the pain buckled his knees. She crushed him to her as she drank, losing herself in the rich strength of his blood, in the strains of rage and grief and self-loathing that wove through it. They echoed and amplified her own rage and grief and loathing, and though they hurt her, she fed hungrily upon them, like a flagellant salting her own wounds.

‘Enough!’ barked Otilia. ‘He still has to ride.’

Ulrika returned to herself, unsure how long she had been feeding. She stopped with difficulty and let go of Ruger’s neck with her fangs, then set him on his feet. He swayed and stared at the ground as he pulled his collar up and settled his helm on his head.

Ulrika glared at him, then turned and started back towards her horse.

‘Thank you, lady.’

Ulrika spun back and slapped him. ‘Don’t thank me for that! Are you a sheep? Have you no–?’

She cut off as she realised she was making a fool of herself, then turned and stomped back to her horse. Ruger followed more slowly, weaving like a drunk, and mounted with great care.

‘Ride,’ said Otilia.

‘Yes, lady.’

As they followed him, Otilia glanced at Ulrika, her infuriating smile back on her lips. ‘You will not be with us long, I think.’

Ulrika curled her lip. ‘What do you mean? I want to tear out the throats of every last human in the Old World.’

‘Yet you will miss the one you seek.’

Ulrika gave her a sharp look. ‘My own, you mean? Aye, I blame myself. But…’ She cast a cold eye at the humans. ‘But not entirely.’

Otilia just smiled and rode on.

They returned to von Messinghof’s camp near dawn, and found it quiet with tension. The human troops went about their morning routines in hushed whispers, while their officers stood in tight knots, whispering to each other and shooting nervous glances towards the vampire glade.

‘What has happened?’ Otilia asked one of the spearmen at the gate.

He coughed, nervous. ‘You’d best hear it from the count, lady.’

Otilia paled and went through, and Ulrika followed, Captain Gaebler slung over her shoulder. Within the glade’s red cathedral the tension seemed even worse. Almost none of von Messinghof’s undead captains and champions were outside their tents, and those that were stood murmuring together just like their human counterparts and glancing at the general’s tent.

Otilia and Ulrika crossed to it with some trepidation, but before they reached it, the curtain opened and the white-robed figure of Emmanus stepped out, then looked back.

‘I will report this to the master,’ he said in his lifeless voice. ‘It is too big.’

‘Do what you must, nuncio,’ said von Messinghof’s voice from within. ‘But your assistance would be more welcome than your wagging finger.’

‘I am here to observe and report, lord,’ said Emmanus, ‘not help you find rabid dogs that have slipped their leashes.’

Emmanus bowed obsequiously, then turned and brushed by Ulrika and Otilia without a look, while inside, von Messinghof burst into a torrent of cursing.

Otilia swallowed and went in, and Ulrika followed, bending a little to get Gaebler’s body through the flap. Von Messinghof was pacing beside his map table, spitting invective, and did not look up as they entered.

‘Withered little eunuch! He is supposed to be my advisor, not my tattle-tale!’ He picked up a golden goblet and hurled it at his suit of armour, splashing blood everywhere as the breastplate rang like a gong. ‘The master does not need to know about every minor setback!’

Blutegel stepped out from the back and retrieved the goblet, then began wiping the blood from the filigreed breastplate. ‘My lord,’ he murmured politely, ‘Lady Otilia and Boyarina Ulrika have returned with their prize.’

Von Messinghof frowned, as if the words were in a foreign tongue, then spun to face them.

‘You are back! Gods of Khemri, I thought I had lost you as well.’

Otilia curtseyed as Ulrika set Gaebler down by the map table. ‘Forgive me, lord count, but – but what has happened?’

Von Messinghof bared his teeth. ‘Kodrescu has betrayed me. That is what has happened. And Nuncio Emmanus goes to tell on me to Mannfred rather than coming to my aid, the neutered cur!’

Otilia’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘Kodrescu betrayed you? So he has attacked Karl Franz after all?’

The count let out a weary sigh. ‘Nothing so foolish as that, praise fortune. At least not yet. No. He has done nothing against my orders, or so my spies have told me. He continues to march on the Monastery of the Black Rose. He makes plans to take it, and he prepares the road back.’

‘Then, how do you know–’

‘Because Morgenthau, his closest ally, has left the camp and taken his troops with him.’

Otilia stared. ‘You are certain?’

Von Messinghof nodded. ‘Under the ruse of clearing the forest of beasts in order to keep his men in fighting trim, he has marched north, and has not returned.’

‘It isn’t possible he has met some trouble?’ asked Ulrika.

The general shook his head. ‘I sent bats to seek him out when he did not return an hour before sunrise. They showed me that he has marched straight for the Altdorf road, and now camps only a few miles from it. He has suffered no casualties.’ He chewed his thumb again. ‘No, he is running to Kodrescu with a fifth of my strength. And worse–’ He glared towards the door of the tent. ‘The others are whispering. They are wondering if I can hold the army together. They are wondering if they should follow Morgenthau. If I don’t nip this here…’

Von Messinghof leaned over the map, glaring at it, then nudged a black knight an inch closer to the white knight that represented the Morrian monastery. ‘By dawn,’ he said, ‘Kodrescu should be here, still a few days away from the templars, while Morgenthau will be…’ He picked up a black rook and placed it an inch or so north of the camp. ‘Here, two days behind him. Will Kodrescu wait for him? Will he attack the monastery on his own?’ He pointed to the white king, still more than a week away from Nuln. ‘Will he pass it by and attack Karl Franz? Do they merely go against orders, or do they mean to usurp me entirely? I must know.’

Otilia straightened. ‘My lord, I would be honoured to discover these things for you.’

But when von Messinghof raised his head, he looked not at her, but at Ulrika. ‘Boyarina,’ he said, ‘I had hoped to season you yet a while before letting you out on your own, but it seems I haven’t the luxury. You will go to Kodrescu, and you will learn his plans.’

Ulrika blinked, surprised, but Otilia spoke first.

‘You can’t send her!’ she exploded. ‘She’s a babe! She can’t control herself! You don’t even know if she’s loyal! I–’

Von Messinghof raised a hand. ‘You are indeed more experienced in spycraft, beloved, and better know the players, but you are the wrong tool for the job.’

‘But–’

Von Messinghof talked over her interruption. ‘There will be no seductions here. Kodrescu has had the same lover for four hundred years, so your greatest powers are useless. If anyone can win his trust, it will be a fellow horse soldier – a noblewoman born in the saddle, who epitomises those things he values most: bravery and prowess. Besides, Otilia,’ he said, turning to the bound body of Captain Gaebler on the floor, ‘I need you in Nuln. You must deliver the boy’s note and finger to his father, and seduce him as well.’

Otilia still looked put out, but nodded. ‘Of course, general.’

‘And you may begin now,’ said von Messinghof. ‘Take the boy and get him to write the letter. Then take his finger. With your skill, I am sure he will quickly be begging you to be allowed to cut it off for you.’

Otilia smiled at the compliment, then crossed to Gaebler, and despite her small frame, bent and picked him up in her arms as if he were a child, then walked out of the tent with him.

‘Now, come,’ said von Messinghof, turning to Ulrika when she had gone. ‘We have only until sunset to prepare you for your journey.’

chapter seventeen

KODRESCU

Ulrika stared up at the massive bat-winged, bat-headed, tentacle-mouthed griffon with a mixture of excitement and unease. ‘You would give me this?’

‘Well, I’d like it back, but you may borrow it,’ said von Messinghof, patting the monster’s scaled, scrofulous flank. ‘You must reach Kodrescu as quickly as possible and return to me swiftly when you have learned his plans, and there is no swifter way. Besides, what would endear you to the traitor more than to hear that you stole my own mount when you decided to abandon me?’

‘But – but I have never held the reins before.’

‘It is little different from guiding a horse, only, pulling down and back commands it lower, while pulling up and back commands it higher. Do not fear. It is well trained to the bit.’

Ulrika tugged at the cinch straps that held the saddle in place, making sure they were secure and trying to get used to the beast’s appalling reek. The sun had just gone down over the camp and the sky was still red in the west. The general had spent the whole sleepless day telling Ulrika about Kodrescu and his lieutenants – their strengths and weaknesses as leaders and warriors, who she might be able to con into giving her answers, who it would be better to intimidate, and who it would be wise to avoid entirely. It had been so much that she wasn’t sure any of it had sunk in, and she was feeling less than confident, not so much about flying – she was actually looking forward to that – but the rest of it, the dishonourable deception.

‘Lord count, I only fear I will fail you. As I have said before, I am no spy. I am afraid that Kodrescu will see through me,’ she said. ‘I am afraid he will know you sent me after him.’

Von Messinghof nodded. ‘Then perhaps we should make it appear you fought your way out – tear your clothes, scruff them up, and–’ He shot her a look. ‘Are you willing to bleed for the cause?’

Ulrika hesitated. Cut herself as part of a deception? Again it hardly seemed a warrior’s part, and she wasn’t sure it would work. ‘I am willing, but surely Kodrescu knows as well as any vampire that a wound means nothing to our kind. A feeding or two and we are healed.’

Von Messinghof held her eye. ‘There are wounds that do not heal so quickly.’

Ulrika blinked. ‘You – you mean silver.’

‘I will not order you to do this,’ he said. ‘You may refuse.’

‘I – I…’ She swallowed. She had felt silver’s pain before. The merest scratch had nearly crippled her, and he was asking for more than that, she was sure. She should refuse. She should hate him for even suggesting it. On the other hand, why shouldn’t she take the pain? For failing to protect Famke she deserved that and more. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘I will take it.’

Von Messinghof clasped her shoulders. ‘You are brave, boyarina. A braver soldier than I deserve.’ He looked in her eyes for a long moment, a soft, sad expression on his face, then turned away abruptly. ‘Come, I have a silvered blade in my tent.’

Ulrika soared above the world, the wind in her face and the two moons making a sea-foam froth of the ocean of green trees below her, but she could not enjoy it – could hardly acknowledge it existed. The pain in her thigh and on her arms and face was too great. The general had apparently admired her bravery too much, for he had not spared her in the slightest.

They had fought in the vampire glade, rapier and dagger against sword and silver knife, so that the wounds would look taken in battle, and he had not pulled his blows. There were cuts from his sword across her legs and chest, and a black bruise from where he had kicked her in the ribs, but the worst were the cuts made by the little knife – a cut just below her hip, another on her right arm, and most terrible of all, a slice from temple to cheek not an inch from her left eye.

A wound to the face, he had said, would be proof, for the scar might never fade. No vampire would willingly allow herself to be cut in such a way, and he was right. If he had asked, she would have said no, but he hadn’t asked, and cut high when she had been expecting him to score her arm again.

She hunched over the winged horror’s broad back, shaking with sickness and pain as the wind stung the wound. The general was playing a dangerous game. Such a trick could turn her against him in truth, and indeed, she almost wanted to betray him out of revenge for the agony. If Kodrescu offered her a fighting position instead of all this damned skulking, she just might take it.

She rode on, staring dully at the forest as it scrolled by endlessly below her. She was glad the winged horror needed little guidance. She was too sick to give it. Her biggest fear was that she would faint from the pain and miss Kodrescu’s camp. Von Messinghof had told her roughly where to look, but in truth he had no more idea than she did where he might actually be. Last night his bats had shown that he was continuing towards the Monastery of the Black Rose, but if he had changed direction tonight, she might search a long time before she found him. Indeed, she might not find him before dawn, in which case she would have to find a place to wait out the day.

Hours later, she saw Mannslieb’s silver glint in the broad curve of the Reik far to the west, and began to angle north. Kodrescu should be marching under the cover of the woods along a course that paralleled the river road. The question was how to find him. From her years in her father’s rota, she knew that moving cavalry through dense forest was a nightmare. If the vampire wanted to make any time at all he would have to find a path of some kind, no matter how narrow or faint. She searched for grooves or gaps in the canopy of trees, looking for one that went vaguely north. There were more than a few, though most turned or vanished or trailed off to nothing. Eventually, however, she found a promising track, overgrown but deeply rutted, that wandered on without ceasing, always within a few miles of the river road.

Mile after mile she flew north along it, and saw nothing. She began to wonder if she had cut into the path too far north, and if Kodrescu’s force was behind her, or if she had missed it at one of the many places where the trees completely covered it. But then, just as the east began to lighten, she saw a ripple of movement between the trees.

Pulling back and down on the horror’s reins, she circled lower for a closer look, and the movement resolved itself into men and horses, all moving along the path in ranks of four. Without her night vision, she would not have seen them at all, for they had blackened their lance points and harnesses and covered their armour and helms with cloaks and hoods.

She urged the winged beast along their line until she reached the head of the column, then found a place where the trees were far enough back from the track that she could make a landing.

As the monster flapped to the ground, six knights in full plate thundered up on their war horses, Kodrescu at the fore, his proud head bare and a tight smile tensing his face.

‘General!’ he called as the dust settled. ‘This is an unexpected–’ He cut off in confusion, staring at Ulrika. ‘What is this? Why do you ride the general’s mount? Have you brought some message from him?’

Ulrika slid from the saddle and dropped to the ground with a weariness that was not at all feigned. ‘I – I have brought the mount for you, general. And I offer myself as well, for I have left that honourless cur, von Messinghof, and wish to join with you instead.’

Kodrescu looked down at her for a long moment, his cold eyes narrowing, as behind him, the rest of the column came out from under the gloom of the trees at a shuffling, jingling walk. At last he looked up at the sky, then turned to one of his knights.

‘Day grows near. We will camp here.’ He waved a hand at Ulrika. ‘And arrest this fool. She seeks to betray the count.’

For a long dark time, Ulrika lay in a tent, bound in ropes with a burlap sack over her head while she listened to the camp being set up around her and meals being prepared. There was no possibility of escape, for Kodrescu’s servants were well aware of her abilities, and had made sure there was no way she could reach the ropes with her claws or teeth. There was nothing to do but clench against the agony of her wounds and ponder her position. Had von Messinghof been wrong about Kodrescu? Was he not a traitor after all? Had Morgenthau deserted on his own, with no intention of joining up with his old ally? And what was going to happen to her? Would Kodrescu hold her prisoner until he returned to the count? Would he question her? Would he kill her?

Finally, long after the camp had quieted into daytime slumber, and the heat of the sun slowly grilled her through the canvas, footsteps entered the tent and rough hands grabbed her by the ankles and under the arms. She cried out in pain as she was carried out of the tent and through the camp in daylight. Even though she was covered head to foot by her clothes, gloves and the stinking sack over her head, the sun still pressed down on her like a hot iron.

A moment later she was taken into another tent and dropped on the ground. The sun-agony stopped, to be replaced by stabbing pain as they rolled her over to cut her ropes, and manhandled her silver-cut wounds. Finally, the burlap sack was pulled off and she uncurled, groaning, on a Cathay carpet that had been spread over the forest floor inside the tent.

A heavy boot kicked her in the head and she looked up, wincing, to see Kodrescu, dressed in elegant grey hunting clothes, looking down at her from his great height, his hands clasped behind his back, while a pair of vampires, one male and one female, watched from behind him.

‘Why,’ he said in a cold, slow voice, ‘are you here?’

Ulrika wondered what her best answer was. Did she tell him the truth and say she had come to spy on him? Did she lie and say she had been sent to test him, and that he had passed the test? Did she refuse to say anything and demand to be returned to von Messinghof? It all depended on whether he was still loyal to the general, or if he was covering his own treachery.

‘Von Messinghof sent me to spy on you, my lord,’ she said, sitting up and rubbing her wrists. ‘He gave me the winged mount and told me to tell you a story about escaping him to come to you, but – but after what he has done to me, what was meant to be a ruse is now the truth. I want nothing more to do with him, and I will not go back.’

Kodrescu raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh? And what has he done to you?’

‘Can you not see?’ she pulled back her right sleeve to show the black cut on her forearm, then turned her cheek so that the ugly gash there caught the light. ‘He said he would wound me, to make it appear I had fought my way out, but he did not tell me he would use silver. I am scarred for eternity.’

Kodrescu exchanged a look with the other vampires. ‘And this was enough to make you throw over your loyalty to him?’

Ulrika sneered and stood. ‘Loyalty? He recruited me only days ago, and made promises he did not keep. I am a boyar’s daughter, an Eagle of the North, a winged lancer. He promised me I would ride and fight in his army. I would lead men. Instead, he had me skulking and sneaking and lying like a spy. It is beneath my honour, beneath my dignity. He uses a sabre as a stiletto.’ She raised her eyes to Kodrescu’s and held them. ‘I heard you know the value of a tempered blade, and so I came to you.’

Kodrescu pursed his lips, then looked back at the other vampires again. One of them, the knight with hair the colour of blood who Ulrika had before seen at his leisure in the red glade, stepped forwards, looking at her. This would be Emmerich von Graal, Kodrescu’s second-in-command. Von Messinghof had said he was a vain and vapid degenerate, but second only to Kodrescu in skill at arms. He called himself the ‘Fair and Perfect Knight’, and wrote poetry using the skins of his victims as vellum and their blood as ink.

‘Why does the general suspect my lord Kodrescu of betraying him?’ he asked.

‘Morgenthau deserted,’ said Ulrika. ‘He took his men on a wide patrol and did not return. Von Messinghof was certain he was on his way to join you.’

Kodrescu barked a curse. ‘That hot-headed little pup!’

‘General,’ said von Graal, warningly, but Kodrescu didn’t hear.

‘I told him to wait! He was to turn on von Messinghof after we attacked!’

Von Graal sighed theatrically. ‘Well, that cat is out of the bag.’

Kodrescu turned on him, glaring, then paused and looked at Ulrika. ‘Ah. Yes. Indeed.’ He turned to von Graal and the woman. ‘Do you believe her story? What shall I do with her?’

‘Kill her,’ said the flame-haired knight. ‘Truth or lie, it won’t matter then.’

The woman, a fine-boned, raven-haired vampiress in hooded robes stitched with ancient Nehekharan symbols, shook her head. This was Lady Celia, Kodrescu’s lover of four hundred years, a powerful necromancer. Despite the martial prowess of Kodrescu and von Graal, von Messinghof insisted that it was she who was the most powerful of the three. ‘The count does not know she has turned her coat,’ she said. ‘We could use her as a conduit for false information.’

Ulrika snarled. ‘I did not quit spying for the general to come spying for you. I came to fight. Kill me or put me on a horse. I no longer care which.’

Von Graal and Lady Celia looked at her with sceptical eyes, but Kodrescu smiled, showing his fangs.

‘I like this girl,’ he said. ‘She wants to do her fighting on the battlefield, not in back alleys and bedchambers. There are so few who understand true honour these days.’ He clapped a hand on Ulrika’s shoulder, hard enough to jar her every wound. ‘You shall have your horse.’

‘But, general,’ said von Graal, ‘can you be sure she’s not lying?’

‘Does it matter?’ asked Kodrescu. ‘If we do not allow her to go back to von Messinghof, what harm can she do?’

‘She can turn on you as you hoped Morgenthau would turn on him,’ said Lady Celia.

‘Let her,’ said Kodrescu, smiling and patting the ruby-pommelled sword that hung from his belt. ‘She will ride at my side. If she makes her play, I wish her good fortune. Wolf’s Fang and I have not been beaten in combat in centuries.’

‘But she cannot always be at your side, general,’ said von Graal. ‘She must be watched, guarded so she does not slip away. It will take resources that we–’

‘Then I give care of her to you, if it so concerns you,’ said Kodrescu. ‘Find room for her in your tent. Find her weapons and a mount. But if harm befalls her in your care,’ he continued as he saw the knight’s face fall, ‘then you will answer to me. Am I clear?’

Von Graal bowed, hiding a pained expression. ‘Perfectly, my lord. Perfectly.’

Ulrika bowed to Kodrescu as well, also to hide her face. Her lies about hating von Messinghof for scarring her and forcing her to spycraft seemed to have worked! At least, she was nearly certain they were lies.

‘I will not be your keeper,’ sniffed von Graal, as he crossed to his tent under a parasol held over him by a human slave. It was an oppressive overcast day, but still a crushing agony to Ulrika, even under the dense cover of the trees. ‘I haven’t time for such foolishness. Nor will I have you in my tent, eavesdropping on me for your master. My soldiers will watch you. You will sleep with them.’

Ulrika scuttled behind him, trying to keep under the parasol’s shadow. ‘Aren’t you afraid I will run away, back to “my master”?’ she asked. ‘Do you not fear Kodrescu’s wrath?’

Von Graal turned at the entrance to his tent. ‘It is my fondest wish that you run away,’ he said. ‘You can tell von Messinghof nothing he has not already guessed, and you will no longer be my responsibility. As to Kodrescu’s wrath, he cannot afford to lose a knight of my calibre. He will do little, no matter what he threatens.’

He motioned to the slave that held the parasol. ‘Take her to Stahleker. Tell him to find her a horse and armour, but to keep her locked up until the general calls for her. And let her bleed you. She looks fit for the grave.’

The slave bowed, and as von Graal disappeared into his tent, he held the parasol over Ulrika’s head and led her to the tents of the horse soldiers. These were not the neat white tents of Imperial cavalry, nor the colourful shelters of Kossar lancers. These tents were filthy, stained and patched, and of a hundred different designs, and the weapons and gear that lay strewn outside them were the same – hard-used, dented and no two pieces alike.

Ulrika eyed it all critically. They were no household troops, then. No lord would allow his followers to look so rag-tag. No matter how poor, he would have at least given them uniforms to make them seem a cohesive unit. These were mercenaries, and not the most reputable either.

The slave stopped before the largest tent in the cluster and raised his fist to rap upon a shield set up outside it for the purpose. Before he could, an amorous moan came from within, as well as what sounded like the grunting of an enthusiastic pig. The slave hesitated, wide-eyed, then rapped timidly on the shield.

There was no response except for an increase in the volume of the moaning and the tempo of the grunting. He swallowed and rapped a little louder.

‘Sergeant Stahleker? Are you there?’

The grunting stopped abruptly, and the moaning trailed off. Then there was a thud and a crash, followed by a curse and a squeak. The slave cowered back as footsteps crossed to the tent flap.

A hairy hand swept the flap aside and an ugly, unshaven face glared out, dripping sweat. ‘Whaddaya want? I’m… I’m tryin’ to sleep.’

The man was a brute. A thick-necked, barrel-chested ape with a grizzled, balding head, a nose like a potato, a scarred chin and brows so heavy it was hard to see his eyes under them. Ulrika recognised him right away. He was the lance sergeant who had complained about the poor fodder for his horses when she had first arrived at von Messinghof’s camp.

‘Your – your pardon, sergeant,’ said the slave, bowing convulsively. ‘But Master von Graal has requested you give this person armour and a horse, and also keep her under arrest until called for. Thank you.’

Stahleker gave Ulrika the once-over. His eyes were hard and angry, but she saw intelligence behind them – and strangely, none of the fear or desire she had come to expect from the Sylvanians’ human troops. He raised an eyebrow like a fat hairy caterpillar.

‘Ain’t she a bloodsucker?’

‘Indeed, sergeant.’

‘Then why ain’t she gettin’ her feet kissed in the fancy tents?’

‘I could not say, sergeant,’ said the slave. ‘I am only doing as my master bids.’

Stahleker growled. ‘And how’m I supposed t’keep her locked up when she could tear a dozen of my boys t’pieces without blinking?’

‘The master did not inform me,’ said the slave.

‘I’ll make no trouble, sergeant,’ said Ulrika. ‘I am here to serve, though your masters do not trust me yet.’

Stahleker looked at her again. ‘Yer the spy.’

Ulrika shrugged, cold. ‘So von Graal thinks me.’

The sergeant continued to glare at her, then cursed and looked back into the tent. ‘Hold that thought, Mags. I gotta take care of this.’

He strode out of the tent, dressed only in a pair of sagging breeks, and crossed to another.

‘Rachman! Get your arse out here!’

After a moment of muffled cursing a wiry beanpole, as ugly in a pale, fish-like way as Stahleker was dark and bearish, stumbled out and looked around, blinking.

‘Whut?’ he asked.

‘Clear out a tent and put a guard on it.’ Stahleker stabbed a thick finger at Ulrika. ‘She goes inside. And stake down the edges o’the tent, all around. Not that it’ll make one damned bit o’difference.’

‘But…’ said Rachman. ‘But she’s a vampire.’

‘Don’t ask questions,’ barked Stahleker. ‘Just do it. We’ll sort it all out after reveille. Now I’m going back to bed.’

Ulrika turned to the slave while Rachman roused more men and ordered them to prepare a tent for her. She would have much preferred to hunt, but it was not an option. ‘Step under this tree with me. I would feed.’

The slave trembled with anticipation. ‘Yes, mistress.’

Ulrika smirked as she led him behind the tents and began to drink. If she wanted to escape she was not lacking in opportunities to do so. There was enough cover under the trees that, though it was the middle of the day, she could have stolen off and survived – albeit painfully – until night, then raced back to von Messinghof. But though she now knew that Kodrescu meant to attack the general, she still didn’t know how, or when.

Nor did she yet know if she wanted to go back.

chapter eighteen

STAHLEKER AND MORGENTHAU

Ulrika woke to a slither of canvas and a soft step, and snatched up her dagger. It was Sergeant Stahleker, dressed now in dirty brown leathers with a sabre at his side, stepping backwards and lifting his hands as she rose to a crouch.

‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Easy.’

Ulrika remained on guard. Humans were not to be trusted. ‘What do you want? Are we moving?’

‘Nah. Kodrescu’s waiting for Morgenthau to catch us up. We’ll be here another day, most like.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Found you some kit and a horse, if you want to see it.’

What she wanted was some air. The tent was still stifling though the day had passed. ‘Aye. Show me.’

He ducked through the flap, then came back with a bulky bundle and set it before her – a breastplate, helm, jack of plates, saddle, harness and blankets for a horse, all dirty and worn, and all strapped together with the saddle cinch. ‘If those don’t fit, we’ll find others.’

‘It will do.’

Ulrika knelt and undid the cinch, then gathered up the saddle, blanket and harness and stood again. ‘Lead on.’

Outside, his men squatted around their fires, cooking lamb for breakfast and boiling buttered tea over small fires. The smell of it reminded her very much of a Kossar camp, and made her suddenly homesick for mornings on the march with her father. These must be men from the Empire’s far eastern edge, where Kossar ways had bled across the border.

‘You are Ostermark men,’ she said as she followed Stahleker to a corral made of ropes slung between trees. ‘One stirrup in the Empire, one in Kislev.’

The sergeant shrugged. ‘Not any more. The pay wagon is our country now.’

He unslipped a rope and waved her in, then pushed through the crowd of shifting horses with the ease of a man born among the herds, whispering and stroking them with calm hands as he stepped past. At the far side of the enclosure he found a roan mare with black face and forelegs, and chirruped to her. Ulrika eyed her, curious. She hadn’t the hulking mass of a knight’s destrier, nor the compact sturdiness of an oblast pony. She was lean and lanky, with an arched neck, a long, narrow head, and a wicked fire in her eyes.

‘Yasim, a daughter of Araby,’ said Stahleker, stepping to her and stroking her flank. She whickered at him nervously, but stood her ground. ‘Runs like the wind – or would if we’d ever get out from under these damned trees.’

‘She is beautiful,’ said Ulrika.

‘Aye. She was Lund’s mount – my first lieutenant – until he was killed on patrol last week. If you can ride her, you can have her. She won’t take everyone.’

Ulrika smirked. ‘You’re hoping she kills me.’

Stahleker was stone-faced. ‘I would never wish harm on my employer’s allies.’

‘And who is your employer at the moment?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t you von Messinghof’s men?’

‘Lord Kodrescu didn’t really give us a choice in the matter. He waited t’tell us he’d gone rogue till we was two days out. He’s paying better though.’

‘Ah.’

Ulrika draped the saddle and blanket over her arm and approached Yasim’s shoulder, moving slowly but confidently. The horse eyed her warily, and snorted at her inhuman scent.

‘Don’t play coy, girl,’ said Ulrika softly, reaching out a hand. ‘You know my smell. Your master has been riding with my kind for months.’

The horse edged back. Ulrika stopped and waited. When she settled, she stepped forwards again. This time Yasim let her approach, though she was still nervous. Ulrika laid her hand on her and stroked her firmly until her ears and eyes quieted.

‘That’s it,’ Ulrika murmured. ‘You’d rather ride than stand, no matter who’s on your back, eh?’

She laid the blanket over Yasim’s back and squared it just behind her withers, then set the saddle over it, still murmuring soft words. The girth was next. She attached it to the billets, went around to her left and reached under her belly to pull the cinch through the buckle on her other side. When it was tight, she slipped the bridle over Yasim’s head and slid the bit into her mouth. Next she let down the stirrups and adjusted their length, then swung up into the saddle and turned Yasim in a tight circle.

Stahleker nodded. ‘You can ride, then.’

‘I have led a rota,’ she said, then pointed Yasim’s head towards the rope gate. ‘Come. I want to feel her run.’

Stahleker scowled. ‘I’ll have to find guards for you, so you don’t escape.’

Ulrika laughed. ‘On a horse like this, who could catch me?’

He patted the pistols tucked through his belt. ‘Then I had better come with you.’

Ulrika gave Yasim her head and she surged down the overgrown track like a red wind, easily outdistancing Stahleker on his wiry Ostermark charger. She was lithe and graceful on her dainty hooves, and when Ulrika raised up in the stirrups and hunched forwards so that her head was down along the side of her neck, it really did feel like she was riding the wind. She smiled. Having ridden a winged monster, she should not have found this half as thrilling, but there was something about the nearness of the ground and the trees whipping by that added a sense of danger and excitement. In the sky there were no obstacles to clear, so what was there to do? Where was the challenge? Here she could crash or spill at any moment. Here a root or fallen tree or low branch could wreck her and break her bones. It was glorious.

‘You’re getting close to shooting distance!’ called Stahleker from behind her.

Ulrika looked back. The Sergeant had a pistol out and was training it at her back, but he was so far back, and it was so dark under the trees that he was unlikely to make the shot, and in another few strides she would be around a bend in the track and out of his line of fire entirely. She grinned. She wondered if he could hit her. Yasim seemed fast enough to outrun a bullet.

She reined in and slowed to a walk as Stahleker thudded up to her.

‘Just testing her gallop, sergeant.’ She patted Yasim’s neck. ‘No need to worry.’

‘My only worry would be hitting the horse,’ said Stahleker. ‘That’d be a damned shame.’

Ulrika looked at him, curious. ‘You don’t fear me. Nor do you worship me like so many of the others.’

Stahleker shrugged. ‘No sane man ain’t afraid of something that can rip his head off without breaking a sweat, but, well, we’ve been riding for the counts for a long time, and you get used to it, you might say.’

‘You are vassals of the Sylvanians, then?’

Stahleker spat. ‘We’re nobody’s vassals. It’s strictly business with the counts. When they need cavalry they can count on instead of their knee-quaking serfs or them skull-headed heavies, they call on us, and pay good money too.’

‘So you have no qualms about siding with those whose express wish is the destruction of your Empire and the subjugation of mankind?’

‘What has the Empire ever done for us?’ asked Stahleker. ‘We was simple horse breeders once – leastwise our fathers’ fathers were – raising our herds on the Ostermark veldt, but what would happen? Every time the Empire went to war in the north they would steal our horses for remounts and plunder our stores for forage, and never a pfennig in exchange. We was to give it up for the good of the Empire. And when the hordes came south? Same story. Rape and pillage and slaughter, and the Reiklanders cowering in the south and tellin’ us it’s our duty to hold the border.’

Ulrika nodded. It had been a similar story in her father’s lands.

‘After too much of that we had nothing left to take, and so took to takin’ ourselves, to get by.’ He snarled. ‘That’s when the Empire finally took notice. We was branded horse thieves and bandits and driven south out of our own lands into the Eerie Downs. Well, there was no farming to be done there at all. Plants don’t grow right. So we became what they called us, bandits, thieves, and worse, and spent a lot of time slipping across the Stir into Sylvania when the excise men came hunting.’

He nodded back towards camp. ‘That’s when the counts found us. Their own vassals live in fear of them, and ain’t got much spine or sense – slaves think like slaves, aye?’

‘Aye.’

‘So they need someone who won’t bend a knee to them, and we’re it. They pay and we fight. Simple as that.’

‘Well,’ said Ulrika, ‘I hope there’s something left to spend your money on when they win.’

‘If they win,’ grunted Stahleker. Then he frowned at her. ‘You don’t sound like you want ’em to.’

Ulrika shrugged. ‘I am here for vengeance. I want to get my blade wet. The rest doesn’t matter.’ She turned Yasim around, suddenly angry, then dug her spurs in. ‘I’ll see you back at camp,’ she called, then galloped away as fast as she could.

Morgenthau arrived the next evening, having marched all day while carried in a coffin by his followers. His force was little more than a warband, though a fearsome one. Two hundred human spearmen, thirty armoured and mounted wights and as many Blood Knights, and a host of ghostly drifting shapes that hid in the shadows beneath the trees and exuded a bone-chilling cold that made even Stahleker’s hardened veterans huddle close to their fires.

The reunion was not a happy one. Kodrescu came out of his tent as Morgenthau’s hulking, armour-clad pall bearers set down his coffin and removed the sable shroud that covered it, then opened the lid.

The vampire that rose from it looked like he had Strigoi blood, for he was bald and misshapen and hideously ugly, though he had gone to great pains to try to disguise these things in his manner of dress. He wore a beautifully embossed suit of gold and red armour that used broad pauldrons and flaring gauntlets to try to hide his hunched shoulders and elongated arms, while the face plate of his helm was formed to look like the face of a noble god. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be heard clearly in it, and had to take it off to speak, revealing a shrivelled, noseless face with upthrust underfangs jutting from a mouth like a dagger cut. Worst were his eyes – bulging, red-rimmed orbs the pink of an albino rabbit’s. Von Messinghof had called him the ablest tactician of the traitors, but also the least sane.

‘Disobedient fool,’ snarled Kodrescu as the vampire bowed before him. ‘Did I not tell you to stay and wait?’

‘I dared not, lord,’ said Morgenthau in a voice like tearing parchment. ‘I could pretend no longer. When I stood by that prating weakling, I only wished to slit his throat. Had I stayed, I would have given myself away.’

Kodrescu’s eyes flared. ‘So your excuse for disobeying me is that you cannot control yourself? You are weaker than he.’

‘Give me a battle and I will show you how weak I am!’ cried Morgenthau. ‘He plots and spins and tells me to wait, and you do the same. I came to the Empire for slaughter! Not to sit in the Stirwood and spin wool. I want to fight!’

Kodrescu sneered. ‘And how am I to trust you in battle when you can’t obey the simplest of orders?’ he asked. ‘How am I to know you won’t charge across the field at the first provocation and leave my flank undefended?’

‘I know the art of battle!’ Morgenthau declared, defiant. ‘I need no schooling in–’

‘I should feed you to Wolf’s Fang for this disobedience,’ said Kodrescu, patting his ancient sword. ‘But I would not wantonly kill a lord of the night. Instead I will only feed myself. Bare your neck.’

Morgenthau stared in disbelief. ‘What! What did you say to me?’

‘Your blood needs cooling,’ said Kodrescu, stepping towards him. ‘And your loyalty needs strengthening. This will achieve both.’

Morgenthau snarled and shrank back, his hand going to his sword. ‘You are not my sire. I will not submit to you. If you want my blood you will have to win it.’

Kodrescu took another step. His hand did not go again to his sword, but the jewelled pommel seemed to glow with eagerness. ‘I am your leader, and you have cost me time and advantage. If you do not bare your neck to me, you will sate Wolf’s Fang’s hunger and someone else will command your troops. Now stand.’

Morgenthau swallowed, his pink eyes darting around at the crowd who watched the drama unfold. ‘You would humiliate me in front of the others? In front of my men?’

‘You humiliate yourself with your bleating,’ said Kodrescu. ‘Stand.’

Morgenthau froze, gripping his sword, as Kodrescu took a final step and stood before him. Ulrika could tell from the way his fingers twitched on the hilt that Morgenthau was contemplating attacking, but something – Kodrescu’s magnetism, or his reputation as a duellist – made him hesitate, and after a moment, he released his grip and stood, his head bowed, then motioned to his pall bearers. Two stepped forwards and removed his elaborate bevor with practiced speed, and he turned under the collar of his gold-embroidered doublet.

‘You steal dignity from me, my lord,’ he said, turning his head. ‘I will not forget–’

Kodrescu shot his hand out, faster than Ulrika could see, and jerked Morgenthau close, then sank his fangs into his naked neck like a wolf tearing at a doe. Morgenthau shrieked in fear and struggled, but Kodrescu crushed him in a bear hug, pinning his limbs, and he grew still.

Ulrika stared, fascinated and appalled. She had experienced the feeding of one vampire upon another before. It had been love-making – the mutual sharing of blood, strength and pleasure. This was not. Having won fear from his victim, Kodrescu fed as calmly as a doctor examining a wound, and though Morgenthau shuddered, Ulrika thought it was from shame rather than enjoyment – or perhaps it was both. This was dominance, pure and simple – the leader of the pack making an upstart submit in front of the other wolves.

She had little sympathy for Morgenthau. Though she understood his wish for action, what he had done was indeed foolish and deserved punishment. At the same time, what Kodrescu was doing was foolish as well. A good leader would not make a subordinate look weak in front of his men. This had nothing to do with strengthening Kodrescu’s army, and everything to do with bolstering his pride. She was beginning to understand why von Messinghof, who these strutting wolves saw as weak, had been given command of Sylvania’s advance force. And yet, to echo Morganthau, she had not joined the Sylvanians to help a spider spin webs of intrigue in the woods. She had joined so she could run with the wolves, and Kodrescu was a wolf.

When he was finished feeding, the general pushed Morgenthau back so that he fell sprawling into his coffin, half-conscious.

‘Take him away,’ said Kodrescu to the pall bearers. ‘We march within the hour.’

The general’s troops had begun to break camp the moment Morgenthau’s scouts appeared, and so were ready with time to spare, while Morgenthau’s force had remained in march formation, allowing the combined army to get under way before the sun was more than an hour set. The speed came at a cost, however. Though Morgenthau’s undead knights rode on without complaint, his hundred human spears were nearly spent after marching all day, and many fell out and collapsed along the track.

Kodrescu, as Ulrika rode up and down the line with him, inspecting the order of march, didn’t seem to care. His horse trampled a fallen spearman under its hoofs, and he rode on without looking back.

‘Aren’t you concerned about diminishing your strength?’ asked Ulrika.

‘Swiftness is more important,’ said Kodrescu. ‘We are a day late now as it is. I must take the monastery and the town that serves it and raise their dead, then return to the Stirwood to lead them against von Messinghof before he makes his attack on Karl Franz. Morgenthau has slowed me enough already. I will not allow his cannon fodder to set my pace.’

So that was his plan. ‘I see you mean to keep your promise to the general – to the letter.’

Kodrescu grinned. ‘Aye. I will bring him the dead of the town and the monastery just as he asked – then shove them down his throat.’

‘And you do not fear the battle will weaken your own force before you go against Karl Franz?’

‘Von Messinghof is weak,’ said Kodrescu, raising his sculpted chin. ‘When he sees what I have brought against him, he will capitulate. And if he does not, I will crush him. He will hardly have a chance to strike back.’

Ulrika rode on, silent, as Kodrescu took his place at the head of the column. Now she knew what von Messinghof had asked her to discover. Now she could slip away, steal the winged horror from where it was penned, and report back to him. But on the other hand, what good would it do? The general could prepare for Kodrescu’s coming, but he wouldn’t know his strength. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until after the battle at the monastery and report the state of his forces once the dead had been raised? Or was that just an excuse not to leave?

chapter nineteen

THE SPIDER OR THE WOLF

A few hours before dawn, a Blood Knight scout came racing back down the track and saluted Kodrescu.

‘A warband, general. A lord and his retinue, as well as a warrior priest and a handful of witch hunters. We counted thirty knights and an artillery train of three great cannon.’

‘They are hunting us?’

The scout shook his head. ‘They are not on our path, but crossing it. They travel from the direction of Wurstheim along a stream that leads to the Reik, and they fly Karl Franz’s colours above their own.’

‘They ride to join him, then,’ said Kodrescu.

‘We should hold here and let them pass,’ said Lady Celia. ‘We will need all our strength when we reach the monastery.’

‘Unthinkable,’ snorted Kodrescu. ‘They go to support Karl Franz. If we destroy them now we will not have to fight them later.’

‘Or face their cannon,’ said von Graal.

‘Precisely,’ said Kodrescu. ‘We will take them unawares.’

‘Lord,’ said the Blood Knight. ‘They will cross our path in less than an hour. There may not be enough time to lay an ambush.’

‘It will have to be cavalry only,’ said von Graal.

‘My lord!’ called Morgenthau, edging his horse up from behind. ‘Let me do this. Let me make amends for my past transgressions.’

Kodrescu turned a cold eye on him. ‘I am pleased you wish to do better, but I will not reward your folly by allowing you glory. Nor will I risk your grave knights.’ He turned to von Graal. ‘Take Stahleker’s lancers. If they die, they can be raised to serve again.’

Von Graal nodded. ‘At once, general.’

‘Lord,’ said Ulrika, ‘let me go too. I have vowed vengeance on all witch hunters.’

‘Please, general, no,’ said von Graal. ‘I cannot watch over her in the middle of battle. She would be a distraction.’

Kodrescu didn’t seem to hear him. He smiled at Ulrika. ‘Good. This will be a perfect opportunity to test your valour and loyalty.’ He turned to von Graal. ‘Watch her during the battle. I want to hear how she conducts herself.’

Von Graal shot Ulrika a murderous look. ‘Very good, general.’

‘You will not fight,’ said von Graal to Ulrika as he led Stahleker and his lancers to the ambush point in the trees on the forest side of the narrow track that wound along the rushing stream. ‘You will stay behind our line with two men guarding you. If you attempt to join the fray, they will cut you down and I will claim you died at the enemy’s hand. Do you understand?’

Ulrika stiffened. ‘General Kodrescu has ordered me to fight.’

‘And I will say you did, but I cannot lead and watch you at the same time.’ He gave her a thin smile. ‘You needn’t worry. You will still rise in his eyes. I will give a glowing report of your valour.’

‘I don’t give a damn about rising in Kodrescu’s eyes. Witch hunters are my sworn enemies! I want to fight them!’

‘Not while I lead,’ said von Graal, and turned his horse from her before she could answer. ‘Sergeant Stahleker! Pick two men to watch the Lahmian. Keep her out of the way.’

The sergeant exchanged a flat look with Rachman, his skinny second-in-command, but only saluted. ‘Aye, lord.’

Von Graal’s plan was simple, and Ulrika was forced to admit, likely to be effective. Hidden by a cloud of unnatural darkness that would cloak their position, and accompanied by a host of hovering shades and wraiths, half of Stahleker’s lancers would charge out of the trees when the lord’s column came level with them, spooking them and striking them in the flank and driving them into the river. There, the other half of the horsemen would pepper the enemy with pistol fire from the opposite shore while they floundered in the shallows. Any that tried to regain the bank would be easy prey for the mercenaries’ sabres and lances. It would be a slaughter. Ulrika only wished she could be part of it.

Stahleker gave her a shrug as he and Rachman directed two men to hem in her horse behind their lines. They were just as aware as she that von Graal’s order was a joke. The lancers couldn’t stop her if she really wanted to join the fight.

‘Just don’t kill ’em when you make yer move,’ said Stahleker.

Ulrika smirked. ‘You are suggesting I would disobey a direct order?’

‘I know I would,’ said Rachman, and they started back to their places behind von Graal in the centre of their line.

A moment later von Graal closed his eyes, spread his arms, and began to whisper sibilant syllables under his breath. Soon a black fog formed around him, and slowly spread to envelop the whole of his company. The men shivered and the horses shied as they vanished into its billows, but as its cold, clammy coils washed over Ulrika she found that she could see within it. The world had a greyish tinge seen from inside the cloud, with the trees and men and horses dusted in silver, but all was clear. She could see the river and the track, and Stahleker’s men in one long rank above it on the slope, their lances resting on their stirrups – swift death, waiting in impenetrable darkness.

They didn’t have to wait long. Within ten minutes Ulrika heard the thud of heavy hooves and the jingle of harnesses in the distance. The lancers heard it a minute later, and shifted restlessly as they readied themselves.

‘Leave the warrior priest to me,’ said von Graal, pulling his visor down over his imperious face. ‘Kill the rest. None must escape.’

The scouts came first. Two men on horseback advanced down the track, peering and listening in every direction. Two more men moved through the woods on foot – foresters with bows and hunting horns and half-shuttered lanterns, but as they walked into the cloud of darkness, it was clear that they could not see within it like von Graal’s lancers could. They stopped and peered about and fumbled with their lanterns as if they thought the flames had gone out. They never saw the soldiers who clamped their hands over their mouths and daggered them through their hearts.

When their death throes had stopped, Stahleker’s men picked up their lanterns and walked out of the cloud, continuing to parallel the road so the mounted scouts would still see the lights bobbing along beside them. Ulrika smiled. It had been neatly done.

Soon the rumble of hooves got louder, and with it came the light of torches, striping the leafy ground with the thin black shadows of the young trees. Then Ulrika saw movement – a thicket of trotting horse legs, the heavy jounce of barded armour, the gleam of breastplates and mailed gloves, the flash of lance-tips and the rich colours of coats of arms on shields and banners.

A vanguard of ten knights rode at the front, two abreast, the first two with long-poled torches set in their lance-cups, the others with their helms on and their shields on their arms. The rest of the knights – perhaps forty in all – were more relaxed, and rode with their helms on their saddlebows and their shields on their backs, though they too remained alert. Ulrika didn’t like the look of them. This was a column just setting off. She could tell from experience that they had been on the road less than two hours, and were wide awake. It was much better to attack a column at the end of a march, when they were fatigued and bored and not paying attention.

In the centre of the warband, flanked by knights on either side, rode a man who could only be their lord – a barrel-chested old knight with a flowing white beard and his hair pulled back into two braids that slapped across his back plate with every pace. He talked cheerily to the rider next to him, a scarred, shaven-headed monolith of a man in the breastplate and vestments of a warrior priest.

The priest was a head taller than the lord, and rode a horse as huge and scarred as himself. He nodded distractedly as the lord babbled beside him, but his shadowed eyes never stopped searching the woods and the river and the road ahead, nor did his grip on his warhammer ever relax.

Ulrika eyed him uneasily. The rest were mere fodder. He was the danger. He radiated an almost visible aura of power. She glanced at von Graal. Did he really mean to give challenge to such a man? Better to take him out of the fight early. Otherwise things might get messy.

Behind the lord and the warrior priest came the crow-like figures of six witch hunters, hunched over their horses with their broad hats pulled low and their pistol butts glinting from their saddle holsters. After them rumbled three great cannon hauled by teams of heavy horses and followed by powder wagons. Next were the other supply wagons, neatly packed with food, tents, anvils, sundry supplies and the lances of the knights, and lastly, a small rearguard of watchful knights took up the rear.

Von Graal lowered his lance and raised his hand as the head of the column passed him by, and Stahleker’s men tucked their lances under their arms and gathered their reins in their left hands. The vampire watched until the warrior priest and the lord were directly in front of him, but still did not drop his hand. Instead, he whispered in an ancient tongue – harsh syllables, crude and vile.

Above him, the air boiled with shadows, and the shades and wraiths and banshees that floated there now gained form and solidity and swept down the slope towards the column like shrouds in the wind.

The warrior priest seemed to sense their approach, and opened his mouth to speak, but he was too late. Before he could cry warning, the billowing haunts burst from the tree line, shrieking with empty jaws and raking the knights with intangible claws. Others exhaled icy breaths that extinguished the torches, blanketing the track in darkness.

Instantly, the column was in chaos. Horses screamed and reared. Knights bellowed in fear and surprise and scrabbled for their weapons. The witch hunters fired futile shots at the diaphanous spirits. The vanguard turned and tried to push back through the column to aid the others. The warrior priest, however, had not been targeted by the haunts. He was not panicked. Nor was his horse.

Ulrika wanted to shout a warning to von Graal, but just then, he dropped his hand and plunged down the slope on his charger. Without word or cry, Stahleker’s lancers spurred after him, gathering speed as they slipped through the trees with inches to spare. Ulrika twitched like a wolfhound on a leash as she watched them go. Every fibre of her longed to be in on the charge, and she found she was strangling the pommel of her saddle in excitement.

Still silent, the lancers exploded from the trees and ploughed into the side of the column like a horseflesh avalanche, impaling the haunt-plagued knights and punching them out of their saddles before they knew they were being attacked. Knights and horses were driven sideways into the stream, slipping down the steep bank and floundering in the rushing water. Von Graal left his lance in the breast of one of the lord’s retainers and urged his charger towards the warrior priest as he drew his sword. Stahleker threw aside his shattered lance and shot the white-bearded lord point-blank in the face with a pistol as the old man tried to pull on his helm.

It was a massacre all along the line. The knights fought as if in darkest night, while Stahleker’s lancers, thanks to von Graal’s magics, could see everything, and took cruel advantage, toppling the knights from their saddles as they flailed in the wrong direction with their swords, stabbing them in the backs as they hacked at the spectres that shrieked in their ears. At the same time, pops of pistol fire flashed from the opposite bank, peppering the knights who had been driven into the river and knocking them into the water.

Then everything changed.

With a shout that seemed to come from a thousand throats, the warrior priest thrust up his shining hammer and a sphere of blazing light burst into existence over his head, illuminating the track and the churning river in a blinding gold-white radiance. At the touch of this light, the shades and wraiths shrivelled and dissipated like black steam, shrieks of agony echoing away after them, and von Graal shielded his face with his arm. Even up the slope, Ulrika cringed back from it. It stung like sunlight and seemed to stab at her soul like a molten sword.

All around the warrior priest, the knights recovered, fighting now unblinded, and finding their courage with the banishing of the dark. Now the attacks of Stahleker’s lancers were met steel to steel, and the pistoliers on the opposite shore held their fire as the two forces swirled together.

‘Stone me,’ said one of Ulrika’s guards, staring at the warrior priest. ‘That’s no company chaplain. That’s a bloody lector!’

Ulrika grunted with disgust. They were only seeing that now?

Von Graal recovered and pushed towards the priest, slashing with his sword. The priest blocked the strike with his glowing hammer, then thrust his palm at the vampire.

‘Creature of darkness!’ he roared. ‘Burn in the flames of Sigmar’s holy fire!’

A twin-tailed comet of fire leapt from his palm and struck von Graal in the chest. The vampire shouted a counter-spell, but the priest’s invocation was too strong. The flames enveloped him, setting his cloak and enamelled armour ablaze, and lighting his horse’s head on fire.

The horse reared, screaming, and von Graal, wreathed in flames, broke as well. Horse and rider bolted back into the woods as von Graal bellowed and beat at his burning cloak.

All along the line, the lancers were falling back, and some turned after von Graal, caught up in his panic.

‘Hold, you horse thieves!’ roared Stahleker as he spurred towards the warrior priest. ‘You break when I tell you to break!’

‘Keep your line!’ shouted Rachman. ‘Hold!’

The rallying cries pulled some of the men around, but the priest’s blazing light and the heavier weapons and armour of the knights were inexorably turning the tide. With the darkness and the shock of their sudden attack gone, the lancers were getting slaughtered.

Stahleker and Rachman hacked at the warrior priest, trying to cut him down, but no amount of experience and trickery could prevail against the sheer power of the lector and his hammer. Rachman was smashed from his horse, and Stahleker’s sabre was crumpled by a crushing blow. He wheeled his horse away, groping for his back sword, but the priest surged after him, knocking aside the lancers that came to his aid as if they weren’t there.

‘Come on,’ said Ulrika, edging forwards. ‘We have to help him.’

The guard on her left put his horse in front of her. ‘Sergeant said to stay here.’

‘Fool!’ snarled Ulrika. ‘We’ll be the only ones left!’

She shoved him and snatched the lance from his hands all in one movement, then danced her Arabyan into the other guard’s smaller horse. It stumbled aside and she spurred Yasim savagely as she couched her lance.

‘Hoy!’ shouted the guard. ‘Stop!’

‘Come catch me!’

Yasim plunged down the hill like red lightning, and Ulrika aimed her at the warrior priest’s back. He was driving Stahleker towards the river bank, bulling his little oblast charger back with the bulk of his warhorse, and raining heavy blows upon him with his hammer. The light from the blazing sphere above him burned Ulrika’s skin and filled her mind with buzzing bees. She clenched her teeth against the pain and clamped her lance tight against her side.

Again, the priest seemed to sense the approach of the unnatural, and wheeled to face her. Again, he was too late. The lance struck him under the left breast, and though it failed to pierce his shining armour, the strength of the impact punched him from the saddle and sent him crashing to the ground directly under the hooves of Stahleker’s horse.

Ulrika leapt from Yasim and dropped down on top of him, drawing her dagger and kneeling on his arm as he tried to raise his hammer.

‘Armour of Sigmar protect–’

Ulrika stabbed him through the eye with the blade and the invocation died on his lips before he could complete it. The sphere of light dimmed and vanished as his life left him, and all was blessed darkness again.

‘Much obliged,’ said Stahleker, blocking a knight who slashed at her as she stood. ‘And you didn’t kill my lads neither.’

Ulrika grinned and vaulted back into her saddle, drawing her rapier. ‘To Sergeant Stahleker!’ she shouted. ‘Drive ’em into the river!’

The lancers roared and rallied in the dark, and began to form a wall of whirling sabres as the knights fell back again towards the river bank. Rachman climbed back on his horse, his left arm hanging limp, and joined in the fight one-handed, guiding his horse with his knees.

Ulrika turned Yasim to help him, but before she could reach him, glass shattered on her pauldron and her face was splashed with stinging water.

‘Turn, fiend!’ shouted a voice as her skin blistered. ‘Turn and die!’

She hissed in pain and looked for the speaker, and got a brief glimpse of a witch hunter’s stern face before she was blinded by muzzle flash. A pistol ball punched through her breastplate to smash her ribs, and a pain like a branding iron quickly eclipsed the blunt throb of the impact. Silver. The screaming black agony of it almost overwhelmed her, and she felt the world swim around her, but stronger than the pain, stronger than the vertigo, was her rage. It rose up in her like a column of fire, blotting out sensation and fear and rational thought. These were the dogs that had burned Famke!

She dug her spurs into Yasim’s flanks and charged them, her vision reddening as if she was seeing through a mask of blood. Another pistol ball whizzed past her ear. She hardly noticed. A witch hunter slashed with a basket-hilt blade. She sheared it in two and cleaved his head from his shoulders with a back hand. Another reared up on her left, aiming a pistol. She chopped off his hand. Every move she made jarred the silver ball between her ribs and goaded her with fresh rage and agony.

More witch hunters came in, white-hot heart-fires in a red sea. She lashed at them in a blind frenzy, completely lost in her fury. The world fragmented into frozen moments – a witch hunter falling from his horse, his arm torn off at the shoulder, another clawing at the hilt of her rapier while the rest of the blade sprouted from the back of his neck, a third trampled under Yasim’s hooves as Ulrika slashed bloody stripes in his back.

Then there was only one – the leader – a hood-eyed gargoyle with a hawk nose that jutted from a curtain of lank grey hair. She knocked a globe of blessed water out of the air and pressed him back towards the river, beating back his sword cuts and scarring his armour with every swipe.

She grinned as his horse’s back hooves scrabbled at the slippery bank and his grim face began to show signs of fear.

‘I only wish I could burn you instead of drown you!’ she hissed.

His horse lost its footing at last and he had to clutch desperately to the saddle bow as its hindquarters dropped out from under him and it fought to climb back up the bank.

Ulrika laughed and raised her rapier for the final blow, but before she could strike, another horse shouldered in front of her and its rider slashed down at the witch hunter, decapitating him.

Ulrika snarled and shoved at the interloper, raising her blade, then saw that it was von Graal, his armour blackened and his helm gone, and riding a fresh horse. He had returned just in time to strike the last blow of the battle. Along the track the melee was over. The knights were dead and the lancers seeing to their wounded.

Von Graal smiled at her from a scarred, blistered, face. ‘Please, I beg you. Strike me so that I may be rid of you.’

Ulrika was sorely tempted, but the red rage was receding, and reason and pain returning, and she knew it was not the time. Not yet. She was too hurt. She could not be certain she would win. She lowered her rapier and inclined her head, nearly fainting with the agony of the wound made by the silver ball.

‘Forgive me, lord. I did not know who you were.’

‘What are you doing here at all?’ he asked. ‘Did I not order you to stay back?’

‘She saved the day, lord,’ said Rachman. ‘When you–’

Von Graal turned on him, eyes blazing with unnatural light. ‘When I what, corporal? Were you going to say that I have done something dishonourable?’

Rachman shifted uncomfortably, and Stahleker pushed up before him.

‘He wasn’t, lord. No. All he meant was, that in the face of that, anyone might have–’

‘Might have what, sergeant?’

Stahleker lowered his head like an angry bull. ‘Lord, I saw what I saw. You–’

‘What is your whore’s name, Stahleker?’ asked von Graal. ‘Margot, isn’t it? I find her quite attractive, in a coarse sort of way.’

‘Leave Mags out of this, lord. I–’

‘I slew the warrior priest,’ said von Graal. ‘I killed the witch hunters. Victory was mine this night, and if you or any of your men say different, your Margot will be moaning my name the next time you rut with her.’ He turned to Ulrika as Stahleker’s face went red. ‘As for you, stray, if you contradict my story, I will challenge you to single combat.’

Ulrika sneered. ‘Why not just kill me and have done?’

‘Because Kodrescu likes you, and I do not wish to anger him. But if you anger me, any of you, you will pay for it. Do I make myself clear?’

Ulrika glared at him, but was too weak to do more than nod. Stahleker and Rachman grunted.

‘Aye, lord. Very clear,’ they said.

‘Good,’ said von Graal, and turned his horse. ‘Then take the knights’ supplies and sink their cannon in the river, but leave the dead their armour and weapons. Lady Celia will raise them later. We ride when you are finished.’

‘Aye, lord,’ said Stahleker.

Ulrika remained upright in the saddle as von Graal rode towards his attendants, then she collapsed across Yasim’s neck, groaning in pain and slipping to the side.

Stahleker dismounted and caught her just before she fell. Rachman joined him.

‘Dirty coward,’ muttered Stahleker as he lowered her to the ground. ‘The victory may be his, but I know who I’d follow, no matter who was paying.’

‘Aye,’ said Rachman.

Ulrika looked up at them through the fog of semi-consciousness. Were they talking about her? They undid the straps of her breastplate, then pulled it off and Stahleker cut open her doublet with a dagger. The charred, bubbling wound beneath made both of them grimace.

‘That’s bad,’ said Stahleker. ‘I’ll fetch the barber.’

Ulrika shook her head and dug into the hole with her claws. The ball was wedged between two ribs. She plucked it out and flopped back, retching and dizzy. ‘No… surgeon. Just need blood.’

Stahleker and Rachman gave her hard looks.

‘Well you won’t get it from us, bloodsucker,’ said Stahleker, then stopped and looked around. ‘Wait here. Come on, Rachman.’

Ulrika snorted as they hurried off, then regretted it. She wasn’t in much condition to go anywhere. The pain of the bullet wound was like an anvil sitting on her chest.

A second later there came a scraping sound and she raised her head. Stahleker and Rachman were pulling the body of a witch hunter along the bank by the legs. It was the one Yasim had trampled to the ground.

‘This one’s still alive,’ said Stahleker as they dropped him beside her.

‘Thank you,’ murmured Ulrika, and pulled herself onto the witch hunter.

Stahleker and Rachman turned quickly away as she sank her fangs into the dying man’s neck. She gulped down his blood, desperate for the relief it would bring, but as she grabbed his belt to pull him closer, a sick heat made her hand sting and she raised her head. The witch hunter had two pistols stuck through his belt and a shot pouch hanging next to a powder horn. The pouch was giving off a nauseating warmth.

Ulrika tugged it free and looked inside – silver shot, nearly a dozen round bullets. She touched the pistols. They too were warm to the touch. She looked around. Von Graal was drinking from a slave twenty yards away. He wasn’t looking her way. One pull of the trigger…

No. Not now. She had not yet learned all she wanted to know, but later perhaps. Yes. Though the heat of its purity sickened her, she tucked the pouch of silver shot away and shoved the pistols through her belt, then returned to feeding on the dying witch hunter.

‘A total victory, lord,’ said von Graal as he rode at Kodrescu’s side. ‘All dead, including a powerful warrior priest and a handful of witch hunters, and fifty mounted corpses added to our horde.’

‘Very good,’ said the general, then looked at Ulrika. ‘And how did our stray conduct herself?’

Von Graal sniffed. ‘Tolerably, lord. She was brave enough, but put herself in unnecessary danger, as you can see by her wounds.’

Kodrescu looked at her. ‘Is this true, girl?’

Ulrika lifted her head with an effort. It was taking all her willpower to stay in the saddle. The blood she had drunk had helped heal her wounds, but she still felt like someone had inserted a hot brick in her chest, and every motion of her horse made her wince and sway. Still, she could not stay silent, not even if it meant facing von Graal. She would not let a threat intimidate her. ‘No,’ she rasped. ‘It was necessary.’

Von Graal shot her a murderous glance, and opened his mouth, but Kodrescu spoke first. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Captain von Graal has not told you the truth. He fled from the priest’s fire. The lances were going to break. I charged the priest and–’

‘Liar!’ cried von Graal. ‘I did not run! I slew the priest, despite your disobedience and the burns it cost me. You are trying to heap glory upon yourself at my expense!’

Kodrescu held up a hand. ‘Finish your story, girl.’

‘There isn’t much else to tell, lord. I killed the priest and fought the witch hunters. Soon after, Captain von Graal returned and slew the last of them and the battle was done.’

‘More lies!’ said von Graal again. ‘She did no more than assist me!’

Kodrescu kept his eyes on Ulrika. ‘Can you prove what you say?’

Ulrika glanced at von Graal. As it stood, it was his word against hers, and she did not doubt who Kodrescu would favour, but there had been other witnesses. All she had to do was call on Stahleker to tell what had happened. If she did that, however, she would force him to speak against von Graal, which would cost him his Margot, and no doubt his life, for Stahleker did not seem the sort of man to let another have his way with his woman without a fight – even if the other was a vampire.

Ulrika clenched her fists around her reins. What was the difficulty? Why should she hesitate? Why should she care what happened to Stahleker? He was only a man after all, and she had vowed vengeance against all of humanity. But he had found her blood when she needed it, and he was a good commander where von Graal was a bad one. She shook her head.

‘It happened as I said it did, but I cannot prove it. I can only give you my word.’

Von Graal sneered. ‘And how much is that worth? You have already turned on your previous master and your mistress before that.’ He turned to Kodrescu. ‘My lord, I must avenge this insult upon my honour. I wish to challenge this conniver to a duel.’

Ulrika smiled. There it was, as promised. Von Graal must have known she would kick. He had wanted this from the beginning – a way to kill her without raising Kodrescu’s ire.

Kodrescu nodded gravely. ‘I grieve that this rift has happened, but you are within your rights. You will have your duel.’

‘I accept,’ said Ulrika, ‘though I hope my lords will allow me to recover my wounds first.’

‘Of course,’ said Kodrescu.

‘Lord,’ said von Graal, ‘she brought these wounds on herself. They are part of her guilt. She should be prepared to fight with them.’

‘And you should be prepared to fight her without them,’ said Kodrescu. ‘This is an affair of honour, captain. Not murder.’ He waved a hand. ‘You will fight her after we have taken the monastery. Now see to your own wounds, and congratulations on your victory.’

Von Graal bowed, stiff. ‘Thank you, lord. And I am prepared to face her under any circumstances.’ He peeled off and started down the column, very upright in the saddle.

Ulrika watched after him, then turned back to Kodrescu. ‘Lord, I told the truth. He sacrificed our advantage so he could challenge the warrior priest.’

Kodrescu turned a cold eye on her. ‘Do not tell tales,’ he said. ‘It isn’t honourable. If you found him incompetent, you should have killed him and led his men yourself.’

Ulrika blinked. ‘That is better?’

‘The strongest should lead,’ he said. ‘That is the law of nature. That is my law.’

‘And if someone tries to kill you and lead your men?’

A savage smile spread across Kodrescu’s face and he stroked Wolf’s Fang. ‘Let them try.’

Ulrika rode in silence as the column continued north, her mind churning. When she’d found Kodrescu, he had offered her battle and glory, and she had been tempted by it. She still was. She wanted to be in at the charge when they swept down on the monastery. She wanted to fight without holding back. At the same time, the more she knew of the man, the more she found him a fool. He was not a good general any more than von Graal was a good captain. A good general promoted good leaders, not good duellists. This was a game to him. He didn’t truly care if Sylvania won the coming war. He was in it to win personal glory – a conqueror, not a ruler, a savage, simple being. But was that worse than von Messinghof’s cold manipulations? The count had cut her with silver – and as coolly as if he had been adjusting her collar. The calmness of it still made her shiver.

So, the spider or the wolf? Who did she give her loyalty to? Both would give her the vengeance she craved, but for how long? Who would keep her fighting the longest? The answer to that came down to the real question: who would win when they met? Would von Messinghof’s tactics carry the day, or would Kodrescu’s brute strength and Lady Celia’s risen horde crush all before them? Would–

Ulrika paused, goosebumps rising on her arms, for she suddenly knew the answer. The one who won would be the one she sided with. If she stayed with Kodrescu and did not warn von Messinghof of his coming, Kodrescu would win. If she escaped and told von Messinghof of Kodrescu’s plans, von Messinghof would ambush him and destroy him. She, who had been a pawn in the games of others since she had died, now had the power to be a kingmaker!

So, the question remained – the spider or the wolf?

chapter twenty

SHARPENING THE KNIVES

Once she gave it some thought, it wasn’t a hard decision. Ulrika might be able to help Kodrescu defeat von Messinghof, but in the end Kodrescu would defeat himself with his vanity and his pride. Von Messinghof, on the other hand, had the brains and political savvy to survive during and after the war. If Ulrika set the crown on his head, he would rule well and give her battle for all eternity.

Good. It was a relief to have it settled in her mind. But, how best to help? If she flew back to von Messinghof with Kodrescu’s plans, he would be able to mount an ambush and very likely defeat the renegade, but the battle might decimate both armies and leave the Sylvanians too weak to attack Karl Franz. Was there a way she could sabotage Kodrescu before she left?

For a moment she thought of betraying him to the templars of the Monastery of the Black Rose and letting them destroy him, but then put it out of her mind. Von Messinghof would not thank her for slaughtering troops he considered his own. No, the destruction of the templars and the raising of their dead was key to the count’s plan. It had to happen, but when it did, Kodrescu would have a huge army of zombies under his command, and it would make it that much more difficult to defeat him when–

A sudden thought stabbed ice through her spine, and she clutched the saddlebow to keep from falling. What if that huge army was under her command?

Ursun’s teeth! Wouldn’t that make von Messinghof sit up and take notice! She wouldn’t be sleeping in the barracks after that! But… but could she do it? Could she kill a vampire so sure of his skills that he invited his subordinates to challenge him? Her eyes flicked to her saddle bags, where the pistols and stolen silver shot were hidden. There were ways, but if she did kill him, would the rest of his army follow her?

Her eyes darted around the column, taking in all the players and sizing them up. Von Graal she would certainly have to deal with. He would not bow to her command. Indeed, if Kodrescu was dead he would try to take command himself. Could she defeat him in their duel, or should she find a way to kill him beforehand? Either way, he would have to die.

Morgenthau, on the other hand, seemed ripe fruit. Ulrika had seen how Kodrescu humiliated him. He would likely have no trouble betraying the general, but at the same time, he had already betrayed von Messinghof. It would be difficult to convince him that the count would welcome him back with open arms. Nor could he be trusted not to turn again should the opportunity present itself.

And what of Lady Celia? She was the most powerful of all, and Kodrescu’s lover. She could expect no help there. Indeed, she might have to kill her first. But no, she couldn’t. Von Messinghof was counting on the army of undead she would bring back to him. How could she be convinced to join Ulrika after Ulrika had killed her paramour? It seemed impossible. Perhaps she could be tricked in some way, though how, Ulrika didn’t know.

She looked at Stahleker. What bitter irony that the human was the only one she thought she could trust. He had proven a clear-headed ally, however, and after the way von Graal had treated him, his loyalty to his current masters must be strained to the breaking point. But was he enough? Right now his four hundred men made up the bulk of the army. Kodrescu, von Graal and Morgenthau only had a hundred blood-and-bone knights between them, but after they took the monastery and the town it would be different. Von Messinghof had told Ulrika that the town of Bruchben had some three thousand citizens, and there were more than three hundred knights and acolytes in the monastery. Once all these were slaughtered and raised by Lady Celia’s necromancy, Stahleker would be outnumbered ten to one.

Ulrika bit her lip. Stahleker was key, but if she couldn’t get Morgenthau on her side and discover a way to deal with von Graal and Lady Celia, he wouldn’t be enough. How was she to do it? She would have to give it some thought, and quickly too. The battle for the Monastery of the Black Rose would come the next night.

Kodrescu’s army made camp two hours before dawn. Bruchben and the monastery were close enough that they could have reached them before the sun rose, but arriving so late would have left them no time for battle. Instead, they pitched their tents out of range of the monastery’s far patrols, and made their final preparations.

Kodrescu called his officers into his tent and gathered them around a rough map of the monastery and the town. The monastery was tucked against low wooded hills overlooking a cultivated valley through which ran the Werkenau river. Bruchben was on the same side of the river, a half-mile through the woods to the west via a narrow path. A larger road ran along the far side of the Werkenau, and there were bridges across the river that connected it to the monastery and the town.

Kodrescu pointed to the monastery. ‘The wards the monks have placed upon their walls make them almost impenetrable by our kind. If we were to lay a siege, it might take weeks to break them. We haven’t the time for that.’

‘Then how do we get in?’ asked Morgenthau.

‘We do not,’ said Kodrescu, smiling. ‘They will come to us.’ He swept his finger to the town. ‘The Black Guard are sworn to fight the undead wherever they appear, and the monastery has strong ties to the town. Many of their servants and initiates come from there. So when they hear that it is being ravaged by a vile vampire and its minions they will have no choice but to come to its aid. And when they do…’ He described a circle around the town with his finger. ‘The rest of us will be waiting.’

‘That still leaves some in the monastery,’ said von Graal. ‘They won’t all come, and the wards will still be in place.’

‘Yes,’ said Kodrescu. ‘It will remain impossible for us to enter. That is why we travel with living men. Disguised in the armour of the templars that we kill in Bruchben, Stahleker’s lancers will ride into the monastery and kill the priests that maintain the wards. Then we will sweep in and finish the rest.’

Ulrika frowned. And who would ‘the rest’ be? A few servants and stable boys? Where was the glory in that?

‘I suppose I am to be the vile vampire who threatens the town,’ sighed Morgenthau, ‘as I have the face for it.’

Kodrescu shook his head. ‘I told you, captain. I cannot yet trust you in battle.’ He pointed to the bridge that crossed the Werkenau near the monastery. ‘You will hold this bridge and make sure no cunning templars try to cross the river and come up behind us.’

‘But – but how likely is that?’ asked Morgenthau, spluttering. ‘They will go straight down the forest path. You leave me out of the action entirely.’

‘Until a dog learns to obey simple commands like sit and stay,’ said Kodrescu, ‘it does not deserve to be in at the kill.’

‘I am not a dog!’ growled Morgenthau.

‘Then prove it!’ said Kodrescu. ‘Show me you can follow orders and I will allow you to be a wolf again.’

Morgenthau opened his mouth to retort, but von Graal spoke first. ‘Then who will attack the town? Not I, surely.’

‘No,’ said Kodrescu. ‘You are too valuable to risk.’ He turned to Ulrika. ‘You will do it, girl. You and forty of the lancers, with some of Morgenthau’s bone knights and von Messinghof’s winged terror to help you.’

Ulrika blinked, unsure whether to be honoured or insulted. It was pleasing to hear that the general trusted her more than Morgenthau, but in the same breath he had suggested that she was more expendable than von Graal, as expendable as the lancers, who he was sending ahead to be cannon fodder twice in one night. ‘Me? Are you certain, lord?’

‘You told me you wished nothing more than vengeance upon all mankind,’ said Kodrescu. ‘This is your opportunity to begin. The town of Bruchben must be wiped from the face of the earth.’

Ulrika thrilled at his words, her fears of being expendable fading. At last she was being allowed her revenge, and Kodrescu was letting her be the leader of men she was meant to be! It was almost enough to make her reconsider betraying him.

A short while after the meeting, Ulrika went to Morgenthau’s tent and found him pacing back and forth while his hulking servants polished his armour and weapons. He looked up at her with his pink eyes as she entered.

‘What do you want?’

‘Are you regretting your decision?’

The pink eyes narrowed. ‘Are you Kodrescu’s spy?’

‘Can you think it?’ asked Ulrika. ‘You may have been told to sit and stay, but he has made me nothing more than bait for a trap. He expects me to die in Bruchben.’ She glared towards the door. ‘I won von Graal’s battle for him, and Kodrescu knows it, but the flame-haired coward will lead the ambush while I am to be trampled under the first charge. I am expendable.’

‘And why do you tell me?’ asked Morgenthau. ‘Do you wish me to pat your hand and mouth sympathies? Please. I would prefer to be alone.’

‘What I want,’ said Ulrika, taking a step towards him, ‘is for you to answer the question. Are you regretting your decision?’

Morgenthau stared at her, frowning, then his eyes widened and he reached for his dagger. ‘You are von Messinghof’s spy!’

‘Easy, lord,’ said Ulrika, holding up her hands. ‘You jump to conclusions.’

She turned her cheek to show the cut von Messinghof’s silvered blade had made on her face. It was still black and raw. Morgenthau winced at the sight of it.

‘He scarred me, for eternity. All so that Kodrescu would believe I had left him for good.’ She snorted. ‘Ruse or not, I did not intend to come back after such treatment. It was too much.’

‘Did not? You have changed your mind again?’ sneered Morgenthau.

‘Wouldn’t you?’ She sighed. ‘We are caught between two imperfect masters, a petty tyrant and a smiling manipulator – and must make a decision.’

‘It is an easy one for me. Von Messinghof would take my head if I returned.’

‘Even if you returned at the head of Kodrescu’s army?’

Morgenthau gaped, then looked nervously towards the tent flap. He motioned to his two men. ‘Ulsler, Bohn. Watch outside. Make sure no one comes near the tent.’

The men bowed and went out, and Morgenthau beckoned Ulrika to a chair with a clawed hand, then leaned in as she sat.

‘You think it would work? You think he would forgive me if I brought back all his troops?’

Ulrika frowned, pretending to consider. ‘I think you would have to make some story, say that you meant to betray Kodrescu all along, but dared not tell anyone, even von Messinghof, for fear of spies in the camp. But with such a force at your back could he do anything but welcome you?’

‘That is true,’ said Morgenthau, his pink eyes brightening. ‘He cannot afford battle. It would be ruinous to his plans. He would have to take me back, but…’ He looked towards the door again. ‘But can we do it? Have we the strength?’

Ulrika hid a smile. She had him now. The rest was just details. ‘I have Stahleker for certain. That leaves von Graal, Lady Celia and Kodrescu himself.’

Morgenthau’s brow lowered. ‘I would send that strutting pig to the void with a stake through his heart for the humiliations he has put me through,’ he spat. ‘But he is the greatest blade in six centuries, even without Wolf’s Fang. I would not live if I faced him.’

‘Forget about him,’ she said. ‘I have a way. Can you best von Graal?’

Morgenthau snorted. ‘That peacock? He is no swordsman. He is more concerned with the jewels on the hilt than the edge on the blade, but what of Lady Celia?’

‘I – I don’t know yet. We can’t kill her. Von Messinghof needs the undead she will bring, but–’

Morgenthau snorted. ‘Fool! You can’t keep her alive! If that’s your plan, I want nothing to do with it. You mean to kill Kodrescu, her lover! She will never join you. She will kill you, and there would be nothing you could do to stop her.’

Ulrika ground her teeth. ‘I am well aware of her powers. Von Messinghof briefed me on them. I was hoping that together, we might find some way–’

‘Together we will die,’ snapped Morgenthau. ‘No. I’ll join you when you agree to kill her and prove to me you can do it. Not before.’

Ulrika glared at him, then bowed and backed towards the tent flap. ‘Thank you, lord. I will think on what is to be done and return.’

Ulrika stepped out of Morgenthau’s tent and cursed. What was she to do now? The plot might be over before it began. Of course, she could agree to Morgenthau’s demands and prove that she could shoot Celia dead with her silver shot, but the vision of leading a mighty force of the living and the undead into von Messinghof’s camp was too powerful to deny. Anything less would be failure. She needed Celia alive.

But how could she convince the necromancer to betray her lover of four hundred years? Ulrika might talk well enough to sway a whipped dog like Morgenthau, but it would take a tongue as cunning as that of Countess Gabriella to turn Celia against Kodrescu, and Ulrika’s tongue was more mallet than scalpel. Her mind turned of its own volition to Galiana, who had been the Lahmian Boyarina Evgena’s companion in Praag. She had served the boyarina for nearly as long as Celia had served Kodrescu, and when Evgena had died, she had been lost. She had not wanted to lead, and had begged Ulrika to stay and help her with her duties. The little doll had lived so long as Evgena’s pet that she knew no other role. Could the same be true of Celia? If she had served Kodrescu for four hundred years, it was likely she had little ambition to rule on her own. What would she do if he were gone? Would revenge consume her? Would she strike off on her own? Would she seek another master?

Ulrika thought she could guess, but a guess was a flimsy thing to build a plan upon, and she certainly couldn’t expect Morgenthau to come on board on the strength of it. But did he have to know?

Her thoughts swirled into mush as she tried to think it through. She pushed them from her head. She would sleep on them and see what revealed itself to her when she woke. But first it was time to find out if Stahleker admired her as much as he had professed.

The mercenary was in his tent, sitting on his cot, weaving a braid of dark hair into the ginger locks of a red-faced, buxom woman of middle years, who was bandaging a wound in his leg. She glared suspiciously at Ulrika as she entered, but Stahleker murmured in her ear and she returned to her work.

‘You’ve recovered, then?’ he asked.

‘Somewhat,’ said Ulrika. ‘And I thank you for finding me that drink.’

‘I thank you for putting down that hammer priest. He would have finished us, I think.’ He eyed her breastplate, which still had the hole the witch hunter’s bullet had punched through it. ‘You come for new armour?’

‘In a way.’ She looked around. There was no furniture in the tent other than the cot, so she sat cross-legged on the bare earth. ‘There is another who may finish us, if he makes his play. I aim to put him down too, and I want your help in it.’

Stahleker scowled. ‘We ain’t talkin’ about von Graal, are we?’

‘No. Nor Morgenthau.’

Stahleker finished plaiting the braid into the woman’s hair and rubbed his bristly chin. ‘You’re asking me to turn on my employer.’

‘I’m asking you to return to your original employer.’

‘Gus, this is trouble,’ said the woman. ‘Stay out of it.’

‘Hush, Mags,’ said Stahleker. ‘The bloodsucker ain’t wrong. Old Kodrescu’s leading us down a bad path. Even if we beat von Messinghof we won’t last long. Kodrescu will throw himself at Karl Franz like von Graal threw himself against that priest, all swords and glory, and some fire wizard will burn him to the ground before he gets halfway across the field. He’s got no tactics.’

‘But the money–’ said Mags.

‘You can’t spend it when you’re dead.’

‘And who says we won’t be dead if we go back to von Messinghof?’ Mags asked. ‘He has no cause to love us, does he? Not any more.’

Stahleker looked like he was going to shush her again, but then he turned to Ulrika. ‘That’s a good point. We broke our contract. Kodrescu may’ve tricked us, but we coulda walked away if we’d wanted. How can y’guarantee us the count won’t cut us down if we go back?’

‘You will be my troops, under my command and protection,’ said Ulrika. ‘I will vouch for you. Nobody will touch you, not even von Messinghof.’

Mags rolled her eyes.

Stahleker looked sceptical as well. ‘You’d go against the count for the likes of us?’

Ulrika paused. Would she? She had pledged to serve von Messinghof, and she had vowed to take vengeance on humanity, yet here she was, saying she would stand up to the count for a mere man. But Stahleker wasn’t like other humans. He did not fear her. He did not hate her. He did not want to burn her or to be her swain. He seemed to admire her for who she was, not what she was. She had his loyalty, and he deserved the same from her.

At the same time, she was not ready to cross the count without reason. She admired him as Stahleker admired her. Not because he was a Sylvanian count, but because he was a smart, forthright commander. He had been honest with her from the start – even about the silver – and had given her opportunities she had no right to expect. Did he deserve less loyalty than Stahleker?

‘I remain loyal to the count,’ she said at last. ‘And will not fight him, but neither will I stand by and see you hurt without reason. If he wants to punish you, I will challenge him on it. And if I cannot change his mind, then I will demand that whatever punishment he metes out to you, be served to me as well – whips, banishment, or death.’

Stahleker and Mags stared at her.

‘Death?’

‘Aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘On one condition.’

‘Here it comes,’ said Mags.

Stahleker waved her down. ‘What condition?’

Ulrika put a hand to her breast. ‘That you pledge to me, not my purse. That you become my troops in truth, my personal troops, loyal only to me, no matter who waves gold in your face.’

Stahleker sat back, frowning, and exchanged a look with Mags.

‘I will pay you, of course,’ said Ulrika quickly. ‘And well. I won’t ask you to grow poor in my service. But I want more loyalty than money can buy.’

‘It ain’t how much you can pay,’ said Stahleker, shaking his head. ‘It’s… well, we’ve been masterless men since before our grandfathers’ grandfathers’ time. We want no lord. We trust no lord. We fight hard for those that employ us, but we serve at our own pleasure, no one else’s, and come and go as we please.’

Ulrika held his eye. ‘Did you not say that you would follow me? Or did I mishear?’

‘I said I’d rather. I didn’t say I’d marry you.’

Ulrika grinned in spite of herself. ‘Well, I won’t ask it, then. Instead I’ll just ask this – if you get a better offer, warn me before you leave.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Stahleker, but Mags leaned forwards, her eyes hard.

‘I have a condition too,’ she said. ‘Or there’s no deal.’

Stahleker looked uncomfortable. ‘Mags–’

‘What is it?’

‘You’ll take no blood from him. Never. For any reason.’ Tears sprung to her eyes. ‘He’ll be sergeant to you, not slave, or I’ll – I’ll…’

Ulrika relaxed. ‘Fear not. I want no swains. I despise them. I want the men under me to follow me because I lead well, not because I’ve beglamoured them. Condition granted. I take my blood from my enemies.’

‘You swear it?’ asked Mags.

‘I swear it. On my father’s memory, I swear it,’ said Ulrika. ‘And gladly.’

Stahleker patted Mags’ hand. ‘There, now. Can’t ask fairer than that, can you? And you know she already–’ He paused then looked up at Ulrika. ‘I – I heard what you did. Earlier.’

Ulrika frowned. ‘What did I do?’

‘Rachman was riding nearby when you told Kodrescu what happened with von Graal and the hammer priest. He heard the general ask if you could prove your story, and heard you say you couldn’t.’ Stahleker raised his head and looked her directly in the eyes. ‘You could have, though. You could have called me to speak. You could have forced me to tell what I’d seen and put me up against von Graal, but you didn’t.’

He put his hand on Mags’ knee and stroked it softly. ‘You’ll have our loyalty, bloodsucker. As long as we’re with you, we are your troops in truth – your personal troops. And you’ll have fair warning if we mean to leave you.’

Ulrika’s chest tightened. She held out a hand. ‘That is all I can ask, sergeant. Thank you.’

He shook her slim hand with his thick one. ‘Thank you, captain. Now, when do we make our move?’

‘Not until after we have done what we came here to do,’ she said. ‘And when you strike, I don’t want you to call me your captain. That honour will be another’s.’

Stahleker frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

Ulrika smiled. ‘Then I will explain.’

chapter twenty-one

BRUCHBEN

The camp woke again at sunset and assembled into three separate forces. Kodrescu, von Graal, Lady Celia and the bulk the army made up one, Morgenthau and thirty mounted wights made up a second, while Ulrika, Stahleker, Rachman and forty of their lancers made up a third, with the winged terror and ten wights added to their number to make sure the town-dwellers knew who was slaughtering them. Kodrescu and Morgenthau’s forces were to leave first, taking little-travelled forest paths to their positions around the town and at the bridge near the monastery respectively.

Before they got under way, Ulrika mounted up and sought out Morgenthau. She found him upon his warhorse accepting his shield and lance from a slave. His mood had not improved.

‘Fool,’ he snapped, thrusting the lance back at the slave. ‘The point is as dull as your mind. Fetch me another!’

Ulrika sidled Yasim to him as the slave scurried away. ‘It will be tonight,’ she said. ‘After the monastery has fallen.’

Morgenthau glared at her. ‘Oh yes? And can you prove to me you can do it? Or will you attempt it without me?’

‘Von Graal and Kodrescu will have a falling-out. Under the guise of protecting Kodrescu, we will kill both of them. If Lady Celia fails to believe that von Graal was the villain, I have another way.’ Ulrika undid the thongs that tied her shot pouch to her saddlebow, then tossed it to him. ‘Have a look in there.’

Morgenthau pulled open the draw strings and looked inside, then recoiled. ‘Silver! Where did you get this?’

‘From the witch hunters I killed.’ She patted her pistols in their saddle holsters. ‘Primed and double-shotted.’

He looked askance at the guns and tossed the shot bag back to her. ‘Even that may not kill her. I told you, she is old and strong.’

‘It may not,’ said Ulrika. ‘But it should take her mind off incantations for long enough to sever her head.’

Morgenthau chewed his lip with a jutting fang, his pink eyes anxious, but at last he nodded. ‘Very well, I will risk it. I cannot stand to live another night under the yoke of this fool. Sit and stay indeed!’

Ulrika bowed in the saddle. ‘Thank you, lord. I am relieved to hear it. Look for my signal to begin.’

As she waited to advance with the lancers, Ulrika noticed that Stahleker had a braid of ginger hair woven into his dark thatch. She smiled.

‘You and Mags have exchanged vows?’

Rachman guffawed and Stahleker shrugged, embarrassed.

‘An old custom,’ he said. ‘They say back home that Ostermarkers don’t plight our troths, we plait ’em.’

Ulrika chuckled. ‘What these two have woven together, let no man put asunder?’

‘Aye,’ said Stahleker, stroking the braid fondly.

‘That, and the braid will strangle him if he looks at another woman,’ said Rachman, grinning.

‘That too,’ said Stahleker, and Ulrika couldn’t tell if he was joking.

For three hours more they waited as the lancers grew more and more restless and impatient, but at last a bat fluttered in with a message tied to its claw, and Ulrika mounted up with a sigh of relief and motioned for them to get under way. Unlike Kodrescu and Morgenthau, the lancers did not go by hidden forest paths. She and Stahleker led them to the main road and they trotted down it in brazen double file, torches and bronze-armoured, skull-faced mounted wights at the front, a banner made of a flayed human skin flying above them – and shadowy wings flapping above.

Ulrika’s chest swelled with emotion as she rode at the head of the column. Everything was right. She was on the hunt with the wind in her hair and men at her back. The rumble of hooves, the creak and jingle of leather and harness, the moonlight and torchlight glinting off helmet and lance-tip, the shiver of anxious anticipation that always came before a battle – she had missed them more than breathing. This was where she was meant to be. This was what she was meant to do.

A few miles later they came to the branching left that led to the town and Ulrika spurred her horse as she took it. The bone knights and the lancers followed suit, and the column boomed onto the ancient stone and wood bridge that crossed the Werkenau. Two guards at the far end hopped on to ponies and fled down the road as they saw the riders coming. Ulrika let them go. They would be their heralds.

As the column broke from the trees, Ulrika saw the town ahead. It lay a quarter-mile away across the strip of farm and grazing land that surrounded it, the shadows of its shingle roofs peeking up above a wooden palisade wall. Her keen eyes saw the two guards riding their ponies through the main gate, and her sharp ears heard them shouting to the guards.

‘Close the gates! Riders are coming! The dead ride!’

Ulrika stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled, high and shrill. An answering shriek, too high-pitched for human ears to hear, echoed from the sky above, and black wings sped forwards.

‘Charge!’ cried Ulrika, and spurred her horse into a gallop.

Behind her, the bone knights and lancers increased their pace with perfect control, maintaining straight ranks as the strides of their horses lengthened and the ground shook under their hooves.

At the gate, the guards were frantically shoving the doors closed, but at the last second, out of the sky streaked the black shape of the bat-headed, bat-winged griffon. It slammed into the men, knocking them back and sending the doors swinging wildly in. The guards picked themselves up and backed away, shooting futile pistols and arrows as the beast lunged at them with massive foreclaws.

Stahleker’s lancers cheered and Ulrika let out a breath as she saw the doors open wide. It would have been a very different battle if the townsfolk had managed to lock the gates. They might have even had a chance. Now they were doomed.

Ulrika whipped out her rapier as her troops bore down on the gates. ‘For Famke!’ She cried. ‘For vengeance!’

Musket fire cracked from the walls and a youth with a spear ran out at her, wide-eyed with fear but stabbing bravely. She thrust through his chest without stopping and the knights and lancers thundered into the town as the remaining guards scattered before them.

Bruchben was a substantial town, full of men who cut heavy blocks from a nearby limestone quarry and shipped them down the river. The houses were built of the stuff, and the main streets paved with it, and the place was large enough to have three inns, two banks, and a temple of Sigmar with a spire taller than the trees of the forest. It also had an actual town guard, with uniforms and well-maintained equipment, and had they had sufficient warning, they might have mounted a decent defence. As it was, with the winged terror flapping to the walls to tear the gunners from the parapet, and skeletal riders and villainous lancers already causing havoc within the gates, they lost themselves to terror and panic.

Ulrika and the mounted wights trampled a handful of guards under their hooves as they sped down the high street, and lashed out at more that dodged left and right for alleys and doorways. Further on, loud bells were clanging from the spire of the temple. Good. That would alert the monastery.

‘Divide into squads, sergeant,’ she called to Stahleker, ‘and sweep the town. Kill the guards first, then start on the rest.’

‘Aye, captain,’ replied Stahleker, then started shouting orders to his men. Rachman did the same.

‘And no decapitations!’ she called after them. ‘They must be fit to rise again!’

‘Aye, captain.’

The lancers split off down side streets in packs of eight, killing any who stood in their way. Ulrika continued straight with the mounted wights as her retinue, and clattered into the square in the centre of town. Beyond a spreading oak in the middle, an ancient priest of Sigmar and his acolytes were herding weeping women and children through the broad stone doors of the temple, while sturdy stone cutters formed a defensive line, armed with mauls and spears and swords.

Ulrika and the skeletal riders cut through the men like so much chaff, faster than their fastest and stronger than their strongest. The women shrieked and wailed as their men died, and the old priest pushed forwards to defend them, dragging a hammer he was far too decrepit to wield.

‘Spare them, fiends!’ he cried. ‘They are no threat to you. Take me instead.’

Ulrika pulled up, hesitating as she looked past him to the cowering women and children. Vow of vengeance or no, she had never liked a foe without the strength to fight back. It wasn’t sporting.

‘Father Solkow,’ wailed a voice from behind her. ‘Aunt Ethelgard! Save me! Take me in!’

Ulrika turned and saw a dozen punishment cages hanging from the branches of the oak tree. All were empty but the nearest, which held a little girl in a torn chemise, so thin that her bones showed through her sunburned skin. The wrist of the scrawny arm she reached through the bars was swollen and bent, and her gaunt face was covered with bruises and cuts. A sign roped to the cage read ‘Vampyre’, and a blistered V-shaped brand in her forehead declared the same. She was marked for life – however long that might be.

‘Save you?’ snarled a woman who hid behind the priest. ‘From yer own kind?’

‘Burn in Sigmar’s fire, slut!’ shouted the priest.

The spark of pity that had briefly flared in Ulrika flickered and died. How could she have thought these ignorant savages innocent? The girl in the cage was no vampire, and anyone not blinded by fear and superstition would have known it in an instant. The wretched thing had obviously sat in the cage for days – night and day – and had not burned in the sun. Ulrika turned back to the priest and the women, snarling and showing her fangs.

‘Spare them?’ she said. ‘Aye, I will spare them. I will spare them the fear the rest of their miserable lives would have subjected them to. I will spare them the hate that would have poisoned their hearts! And I will spare their children too. They will not have to grow up in a world full of cruelty and stupidity. They will remain innocent to the end of their lives!’

She turned to the mounted wights, who waited silent upon her word. ‘Kill every last one of them.’

The ancient warriors plunged forwards, slashing at the women and children and chasing them as they scattered left and right. The priest shoved down the aunt of the caged girl and raced for the temple, his flock forgotten in his fear. Ulrika spurred after him, riding her horse up the temple steps and through the doors.

He shrieked as she passed the threshold. ‘Stay back, fiend! Do you not fear the wrath of Sigmar?’

Ulrika sneered as she backed him down the aisle. ‘I am from Kislev. Sigmar has no dominion over me.’

He swung his heavy hammer and crashed back against the altar as he overbalanced himself. She stabbed him through the heart, then whipped her rapier from his chest and let him slump to the floor.

‘And it seems he cares little for you either.’

She rode out into the square again to find the women and children dead, dying or fled, and the skeletal knights looking for new prey.

‘Dismount,’ she said, swinging down to the ground. ‘We will go calling.’

The mounted wights stepped down from their dead horses with the jingle of chainmail and the hollow clatter of bone, and followed Ulrika as she stalked towards the rich houses that fronted the square. From every one she heard the slamming of shutters and the barring of doors. She smiled. It would do them no good. Their nightmares were here, and they were stronger than they had dreamed.

It was as she was pulling a fat, gibbering merchant from the attic of the third house that she heard the distant thunder of massed cavalry at the gallop – the templars of Morr had answered the call of the temple bells.

‘They’re coming,’ she said as she broke the man’s neck.

She started down the stairs, whistling for the wights, who were busy butchering the servants where they had taken refuge in the kitchen. They turned from their grisly work without a word and followed her back into the square.

The lance squads were pouring into it from every side street, and Stahleker and Rachman trotted up to her, saluting, as she mounted Yasim.

‘All dead?’ she asked.

Stahleker’s face twitched. ‘Not all,’ he said. ‘We had little time to be thorough.’ He looked pale and grim.

‘The work doesn’t suit you, sergeant?’

‘I prefer battle,’ he said.

‘Then you’re in luck.’ She wheeled her horse around. ‘They’re coming for the east gate. Put your men in the side streets. I and the wights will take their charge. You will flank them.’

‘Aye, captain. Move your arse, Rachman.’

They rode off again, shouting to their squads, as she led the skeletal knights to the mouth of the street that led to the east gate. The gate was flung wide, opened by the town guards in anticipation of the templars’ coming, and Ulrika had no wish to close them. For Kodrescu’s plan to work the Black Guard had to be trapped inside the town, and she and the wights were the bait that would lure them in. A shiver went up her spine as she wondered how often the worm was eaten before the fish was hooked.

A mournful horn, like the howl of a grieving dog, sounded from the road, and the templars of Morr thundered through the gate, a four-wide column of dark-visaged knights, as grim and intimidating in their way as her own, bearing down upon her in a perfect line. They were encased head-to-toe in heavy black plate, with slotted visors hiding their faces and making them look more like automatons then men. Devices of ravens, skulls and black roses decorated their shields and pauldrons, and black plumes bobbed above their helms.

‘Steady,’ said Ulrika, as they came within a hundred paces, then realised she was being ridiculous. The skeletal knights she stood with knew no fear. They would not need reassurance in the face of the Black Guard. She was the only one who was nervous.

Eighty paces away. She raised her sword. The first law of cavalry was that standing riders would not survive a cavalry charge. Force must be met with force, and speed with speed. At the same time, she wanted as many of the templars through the gate as possible before she stopped their advance.

Sixty paces away, but the tail of the column had not yet appeared. It didn’t matter. She could wait no longer. She dropped her sword.

‘Charge!’

The wights kicked their skeletal war horses into a gallop and lowered their lances. Ulrika rode with them but hung back. She had no interest in risking herself here. Let the mindless constructs take the charge. She had to survive the battle and make her play for Kodrescu’s head.

The fronts of the houses blurred by on either side, the noise of hoofs deafening in the confined street. A wild eye glinted through the visor of the leader of the Black Guard. Then, impact.

With a sound like a steam tank crashing off a cliff, the mounted wights and the Black Guard slammed together. Lances buckled and splintered and punched through breastplates. Living and dead horses smashed chest to chest, and knights both human and skeletal were thrown from their saddles, pauldrons and helmets spinning away.

The weight of numbers and flesh gave the templars the advantage, and they drove the wights back, snapping femurs, skulls and ribcages as they trampled downed horses and fallen riders underfoot.

Caught in the second rank, Ulrika was swept back with the rest, Yasim almost lifted off her hooves in the tide, but at least they were both whole and unhurt. Ulrika slashed at a knight who was pressed stirrup to stirrup with her in the crush, but even with her inhuman strength, her rapier was not heavy enough to pierce his blessed black armour. Still, there were always openings.

As he raised his long sword, she thrust for the gap between his breastplate and vambrace and impaled his armpit. With a grunt, his arm dropped, useless, and she stabbed him through the eye, then took the long sword from his hand as he toppled from the saddle.

A knight on her right swung a mace at her head. She parried with her rapier and hacked at his arm with her stolen sword. It chopped through his armour and knocked him to the ground – a weapon much more suited to the occasion. She sheathed her rapier and looked around. The mounted wights had been pressed back almost to the town square, but the templars’ advance had been stopped at last. All around her the skeletal riders fought the Black Guard in a swirling, clanging mess that was utterly familiar to her, and at the same time, utterly foreign – for it was silent.

Usually a melee such as this was filled with battle cries and curses, shouts and challenges, but the wights did not speak for they hadn’t tongues, lips or breath, and the templars of Morr had taken a vow of silence which they apparently didn’t break even in battle. Both sides fought with the eerie quiet of black beetles going to war.

Then the silence was broken.

With a roar, her lancers poured from the side streets and slammed into the flanks of the templar column, Stahleker’s squads on one side, Rachman’s on the other, lances lowered and sabres flashing. Ulrika breathed a sigh of relief as knights fell and died and the lancers howled and swore. This was war as she knew it – loud and bloody and savage.

She fought towards Stahleker, leaving the wights to fend for themselves. There was neither thrill nor skill to leading mindless troops. They did not rally to you because they trusted you. They did not fight harder when backed into a corner. They did as they were commanded, without question or passion.

She stabbed a Black Guard through the backplate and he slumped over his horse’s neck, revealing Stahleker fighting sabre to broadsword against a hulking templar. The mercenary was cut in a dozen places and sweating like a cook over a stove, but grinning like a madman.

‘More to your liking, sergeant?’ asked Ulrika.

‘Aye, captain. Much more.’

Ulrika blocked the Black Guard’s slash, allowing Stahleker to chop through his visor and send a spray of crimson down his breastplate. Ulrika finished the knight with a thrust through the gut and they turned to look for fresh targets.

There were plenty. Too many. Though Ulrika’s
draw-and-flank manoeuvre had been a success, and the front of the Black Guards’ column was in bloody ruins, the warriors of Morr had not stopped pouring through the gate. Behind the vanguard of armoured knights, perhaps fifty strong, was a company of younger, lighter-armoured men in the tabards of initiates. They were not hidden within full plate, nor were their faces covered, but they were intimidating nonetheless – as silent as their elder brethren, and as fervent in their loathing of the undead and those who served them.

The situation was turning bad, and getting worse. Everywhere the templars and initiates were driving the lancers back down the narrow streets from which they had burst, and if they managed to push them to the ends, they would be able to encircle them and wipe them out. Where was Kodrescu? He should be falling on their rear by now.

Beside her, Stahleker grunted as if he’d been hit, and Ulrika followed his gaze in time to see Rachman pitch from his saddle in the middle of a melee on the far side of the street. Stahleker held his position as his friend vanished from view, but Ulrika could see that his heart was across the street.

‘Kodrescu means to let us die to weaken the templars,’ he growled.

‘A pox on that,’ said Ulrika as she gutted a knight with a silvered sword. ‘If Kodrescu won’t attack them from behind, I will.’

She stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled, too high for humans to hear, then began to fight free of the press. ‘Help Rachman, then hold,’ she said. ‘It’s time for the bait to bite back.’

chapter twenty-two

MORR’S MERCY

The terror, which had been hunting down townsfolk, flapped over the spire of the temple of Sigmar and whumped down beside Ulrika as Yasim shied away, terrified. Ulrika patted the horse’s neck, then leapt from her saddle onto the ugly beast’s back and grabbed the reins. Kodrescu had expressly forbidden her to ride the beast, saying he didn’t trust her not to abandon him, and Stahleker was supposed to mind her and kill her if she tried, but Stahleker was hers now.

‘Up!’ she cried, and dug her spurs into its neck.

The thing kicked up and rose into the air with ponderous wing strokes. She was tempted to drop it right back down in the middle of the templars, but the battle was strung out all along the main street and the initiates were forcing back the lancers at every intersection. If she attacked in one place, they were sure to break out in another.

She turned the horror in a wide circle to gain altitude and speed, then banked it into a swooping dive along the length of the street. Knights and initiates alike flinched and ducked as she brought the beast into a head-level glide, its wings crushing helms and its claws raking shoulders and backs. At the gate she pulled it up and into a steep arc for another pass and saw her gambit had had the effect she’d hoped for. All along the street the shaken templars were falling back before Stahleker’s men.

‘Again!’ cried Ulrika, and swept down at them for a second pass.

They were ready this time, however, and swords, axes and maces flashed up as she shot over their heads. The beast took the cuts and heavy impacts with the stoicism of the dead, and the scaled skin of its body and heavy leather of its wings took little damage, but as she approached the end of the street, Ulrika saw a Black Guard snatch up an unbroken lance and aim it straight for the horror’s breast.

She hauled up on the reins, but too late. The lance punched through the beast’s ribs and jolted it out of the air – crushing the knight and his horse to the ground as it fell, then ploughing a swath through the templars and skeletal knights around him.

Ulrika vaulted clear of the wreckage and skidded to a stop in the middle of the melee as the horror flopped and floundered beside her. So much for being everywhere at once, but perhaps she had done enough. Stahleker’s men seemed to be holding now, while the initiates looked shaken and afraid, and her crash had wiped out a handful of Black Guard.

The rest, however, were surrounding her, a towering circle of faceless black knights on jet-black destriers, turning from reducing the skeletal knights to bone dust and dented armour, and now focussing all their silent attention on her.

Ulrika dropped into guard and turned in a slow circle, her stolen long sword in both hands. ‘Who leads you?’ she called. ‘I call him out. Single combat!’

The knights made no answer, only crushed in as one, chopping down at her and trying to pin her between their horses. Ulrika ducked and parried, but there were too many, and she was too hemmed in. A sword dented her left pauldron. Another cut her forearm. With a howl and a flailing sweep, she caught the wrist of a knight as he slashed at her and levered herself up onto the rump of his horse. He tried to hack backwards at her, but she caught him around the neck and dragged him to the ground on the far side, out of the circle of knights.

‘Grand master!’ cried a knight as she hooked her claws in the slot of the fallen man’s visor and tore off his helm.

His beard was grey and his bald head lined with wrinkles, but though old, he looked in no way weak. The strength of faith and years of training burned in his eyes as he glared, not at her, but at the knight who had spoken.

Ulrika raised her sword and showed him her fangs. ‘Grand master, is it? An honour to–’

The shriek of banshees and the thunder of hooves interrupted her and she glanced up. Von Graal and his Blood Knights were at last pouring through the eastern gate and falling upon the back of the initiates of Morr, and there was more thunder behind her. Kodrescu and his retinue were surging across the square from the west as the rest of Stahleker’s four hundred spread out to the side streets, moving to join their brothers and close in on the Black Knights from all sides.

A mailed fist cracked Ulrika in the jaw and she fell back. The grand master had taken advantage of her distraction. She recovered and hacked at him, but he beat away her sword and regained his feet.

His templars started to come to his aid, but he waved them angrily towards Kodrescu’s knights and they turned to face the onslaught as he squared off with Ulrika.

‘Come, templar,’ said Ulrika. ‘I’ll show you Morr’s portal–’

‘Stand away, girl,’ came Kodrescu’s voice. ‘He is mine!’

Ulrika sprang aside as the general rode his hell-steed between her and the grand master and dismounted without reining in. He strode towards the templar and drew Wolf’s Fang. It was the first time Ulrika had seen the dread blade unsheathed and it sent a chill up her spine. Freed from its scabbard, the sword’s animal presence was unmistakable. Though there were no flames nearby, its blade glinted like a wolf’s eyes reflecting a fire, and she could sense its ancient hunger hunting for prey.

‘Hold all others back,’ said Kodrescu. ‘I will fight him alone.’

Ulrika ground her teeth. Kodrescu’s arrogance was infuriating. She couldn’t wait to kill him, but maybe the templar would do her job for her.

‘Grand master,’ intoned Kodrescu, pointing the red-gleaming sword at him. ‘Let this combat be proof that the lords of night are greater than your so-called god of the dead. You think he will give you strength. He will not. You think he will protect you from resurrection. He will not. Wolf’s Fang will drink your soul, and your shell will ride with me, rejected by Morr, and–’

The grand master charged him, slashing strong and sharp and silent. Kodrescu parried barely in time, and took a step back as the knight followed up a with chop at his legs. Ulrika’s skin prickled with sudden hope. Could he really do it? Eternal vengeance or no, she would spare the grand master’s life if he made the loudmouth general eat crow for once.

It was not to be. Kodrescu recovered and twisted aside with unhurried ease as the grand master made a thrust to his exposed neck, then hacked down and sheared the templar’s silvered blade in two with his crimson one. The grand master dodged back, raising the shattered sword and reaching for the mace that hung at his belt, but Kodrescu was blindingly fast, and chopped down through his clavicle and chest to his heart before he could bring either weapon into position. The dread blade keened like a whimpering dog and glowed bright red in the wound, as if heated on a forge. The grand master sank to his knees, his mouth open in a silent scream of agony. Ulrika blinked as she saw that he had no tongue. It had been cut out long ago.

‘Now you see that power is greater than faith,’ said Kodrescu as the dying templar’s eyes bulged in horror and his face drained white. ‘Now you see that the dead are mine, not Morr’s. Welcome to my army, grand master. Your lance will soon be crimson with the blood of your brothers.’

He twisted the sword in the wound, causing the grand master to jerk with one last spasm of pain, then tore the blade out and laughed as he toppled backwards to the ground. The templar’s wounds bled not a drop. He was as dry as a raisin.

Kodrescu turned from the corpse and looked around, and Ulrika did too. The battle was nearly over. Out-numbered two to one and pressed from all sides, the templars and the initiates were dying to a man. Only a last knot of Black Guard still fought on, ringed by von Graal and his favourites and dying quickly.

Kodrescu plunged for them, shoving aside von Graal and the others to reach the front rank. Wolf’s Fang flew everywhere, slicing through armour, bone and flesh as if they were air, and wreathing him in a whirlwind of blood. Von Graal snarled at the intrusion, but regained control of his expression by the time Kodrescu had slain the last templar and raised his sword to his troops.

Ulrika smiled. Even without her goading, the players already seemed to be playing their parts.

‘Well fought, brothers!’ cried the general, heedless of the glares he was reaping. ‘Now, finish the town. We march on the monastery within the hour.’

Ulrika waited, the black enamelled breastplate of a templar of Morr in her hands, as Stahleker knelt by Rachman, folding his arms over a leafy oak twig. Rachman lay with the rest of the Ostermark dead, his chest caved in by a Black Guard’s axe and his face shattered by the hooves of the horses that had trod on him after he had fallen.

‘I’m sorry, captain,’ said Stahleker. ‘I’ll just be a minute. Just have to…’ He broke off, then tried again. ‘Just have to say the words.’

‘Take your time, sergeant.’

Ulrika looked away as Stahleker made the sign of Taal’s horns and began to murmur under his breath. The lancers had gathered at one side of Bruchben’s square and were seeing to their dead and donning the armour of the templars of Morr, while on the far side of the square, Kodrescu, von Graal and the other Blood Knights were feasting on their victims – those templars and town-dwellers who had survived the initial onslaught – and preparing for their assault on the monastery.

‘Ride free, brother,’ said Stahleker when he had finished his prayer. ‘I’ll find you on Taal’s veldt.’

With a sigh, he stood from Rachman’s body and took the front half of the black breastplate from Ulrika, then held it to his chest as she set the back in place and began to pull the straps through the buckles. The back-and-breast was much too big. The templars were huge men, chosen for their size and strength. Men of the Ostermark had Ungol blood in their veins and were consequently smaller and more wiry than their southern cousins.

‘Like fighting inside a coffin,’ growled Stahleker as he tried to move his arms in the bulky armour. He glared across the square towards where Kodrescu stood with Lady Celia as Ulrika started to buckle a pauldron to his left shoulder. ‘First into the lion’s den again, for the second time in a night. You wouldn’t want to make your move before he kills me like he killed Rachman?’

‘I wish I could, but we’ve no home to return to if we don’t do as von Messinghof bade us. We have to finish the monastery, and we need Kodrescu to do it.’ She started on his right pauldron. ‘But as soon as it is done, look for my signal. I want to strike while he is still celebrating.’

Stahleker nodded, grim. ‘Aye, captain. We’ll be ready.’

Across the square, Kodrescu was stepping from Lady Celia and motioning everyone else back. She had entered Bruchben once he had declared it safe, and was now crossing to the centre of the square. Ulrika saw the V-branded girl staring at her from her cage as she stopped near the tree and faced Morrslieb, which hung near the western horizon and had the night sky to itself.

Stahleker shivered and turned his back as Celia took what looked like a mummified forearm and fist from the folds of her robe and began to croon over it like it was a child. Ulrika, however, could not look away.

As Celia continued to sing, the fingers of the fist slowly unclenched and then began to flex and curl as if waking up, while scabs of ancient skin flaked away and fluttered to the ground. Celia stroked the limb and the song became a chant, still soft, but insistent, as if she was urging it to some task. The fingers curled again – all but one, which remained pointing like that of an accusing judge.

Still chanting, Celia raised the limb to the sky and pointed it at the Chaos moon, then all around at the town, and finally down at the ground at her feet, where she began to sweep it around herself in careful strokes. Wherever the finger pointed the grass withered and blackened, and Ulrika saw that some sort of pattern was being drawn on the ground.

With the completion of each line, a pressure like a coming storm grew heavier, and the night blacker, as if a dark lens was being placed over the sky. Celia’s strokes grew slower too, and her arms began to shake like she was pushing the pointing finger through mud rather than air. Stahleker’s men edged back, eyes wide, and Ulrika felt nausea climbing her throat like a fat worm.

She had never liked the sensation of magic being done, and this was the greatest spell she had ever witnessed up close – and the vilest. Celia was drawing deep from the dark winds and opening doors into places beyond reality with the drawing of each new stroke. Human screams echoed from nowhere and half-seen beings flickered at her shoulders as she struggled on.

Still unable to look away, Ulrika saw that the lines of blackened grass were forming an arcane symbol enclosed within the iris of a stylised Nehekharan eye, and Celia was trapping herself in the centre of it. Finally, shaking like a palsy victim, she drew the loop of the iris, and as the seared circle around her was made complete, a silent crack, like thunder felt but not heard, echoed through the town, staggering Ulrika as if the ground had moved under her feet. Stahleker and his men staggered too. Some vomited or buckled at the knees.

Stahleker pressed his hand to his breastplate and sucked in constricted breaths, but Ulrika, after the initial shock, felt invigorated. Whatever the dark energy Celia was gathering, it was feeding her, giving her strength. It was not a healthy vitality, however, more like a jittery rage. She wanted to howl and kill and had to force herself to keep her claws and fangs sheathed. The scent of Stahleker’s bloody wounds was choking her with thirst.

In the centre of the eye, Celia lifted the withered arm over her head and began a new chant, more martial and rhythmic than before, which raised translucent walls of black energy from the blackened lines of the symbol until they formed an irregularly shaped column of darkness around her. When the column was taller than the spreading oak, she pushed out with her palms and the walls began to expand outwards, passing through the tree and other solid objects as if they weren’t there.

Their caress jolted Ulrika with another surge of the poisonous vitality, and her skin crawled. She growled in her throat. It affected Stahleker and his men in exactly the opposite way, making them shiver and moan with pain, but these were only side effects. The walls’ true purpose was revealed as they began to ripple over the bodies of the dead that Ulrika and the lancers and the rest of Kodrescu’s force had left strewn around the town square.

At the touch of the dark energy, the corpses began to twitch and jerk, faintly at first, like dreamers caught up in a nightmare, but then the spasms became more pronounced. Their heads snapped about and their limbs flailed as if they were having seizures. A stonecutter’s wife with her guts spilling from her belly flopped onto her back and began clubbing herself in the face with her arms and fists. An old man gnawed the dirt and crawled in circles.

Stahleker grunted. ‘Taal and Rhya, no!’

Ulrika looked down and saw that Rachman and the other dead lancers were twitching and writhing along with the rest. The living lancers recoiled in horror.

Stahleker balled his fists and started towards Celia. ‘Y’eerie bitch! Leave my men–!’

Ulrika hauled him back, pinning his arms. ‘Don’t,’ she hissed. ‘You’ll spoil our ploy.’

Stahleker struggled in her grip. ‘No! The counts bought our lives, not our deaths! They won’t have ’em!’

‘They won’t!’ agreed Ulrika. ‘Finish them before they rise. Quick.’

Stahleker’s face contorted and he began to shake. ‘But – but that’s–’

‘Would you rather the alternative?’

With a curse Stahleker tore away from her and drew his sabre, then knelt by Rachman and chopped his head off as tears ran down his cheeks. Taking their cue from him, his men did the same with the other dead, sorrowfully decapitating them, then laying them down again and straightening their limbs.

Stahleker rose and stood beside Ulrika as they watched the rest of the dead start to lurch to their feet and stagger around, gnashing their teeth and colliding with each other. His face was cold and hard as he wiped the tears from his cheeks.

‘We’ll be ready, captain,’ he said as he stared at Kodrescu and Celia. ‘We’ll be ready.’

The dead templars and initiates, now stripped of their armour, rose up on maimed and broken legs and clawed at the air with arms cut to the bone. The aged priest of Sigmar stumbled out of the temple and crashed into the women and children he’d tried to protect. They careened blindly away from the impact, trailing guts and blood-sodden bed clothes. And as the walls of necromantic power spread to encompass the whole town, more and more dead citizens shambled into the square, drawn by Celia’s siren call. Butchers with their knives, stonemasons with their mattocks and chisels, guards with their halberds and swords, wives and children with kitchen knives and clubs and whatever futile weapon they had been defending themselves with when Stahleker’s men had killed them.

‘And all our sins shall come back to haunt us,’ whimpered a lancer as he saw the horde approaching.

‘Steady, lad,’ said Stahleker. ‘We saved our own, at least.’

Finally, after Celia’s chant had gone on for what seemed hours, the torrent of walking dead slowed to a trickle and the necromancer lowered her arms and hung her head, exhausted. The stultifying tension of the spell dissipated and the night grew brighter again. Stahleker and his men drew relieved breaths. Ulrika shook herself, casting off the simmering urge to violence that had filled her since it had begun.

A slave rushed up to Celia and offered her his arm and his neck. She took both gladly, leaning her weight on him as she drank greedily from his throat, but while she was distracted, her new charges began to drift, and turn towards the living with dead, staring eyes.

Stahleker cursed and stepped back as some of the undead throng shuffled towards him and his men. ‘First she raises our dead, then she tries to kill our living. Call off your dogs, y’corpse witch!’

Celia was too lost to hear.

‘Take up your armour and retire,’ said Ulrika. ‘I will speak to her.’

‘And slit her throat while yer at it,’ said Stahleker.

‘Would that I could.’

Ulrika started towards Celia, then saw some of the zombies pawing at the cage that held the V-branded girl. A tall corpse had caught the bars and was pulling on them while she trembled inside, staring with terrified eyes at the sea of undead around her.

Ulrika paused, suddenly sickened. There was no hope for this girl. The only innocent in the whole affair, and she had suffered worse than all of the rest. Nor would her suffering end when the zombies brought down the cage and tore her from it. At best, they would eat her alive. At worst, they would obey Kodrescu’s rules and only kill her, allowing Lady Celia to raise her and make her one of them. Even if she escaped, there was little hope for her. With a vampire’s ‘V’ branded on her forehead and what she had seen tonight seared into her mind forever, she would likely be burned at the stake or locked up in a madhouse by the upright citizens of the Empire. That was no life, no life at all.

Ulrika turned abruptly, and started kicking through the zombies.

‘Get away!’ she barked, and slapped at the corpses with the flat of her stolen templar sword. They groaned and stumbled aside, but only to the edges of the burnt grass plot, where they stood slack-jawed, watching the swinging cage like it was a hypnotist’s medallion.

Ulrika stopped the cage with a hand, then looked at the girl. She cringed back against the bars, as fearful of Ulrika as she was of everything else.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Ulrika said. ‘I will save you from them. Now, stay back.’

The girl shrank away even more as Ulrika raised her blade and swung down hard at the rusty lock. It fell away in pieces and Ulrika pulled the door open, then held out her hand.

The girl remained at the back of the cage, but when Ulrika made no more threatening moves, she edged forwards and let her lift her out and lower her to the ground. She was almost too weak to stand, but at last rose and looked up at Ulrika.

Ulrika couldn’t meet her gaze. She waved a hand. ‘Go before me, to the west gate. I will protect you.’

The girl turned and glanced fearfully around at the looming zombies, then looked again over her shoulder.

Ulrika nodded. ‘Go on.’

The girl turned back and started for the gate. Ulrika raised her sword and decapitated her before she had taken two steps.

‘I’m sorry, little one,’ she said. ‘That is the only protection I can give you. Find peace in Morr’s realm.’

She stepped over the little headless corpse and started again towards Celia.

chapter twenty-three

BLOOD AND BLACK ROSES

Under the shadow of the trees at the edge of the surrounding forest, Ulrika watched with Kodrescu, von Graal and Lady Celia as Stahleker and his lancers, dressed in the armour of the Black Guard, trotted in double file towards the black stone monastery, which sat on the side of a hill about a half-mile across a cultivated valley through which wound the Werkenau river. The monastery was high-walled and rose up the slope in sections, with the roof of a temple rising above the walls of the bottom section and dormitories and other buildings poking out further up.

She watched the disguised lancers approach it with some trepidation. What if they were challenged? What if their ill-fitting armour was noticed? She turned to Kodrescu. ‘And if the monks close the gates to them? Do we lay siege after all?’

Kodrescu smiled. ‘The servants of Morr never close his gates. It is a stricture of their cult. All must be allowed to enter his temple.’ He motioned to the monastery. ‘Even here, the doors have a gap between them wide enough for a single rider to pass through. If the monks recognise the lancers as impostors, all they can do is defend the gap, and there will be few enough left for that. But they will not see the ruse. They are too arrogant to believe that their brothers could ever lose.’

Ulrika hid a smirk at that. Kodrescu was certainly an expert on arrogance, but maybe he was right. She hoped so. The lancers had still not recovered from Celia’s enervating spell when they had ridden off. In that condition, they would need every advantage they could get.

A short while later, she saw their black line start up the twisting road to the monastery gate. A horn blew from the walls and Ulrika tensed, afraid it was some signal that had to be answered, but the lancers rode on without responding, and she saw no sign that the monastery was in a state of alarm. Indeed, as the lancers reached the level area before the gate, the heavy doors swung open.

Ulrika let out a sigh of relief and gathered up her reins.

‘You see,’ said Kodrescu, smug. ‘They are in.’ He waved a hand. ‘Ahead at a canter.’

He and his command spurred their horses forwards and the rest of the column started after them. The little valley looked so peaceful as they rode through it. The fields were lush with growing crops and the monastery seemed to slumber on the hill, but from inside its walls Ulrika heard the distant pops of pistols and the faint cries of men.

‘Should we not go faster?’ she asked.

‘We cannot enter until the wards falter,’ said the general. ‘Lady Celia will know when it is safe.’

Ulrika ground her teeth. If Lady Celia was overly cautious the lancers could again be left high and dry. She wanted to race ahead, not only because she thought of Stahleker’s men as her own now, but also because their deaths would endanger her own plans. If the lancers died, her coup would die too.

Halfway across the valley, Morgenthau’s force broke from the southern edge of the forest and trotted towards them across the bridge over the river. He saluted Kodrescu as his troops merged into the column, then gave Ulrika a brief sly nod. She cursed under her breath. The fool was going to give the game away. He should not have acknowledged her at all.

Fortunately, Kodrescu only seemed interested in taunting Morgenthau and didn’t notice. ‘You seem unmarked, captain,’ he said, smiling. ‘Fighting was light, then?’

‘Fighting was nonexistent, lord,’ said Morgenthau through his teeth, ‘as you well know.’

‘You shall see some action now,’ said Kodrescu. ‘The end has begun.’

‘Aye,’ said Morgenthau. ‘Sweeping up the dying leavings of your mercenaries. How glorious it will be.’

Kodrescu glared at him. ‘Have a care, captain, or I will set you to guarding the perimeter.’

Ulrika glared at him too. If the fool angered Kodrescu now, the general could indeed send him on some fool’s errand, and she would have to deal with Kodrescu, von Graal and Lady Celia alone.

‘The wards have weakened,’ said Celia. ‘They will not stop us.’

Kodrescu grinned and raised his lance high. ‘Death to the thieves of the dead! Attack!’

Ulrika and the others kicked their horses into a gallop and gained full speed just as they reached the foot of the hill. Kodrescu led them up towards the monastery with his red banner flapping from the end of his lance, the very image of a brave lord leading a shining company to storm an evil black castle. Ulrika laughed at the irony, her blood singing in anticipation of the combat to come.

At the top of the gentle slope the road entered a neatly tended Garden of Morr, and she could see the open gates of the monastery before her, flanked by one white column and one black, and crowned with carvings of skulls and ravens. Beyond them, the courtyard was a scene of red slaughter. Taken unawares, the monks and initiates had died in scores, and the flagstones were littered with butchered bodies. Now however, the survivors had rallied, and Stahleker’s false templars were fighting robed men and tunic-clad initiates all over the yard.

Kodrescu lowered his lance and kicked his horse into a breakneck gallop, and Ulrika and the others plunged after him, flashing past graves and monuments wreathed in black roses to either side. She braced for the touch of the wards as they charged over the monastery’s threshold, and was not disappointed. A pain like a hammer blow rocked her backwards, and a force like a strong wind almost dragged her from her horse. She thundered into the courtyard reeling in the saddle and gasping in agony, her vision clouded and crimson. The others were in similar straits. Von Graal clung to his saddlebow, and Morgenthau was bleeding from the nose and mouth. Only Kodrescu and Lady Celia seemed unaffected.

‘Treacherous witch!’ Morgenthau snarled at her, his clawed hands pressed to his temples. ‘You were meant to weaken the wards!’

The necromancer snorted. ‘Were they at full strength, you would be dead.’

Ulrika surveyed the courtyard through swoon-dimmed eyes. A phalanx of monks in robes and breastplates were fighting the false Black Guards on the steps of the monastery’s temple, while all around and on the walls above, false initiates fought true initiates in a myriad of confused melees. Black-armoured corpses sprawled everywhere, and Ulrika feared Stahleker was among them, but then she saw him fighting two initiates and a monk with a warhammer on the balcony of what looked like a library. He was in bad shape, his black helm lost, and the vambrace that encased his left arm crushed almost flat.

Neither Kodrescu or von Graal seemed to notice that the commander of their human forces was only seconds from death, and instead clattered up the temple steps on their chargers to rain blows down upon the warrior monks.

Ulrika snarled with anger and spurred Yasim at the library, then leapt from her saddle and climbed the skull-encrusted stonework to the balcony. Stahleker fell just as she vaulted the balustrade, knocked flat by a hammer blow to the shoulder, and she sprang at his opponents, long sword flashing, as they raised their weapons to finish him.

‘Fight me!’ she cried, smashing an initiate’s sword from his hands. ‘I am your sworn foe, not him!’

The second initiate swung an axe at her, but he was painfully slow. She ducked under it with ease and ran him through the ribs, then kicked him into the first, sending them crashing over the balustrade to the courtyard below. The monk, however, was a veteran, scarred and strong and cold of eye. He swung his hammer one-handed, and blocked Ulrika’s counterstrike with an iron bracer that he wore under his voluminous sleeve.

Still, he was only as fast as a human, and when he swung again, she slashed not at his body, but at the arm that wielded the hammer, and opened a gash in his wrist that showed bone. His grip faltered as he gasped, and in that instant he was done. Ulrika stabbed him in the guts, her blade punching through his breastplate as if it were made of tin, then caught him by the throat and hurled him to the courtyard after the initiates. He landed head-first.

At her feet, Stahleker struggled to get up. Ulrika pulled him to his feet. He was white as a ghost and weaved like a drunk.

‘Is it bad?’ Ulrika asked.

‘Can’t lift my arm,’ he slurred. ‘And that bastard monk knocked me silly, but I’ll live. Thanks to you.’

‘Forget it. Can you fight?’

He shook his head, wincing. ‘But I can lead.’

‘Can you fire a pistol?’

He grinned through bloody teeth and held up his unwounded right arm. ‘Oh, aye.’

Ulrika glanced over the balcony. The fight was nearly over. Kodrescu and von Graal had defeated the monks on the temple steps, and their troops, living and dead, were starting to spread out through the monastery, looking for survivors to slaughter.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then gather your men. Pull them off the hunt and get them mounted and ready to fight in the courtyard. Hopefully it will be over before it starts, but…’

‘But y’never know.’

‘Aye.’

Stahleker saluted and limped to the door that led into the library. ‘We’ll be ready, captain.’

Ulrika returned the salute and leapt over the balustrade to drop like a cat to the courtyard, then remounted her horse and started for the temple.

At the top of the steps, Kodrescu had the monastery’s ancient abbot on his knees before him, while von Graal, Morgenthau and Lady Celia stood by. The abbot bled from a wound in his neck that had been made by fangs. Kodrescu wiped his lips.

‘For all your life, monk, you have been a thief of the dead,’ he sneered, ‘stealing subjects that are rightfully mine. Now you will have your punishment. Hard labour, for eternity, walking until your skin sloughs from your bones as a slave in my train.’

Ulrika stopped her horse at the bottom of the steps and caught Morgenthau’s eye. He raised his eyebrows questioningly, and she gave a minuscule shake of the head, then flattened her hand in a ‘wait’ motion. He nodded and clenched his jaw, uneasy.

Kodrescu lifted the abbot off his feet by the neck and looked him in the eyes. ‘You will never find Morr’s realm, monk, nor will any of your brothers.’

The old man met his gaze, unflinching. ‘I take solace that you will not either,’ he quavered. ‘Even the undead die, and when it is your turn, your fate will be worse than mine.’

Kodrescu snarled at this affront, then tore the abbot’s throat out and threw his body down the stairs to lie with the rest.

‘Raise him,’ he said, turning away, ‘and all the others. It is time to march on von Messinghof at last.’

‘Yes, lord,’ said Lady Celia.

Ulrika looked around as the beautiful necromancer started down the stairs towards the centre of the courtyard. Stahleker’s men were slipping back to their horses in ones and twos, but most were still in other parts of the monastery. Nor had Stahleker returned. If Lady Celia began her ritual before they made their attack, it would weaken them again and make them unfit to fight.

‘General,’ said Ulrika. ‘The men are not finished hunting down all the survivors. If the spell is done now, you will leave some thieves unpunished.’

Kodrescu looked at her, then turned to Lady Celia. ‘Wait until all are dead.’

‘Yes, lord.’

Kodrescu started down the stairs as well, motioning to von Graal and Morgenthau to follow. ‘We will stay here for the day and burn their books and relics, then start back to von Messinghof at sunset. Now come to the library. We must plan our return.’

Ulrika tensed as the three lords crossed towards the library door. What was keeping Stahleker? If Kodrescu left the courtyard, the moment would be lost, and they would have to find another. But when again would he be so completely off his guard?

As if on cue, Stahleker limped around the corner of a dormitory at the head of a dozen lancers. Ulrika chewed her lip as they hurried for their horses and Morgenthau looked over his shoulder at her. Was this the best time? Stahleker wasn’t in position. Should she wait? Would it all fall apart?

It didn’t matter. It was time to try or die. She nodded to Morgenthau and mouthed the word, ‘Go,’ then looked back at Stahleker and gave him a nod too.

Morgenthau swallowed and slowed, letting Kodrescu and von Graal get ahead of him, then drew his sword. Ulrika saw him hesitate, but finally he lashed out and cut through the armour of von Graal’s forearm.

‘Traitor!’ he cried. ‘You attack our lord? Face me!’

Von Graal and Kodrescu whipped around at the same time.

‘What is this?’ asked von Graal, drawing with his wounded arm. ‘Why have you struck me?’

Morgenthau stepped back, pointing his sword at him but looking at Kodrescu. ‘He had silver, lord! He meant to stab you in the back!’

Kodrescu drew too, glaring from one to the other as Wolf’s Fang shimmered an angry red. ‘Is this true?’

‘Of course not!’ cried von Graal. ‘It’s madness. He lies!’

‘You are the liar!’ shouted Morgenthau, and lunged at him, stabbing for his heart.

Kodrescu hesitated, uncertain who to attack, and in that instant Sergeant Stahleker hit his cue perfectly.

‘To Lord von Graal!’ he cried, raising his sword. ‘Protect our master! Slay Kodrescu! Slay Morgenthau!’

As one, his lancers answered the call and spurred their horses towards the general. ‘To Lord von Graal! Slay Kodrescu!’

Kodrescu turned on von Graal, snarling, as Morgenthau fell back. ‘He lies, does he? This is a coup!’

‘No, lord! I swear it!’

Kodrescu didn’t listen. He thrust at von Graal with the red sword as Stahleker and his lancers surged their horses around the combatants and hacked down at the general, still calling von Graal’s name.

All over the courtyard, Kodrescu’s Blood Knights hurried to save their master, but Stahleker had moved first, and the lancers formed a solid wall around the general, holding them off. Unfortunately, no wall would protect von Graal from Lady Celia’s magics. Ulrika saw the necromancer beginning a spell and spurred her horse at her. The animal shouldered her to the ground and trampled her, stopping the incantation. Ulrika didn’t look back. It was time to play her part.

She drove forwards into the press, crying, ‘Fall back, traitors! You will not kill our lord!’

The lancers, who were of course in on the ruse, made way for her, and she shoved through to the open space where Kodrescu and von Graal fought. As she expected, von Graal was getting the worst of it. He was a decent fencer, and as quick as any of their kind, but Kodrescu was on another plane entirely. He gashed von Graal a dozen times in as many seconds, and the red sword glowed like hot iron as it absorbed his blood.

Ulrika drew a pistol from her saddle holster. ‘Death to the traitor!’

‘No!’ roared Kodrescu, waving her back. ‘His death is mine! Don’t shoot him!’

‘Very well,’ said Ulrika, and shot Kodrescu point-blank in the back.

The general gasped and staggered as the double-shotted silver punched through his breastplate and buried themselves between his shoulder blades. His sword drooped and he clutched at his back, hissing in pain. Ulrika was amazed at his toughness. She would have been on the floor, screaming like a baby. Nevertheless, it was enough. Presented with the opening, von Graal took it, and chopped deep into Kodrescu’s side with his sword, making a terrible wound.

Even then the general did not fall, and countered with a wild slash that knocked von Graal’s helm flying and left him with a gash over the ear.

Von Graal staggered back, ripping his sword from Kodrescu’s side. ‘Mad dupe,’ he rasped as the general fell to his knees. ‘It was not I who plotted your assassination. But as you have proven yourself a fool for believing it, perhaps you deserve it.’

He raised his sword over his head. Kodrescu tried to lift the red blade to block it, but he was shaking too hard. The veins in his neck were turning black under his skin, and his mouth was frothing blood.

Von Graal chopped down like an executioner and severed Kodrescu’s head with one clean stroke. It toppled from his shoulders and fell to the cobbles.

The red-haired knight looked at it sadly, then raised cold eyes to Ulrika as she holstered the spent pistol. ‘Well, traitor,’ he said, ‘it seems I have done your dirty work for you. Do I now get to share in the spoils?’

‘Death to the assassin!’ cried Morgenthau, bursting from the ring of lancers with his sword raised.

Von Graal spun too late, and Morgenthau’s sword cut through his vambrace and into his arm. The beautiful knight grunted and backed to the wall, trying to keep Ulrika and Morgenthau in front of him. Unfortunately, he didn’t see Stahleker on his horse beside him.

‘Touch my woman, would ye?’ snarled Stahleker, and slashed a red trench in the back of von Graal’s bare head.

Von Graal staggered forwards, crying out and covering up. Ulrika hacked down and chopped through his wrists to split his head from crown to chin. He dropped to his knees, as loose as a scarecrow, then pitched face-first to the cobbles in a welter of blood.

Morgenthau breathed a sigh of relief, but Ulrika knew the job wasn’t done. Kodrescu’s Blood Knight lieutenants were attacking Stahleker’s lancers from all sides, calling them traitors and turncoat human scum, while Lady Celia was getting to her feet where Yasim had knocked her to the ground and shaping another spell.

‘Stop!’ shouted Ulrika at the top of her lungs. ‘Stop fighting! They were only following von Graal’s orders! Listen to me! We must unite!’

‘They were following your orders, assassin!’ cried Lady Celia. ‘I saw you shoot him!’

‘I shot at von Graal! I tried to stop him!’

Celia wasn’t listening. She was glaring at Ulrika as black energy boiled between her tensed hands.

Ulrika cursed. So much for the original plan. She drew her second pistol and aimed it at Lady Celia. ‘Very well, I did shoot him. And this one holds silver too. Do you wish to die as your lord did?’

Celia froze, her gathered darkness swirling but not growing. The other melees quieted as all turned to see the outcome of this conflict.

‘Consider your play carefully, lady,’ said Ulrika, babbling as she tried to think of something that would stay Celia’s hand. ‘What comes next? Will you take up Kodrescu’s banner? You have great power. You are likely more deadly than he ever was. Will you go against Karl Franz? Or will you attack von Messinghof?’

Lady Celia bared her teeth, but remained staring, thoughts churning behind her angry eyes. Ulrika swallowed. She was on the right track.

‘What is your battle plan, lady?’ she continued. ‘Do you know von Messinghof’s strength? Do you know Karl Franz’s? Upon what ground will you meet them? And what will you do if you lose? Where will you run if Sylvania learns of your mutiny?’

‘Enough!’ said Lady Celia. ‘You make your point! I am no leader. I never claimed to be. But do you suggest that you should lead instead? Or that treacherous worm at your side? You haven’t the troops to defeat von Messinghof either. I am dead no matter what, so I may as well have my vengeance upon the killers of my–’

‘You are not dead,’ said Ulrika, seeing the way at last. ‘As you guessed from the beginning, I am von Messinghof’s spy. I was sent to kill Kodrescu and bring the others back to the fold. Return with me in my train, and you will be welcomed with open arms, this I promise you. Von Messinghof needs you. All of you. You are vital to his plans. You will not be cast away.’

Beside her, Morgenthau sputtered. ‘Your train? We have done this so that I may lead Kodrescu’s troops back to von Messinghof. This is my army, not–’

Ulrika shot him full in the face with her second silver-loaded pistol. His head exploded in a shower of sizzling black brain matter, and his headless body sprawled to the ground, his sword clattering away from his slack hand.

‘Von Messinghof might have welcomed back a traitor,’ she said to his corpse. ‘But not a fool.’

chapter twenty-four

TRIUMPH

The whole courtyard fell utterly silent. Three vampires had died in a matter of moments, ending three lives all hundreds of years long. The shock of it seemed to have cowed them all.

Ulrika turned back to Lady Celia, who was staring at the blood spilling from the stump of Morgenthau’s neck. ‘There,’ said Ulrika, tossing aside the smoking pistol. ‘I have spent my last silver. I have nothing left to stop you if you wish to kill me.’ She folded her hands over her saddle bow. ‘So, which will it be, vengeance, or a future? My death, or your life?’

Lady Celia raised fiery eyes and stared at Ulrika for a long moment, her arms hard at her sides. ‘A vampire must always be a pragmatist,’ she said at last. ‘I will accept your offer, but know this. You slew my beloved. I will not forget, and you will not always hold the high hand.’

‘Thank you for the warning,’ said Ulrika, then turned her horse and rode up the temple steps. She looked out over the Blood Knights. ‘You have the same opportunity. Will you kill me and turn fugitive, or will you return with me to von Messinghof and live to see Sylvania’s victory?’

The vampires all looked up at her, silent and cold, and Stahleker motioned the lancers to move in front of the steps, just in case, but finally one of von Graal’s lieutenants raised his hand.

‘Lead us back,’ he said, ‘and I will follow.’

‘As will I,’ said another. ‘But if von Messinghof orders our deaths at the end of this trail, do not think you will escape the slaughter.’

One by one, the others followed suit, raising their hands and pledging to follow. They did not look pleased, and they did not look trustworthy, but they looked resigned. For now it was enough. Ulrika was certain their instinct for self preservation would keep them loyal, at least until she brought them back and won them their amnesty. To be on the safe side, however, she would ask Stahleker to post a double guard on her tent.

‘Very good,’ she said, when all had raised their hands. ‘Now, rest and see to your wounded and plunder as you will. The treasures of the monastery are yours to keep. We will start for von Messinghof’s camp at sunset.’

As the Blood Knights and lancers began to turn away and talk among themselves, Ulrika rode her horse back down the steps to Kodrescu’s body. She dismounted and knelt, then took Wolf’s Fang from his hand and its scabbard from his belt.

‘To the victor, the spoils,’ she said, and strapped it to her waist.

The next night Ulrika led her army down the forest road from the monastery and the ruins of Bruchben, then skirted the town of Ryker by turning into the woods just east of it and spending the day in them. The next night they reached the Reik road and sped south along it, moving openly and slaughtering every merchant, pilgrim, soldier, highwayman and roadwarden they encountered, and leaving them to be raised by Lady Celia when she caught up to them. No one escaped their blades.

Ulrika had no choice but to move openly. There was no time to be covert. When she had left von Messinghof, he had told her that Karl Franz and his retinue would reach Arschel in twelve days. Her flight to find Kodrescu and the journey to the monastery had taken five of those days. She had to return to the count’s camp as quickly as possible and hope that, if they killed everyone, there would be no one to spread tales of their coming to the Emperor’s retinue.

Towards morning on that second night, Ulrika led her army into the village of Werkenau and killed everyone in it. The vampires fed and the lancers looted, but only for so long. There was no time for indulgence. They were away again in under two hours and made six more miles before they had to take shelter again in the woods and wait out the day.

The next night, they laid waste to the fortified inn known as the Blessed Grapes and were on their way again before the baggage train had caught up with them. One night after that, after more bloodletting on the road, they turned at last into the Stirwood, and one night later, only three hours after sunset, they were challenged by one of von Messinghof’s wide patrols. Ulrika had made the trip with two days to spare.

As she waited for word to be sent to the camp, Ulrika went down the column, chivvying the lancers and the Blood Knights to get their kit in order and dress their ranks. She had done a difficult thing and done it well, killing Kodrescu and his gang of traitors, while keeping their troops loyal and bringing them back before time, and she wanted her triumph. She wanted to come into the camp a hero, so her train had to look the part. She had the Blood Knights put on their helms, and had Stahleker and his men put on the jacks and tabards of the Morrian initiates, which were more uniform than their own haphazard armour.

At last the word came that they could come ahead, and Ulrika took her place at the head of the column dressed in her black doublet, breeks and riding boots, and with a black enamelled breastplate looted from the corpse of one of the smaller templar initiates. Yasim was combed and curried until she shined, and looked like a statue of herself.

Ulrika squared her shoulders and raised her hand. This was what it was all about. This was glory. ‘March!’

As they came out of the trees and into the human section of the camp, she lifted her chin. Everyone had come out to see her. The camp followers and household troops of course, but also the Sylvanian officers and Blood Knights, emerging from the red glade to watch as she marched the column to a halt in front of von Messinghof. The General stood in the centre of the camp, looking up at her with a stern expression on his face, the nuncio, Emmanus, to one side, and Rukke, looking sullen, to the other, while Blutegel stood quietly behind.

‘My lord,’ said Ulrika, bowing from the saddle. ‘I return you your troops.’

The count’s eyebrow raised. ‘This is not what I asked you to do.’

Ulrika stiffened. She had expected a warmer reception. She had almost forgotten that she had broken his original order. ‘No, lord, I–’

‘Where is Lord Kodrescu?’

‘He – he is dead, lord, by my hand.’

‘And von Graal? Morgenthau?’

‘Also dead. Also by my hand. They were traitors, lord.’

Rukke choked and Emmanus hissed. Blutegel stifled a smile.

‘Books of Nagash!’ said Emmanus. ‘She has killed more of us than have the Lahmians!’

Von Messinghof waved them silent and folded his arms. ‘So, instead of reporting this back to me as I asked, you took it upon yourself to murder three able commanders and take command of a fifth of my army?’

Ulrika’s spine prickled. He was not seeing this as she’d hoped he would. ‘Lord, by the time I learned their plans, it was too late to return to you. They would have already been marching back to fight you with all these troops. Such a battle would have reduced your numbers, no matter what the outcome. I thought it better to avoid the battle entirely.’

The corner of von Messinghof’s mouth quirked up. ‘And making yourself my most powerful general was only an accidental by-product of this plan. I see.’

‘Lord, I assure you–’

Von Messinghof held up a hand. ‘Do not protest. I applaud you. Your von Carstein side is showing at last. I must remember to watch my back.’

Ulrika opened her mouth to assure him of her loyalty, but before she could speak he bowed to her.

‘Well done, obercaptain. And thank you for returning my troops to me. They are needed.’

‘Obercaptain!’ barked Rukke. ‘You promote her? Over me?’

Blutegel put a hand on his shoulder, but Rukke shrugged him off.

‘You should execute her!’ cried Emmanus. ‘The master will hear of this!’

‘I’m sure he will,’ sighed von Messinghof. He beckoned for Ulrika to dismount, then started for the red glade. ‘Come. We have much to discuss.’

Ulrika’s eyes widened. Obercaptain? That was more than she had expected. She swung off Yasim and started after him, her shoulders thrown back and her chin high.

‘Do not trust Lady Celia,’ said Ulrika.

She stood on one side of the count’s map table, while von Messinghof and Emmanus stood at the other and Blutegel hovered in the background. Rukke had not been asked to join them. ‘She bowed to me only because the alternative was death. She has no love for me or you.’

‘Well I know it,’ said von Messinghof. ‘She was Kodrescu’s lover for centuries, but she is wise enough to know that I must succeed here in order for her to have a future. She will not strike until Karl Franz is dead and the Empire is ours. After that…’ He smiled grimly. ‘I will keep my eyes open. Now…’

He looked down at the map and pointed at the white king, which was still on the road to Nuln. ‘You returned only just in time, Obercaptain. Tomorrow night Karl Franz will be the guest of Baron Ambosstein, and the next night he will come to the manor of Lord von Arschel, and we will be waiting.’

Ulrika grinned with excitement. ‘So, at last we will step from the shadows and raise the flag of Sylvania? They will finally know who we are?’

Emmanus snorted derisively. ‘No smarter than the fools she killed.’

Von Messinghof smiled. ‘I admire your boldness, but we must still be more subtle than that. It will be the Lahmians who are blamed for Karl Franz’s death.’

‘But what better way to have mankind fear you than announce that you have slain the greatest leader of the Old World?’

‘They will know in time,’ said the general. ‘But it is still too early. A nation that perceives a threat from outside its borders unites against a common foe. A nation that perceives a threat from within will fracture and suspect its neighbours.’ He unrolled a smaller map that showed all of the Empire, and began moving his finger from province to province. ‘The Emperor will die in Wissenland, beset by Lahmian vampires. I have already set a rumour in motion that Countess Emmanuelle is a Lahmian. This will pit Wissenland and the Reikland against each other. Middenland and Talabecland will both see an opportunity to seize power while their southern neighbours fight. They will move against each other in order to prevent the other from stealing the prize. The four most powerful provinces will be locked in a bloody, four-sided war, while the rest line up to choose sides, or withdraw within their borders and wait for it all to be over.’

He stabbed his finger at Sylvania. ‘Then and only then will Lord von Carstein sweep in and crush all before him.’

‘Our conquest will be assured,’ said Emmanus.

Ulrika smiled at the thought of the world of men falling into madness and self-destruction. It was only what they deserved. She imagined riding back into Nuln at the head of an army and bringing it low, and the Lahmians with it. She would find Famke there and take her from the sisterhood’s airless chambers to show her the new empire, an empire made safe for their kind because it was ruled from sea to mountains by the aristocracy of the night.

The tent flap opened, waking Ulrika from her daydream, and Otilia entered, her face drawn and grim. She noted Ulrika’s presence with a twitch of her cheek, then turned to von Messinghof and Emmanus and curtseyed.

‘My lord, I have grave news.’ Her eyes slid to Ulrika. ‘News which should only be shared with your most trusted advisors.’

‘Speak,’ said von Messinghof. ‘Ulrika has my complete trust.’

‘She shouldn’t, lord,’ said Otilia, ‘for there is a spy, and she is the only other who knew the secret.’

The general shot a look at Ulrika, but then turned back to Otilia. ‘Tell me. If it was her, she will not leave this tent.’

Otilia pursed her lips. ‘Doktor Gaebler is dead. An accident, apparently, but I see the hand of Lahmia behind it.’

Emmanus cursed.

Von Messinghof’s eyes widened. ‘This is grave news indeed.’

Ulrika swallowed uneasily, Gaebler’s involvement in their plot on her mind. ‘Besides you, lord, only myself and Ulrika knew of the plan,’ said Otilia. ‘The swains who assisted in the capture never knew Gaebler’s name or his significance. She must be the spy.’

Ulrika took a step back. ‘Lord, I did not do this.’

‘Can you prove it?’ asked Otilia.

‘I cannot,’ said Ulrika. ‘Can you?’

Von Messinghof held up a hand. ‘We will not descend to bickering. The circle of potential spies is wider than you think.’

They turned, Otilia scornful, Ulrika hopeful.

‘It might be anyone in the glade,’ said the count, ‘listening through the walls of the tent. It might be the slaves who feed Gaebler. And I have told Emmanus since, and Blutegel was here when we spoke of it, were you not, Blutegel?’

‘Indeed, lord,’ said the valet. ‘Though I spoke of it to no one, as you commanded.’

‘Not even Rukke?’ asked von Messinghof.

‘I swear to you, lord. He heard nothing from me.’

‘And you certainly can’t suspect me,’ growled Emmanus.

‘Lord,’ said Otilia, ‘the circle may be wider, but that does not mean you shouldn’t suspect Ulrika. She is still the most obvious culprit.’

‘As are you,’ said von Messinghof.

‘Lord!’ protested Otilia.

Von Messinghof waved her down. ‘I do not mean you went to the Lahmians, but you did go to Doktor Gaebler and tell him that we were holding his son. You did seduce him.’

‘I hope my lord has no complaints with my performance in that regard,’ said Otilia stiffly.

‘Not at all,’ said von Messinghof. ‘But it is possible you were followed. You may have unwittingly led the Lahmians to the doctor.’

‘I took every precaution,’ insisted Otilia. ‘I–’

‘How they know matters less than what they know,’ rasped Emmanus. ‘If there is a spy, he will not only have told the Lahmians about Doktor Gaebler, but likely divulged our plans to attack Karl Franz at Arschel as well. They will be lying in wait. They may even tell the Emperor of the impending attack. Our plans are wrecked, and until the spy is caught, we dare not make new ones.’

‘But we must,’ said von Messinghof. ‘There is no time for a witch hunt. We have but a day. I must form new orders that I can give my officers which won’t allow them to betray me.’

He laughed at that, black and bitter, then looked down at the map again. ‘Leave me. Yes, even you, Blutegel, and you, Nuncio. I must think.’

chapter twenty-five

AMBOSSTEIN

A half-hour later, with less than half the night left, von Messinghof strode from his tent and summoned his officers.

‘Prepare your troops,’ he said. ‘We ride tonight, within the hour.’

‘Tonight?’ said Lady Celia. ‘But I understood we would not leave until tomorrow.’

‘Plans have changed. Make ready.’

‘Yes, lord,’ said Lassarian. ‘But to where do we ride?’

‘To the west,’ said von Messinghof, and returned to his tent, snapping his fingers at his steward. ‘Blutegel! Prepare a bat. I must send a message.’

‘Yes, lord,’ muttered Blutegel, shaking his head as he followed him in. ‘Not nearly enough time to pack. Not nearly.’

All night, Von Messinghof’s army marched for the Reik by the most direct path, and reached it just as the sky lightened and the birds began to sing in the trees. Ulrika was surprised to see barges and boats waiting for them in the shallows, and realised what message von Messinghof’s bat must have carried. She marvelled anew at his organisation and thoroughness. Kodrescu would never have had the forethought to place boats upstream in case of a river crossing. Von Messinghof left nothing to chance. Nothing.

As the column broke up and spread along the river, von Messinghof’s officers dismounted and started giving orders to their men to make camp for the day, but the general rode among them, crying out angrily.

‘No! Get on the boats! We cross now, before we rest. We must be ready to march at twilight tomorrow night.’

‘But, lord,’ complained Rukke, ‘it will be full light by the time we are all across.’

‘You risk our skin,’ said Emmanus.

‘And if we wait a day we risk our victory!’ snapped von Messinghof. ‘Cross on the first boat and deputise your men to get the rest across before you take shelter.’

There was a lot of grumbling about this, but they did what they were told. Ulrika turned the details of the lancers’ crossing over to Stahleker, and went across with von Messinghof and the other officers and their mounts, who were followed in the next boat by the slaves who would raise their tents and make their beds.

‘Will you tell us now where we’re going, general?’ asked Lassarian, as the barge edged across the river.

‘South,’ said von Messinghof, and nothing more.

The next evening, when the army got under way again, the sky was black with low clouds, and thunder rumbled from all directions, like giants belching insults at one another. Von Messinghof led them out of the woods and started south on the Reik road at a fast clip, pushing his cavalry and leaving Lady Celia’s undead to fall rapidly behind. For hours they rode on under the glowering sky, a half-mile-long column of racing vampire knights, bone knights and human mercenaries, with the white flashes of ghouls and the low black shadows of dire wolves pacing them in the woods on either side of the road, and above and before them, a floating phalanx of haunts, spectres, banshees and wraiths, drifting like an amorphous cloud.

The wolves and ghouls ranged far ahead of the column as well, slaughtering any they encountered, and as she rode at von Messinghof’s shoulder, Ulrika would see the grisly remains of coach passengers and horses, roadwardens and pilgrims, as the column followed in their wake.

Two hours before midnight, the road turned away from the river, and less than an hour after that, von Messinghof raised his hand and called a halt. The column stopped in the middle of the road, and the general called for his table and maps to be brought up and placed in a clearing to one side, then he gathered his officers around him.

‘Here,’ he said, unfurling the map. ‘I can at last tell you where we go, for we are now too close for aid to be brought by our foes.’ He stabbed a finger down at a dot north and east of Arschel. ‘Ambosstein. Karl Franz sleeps here tonight, the guest of Baron Ambosstein, before travelling to Arschel tomorrow. We will wait for Lady Celia’s dead to arrive, then attack, giving us roughly four hours to kill the Emperor before the dawn catches us and we must retire.’

‘General,’ said Lassarian, ‘Ambosstein is no manor. It is a small castle. This is why we chose to strike at Arschel, which is little more than a country house.’

‘Arschel has been compromised,’ said von Messinghof. ‘The Lahmians may know we mean it as our target, and likely lie in wait there, ready to ambush us.’

Lassarian looked at him. ‘There is a spy?’

‘There is a spy,’ said von Messinghof. ‘And stone walls do not daunt me near as much as traitors and flank charges. We have more than enough troops for Ambosstein. The night will be ours, never fear.’

A few fat raindrops splattered on the map and he rolled it up again, looking up to the sky. ‘It will be roughly two hours before Lady Celia’s dead catch us up. In the meantime we will scout the castle and get our troops into position. There is a valley over that rise to our right. Pull your troops off the road and stage them there. I will have Lassarian, Rukke and Boyarina Ulrika with me to survey the castle. Come.’

Otilia shot Ulrika dagger looks as she went with von Messinghof and the others into the pattering rain. Ulrika smirked as if she had scored on Otilia, but she wondered if she was really being honoured, or if von Messinghof just wanted to keep her in his sight.

‘At least we know he’s here,’ said Ulrika, peering through the trees.

‘Aye,’ said von Messinghof, stroking his neat beard distractedly. ‘And has gathered more troops than I had hoped.’

They stood with Rukke and Lassarian in the shadow of a sparse wood looking across a broad, cleared highland to Castle Ambosstein, a small keep built at its very edge – and now half-hidden by the soft rain. The main building of the keep was a blocky old strong house with a curtain wall surrounding a simple bailey, and was much too small for the force of men who had come to stay the night. The tents of those who couldn’t fit inside the walls spread like wings to either side of the castle, and campfires illuminated the banners of more than a dozen noble lords, as well as the standards of the Reiksguard. Ulrika estimated that more than two thousand men made their bed outside the castle walls.

‘Come,’ said von Messinghof, starting back to his horse. ‘I want to see the front.’

Ulrika and the others followed, riding in a wide circuit through the dripping woods until they came to where the plateau dropped down into the valley below. The village of Ambosstein lay at the far end of the valley, obscured by rain and intervening trees, and the road that led from it snaked out of the woods at the base of the hill and zigzagged up to the castle. The twists in the road were necessary, for the slope from castle to valley was extremely steep – a boulder-strewn drop that no wagon could have managed in a straight line.

‘A difficult approach,’ said Lassarian, pointing. ‘Any force that tries to take the castle from the front will present its flanks to the castle’s guns three times before it reaches the summit.’

‘And they have put the main gate on the side,’ said Ulrika, ‘so the attackers must expose themselves further as they circle around to it.’

‘Which is why we will not attack from the front,’ said von Messinghof. ‘Indeed, we won’t even attempt to storm the castle unless things go terribly wrong.’

‘But how can we kill the Emperor without entering the castle?’ asked Rukke.

Von Messinghof looked up from staring at the woods at the base of the slope. ‘He will come to us.’ He turned his horse. ‘I have seen enough. Let us go back.’

Back at the staging camp, von Messinghof gathered his officers in his tent while Emmanus watched in silence and Blutegel polished his master’s armour off to one side.

‘The castle is here,’ said the count, speaking over the noise of the rain on the canvas, and sketching with a stick of charcoal on the reverse of a map. ‘The Emperor’s troops here and here, camped on either side of it along the brink of the steep hill. They think this protects them against an attack from below, but if we strike from the woods behind the castle, here, we can drive them over the edge.’

Lassarian’s brow furrowed. ‘Reiksguard are hard troops, lord. Even taken unawares, they will put up a strong fight. Sunrise may come before we defeat them, and they will die to the last man before they let us reach the Emperor.’

‘That is precisely what I am counting on,’ said von Messinghof. He waved a dismissive hand at the blocks of Imperial troops he had sketched in. ‘I really care little if we defeat these troops. It would please me if we did, but what is more important is our show of force. The castle must believe we are coming for the Emperor, and that we are unstoppable. To further that belief, every flying creature and spirit at our disposal will attack the castle as we attack the troops outside. We must overwhelm them with wings and terror.’

He drew the road that zigzagged down the steep hill, and the woods at the base through which it passed. ‘In the face of such an attack, the Reiksguard will not allow Karl Franz to remain. They will take him out of the castle under heavy guard and rush him south.’ With heavy strokes he blacked in two ‘X’s in the woods. ‘Directly into an ambush.’

‘Lord,’ said Otilia, uneasy, ‘what if he doesn’t flee?’

‘Then we must take the castle after all. Either way, Karl Franz is dead tonight.’ He pointed at the map again. ‘Lassarian, you will be in command of the main force in the woods behind the keep. I leave it to you to arrange your troops as you see fit. Rukke, Otilia, Lady Celia and Boyarina Ulrika will serve under you. I will command the ambush in the valley with the Blood Knights and the wolves, and sound a horn when Karl Franz is dead. After that, you may retire.’ He turned to Blutegel. ‘Blutegel, send word to the boats to move downstream to where the road touches the river.’

The old man bowed. ‘Aye, lord.’

Von Messinghof pointed at the map again and looked around at the others. ‘Whatever befalls, retire to this spot. The boats will be there to carry us across the river again. Understood?’

There was a murmur of assent, and von Messinghof saluted them. ‘Good, then ready your companies and make your way to the ground without being seen.’ He smiled, showing all his teeth. ‘The hour of destiny is at hand, friends. With the death of the Emperor, we begin the end of human hegemony, and the start of the Sylvanian Empire.’

As the various companies made ready to march, there was a fair bit of grumbling among those who had been ordered to attack the castle. Lassarian complained about the rain and not being in at the kill. Otilia pouted, angry that von Messinghof hadn’t wanted her at his side, and Rukke was muttering about having to lead the ghouls and not more prestigious troops.

‘It is like I was a ghoul myself, instead of his own blood,’ he growled as his subhumans gathered around him.

Blutegel crossed to him, a fearful look on his face and two messenger bats tucked under his arm. ‘You are my blood too,’ he said, ‘and I would not see you hurt. Stay well back, I implore you. You were meant for better things.’

Rukke sneered and turned his back on him. ‘Your seed bore the shell I was, old man, but I am no longer yours. Von Messinghof is my father now, and I will show him what I can do, no matter what troops he gives me.’

Blutegel stared after him, then sighed and lofted the bats into the air. They flapped up, ungainly at first, before circling and disappearing into the rainy night in different directions.

‘They’re right t’complain, you know,’ muttered Stahleker as he and Ulrika took their positions at the head of their four hundred lancers. ‘Von Messinghof’s taking a page from Kodrescu’s book. Sending us in as a feint without bothering himself about what happens to us after. Reiksguard, we’re up against. It’ll be a slaughterhouse.’

‘Aye,’ said Ulrika, smiling to herself. ‘The gods willing.’

Stahleker gave her a wary look. ‘Not you too?’

Ulrika pulled herself out of her reverie. ‘I apologise, sergeant, but I’ve been waiting for this. No more butchering the weak. No more cloak and dagger. This will be a stand-up fight, a true battle, a battle in which I can prove myself.’

Stahleker scowled. ‘Y’sound like Rukke. What is there to prove? The count don’t care if y’win or lose. He just wants you to flush the bird.’

‘Do I care what he wants? This is for me. He may not care if we win, but I do, and I will win! We will win!’

Ulrika stood in her stirrups and looked back at the lancers behind her, all huddled against the steady rain. ‘Men of the Ostermark! Bandits, horse thieves and renegades all! The count is sending you to die like the scum he thinks you are! But you won’t die! You will conquer! You will drive all before you! Ride with me, and we will show these bloodsucking fops what real soldiering is! Are you with me? Are you ready to show the Blood Knights and the Reiksguard that you are the finest horsemen in the Empire?’

The narrow valley rang with their bloodthirsty roaring as they shook their lances over their heads. ‘Ulrika! Ulrika! Captain Ulrika!’

Stahleker chuckled bleakly as she sat back in her saddle, thrilling to the cheers, and waved the column ahead.

‘Well, y’can stir ’em up, all right,’ he said. ‘They’d follow y’into the Wastes now. I just hope y’can lead ’em out again.’

‘Count on it,’ said Ulrika.

After two hours in which Ulrika thought she would go mad with waiting and the rain dripping down the back of her neck, Lady Celia finally arrived with her horde of undead corpses and joined the rest of von Messinghof’s troops, all hidden around Castle Ambosstein and desperately eager to attack. The count lay in ambush with Emmanus and the Blood Knights and the wolves in the woods below the steep slope, while the rest of the companies stared out at the castle from the edges of the forest that ringed it, champing at the bit.

As Ulrika had expected, Lassarian had arranged it so she and Stahleker’s lancers were opposite the tents of the Reiksguard – set up to the left of the castle – while his mounted wights and Blood Knights and black magicians would face the much less lethal collection of lords and knights that had attached themselves to Karl Franz’s train on his progress from Altdorf – all camped to the right. Lassarian had placed Otilia, who would be adding to the magics that they would hurl at the castle, on his right flank, protected by Captain Ruger and the human men-at-arms from Castle Messinghof.

The ghouls had been split into two mobs and sent to the woods that flanked the camps, with Rukke leading one mob and a thrall leading the other. Lassarian had ordered that the ghouls and zombies be first in, wreaking havoc and distracting the camps from the main advance. The cavalry would strike next, with Otilia and Celia and Lassarian’s black magicians raining death and confusion upon their enemies from behind. Last would come the bats, spirits and the corrupted griffon, dropping out of the sky as the men of the castle crowded the battlements to see the melee, and tearing and terrorising them in a flurry of talons, wings and ethereal claws.

Lassarian trotted up to Lady Celia as she appeared from the dark like a gaunt shadow and her zombies shuffled out of the trees to filter through the other troops.

‘You certainly took your time, lady,’ he said. ‘Send them in at once.’

Lady Celia stopped before him, but didn’t seem to hear. She stood motionless, her face hidden in the darkness of her voluminous hood.

‘Lady Celia,’ said Lassarian, his voice rising. ‘We only have four hours of night remaining to us. Send in your troops.’ He turned to his galloper when she still did not reply. ‘Go to Rukke. It is time–’

‘Wait!’ called Lady Celia. She turned and looked into the woods behind them as her zombies trudged to a halt and Lassarian glared at her.

‘What is it?’ he snapped. ‘There is no time.’

‘The winds move behind us,’ she said. ‘Someone practises sorcery.’

‘My black magicians,’ said Lassarian. ‘They ready their incantations. Now advance your–’

‘No,’ said Lady Celia, stepping back and beginning to move her hands. ‘This is far greater magic than that, and far better hidden. This is–’

A searing shaft of red light blazed from the depths of the woods and shot through her like a molten spear. She shrieked and hung rigid in mid-air as her cloak flapped and tore in an arcane wind, and the red glow enveloped her head and limbs.

Lassarian pulled his winged hell-steed to heel as blood began to spray from Lady Celia’s eyes, nose and mouth, and the veins in her neck and wrists tore from her flesh and writhed and bled like wounded snakes.

‘Magic!’ cried Lassarian, looking back into the trees.

Ulrika followed his gaze, shielding her eyes. The blistering red bolt was coursing from a patch of darkness which not even Ulrika’s night vision could pierce. Indeed, all of the forest behind them was cloaked in unnatural shadow. How had she not seen it before?

‘We are ambushed!’

‘Aye,’ rasped Lassarian. ‘But by whom?’

As if in answer, rags of blackness broke from the shifting murk and bounded forwards, scores of them, red eyes burning and yellow teeth flashing – undead wolves, huge and gaunt. Behind them, on horses white as moonlight, a double rank of women in shining armour burst forth with swords and maces held high. Their leader wore no helm, and her black hair billowed in the wind of her passage. Ulrika snarled as she recognised her – Mistress Casilla, the Estalian vampiress who had chased her and Famke through the Maze.

‘The Lahmians,’ she said. ‘They have found us.’

chapter twenty-six

THE KILLING FIELD

‘Turn about!’ roared Lassarian, galloping past Lady Celia’s writhing form towards his troops. ‘We are attacked from behind!’

‘Lancers, form up!’ shouted Ulrika, wheeling her horse and drawing Wolf’s Fang. ‘Prepare to charge!’

‘Dress ranks!’ cried Stahleker. ‘Lances couched!’

It was too late. Before even half the Ostermarkers had turned their horses, before Lassarian had reached his mounted wights, before Ruger and his men-at-arms could close ranks and protect Otilia, before the zombies could shuffle around to face them, the wolves and the Lahmians were among them, clawing and hewing left and right with fang and sword, while ranks of mounted blood-swains thundered out of the woods behind them. There seemed no end to them.

Ulrika severed the spine of a leaping wolf with her hungering sword and swung it at Casilla. She turned it with a slashing parry, laughing to see her.

‘So, you are here, upstart? Excellent! I had hoped we would meet again.’

Ulrika replied with a cut to Casilla’s shoulder, but the surging crush of wolves and zombies and maddened horses forced them apart again, and she found herself beside Stahleker, hacking in all directions as lancers died all around them.

‘How did they know we’d be here?’ asked Stahleker, emptying a pistol at a wolf. ‘We didn’t know we’d be here!’

An inhuman scream drowned his words. The seething red energy was turning Lady Celia inside out, her pulsing veins and glistening innards blossoming outwards like a wet red flower as her skeleton arched in mid-air. Then, like a bubble expanded beyond its limits, she burst, vanishing in a crimson spray that spattered everyone within thirty paces. Even her bones were gone.

And with her went her slaves.

A silent blast-wave spread from her bloody explosion, stunning Ulrika and knocking down the zombies that Celia had commanded in an ever-expanding ring. They dropped where they stood, their strings cut, all three thousand of them, turning the forest floor into a field of rotting corpses in a matter of seconds. The Sylvanians and the Lahmians crushed them under hoof and foot as they fought, churning them to a reeking paste.

‘Three-quarters of our force gone in one go,’ said Stahleker. ‘Changes the odds a bit, eh?’

‘Too much,’ said Ulrika.

She blocked the mace of a Lahmian warrior and looked across to Lassarian for orders, but he and his wights were as swamped as she and the lancers were, and was concentrating on saving his own neck. Beyond him, Ruger’s men-at-arms were backing and dying before a company of black-armoured blood-swains as Otilia cowered behind them, trying to shape a spell. The situation was perilous. With Lady Celia and her zombies gone, the Lahmians and their followers outnumbered them by almost two to one, and if Castle Ambosstein got wind of the battle, the Sylvanians would have Imperial knights charging their backs. They would die pinned between two forces, and von Messinghof’s plan would die with them.

Ulrika called to Stahleker as she fought two Lahmians. ‘Send a man to the count and two more to Rukke and the thrall. Tell the count we’re ambushed. Call the ghouls back here, but tell them to keep within the woods. We can’t let Karl Franz’s retinue know we’re here.’

‘Right,’ said Stahleker, and bellowed the order to three of his lancers, then looked back to her as they galloped off. ‘Not that it’ll matter much. The castle’ll hear us anyway.’

‘Not with the noise of the rain, I hope,’ said Ulrika.

She chopped into a Lahmian’s back with Wolf’s Fang, then turned on two others as the first toppled from her saddle, shrieking. Now that the first mad crush had slowed, the Ostermark men had sorted themselves out into a close-packed line that was keeping the wolves and blood-swains at bay and frustrating the Lahmian champions, who seemed to have expected to fight a series of one-on-one duels and were crying out with rage at being struck at by five sabres at once.

Ulrika let a glimmer of hope kindle in her breast as she joined the line. Though the Lahmian army was larger, and more of them vampires, less of them were trained soldiers. Each of the Lahmian knights might be stronger and more skilled than any of Stahleker’s men individually, but the lancers’ experience in fighting and moving as a unit was beginning to tell. If Rukke’s ghouls got back quickly enough they might have a chance – at least to defeat the Lahmians. Attacking the castle and the Reiksguard after this would be impossible, but at least they wouldn’t have exposed themselves.

Hoarse cries of fear and a staccato of hoofbeats from the left froze Ulrika, and she looked around, praying she wouldn’t see what she feared. Her prayers went unanswered. Ruger’s men had broken and were in full flight from the Lahmians, fleeing out of the woods at a gallop with Otilia in the middle of them, looking as terrified at the rest. Worse, the Lahmians were pursuing, their savagery overwhelming their caution, and were chasing Otilia and her Sylvanians across the open ground – straight towards the tents of Karl Franz’s retinue. Ulrika’s glimmer of hope guttered and died.

‘That’s torn it,’ said Stahleker, fighting on grimly. ‘The cowardly bitch has killed us.’

‘Aye, it’s lost,’ said Ulrika. ‘We need orders. Hold here. I’ll go to Lassarian.’

She pulled back from the line and galloped for Lassarian’s mounted wights, who were trying to close the flank that Otilia had left exposed. Halfway there, horns echoed across the killing field. Ulrika winced. The castle and the camps had seen the Sylvanians and the Lahmians. They were making ready to defend themselves. The end was coming.

‘General!’ cried Ulrika as she pulled up beside him and added her sword to his against the Lahmians who attacked him. ‘We must retire! We cannot win!’

‘We cannot,’ said Lassarian. ‘But we can still give the count his victory.’

Ulrika backhanded a Lahmian with Wolf’s Fang, cutting though her helmet as if it wasn’t there. The woman veered her horse away, blinded by blood. ‘How?’

‘Otilia’s rout will draw the Reiksguard away from the castle as we wanted. When they engage us, I will send in the horrors and winged troops. Karl Franz will be driven out into von Messinghof’s ambush as planned.’

‘At the sacrifice of our lives,’ said Ulrika.

Lassarian laughed. ‘My steed flies, captain. I will not stay to the bitter end.’

‘And I?’ asked Ulrika, finishing the blinded Lahmian with a chop to the neck. ‘I have no winged steed.’

‘Hold until the horrors are away, then do as you wish.’

Ulrika grunted. With luck, Lassarian’s ploy might indeed send Karl Franz into von Messinghof’s waiting arms, but he was going to leave his troops to die. Why should she have expected anything else? A vampire cared nothing for resurrected skeletons, and still less for human mercenaries. She knew she should feel the same, but she couldn’t. The lancers were her troops now, loyal and true. She would get them out – somehow.

‘Very good, general,’ she said.

A distant screeching reached her ears as she started back towards Stahleker down the line, and she looked to the field. With Rukke at their head on a skeletal horse, the ghouls were flooding from the woods and bounding for the tents of the Reiksguard. What was the madman doing? The fall-back order must not have reached him!

But perhaps it was all to the good. If the ghouls could slow the Reiksguard for long enough – but no. Two figures in red and orange appeared at the edge of the camp and spread their hands. The rain-wet grass caught fire as if it were dry hay, and the flames raced at the ghouls like living things. Rukke threw up his arms as a wave of flames crested before him and made to crash down upon him. He–

A rider surged into the corner of Ulrika’s eye. She whipped around. It was Casilla again, smashing through the line to close with her. She slammed her warhorse into Yasim’s side, knocking her sideways and swinging her shining blade for Ulrika’s head. Ulrika countered, but barely. The blow glanced off Wolf’s Fang and rang her morion helm like a gong.

‘You won’t flee this time, coward!’ cried Casilla, as Ulrika’s head spun and their horses sidestepped into the crush of the battle. ‘We finish this here!’

Ulrika cursed. If she could land a solid blow with Wolf’s Fang, the fight would end, but the woman was quick. Ulrika aimed a strike at her neck, but she jerked back and hacked down at Ulrika’s helm again.

Still dizzy, Ulrika lurched aside to avoid it, but not quick enough. The blade smashed into her pauldron, crumpling it, and knocked her from the saddle. She crashed down beside Yasim, losing her helm, and took a kick behind the ear from Casilla’s horse. The world dimmed at the edges, and she didn’t know which way was up. Horses surged and trampled all around her.

Ulrika clutched weakly at Yasim’s stirrup as Casilla’s blade sliced towards her. She raised Wolf’s Fang to block, knowing it was too late, but Casilla gasped and faltered in mid-swing, and her strike barely scratched Ulrika’s breastplate. She looked frozen – her eyes wide, her jaw clenched. She tried to raise her sword for another blow, but was so slow that Ulrika, stunned though she was, stabbed up under her breastplate and pierced her guts.

The huntress spasmed as Wolf’s Fang fed, and could not pull away. Ulrika hauled her from the saddle, slamming her to the ground, then chopped down with all her might. The dread blade sheared through her bevor and her neck, and her head of long black curls tumbled to the ground.

It was only then that Ulrika noticed faint purple lines – like constricting ropes – fading from Casilla’s slumping body. Magic! Someone had bound her and weakened her blows! Ulrika looked up, and into the eyes of Countess Gabriella, shoving through the Lahmian line towards her upon the back of a white palfrey, a nimbus of purple fading around her hands and a hood over her head against the rain.

Ulrika staggered back against Yasim, raising her seething sword as confusion boiled in her breast. ‘What are you doing? Do you want to kill me yourself?’

Gabriella held out a hand. ‘I want you to be my daughter again. I want you to come back.’

Ulrika snarled. ‘To what? Prison? Death by silver or sunlight?’

‘Your exposure of the traitor, Ludwina, helps your cause. And I will keep you safe, I promise you.’

‘Aye, in some hidden tomb.’ Ulrika laughed, harsh, then mimicked Gabriella’s soft voice. ‘It will only be a century, beloved, before I can let you out. It isn’t so long to wait.’ She swiped Wolf’s Fang at Gabriella’s proffered hand. ‘Get away if you don’t want to die. I am free here! Free!’

Gabriella’s sad eyes turned hard in an instant. ‘You have traded a mistress for a master. Where is the freedom in that?’

‘When he has won, and we rule as we should, I shall have the freedom of the world!’

‘Little fool,’ said Gabriella, pityingly. ‘Your master is dying as we speak – caught by the other half of our force. You will have the freedom of the grave if you do not come with me now.’

Ulrika opened her mouth for another retort, then realised the import of what Gabriella had said. The other half of her force? There were more Lahmians ambushing Von Messinghof and his Blood Knights in the wood below the castle! The count could indeed by dying, and not only that, if Karl Franz and his retinue fled the castle, he would be too busy to stop them. The Emperor would slip the trap.

‘Cunning,’ said Ulrika as she vaulted back into her saddle. ‘I don’t know who you’ve tricked into betraying us, but they will pay, and so will you.’

‘Ulrika, wait,’ said Gabriella. ‘I–’

Ulrika wheeled away, ignoring her. Gabriella’s weapons were words. If she listened, she would be undone. She turned Yasim towards Lassarian, calling at the top of her lungs. ‘General! Don’t loose the horrors! Karl Franz must stay in the castle.’

She was drowned out by a blast of horns from the killing field. Through the trees and the downpour she could see them coming, scores of knights in the white and red of the Reiksguard, backlit by the grass fire that still raged behind them. Some were half-armoured and hastily dressed, some were hardly dressed at all, but they had come to the wood to defend their Emperor, and they were all armed to the teeth. A thunderclap rocked the ground and a ball of white light, like a miniature sun under the rain clouds, roiled into being, shining its glare into the wood and sending long black shadows racing across the ground from the trees.

Both the Sylvanian and Lahmian forces paused at the noise and the light, seemingly realising for the first time how vulnerable their position was. Then, as one, the assembled Imperials raised their weapons, roared their battle cries, and charged for the trees.

Ulrika turned towards Lassarian again, but it was too late. Though she couldn’t hear him over the din of hooves and battle cries, she saw him wave his hand at the hovering black cloud of shapes that lurked in the branches of the trees over his head.

‘No!’ Ulrika cried. ‘Stop!’

No one heard her. She couldn’t hear herself. She lunged forwards on Yasim, but the cloud was already moving, swooping down and breaking into individual haunts and wraiths and banshees that shrieked straight at the oncoming knights. They bit with jaws like yawning pits and raked with claws like ghostly sabres, then rose up like leaves on an updraft and swept towards the castle, a swarm of monstrous bats and flying abominations coursing down from the rumbling sky.

‘No!’

Ulrika punched her saddle. The disaster was complete. Everything was ruined. The haunts and winged horrors would bombard the castle with terror and leather-winged death and drive Karl Franz out. He would race down the slope, slip through the ambush and escape. Or worse, he would see von Messinghof fighting the Lahmians and decide to strike from the rear. The count’s army could be wiped out entirely here tonight. Her dream of freedom would die.

‘Von Messinghof must be warned,’ Ulrika said to herself. ‘He must be saved.’

She turned her horse again, this time for Stahleker, and waved her sword over her head. ‘Through the Lahmians! Into the forest!’ she roared. ‘Leave them to fight the Imperials!’

Again nobody heard her, but she kept shouting it as she raced behind the lancers and the Reiksguard thundered towards them under the boughs of the first trees.

‘Into the forest! Through the Lahmians!’

Stahleker and the Ostermarkers heard at last, and the order rippled down the line. The look of panic that had gripped them when they had realised they would be trapped between the Lahmians and the Imperials was replaced by one of grim determination. They turned their backs on the Reiksguard charge and spurred at the Lahmians as hard as they could, fighting not to kill, but just to get past. Ulrika’s breast swelled with pride that they would do so terrifying a thing on her word alone.

Of course it was a massacre, at least at first. The Reiksguard ploughed into the backs of the lancers and many died with swords in their spines and the backs of their heads crushed by heavy maces. The air shivered with the screams of men and horses, and the ground shook with the thud of falling bodies. Those that survived that first impact, however, were through the Lahmians quicker than they expected, for the vampiresses too were having to fight the Reiksguard, and let the lancers by in order to protect themselves from the more heavily armed knights.

Ulrika took the Imperial charge face on, protecting Stahleker’s back as he and his men bashed a hole through the Lahmian line, and she nearly died from it. A visored knight the size of Kodrescu drove straight at her, a long sword in his fist that he wore chained to his wrist.

Only Yasim’s dancer’s grace saved Ulrika from being crushed like a rat under his enormous horse. She dodged aside at the last second and only rubbed shoulders with the destrier, instead of being rammed neck to neck. The knight swept his long sword at Ulrika as they mashed knees, but after Casilla, he was painfully slow, and she ducked it, then bit through his back armour with a backhand so deep that Wolf’s Fang ground against bone.

The knight gasped in pain and his horse crashed unruddered on into the Lahmian line, where he was struck down by a pair of vampiresses. But there were more behind him – many more. A mace struck Ulrika high on the leg, crushing her leg armour. She screamed and lashed around her desperately, chopping through arms and chests, but taking a blow for every one she gave. Her armour was scored in a dozen places and she bled from every limb. The pain in the leg was making her nauseous.

At the same time, Wolf’s Fang was drinking blood and glowing like the setting sun, and its red fury gave her strength. With a shriek like a hawk, she shot out her fangs and claws and snarled at the knights, letting out all the feral rage that the pain and betrayal and the ruin of their plans had built up in her.

It worked.

For the briefest of seconds, the knights froze at her savage outburst, unnerved, and she was able to break for the Lahmians. Before Yasim had taken two steps they were on her again, but two steps was all she needed. She slipped between a stunned knight and a dying one, then plunged past a Lahmian who was engaged with two more and found herself behind their line with Stahleker and the remnants of the lancers.

‘Now what?’ asked Stahleker. ‘Attack their rear?’

‘No,’ she panted, trying to pull the crumpled leg armour away from her crushed thigh. ‘The Lahmians have ambushed the count as well. We go to him. Out of the woods and across the killing field.’

Stahleker’s eyes widened as he turned his horse in the direction she indicated. ‘They knew everything! Not just where we would be, but our strategy as well.’

‘Aye,’ said Ulrika. ‘The traitor was in the tent when von Messinghof gave us our orders. I’m sure of it.’ She shot a glance back towards Lassarian, who was trying to break through the Lahmians just as they had done. ‘And I think I know who it was.’

‘My steed flies,’ Lassarian had said. ‘I will not stay to the bitter end.’ Of course he wouldn’t. He would fly to his Lahmian mistress, whoever she was – but only after making a good show of it, so he could come back and betray the Sylvanians again at another crucial moment.

‘East!’ cried Ulrika, tearing away the leg armour at last and tossing it aside as the lancers rallied around her. ‘Around the battle line and straight for the castle! Ride!’

chapter twenty-seven

SWORD OF JUSTICE

With the Lahmians and the Reiksguard fully engaged with each other, the first part of Ulrika’s plan was easily executed. She and the remaining lancers – still more than two hundred – threaded their way through the trees behind the Lahmian line, then wheeled around their eastern flank and turned south. Ten strides later, they burst from the tree line into the rain, and spurred their horses towards the castle at a gallop, four abreast.

Through the torrent and the drifting smoke, Ulrika could see a black cloud swirling over Ambosstein’s battlements – a swarm of monstrous bats, ghostly spectres and heavy-winged abominations that dived at the defenders and dragged them off the walls with their claws. The corrupted griffon that had once been Ulrika’s mount was tearing through the roof of the highest tower with claws like hay rakes. Men leapt screaming to their deaths in the face of shrieking horrors that pawed at them with frigid, insubstantial hands.

‘Don’t leave, Emperor,’ gritted Ulrika as she rode. ‘Lock down and wait it out.’

But it seemed that everything she wished for that night was to be denied her. Even as she spoke, the main gate of the castle swung open and a column of knights in the colours of the Reiksguard – more than a hundred in all – rode out and started down the zigzag road to the bottom of the hill.

Ulrika cursed. That was the end of it. The Emperor was riding away, and with von Messinghof engaged with the Lahmians, there was no one to stop him from leaving. All would be lost, unless…

With a flush of mad inspiration, Ulrika howled and kicked Yasim in the flanks, surging ahead while Stahleker and his men struggled to keep up. She would catch Karl Franz, she would stop him, she would kill him! The greatest coup in the history of the aristocracy of the night and it would be Ulrika Magdova Straghov who made it! No vampire had ever killed an Emperor before. That would change tonight!

With the lancers coursing behind her, Ulrika pounded across the rain-soaked field at full stretch, Yasim deftly dodging the blackened bodies of the ghouls that had died in the bright wizards’ arcane fire. They crashed through the shattered camp, swerving around collapsed tents and the bodies of ghouls and men, still locked in the embrace of combat even after death. Squires and grooms and camp followers fled before them, and were trampled under their hooves.

The castle gates were swinging shut as Ulrika and the lancers neared it, and terrified men stood in the gap, spears braced to try to keep them out. Ulrika laughed. What did they think she wanted with their castle when the white king was flying south? She turned for the road and the precipitous slope – and her laughter faltered and died.

The Emperor and his retinue were already halfway down the zigzag road, making the second switchback, and starting towards the third. Their speed was slow, as it had to be. There was no way to make those hairpin turns at a gallop, particularly in the rain. And that was what had killed Ulrika’s laughter. She and the lancers would have to slow just as much to follow. She would never catch them. By the time she had wound her way down the hill, they would be on the flat, with fresher horses, and they would leave her in their dust. The only way to catch up to them would be…

Ulrika’s smile returned, wider and more savage than before. The hill down to the woods was rocky and loose, with only a thin cover of gorse holding it together, and it dropped at an angle steeper than a pitched roof. It would be madness to lead two hundred men down such a slope in the rain. But what had she to lose? All was lost already.

‘Yer crazy, bloodsucker!’ shouted Stahleker as he saw where she was looking.

Ulrika didn’t hear him.

‘Men of the Ostermark!’ she cried, raising her sword. ‘Follow me to glory!’

With a final spur to the ribs, Ulrika drove Yasim over the lip of the precipice and plunged down the slope at a gallop. There was no other way to take it. If she had tried to slow, the loose wet earth would have slid away beneath her. Instead she rode down in a spray of mud and stones and flying scrub, and to her joy and pride, she heard two hundred men following behind her.

She couldn’t look back. She needed every sense focussed forwards to keep herself upright and moving, but the sound was unmistakable – a deep avalanche roar of pounding hooves and tumbling stones and ten score throats howling savage northern battle cries.

There were screams too, and the sick sounds of horses falling and snapping their legs and crushing men beneath them, but the rest galloped on, a thundering rapids of armour, horseflesh and men.

Ulrika saw the Emperor’s retinue of Reiksguard look up and back at the noise as they reached the last turn. Men pointed and cried out, and the leaders picked up the pace, cantering into the turn where they had been jogging. Swords and pistols came out, and a bright wizard on a roan horse dropped back into the rearguard and drew an iron staff from his back.

Ulrika looked to the base of the hill. She and the lancers would reach it roughly a hundred paces to the left of the road, and at roughly the same time as Karl Franz and his force reached the flat. If she could have angled across, she could have closed that gap to spitting distance, but turning on such uncertain ground would bring ruin. Yasim and the other horses would fall and the lancers would crash down on top of her. All that would reach the bottom of the hill would be horsemeat and broken men.

The first of the Emperor’s troops reached the level road as the rest of the column continued to wind off the hill behind them. Ulrika hit the flat at a dead run a second later and pulled Yasim’s head as hard to the right as she dared. The Arabyan’s knees almost buckled as the ground rose under her, but she recovered and breasted through shoulder-high saplings and bulrushes as she angled into the sharp turn.

It was a tight squeeze. The edge of the forest came almost to the base of the hill, and thick tree trunks whipped by inches away on Ulrika’s left. She ducked a low branch and straightened out, but some of the lancers didn’t make it. The legs of some of the horses gave out at the base of the slope, and they went down on their necks, sliding and crashing and throwing their riders. Others barrelled wildly into the trees, unable to stop. More crashed down on top of the fallen, but the men of the Ostermark were not called the Empire’s finest horsemen for nothing. Most cleared the wreckage and made the turn, and were quickly surging after Ulrika with sabres drawn.

Ulrika glanced back and saw Stahleker still at her shoulder, grinning like a lunatic.

‘Madness, bloodsucker!’ he shouted. ‘Madness!’

She laughed and sped on, closing fast on the Emperor’s retinue as its tail slowly wound around the last curve of the descent. Karl Franz was on the flat behind the vanguard now, hidden between the two files of enormous knights who rode on either side of the column. The knights were beginning to speed up as the road entered the wood, but not by much, for they didn’t want to get strung out along the road. Ulrika bared her teeth. She had them.

The lancers curved after her as she angled towards the road. Fifty paces now. The Reiksguard’s rearguard was on the flat, and the column was picking up speed. They still weren’t fast enough. She turned onto the road only twenty paces behind them, narrowing her eyes against the plume of mud and grit they kicked up in their wake. She was so close now she could hear their hearts pounding, feel the heat of their blood as it raced in their veins.

The bright wizard in the rear rank twisted back and pointed his staff at her. She flinched, expecting a wall of fire, but he was having difficulty staying in the saddle, and finding it hard to loose his flames.

Ulrika chuckled as she let go of Yasim’s reins and drew a pistol. Apparently they didn’t teach riding at the Colleges of Magic. She aimed at the wizard as heat ripples began to form around the amber orb at the end of his staff. He was too small a target. With a grunt of regret, she lowered the gun and shot his horse.

The beast went down screaming and crushed the wizard under its body as it slammed to the mud. His staff snapped and went flying. Ulrika leapt the mess, cursing. Too many horses had died this night, and not enough men. Well, she would rectify that.

Ten paces away now, and they were into the wood, the huge oaks rising up on either side of the road to close above it like a temple roof. Yasim was flagging a little, her flanks flecked with foam, but there was still no question. Ulrika and the lancers would be riding up the Reiksguard fundaments in a matter of seconds.

‘Vanguard! Peel off!’ roared a commanding voice from further up the column. Even over the rain and the thunder of ten score horses she could hear it. ‘To the rear, charge!’

Ulrika’s eyes widened. The Reiksguard were sending the front to the back, meeting their charge with a charge in order to give the rest time to form up – or make their escape.

‘Charge coming!’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘Ride through! Ride through!’

A few seconds later hurtling forms surged around either side of the retreating column – two files of knights, thundering down the narrow gap between the road edge and the trees that flanked it, whipping past their comrades and charging straight for Ulrika and Stahleker’s lancers. As they came, they formed up into a line six wide and three deep and lowered heavy lances. Even as her guts shrivelled in trepidation, Ulrika had to admit it had been neatly done. Even the Gryphon Legions of the North would have had difficulty with such a manoeuvre.

‘Brace for it!’ she shouted. ‘Drive through!’

A knight in a red cape aimed his lance straight for her heart. Only her unnatural strength and the temper of her stolen blade saved her. Wolf’s Fang beat the lance aside at the last second, splintering it, and it shot past her arm, a hair’s breadth from tearing it off. Unfortunately, she could not avoid the impact that followed.

Yasim slammed chest to chest with the knight’s massive warhorse as the lancers crashed into the Reiksguard all around her. Ulrika’s jaw clacked shut at the collision, and her brain bounced around in her head. The two sides surged up like surf hitting a wall, horses rearing and falling, men crushed, men impaled on lances, men trampled underfoot, but eighteen knights, no matter how heavy their armour and mounts, could not hold back two hundred lancers. Even as Ulrika and Stahleker and the rest of the front rank were knocked about like nine-pins, the rest of the lancers drove forwards, shoving them inexorably on and swarming past them on all sides.

The knights were like tortoises caught in a swift stream, swiftly dragged down and rolled under by the weight of numbers. Ulrika sheared through the helmet of her opponent, sending him pitching backwards off his saddle in a fountain of blood, to be lost beneath the crush of lancers.

In seconds, his seventeen brothers were all dead or downed, but they had done what they were meant to do. The lancers’ momentum was lost. They had broken through, but at the expense of their speed and formation.

‘On! On!’ shouted Ulrika. ‘Form up and ride! Hurry!’

The lancers struggled to obey, ranking together as best they could, and spurring their weary and wounded horses on. All the men at the front were battered and bleeding, their armour dented and torn away. Stahleker’s helm was gone, and he had a cut on his forehead that bled like a river. He spit blood as he echoed her orders.

‘Form up, you whoresons! After them!’

Ulrika looked ahead dispiritedly as they picked up the pace, expecting to see nothing but horse tails and lance tops vanishing into the darkness, but to her surprise, she saw the rearguard turning and making a line. No, it wasn’t just the rearguard! It was the whole column. Karl Franz was coming back for them!

Ulrika whooped and whirled Wolf’s Fang around her head. ‘The prize is still in reach, you horse thieves! Take it! Hit them before they make their line!’

Stahleker fell in beside her as they kicked their horses into a gallop. She flashed a wild smile at him.

‘You think I’m mad?’ she cried. ‘Your Emperor is insane!’

‘Brave,’ rasped the sergeant. ‘Like you.’

This second charge didn’t have the impact of the first. The lines were too ragged on both sides, and neither had the speed. Instead, the two forces crushed together in a plunging, brawling swirl, swords and maces and warhammers rising and falling and clashing against armour both bright and black, polished and scarred.

Ulrika fought in the centre of it, howling, Yasim wheeling and rearing beneath her as she lashed out on all sides with Wolf’s Fang. It was bliss. She and the sword and the horse were suddenly one, a single, steel-clawed centaur that moved all its parts in perfect harmony. As a dancer knows instinctively where her feet and hands and torso are at all times, Ulrika knew where Yasim would step and how her weight would shift. She knew where the blade would strike and where to block the next attack. And she knew just how to turn and duck and stretch to complement their movements.

Knights fell away from her in showers of blood, their breastplates cleft and chests carved to the heart as the terrible blade glowed like a red sun. She severed hands and snapped weapons in half. She cut throats and broke ribs. She crushed heads and let guts spill to the ground. The world turned crimson. It rained blood. She bathed in it. She fed just by inhaling.

Then, through the crimson haze of battle-lust and the clamour of battle, she heard a voice – clear and rich and strong.

‘Take her alive! I will know who is behind this!’

Another voice, darker, harsher, answered. ‘We will, my liege, but you must retire.’

‘I do not lead from behind,’ declared the first voice.

Ulrika snapped from her blood fugue and looked around. My liege? The first voice was the Emperor! He was close. There. A tall, clean-limbed, clear-eyed man, armoured no more elaborately than any of his knights, but mantled in crimson and ermine, with a plain circlet fixed to his helm and an aura of command that was almost tangible. He was pressing his horse into the pack with his sword unsheathed and a cloaked, black-bearded giant of a knight beside him, who seemed to be trying to keep between him and the fighting. This must be Ludwig Schwarzhelm, his champion, whose name was nearly as famous as his master’s.

‘My liege, you are ill,’ said Schwarzhelm. ‘This is not the time.’

Ulrika cut down another knight and wheeled to face the pair over the surging melee. ‘If you wish me alive, Emperor, come take me!’ she cried, pointing her sword at them. ‘Karl Franz, Prince of the Reikland and Emperor of the provinces, I–’ She broke off. She shouldn’t name herself, but what name should she say? Von Messinghof had said he wanted the Empire to think Lahmia had killed Karl Franz. Ha! Yes! ‘I, Countess Gabriella of Lahmia, Herald of the Queen of the Silver Mountain, challenge you to single combat!’

‘And I, Karl Franz, accept–’ began the Emperor eagerly, but Schwarzhelm pushed ahead of him.

‘No, my liege,’ he said, firmly. ‘I am your champion. It is my duty to protect you – even from yourself.’

‘Ludwig,’ said Karl Franz. ‘I am still a knight.’

‘You are the Emperor, my liege,’ said Schwarzhelm, shouldering his massive horse through the press towards Ulrika. ‘And you are not at your full strength. You need prove nothing to fiends like this. Ride on. They will not follow you.’

Ulrika sneered. If this bear in a tin suit wanted to die for his Emperor, then she would oblige him. Karl Franz would keep for another few seconds, for he did not seem eager to go. Instead he watched as his champion closed with her.

Ulrika drove forwards to meet him, her bloodlust still singing its joyous song of mayhem in her head. It was only as Schwarzhelm raised his long sword that the faintest note of doubt added a discord to its melody. She had never seen such a blade before. The weapon did not burn with arcane flames. It did not glow with red power as hers did. It was not black, or fitted with spikes or skulls or sawed edges. It was as stark and simple a sword as she had ever seen, and yet it radiated a sense of purity and power that made her shrink back as if she were staring into the sun. This blade stood against everything that she had become. It was a ward against the darkness. It was the doom of the enemies of mankind.

Another sour note added to the growing cacophony. A sword like this was never wielded by a ‘bear in a tin suit’. This was a hero’s sword. It would only be bestowed upon a knight as pure and powerful and perfect as itself. When she had thought of it at all, she had thought the title ‘Emperor’s Champion’ was an honorary one, a post given to some honoured general, now retired. Ludwig Schwarzhelm did not look retired.

She snarled and spurred on, driving the doubt from her mind with a howl of fury. What did it matter? Hadn’t she killed Kodrescu? Wasn’t she faster and stronger than any living man? Didn’t she have a powerful sword of her own?

She ducked a whistling sweep from the great blade as they slammed together, and lashed out at the champion’s side. Wolf’s Fang rang off his breastplate as if off stone. Ursun’s teeth! He was armoured as well as he was armed! That was gromril plate!

The shining long sword slashed at her again and she had to bow over Yasim’s neck to avoid it. She urged the horse around and struck at the back of his helm. That blow hit as well, but glanced off just like the first. She was indeed faster, but did it matter? A fox was faster than a turtle, but it was never going to kill it.

The champion hacked down at her head. She parried with Wolf’s Fang, and the shining blade sheared hers in two in a blinding flash of red, then sliced through her pauldron and found flesh. She shrieked and dodged back, reining Yasim into a rearing retreat, more shocked by the destruction of Kodrescu’s dread sword than the shoulder wound. The champion had just destroyed a sentient, centuries-old weapon, more powerful than any she had ever known but for Gotrek Gurnisson’s starmetal rune axe, as if it were a dry branch. She had faced strong enemies before. She had faced skilled enemies, but this…

‘Alive, Ludwig!’ called the Emperor. ‘I want her alive!’

‘Fear not, my liege,’ growled the champion, pressing forwards again. ‘Vampires take a lot of killing.’

Ulrika drew her rapier from its sheath across Yasim’s rump and danced the horse back away from the big man, fighting the urge to just turn and run. If Kodrescu’s blade had been a dry branch, then the fencing blade was a burnt twig. How was she going to do this? There had to be a way. She had come so far. Karl Franz was right there! She couldn’t give up now.

She looked around. Perhaps the lancers could bring Schwarzhelm down while she kept him busy. But without her slaughter distracting the Reiksguard, they were faring poorly – the knights’ freshness and better arms were turning the tide, and Stahleker and his men were being pressed back on all sides, bloody, bruised and demoralised. They would be no help.

The champion closed on Ulrika and hacked at her torso. She twisted aside and chopped at his wrist, trying to stun him into dropping the weapon. He grunted, but his grip did not weaken, and the blade hissed towards her again, too close this time. Were she any slower, the cut would have taken her left arm. Instead it tore her vambrace as she pulled away, and only cut her to the bone.

She fell back, hissing in agony and rage, then lunged forwards again, slashing and stabbing in a mindless frenzy. Again and again she struck home, but to no effect, and the champion was raising his sword again.

‘Emperor!’ cried a hoarse voice. ‘Another force! In the woods to the east. They are coming!’

The champion checked his swing and looked towards the woods. Ulrika wheeled Yasim away from him and followed his gaze, her heart leaping. In the thrill of the chase and the rush of battle she had completely forgotten von Messinghof. This was where he had meant to ambush Karl Franz, and if he was coming, it must mean he had defeated the Lahmians. They could win after all!

But as she peered into the forest her hope faded. It wasn’t von Messinghof who led the cavalry that thundered through the trees. It was Lashmiya of Mahrak, ruler of the Serpent Coast, and emissary of the Queen of the Silver Pinnacle, head to toe in gold and lapis armour, with red magic swirling around her upraised fist and four hulking shieldmaidens flanking her.

chapter twenty-eight

THE BETRAYER

Ludwig Schwarzhelm turned his horse and raised his foghorn voice. ‘Ambush! Reiksguard, fall back and protect the Emperor!’ He surged back towards Karl Franz as his knights began to fight their way free of the lancers. ‘My liege, you are leaving – now!’

‘No!’ cried Ulrika, and spurred Yasim past him, slashing at his eyes as she went. The Lahmians would not steal this from her! If she was going to die here, she would take Karl Franz with her.

Schwarzhelm ducked, and her blow struck his helm instead of his eyes, knocking it from his head. He plunged at her, raising his sword as she tried to drive through the Reiksguard line to the Emperor. The knights closed ranks and slashed at her as Schwarzhelm slammed into her from behind. His rune sword slashed down in a diagonal arc. There was no way to block it or twist out of the way. She threw herself out of the saddle and heard Yasim scream as she fell beside her.

She looked up. The Arabyan was collapsing, her knees buckling. Ulrika rolled aside and Yasim whumped to the ground where she had crouched, her saddle split in half by a sword cut that had also severed her spine.

Ulrika stared at the dead horse for a long second, uncomprehending, then raised burning eyes to the champion, who was hurrying with the Reiksguard line to his Emperor’s side. She growled in her throat and started after them, her rapier white-knuckled in her fist. She would kill the Emperor swiftly, but his champion would die by inches for this slaughter.

‘Captain!’ shouted Stahleker. ‘Captain! The Lahmians!’

Ulrika turned. The Lahmian force was less than a hundred feet away, swarming through the trees to the left of the road like the hordes of the Wastes were after them. She cursed. It was the champion she wanted to fight, not them. She wanted the Emperor’s head and Schwarzhelm’s hide!

But as she looked around at her men, all turning to face the new threat as the Reiksguard broke from them and galloping after Karl Franz, her chest clenched like a fist. The lancers looked like the walking dead – battered in the battle behind the castle, run ragged in the charge across the killing field and the plunge down the hill, and overmatched against the Reiksguard on the road. There wasn’t one of them unwounded. There wasn’t a helm undented or a breastplate unscarred. Their faces and hands were red with blood and their eyes glazed with weariness. They had followed her so well, and she had led them so poorly. She was ashamed of herself – chasing an impossible target while they died all around her. And she had been about to do it again, charging after the Emperor and his champion single-handed and leaving them to their fate. This was not what she had promised them. This was not the bargain she had struck with Stahleker.

Ulrika ran to the nearest unmanned horse and vaulted into the saddle. ‘Leave the knights! Face left! Face left!’

Just as she goaded her mount into the line beside Stahleker the Lahmians burst from the trees, and Lashmiya let loose a spell. A black cloud spread from her outthrust hand and swirled towards the lancers.

At first, Ulrika thought it was smoke of some kind, but as it got closer she saw that it was flies! Thousands of them! They gusted ahead of the Lahmian charge upon a wind that smelled like a charnel house, and enveloped Ulrika and the lancers in a buzzing, battering swarm. All around her, the Ostermark men began choking and crying out as the flies flew into their eyes and mouths, and under their armour, gagging them and biting them.

Ulrika twitched and cursed as sharp stabs of pain peppered her face, hands and body. Why didn’t she have magic of her own? Why couldn’t she repel the spells of others?

‘You’ll die for this, witch!’ cried Ulrika, spurring towards Lashmiya and raising her rapier over her head. ‘For Sylvania! For von Messinghof!’

The lancers tried to echo her call and follow, but their charge floundered as the flies blinded them, and they could hardly defend themselves as the two sides slammed together.

Ulrika hacked at the emissary’s heavily armoured shieldmaidens as the flies buzzed all around her. She had to get past them and stop Lashmiya’s magic. The Lahmian already had too many advantages. She had more blood-swains than Ulrika had lancers, as well as a dozen vampiresses, while she was only one. But as one of the giant Norsewomen fell to her rapier, Ulrika saw that Lashmiya’s force was in truth nearly as broken as her own. Lashmiya herself was fighting desperately to maintain the spell, while her shieldmaidens and men-at-arms were cut to ribbons, their armour torn and punctured, their flesh smeared with clotting blood. Some could barely keep their saddles. Some looked only inches from panic.

Ulrika’s lancers, on the other hand, despite their weariness and their wounds and the distraction of the flies, were soldiers to the core. They had been on the wrong end of a battle before. They knew what defeat tasted like, and were not dismayed by it. They fought with the grim determination of dwarfs digging their way out of a collapsed mine. As Ulrika cut down another shieldmaiden and came to grips with Lashmiya, they held their line and hacked at the blood-swains like they were a rocky work face, chipping away at them in a slow, steady slaughter.

‘You should have brought an army,’ sneered Ulrika, slashing at the Lahmian’s haughty eyes. ‘Not a flock of fencing masters.’

‘It matters not that we die,’ said Lashmiya, parrying with a jewelled scimitar. ‘We have kept you from your mad purpose. Karl Franz has escaped you. Your war is over before it is begun.’

Ulrika snarled because she had no answer to that. Though Ulrika and her men might survive the Lahmian ambush, Lashmiya had still achieved her goal of stopping the assassination the Emperor. And if the Emperor was not dead, would the count’s Sylvanian masters dare wake Mannfred von Carstein and begin their invasion?

She aimed a blow at the dark-skinned Lahmian’s neck, but before she could strike, a sizzling lance of black energy struck Lashmiya in the back and she spasmed and jerked in the saddle as her skin wrinkled and shrank.

The cloud of flies dropped dead instantly and Ulrika looked past the Lahmian, searching for the source of the withering bolt. There. Coming out of the trees behind the melee were von Messinghof and the tattered remains of his Blood Knights – less than half the force he had brought to Ambosstein – and beside the count, Emmanus, the nuncio, black lightning crackling around his hands as he prepared another blast.

‘Sylvania!’ cried von Messinghof. ‘Sylvania endures.’

And with that, he and his Blood Knights smashed into the backs of the beleaguered Lahmians and the massacre began in earnest. Flanked, crippled and demoralised, the Lahmians’ blood-swains practically threw themselves on the Sylvanian swords. Ulrika turned back to Lashmiya to finish her off, but she was gone, vanishing into a rapidly dissipating cloud of ash that smelled of dusty cinnamon. Ulrika and Stahleker cut down her remaining shieldmaidens in short order, and the slaughter was complete. Ulrika felt no satisfaction in the deed, however. This was no victory. Sylvania had lost. It mattered not that they were the ones to walk from the field. Their cause was dead. Lashmiya and the Lahmians had killed it.

‘Obercaptain,’ called von Messinghof, walking his horse to Ulrika through the carnage. He had lost his right vambrace and there was a gash on his forearm through which she could see bone. ‘Karl Franz escaped?’

Ulrika inclined her head. ‘Forgive me, lord. We tried to fight through to him, but we failed. The Lahmians intercepted us.’

‘And how did they know to find us?’ rasped Emmanus. ‘Who is the traitor?’

Von Messinghof ignored him and wiped his bloody brow with his sleeve. ‘You were ambushed above as well?’

‘Aye, lord,’ said Ulrika. ‘Attacked from behind by the Lahmians. We tried to keep the battle contained to the wood, so the castle would not hear it, but…’ She paused, hesitating to tell tales out of school and blame Otilia. Stahleker did it for her.

‘But yer sweetheart broke and ran,’ he said, slumping on his horse as if he might fall from it at any second. ‘Her and Ruger’s cowards. Fled out onto the field with the Lahmians pursuing. The castle horns started blowing a second later.’

‘Is – is she dead?’ asked von Messinghof.

Ulrika shook her head. ‘I was fighting and could not see.’

‘And the others? Lassarian?’

Ulrika looked up towards the castle and saw a snaking line of torches descending down the road from its black silhouette.

‘I know not, lord,’ said Ulrika, ‘but we cannot wait to find out. The rest of the Reiksguard are coming for us. We must go.’

‘Aye,’ said Emmanus, looking at von Messinghof from under his hood. ‘Your game is over, lord. You have failed your master. There will be a reckoning.’

The count glared at him. ‘No. We have not failed. There is still Arschel.’ He turned his horse. ‘To the barges. We will try again tonight.’

Two hours later, after a brutal ride that nearly killed their wounded mounts, von Messinghof’s battered army arrived at his barges just before sunrise. While the lancers and other human troops hurried to load their horses and gear and wounded into the holds, Ulrika followed Emmanus and the count to his windowless private cabin under the aft deck of the lead barge.

Otilia and Lassarian were already there. Otilia huddled on a couch, her clothes torn and covered in dried blood, sobbing as she fed from a slave. Lassarian slouched in a chair, glaring at her from under half-lowered eyelids. Old Blutegel was on his knees near them, cleaning blood and muddy footprints from the polished wooden floor, but he stood and bowed as von Messinghof came in.

‘Welcome, lord,’ he said. ‘You – you have good news?’

Emmanus snorted.

‘I am not dead,’ said von Messinghof, throwing his cloak and gloves onto his bed. ‘But neither is Karl Franz.’

‘I am sorry to hear it, lord,’ said Blutegel. ‘But, may I ask? Is Rukke with you? Does he live?’

Von Messinghof shrugged and looked around at the others.

‘He went in with the ghouls,’ said Ulrika. ‘I did not see him again.’

Blutegel’s eye twitched. He bowed. ‘Thank you. Will my masters require blood slaves?’

Ulrika declined, but von Messinghof nodded. ‘Bring Shiller. I need strength.’

Blutegel bowed and exited and the five vampires were alone. Von Messinghof groaned into a chair opposite Lassarian and motioned for Ulrika to sit upon a bench across from Otilia. Emmanus remained standing.

‘If you mean to make another try, lord,’ he said, ‘then the traitor who betrayed us this time must be exposed.’ He looked around at them all, his red eyes all that was visible under his hood. ‘Only we here were present when the count told us his plans. Therefore, one of us must be the betrayer, and must die.’

‘It was Ulrika!’ snarled Otilia, looking up from the unconscious slave who slumped in her embrace. ‘Who else could it be? She never stopped working for the Lahmians!’

Ulrika snorted. ‘Don’t be more of an idiot than you already are. If I was the traitor, why did they attack me too?’

‘How else does a Lahmian repay a favour?’ Otilia sneered.

Ulrika wanted to protest that, but couldn’t argue the point. Turning on one’s allies was a time-honoured Lahmian tradition. The fact that they had tried to kill her did not rule out the possibility that she had spied for them.

‘Then perhaps it was you,’ said Lassarian, still staring at Otilia with cold eyes. ‘You certainly did more harm than anyone else. Perhaps your courage didn’t break after all. Perhaps you ran onto the field on purpose, to bring ruin upon us from both sides.’

‘I didn’t break!’ cried Otilia. ‘Ruger broke! And I didn’t betray us to the Lahmians. I despise them!’

‘That at least is true,’ said Ulrika. ‘Otilia hates the Lahmians more than any of us.’ She turned on Lassarian. ‘What about you, general? You told me you planned to fly away upon your hell-steed before the end. Was that your plan all along? To leave us all to die? Were you only making a good show when you fought the Lahmians?’

Lassarian rolled his eyes. ‘Now who’s the idiot? Would I be here had I betrayed you?’

‘Of course,’ said von Messinghof. ‘To kill any survivors. To be sure the job was done.’

Lassarian’s eyes widened. He sat up. ‘Lord, I assure you, I–’

Hurried footsteps came from behind the door, and the latch turned. Ulrika and the others dropped their hands to their weapons instinctively, but when the door opened, it was Blutegel, sobbing, with four men following and carrying something between them.

‘Lord!’ he said, staggering in. ‘My son – your son. He has returned! You must save him!’

The four men carried a blanket into the cabin and set it down. Lying upon it was Rukke, and Ulrika could not be sure he was alive. He lay still as death, scored with a dozen wounds and one hand mashed into an unrecognisable pulp. All his blond hair had been burned away, and the skin on the right side of his face was charred and flaking. His right ear was gone. His teeth and jaw were splintered by a cut that looked like it had been made with a war axe.

Otilia flinched at the sight of him and looked away. Lassarian curled his lip. Ulrika shuddered. Von Messinghof stood and looked down at him, an unfathomable look in his eyes.

Blutegel reached pleading hands towards him. ‘Please, lord. You can heal him. You can save him.’

‘For what?’ asked von Messinghof. ‘It may take years for him to recover – years of agony. His hand may never heal. His mouth…’ He shook his head.

‘Lord,’ mewled Blutegel. ‘You promised me when you turned him. You said you would care for him, for eternity. You would treat him as your own son.’

‘And I am!’ barked the count. ‘Do you think I would let any son of mine suffer the pain he is enduring? Blood of Nagash! Why did the fool attack in the first place?’ He spun on Lassarian. ‘Did you order him in?’

‘No, lord,’ said Lassarian. ‘We saw him go of his own accord, after Lady Otilia…’

One of the men who had carried him in bowed. ‘Forgive me, lords. We were with him. He saw the lady’s charge and thought the signal had been given.’

Von Messinghof groaned and ran his fingers through his blood-crusted hair. ‘This is my fault,’ he said. ‘All this stems from putting lovers and sons into positions that should have been held by professionals. I am a fool!’

Otilia’s head shot up at this, her eyes flashing. ‘Do you speak of me, lord? Have I disappointed you?’

The count rounded on her. ‘Can you think otherwise? If not for you, the game might have been saved! Had you not broken, we might have defeated the Lahmians without the Imperials the wiser. We might still have been able to make our play. But–’

‘I did not break, lord! Ruger broke!’

‘Then you failed to inspire him! You failed to lead!’ He turned and threw out a hand towards Ulrika. ‘Look at what your sister did this night. Attacked from the rear by our enemies, she held her troops firm while you broke. Attacked again from the rear by new enemies who you alerted, she had the presence of mind to pull them out of harm’s way and bring them to my aid. She led her troops through fire, down a precipice, and against the deadliest knights of the Empire, and they followed her like they were her shadow. That is leadership! That is what wins battles! Gods! In spite of your exposing us all through your cowardice, she still came within an inch of taking the head of the Emperor!’

Otilia trembled with rage and turned her burning eyes on Ulrika. ‘And what if it was all a ruse?’ she asked. ‘What if it was she who told the Lahmians where we were, and what we planned?’

Von Messinghof laughed. ‘You will say anything, won’t you? Why would Ulrika risk her life attacking Karl Franz if it was a ruse?’

‘To drive him to Nuln and out of your reach, perhaps?’ said Otilia. ‘What better way for the Lahmians to protect him from you, than to scare him with a close call?’

Von Messinghof opened his mouth to deride her again, then closed it and looked at Ulrika, his eyes suddenly questioning. Ulrika stiffened.

‘Lord,’ she said, ‘you can’t think this. It was Otilia who precipitated things. It was she who broke.’

‘It was Ruger who broke,’ countered Otilia. ‘The same Ruger who she has bled. Perhaps he was doing her bidding, alerting the Imperials to bring about our doom.’

Ulrika stared. ‘I fed from Ruger weeks ago! He–’

‘And Lassarian saw her speak to her old mistress, Countess Gabriella,’ continued Otilia. ‘In the middle of the battle.’

Von Messinghof turned to Lassarian. ‘Is this true?’

Lassarian inclined his head. ‘Indeed, lord. I saw it with my own eyes.’

Von Messinghof looked at Ulrika, his gaze boring into her. Ulrika swallowed, her head spinning. How had this happened? A second ago, he had been singing her praises. Now he thought she was the betrayer. She shot a glance at Otilia. The erstwhile housekeeper may have changed sides, but she was still a true Lahmian – more so than Ulrika had ever been. She knew how to twist words to make facts dance.

‘Boyarina?’ asked the count, expectant. ‘You had words with Countess Gabriella?’

‘She – she asked me to come back to her,’ said Ulrika. ‘I told her to go to hell and raced to save you. There was nothing more.’

‘And can anyone verify this? Did anyone else hear you speak?’

Ulrika thought back. She had been yards away from the lancers, fighting among Lassarian’s mounted wights, and they could neither hear nor speak. ‘No one,’ she said. ‘I was alone.’

Von Messinghof’s hand dropped unconsciously to the hilt of his sword. He pursed his lips. ‘Boyarina, I don’t want to believe this of you, but–’

‘Lord, please, think!’ said Ulrika, standing and spreading her hands. ‘Even if I had wanted to, when would I have had the opportunity to warn the Lahmians. I didn’t even know where we were going until the night of the attack! And once you had told us, I was busy readying my men, in sight of everyone. How could I have got a message to them? I would have had to have sent it just as we were riding out to…’

She trailed off as a memory came to her. Someone had sent a message just as they were riding out. Someone had sent two messages.

‘The same can be said of everyone who was in my tent,’ said von Messinghof, waving her words away. ‘All were in sight of everyone, and yet someone did send a message. They must have, else the Lahmians would not have known where to ambush us.’

‘Aye!’ said Ulrika. Her skin prickled with excitement as she turned to Blutegel. ‘Steward, why did you loose two bats just as we were getting under way?’

The old servant blinked. ‘Why, I – I sent a message to the barges, to tell them where to meet us after the battle.’

‘What is this?’ asked von Messinghof. ‘Why are you questioning Blutegel?’

Ulrika kept her eyes on Blutegel. ‘That took two bats? Why? Why did you need two bats to send one message?’

The old man opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. ‘I–’ he said at last. ‘I can explain. I–’

Nothing else came out. Instead he began to shake.

Von Messinghof stepped to him, staring. ‘Blutegel?’

The steward covered his face with his hands and sank to his knees. ‘I am sorry, lord. I am sorry.’

Von Messinghof’s eyes flared. He grabbed Blutegel by the front of his robe and lifted him off the ground with one hand, then looked him in the eyes.

‘Why?’

chapter twenty-nine

HERALD OF THE QUEEN

‘You – you broke your promise!’ bawled Blutegel. ‘You said you would treat him as your own blood!’ He shoved ineffectually at von Messinghof’s hand. ‘You made him your kennel keeper!’

Von Messinghof stared, eyes blazing. ‘You betrayed me for that? You scuttled the birth of the Sylvanian Empire because I gave your son the position he deserved? Fool! A man does not become an aristocrat of the night in the span of a human life! I had all of eternity to raise him! Did you expect to see him made my favourite before your death?’

‘They said you would not raise him at all!’ sobbed Blutegel. ‘They said he was an embarrassment to you, whom you would kill as soon as I was dead!’

A look flashed across the count’s face that told Ulrika that was precisely what he had intended to do. He shook Blutegel. ‘They? Who told you this?’

‘The lady,’ said the steward. ‘The countess. She said that the Lahmians would honour the pledge that you did not. She said that once you were defeated, Rukke would be the ruler of all Sylvania. Not just a son to her, but a prince! A prince of the blood!’

Von Messinghof closed his eyes, still holding the steward off the ground. ‘You are a fool, Blutegel. Only women rule in the courts of Lahmia. She lied to you.’

‘Not the countess,’ said Blutegel. ‘She promised me.’

‘She bled you,’ sneered the count. ‘I should have smelled it on you.’ He tightened his grip on the steward’s collar, making him choke. ‘Tell me one thing before I kill you. How did they reach Ambosstein in time? I only revealed out final destination at sunset yesterday. There was no way they could have travelled from Nuln in four hours. The trip takes days.’

Blutegel laughed, a high, constricted giggle. ‘The white king!’

The count shook him. ‘What? Talk sense!’

Blutegel coughed, then rasped in a breath. ‘You were very clever, count, not telling us where we were going. But you left your chess pieces on the map after you had made your calculations. The white king was placed on Ambosstein. I knew where we were going before we left the Stirwood two days ago.’

‘Two days is still not enough time to get from Nuln,’ said von Messinghof.

‘Yes, but the Lahmians were already waiting at Arschel, thinking you would attack there,’ said Blutegel. ‘It took them less than a night to reach Ambosstein. Last night I only had to tell them your final placement.’

Von Messinghof snarled and shoved Blutegel back into the bulkhead. The steward’s head smacked the hard wood with a hollow thump and he slumped to the deck, groaning.

‘This is what I get for trusting humans,’ said the count, stepping over him and letting out his claws. ‘They always turn on you in the end.’

He drew back his hand, preparing to slash Blutegel’s throat, but a voice hissed behind him.

‘No, lord. Please.’

Ulrika, von Messinghof and the others turned. Rukke was pushing himself into a sitting position and wincing as he put weight on his mangled hand. He stared at his birth father with his one remaining eye.

‘Let me kill him,’ he whispered. It sounded like his windpipe was split. ‘It is he more than anyone who did this to me.’

Blutegel raised his head. ‘No, Rukke,’ he quavered. ‘I told you to stay out of it.’

Von Messinghof looked down at the young vampire. ‘You would kill your father?’

‘You are my father,’ breathed Rukke. ‘And I will prove myself worthy to be your son.’

The count looked at him for a moment, considering, then shrugged and kicked Blutegel across the floor to him. Rukke pulled himself up on top of his father like a broken spider, then opened his mangled mouth.

‘Please, Rukke,’ sobbed Blutegel. ‘I did it for you. I tried to save you.’

There was hardly an unbroken tooth in Rukke’s shattered jaw, but he bit down on Blutegel’s neck anyway, tearing his flesh with the ragged stumps. The old man screamed and kicked, but Rukke held him down and fed, slurping like a hag gumming soup as blood pooled on the deck beneath them.

Otilia and Lassarian turned their heads, revolted, but Ulrika couldn’t look away. She saw Blutegel’s struggles weaken and slow, and Rukke’s wounds begin to knit and scar. The biggest of them did not heal, however, and his hand and face and burned scalp remained gruesome and wet.

Von Messinghof looked down at them both, sad and grim. ‘You were a mistake from the beginning,’ he said softly. ‘Turned out of pity, not out of love. And now you have committed a crime beyond redemption. Your plight has caused your father, a better man than you would ever have become, to turn against me. Because of you, I have lost him.’

Rukke did not seem to hear, and kept feeding, oblivious.

The count sighed and drew his sword. ‘I admit the fault is my own, and you are as innocent of your crimes as a pup who chews a hole in a boot, but the mistake must be rectified. The death of your father must be avenged.’

That seemed to pierce Rukke’s blood-fogged brain. He pushed himself to his knees by his father’s corpse and looked up at von Messinghof with his remaining eye.

‘Huh?’ he said.

The count swept off his hideous head with a single stroke of his sword. It bounced away, and Rukke’s torso slumped across his father’s corpse, almost as if they were embracing.

Von Messinghof turned away and cleaned his sword on his kerchief, then sheathed it. ‘Take the son out and throw him overboard,’ he said to the men who had brought him in. ‘The father will be buried with all the rites of his cult when we land again.’

The men scurried to put Rukke’s body on the blanket as von Messinghof turned to Ulrika and inclined his head.

‘Thank you for exposing the traitor,’ he said, ‘though I wish it could have been anyone else at all.’

Ulrika bowed in return. ‘I’m sorry, lord.’

He waved that away. ‘Leave me, all of you. Sleep. Ready yourself for tonight when we reach Arschel. I must think what is to be done. We will have no other chance.’

Ulrika rose and stepped to the door with the others, and held it open for them. Otilia gave her a look of pure poison as she passed.

‘Lady,’ asked Ulrika as she followed her out, ‘what precisely have I done that has angered you so?’

Otilia turned back and looked her up and down with eyes like ice. ‘You are here.’

Ulrika stared after her as she stalked away.

Lassarian laughed. ‘You should have named her traitor. The count wouldn’t have minded feeding her to Rukke nearly as much.’

Ulrika woke to a crash and scream. Her quarters, little more than a closet with a hammock hung from its ceiling, shared a bulkhead with von Messinghof’s cabin and the crash had come from there, and now there were the sounds of a struggle.

‘Lord!’ she cried, then half-fell from her hammock and grabbed her rapier as she stumbled out into the gangway, dressed only in breeches and shirt. It was still day. Sun filtered through cracks in the deck above. Von Messinghof’s door was half-open, and the dim light showed kicking limbs. She shouldered in, sword at the ready, then skidded to a stop, staring.

The count was bent over a prostrate man in a travelling cloak whose heels kicked the floor in weak spasms. Von Messinghof’s fangs were in the man’s neck, and his claws were bared and bloody. It occurred to Ulrika that she had never seen him feed before.

‘Lord,’ she asked, ‘is all well?’

Von Messinghof looked up, and a grimace of chagrin twisted his face. He lowered the man to the ground, then snapped his neck.

‘It – it is nothing,’ he said, wiping his lips. ‘I have only killed the bearer of bad news.’

‘Bad news?’

Otilia and Lassarian came in behind Ulrika, both in robes, as the count crossed to his chair and slumped into it.

‘Lord,’ said Otilia, ‘what has happened?’

He waved at her and Ulrika and Lassarian to sit, but when they did, he said nothing for a long time, staring at the corpse of the man he had just killed, still slowly leaking its life blood onto the boards.

‘Karl Franz has reached Nuln,’ he said at last. ‘He did not stay in Arschel. He did not rest. He did not stop to eat or drink. He and his retinue rode straight through without a break and arrived at the gates of Nuln an hour before sunset.’ He sighed. ‘It is the end. We are done.’

Ulrika, Otilia and Lassarian looked at each other, uncomfortable. Otilia licked her lips nervously.

‘Is there no way, lord? Surely we have entered Nuln before.’

Von Messinghof looked up at her, eyes blazing. ‘He is not just in Nuln! He is in the palace of Countess Emmanuelle, with all her soldiers and magisters and priests added to his own! I have no army strong enough to break down those walls and defeat his defenders. Nor is there any trick that will draw him again into the open. He knows we are after him! He is on his guard!’ He laughed wildly and pointed at Ulrika. ‘You! You are wanted dead or alive as the Queen of the Lahmians, of all things! There are descriptions of you being raced to every village, inn and roadwarden along the Nuln-to-Altdorf road! No. It is impossible. Karl Franz might as well be on Mannslieb. We will not reach him.’

Otilia lowered her head, chastised, and Ulrika and Lassarian sat silent, afraid to speak. The count stared again at the corpse for a long while, then spoke again without looking up.

‘I will die for this. The von Carstein punishment for failure is death. I will return to Sylvania and make my report and await my execution. You, however, need not suffer my fate. Lassarian, I would advise you to find a new master, in Bretonnia perhaps, or farther south. Somewhere Sylvania is not at the moment casting its eye. Otilia, Ulrika, you may do the same if you wish, or you might try your luck with the Lahmians. They will be the best protection against his wrath – for a while at least. I am sorry I dragged you into a debacle. I meant to elevate you all. You would have been the heroes of the new order. Now… now it will be someone else’s turn to usher in the Sylvanian Empire.’

He stood and crossed to the travelling trunk that held his belongings. ‘I will put ashore before Nuln. Your service to me ends there. Go where you wish. Do what you will.’

There was another long silence, then Lassarian snorted and stood and strode out of the cabin. Ulrika was about to follow him when Otilia bit her lip and spoke again.

‘Lord, please. I do not want to leave you. You are my master. You are my–’

‘I am your doom!’ snarled von Messinghof. His claws dug into the lid of the trunk. ‘No one will live who stays with me. Now go before I strike you. Both of you!’

Otilia stood with a sob and stumbled to the door. Ulrika rose and started after her, the image of herself knocking on the door of Gabriella’s brothel and begging to be allowed to be a Lahmian again making her shudder, but as she reached the door, she paused, for the stray thought had rubbed against another and kindled a tiny ember of an idea in her head.

‘Lord,’ she said, turning.

‘I asked you to go,’ growled von Messinghof.

‘Lord, what if I knew a way to lure him out?’

‘There isn’t one.’

‘There might be. You said it earlier, and it might work.’

The count looked up at her, his brows lowered in annoyance. ‘Stop speaking in riddles. What did I say?’

Ulrika put a hand to her breast. ‘I am the Queen of the Lahmians, wanted dead or alive.’

chapter thirty

THE BAIT

Von Messinghof stared at Ulrika, then stepped towards her, his hands trembling. ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me!’

Ulrika took an involuntary step back. ‘Last night, as we fought his Reiksguard, I heard the Emperor calling to his champion to take me alive. You’d said that we were to make it appear the Lahmians had assassinated him, so I had announced myself as herald of the Queen of the Silver Mountain. He – he wanted to interrogate me. He wanted to know the Lahmians’ plans. If we were to let him know where I was…’

A glow appeared in von Messinghof’s eyes that looked very much like the light of hope, but then it died. ‘No,’ he sighed. ‘It was a good thought, but it won’t work.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it will not be the Emperor who comes. If he truly does want to interrogate you personally, he will send the Reiksguard to fetch you, and you will be dragged back to the palace, put in the deepest dungeon, bound in silver chains and subjected to tortures that will make you wish that you were not immortal. You will not draw him out. You will only succeed in trapping yourself.’

Ulrika cursed. He was right, of course. She couldn’t very well ask Karl Franz to rendezvous with her and expect him to walk into her trap unaccompanied. But there had to be some way they could use her as bait.

‘Lord, if I might make a suggestion?’

Ulrika and von Messinghof looked up. Otilia had reappeared in the door, an uncertain expression on her face.

Von Messinghof scowled. ‘What is it?’

Otilia stepped back into the room. ‘You know the story of the rabbit who begs not to be thrown in the briars? What if Ulrika does the reverse?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked the count.

‘What if she asks to be imprisoned in the palace? What if she seems almost eager to go?’

‘You mean to make it seem that I intend some mischief there?’ asked Ulrika. ‘So that they fear to let me in?’

‘Exactly,’ said Otilia. ‘They would be forced to lock you up elsewhere, and if Karl Franz wanted to question you, he would have to visit you there.’

‘But that is no better,’ said von Messinghof. ‘They could lock her up anywhere. We would have no way to plan our attack beforehand.’

Otilia smiled, cold and cruel. ‘You would if she allowed herself to be caught only by the witch hunters. There is nowhere they would take her except the Iron Tower.’

Ulrika’s eyes widened. She bared her fangs. ‘Lord,’ she said, turning to von Messinghof. ‘This is not a plan to assassinate Karl Franz. This is a plan to destroy me! She has tried to turn me over to the witch hunters before.’

‘How is this an improvement?’ asked von Messinghof, glaring at Otilia. ‘A tower on an island in the middle of the Reik, well fortified and accessible only by two bridges?’

Otilia shrugged. ‘You wanted a way to know in advance where Ulrika would be taken. I have given you one. For the rest, I know not. As you have told me, I am not a tactician.’

‘Clearly,’ said von Messinghof.

But now gears were turning in Ulrika’s head. What if the island’s defences could be used to their advantage?

‘It might work, though,’ she said. ‘Here.’

She crossed to von Messinghof’s desk and took up a quill, then dipped it in ink. Von Messinghof and Otilia followed and watched as she drew on a scrap of parchment the two banks of the Reik, then a circle between them to represent the Iron Tower, and finally the two bridges, one connecting it to the north bank, another linking it to the south.

‘The tower is also accessible by river, lord,’ she said, drawing an arrow in the middle of the Reik that pointed to the island. She dipped her quill again and crossed out the bridges. ‘And if you were to somehow remove the bridges, it would be very difficult for anyone to come to the Emperor’s aid, once he set foot upon it.’

Von Messinghof’s eyes were glowing again. He chewed a finger absently as he looked at Ulrika’s simple map. ‘We have the barges. We can land them on the island with no difficulty. He would be surrounded and cut off.’

‘If we can remove the bridges,’ said Ulrika.

‘Aye,’ said von Messinghof. He turned and began to pace, then waved them away. ‘Go tell Lassarian I am not done with him after all. And wake Nuncio Emmanus. I believe I finally have a use for his considerable power.’

Ulrika bowed and Otilia curtseyed, then they turned and left the room.

In the hall, Otilia touched Ulrika’s arm. ‘It is a very brave thing you have volunteered to do,’ she said, smiling. ‘Very brave.’

Ulrika swallowed as she walked off. Though Ulrika had been the one who suggested it, she suddenly felt that she had somehow fallen into a trap of Otilia’s devising.

Two nights later, as Ulrika looked down at a veritable army of witch hunters and Reiksguard from where she perched upon the two-storey-high statue of Magnus the Pious in the centre of Nuln’s magnificent Temple District, the same feeling returned to her. Why had she suggested this insanity, and how was she going to live through it?

In the end, the most difficult aspect of the plan had not been the bridges – their destruction was apparently well within Nuncio Emmanus’s abilities – but rather picking the proper place and time for Ulrika to reveal herself. It had to be arranged so that the witch hunters would grab her before the Reiksguard had a chance, yet she also had to be certain that Karl Franz would hear of her capture. It would be pointless – fatally so – to allow herself to be taken into the Iron Tower without the Emperor knowing she was there.

Finally, after securing inside information about Karl Franz’s itinerary through his network of spies, von Messinghof had decided that the best time and place for Ulrika to make herself known would be on the Emperor’s third night in Nuln. He was to meet with Nuln’s arch lector of Sigmar, as well as the grand master of the Templars of Sigmar – the witch hunters – and representatives of the other cults, in a grand conclave at Nuln’s massive temple of Sigmar, to discuss the vampire crisis and to attempt to arrange a coordinated strategy to fight it. The conclave was taking place at the temple rather than the palace in order to give the public a chance to see Karl Franz pray in all the pageantry of state and be publicly saluted by the arch lector as the epitome of all Sigmarite virtues and a true friend to Nuln.

That day at noon, accompanied by Ludwig Schwarzhelm and two companies of Reiksguard, the Emperor had left the countess’s palace and marched through the Altestadt to the Temple District as cheering crowds lined the streets, then he knelt and prayed on the steps of the great temple. After that, he had been crowned with a golden laurel and gifted with a silver chalice by the arch lector, then stood and looked imperial while the arch lector read a long speech of welcome. Finally, after saluting the roaring crowd that had gathered at the base of the temple steps, he had gone within, and the real work of the day had begun.

Now it was four hours past sunset, and Ulrika was seeing signs that the conclave might finally be breaking up. About a quarter of an hour before, a Reiksguard knight had slipped out one of the temple’s service doors and crossed to speak with the Reiksguard captain in charge of the companies who had formed an unbroken ring around the temple since Karl Franz had entered it. After that, while one of the companies remained on guard, the other had formed a column in front of the temple, not thirty paces from the statue upon which she hid, and the horses of Karl Franz and Schwarzhelm had been brought to the base of the wide marble steps, where they waited for the return of their masters.

In the orange flicker of several hundred torches, the crowd waited as well. As far as Ulrika could tell, they had stood there all day, through the heat of the afternoon and the chill of the evening, all for one more brief glance of their Emperor when he once again strode out through the temple doors and rode away. Ale and sweetmeat vendors had roamed the crowd all day, while enterprising hawkers sold badges and tin coins with Karl Franz’s profile stamped on them, as well as flags, cockades and even paper fans with the Imperial colours. Consequently, the mob was in a festive mood.

There were however, others slipping through the crowd that spread fear rather than cheer, and who seemed to trail a tail of silence and dread after them like some lodestone comet – witch hunters, skulking among the onlookers in squads of six or seven, their wide hats low and their long coats flaring as they searched for signs of heresy or revolt. The people shrank back and averted their gaze at their approach, then stared nervously after them as they walked on.

Ulrika stared at them too. It was to them that she would be surrendering after her charade began, and they were not known for their gentle hospitality. She hoped Karl Franz would be quick, and make her stay with them as brief as possible.

As if sensing her thoughts, one of the witch hunters looked up at the statue of Magnus the Pious and seemed to look straight at her. It was Meinhart Schenk! She shrank back into the shadow of the old hero’s upraised hammer and stayed absolutely motionless.

Schenk squinted myopically and rubbed his chin, then continued on with his men. Ulrika let out a breath. If he had seen her before time all would have been lost.

With a huge, hollow boom, the great doors of the temple began swinging open, and more Reiksguard marched out, swords held before them, to secure the steps. Ulrika’s chest tightened and a chill of dread ran up her spine. This was it. The curtain was lifting. The comedy was about to begin. It was time to play her part.

As the last of the knights took their positions on either side of the steps, Karl Franz stepped out through the high, arched doors with his honour guard around him and Ludwig Schwarzhelm at his shoulder and stopped on the top step. It was almost impossible to tell that he was sick and weak with fever. He held himself square and proud, as an Emperor should. The cheering of the crowd was deafening, and the Reiksguard had to hold them back as they surged unconsciously forwards.

The Emperor saluted them with a smile, then raised his hands for quiet. Almost at once, he got it. The roar of the mob dropped to a whisper, and everyone waited eagerly for him to speak.

Ulrika beat him to it.

‘Karl Franz, Prince of the Reikland and Emperor of the provinces!’ She shouted as she leapt to the top of Magnus the Pious’s great granite head and drew her rapier. ‘You ran from me once, lord! So I return to challenge you again!’

All eyes turned to her, both in the crowd and on the steps, and her tongue nearly froze in her mouth at the attention. She swallowed thickly, then forced herself to go on.

‘I, Countess Gabriella of Lahmia, herald of the Queen of the Silver Mountain, request that you face me in single combat for the crown that sits on your head, and the Empire that lies at your–!’

A pistol shot drowned out her last word and the ball smashed into her upper arm, knocking her back and making her fight for balance on Magnus’s head as the pain dizzied her. She looked down. Captain Schenk was glaring up at her from under his hat, a long-barrelled pistol smoking in his hand, and his men were aiming more.

Ulrika stepped back, saluted the Emperor with her blade, then spun and dived into the crowd behind the statue.

A great roar shivered the air as she landed and rolled to her feet in the midst of the crowd – a thousand voices all screaming for her blood – but above their clamour she could hear the louder voices of men used to giving commands.

‘Kill her!’ came Schenk’s voice, harsh and angry. ‘Kill the vampire! In Sigmar’s name, destroy her!’

‘Alive!’ came Karl Franz’s voice, higher and clearer. ‘Take her alive! I will question her!’

Then, loudest of all, Schwarzhelm, as hard and deep as the bark of a cannon. ‘Surround the square! Do not let her escape! She is the Emperor’s prisoner!’

Around Ulrika the crowd shouted and pointed. Some of the braver ones edged in, clubs and daggers in their hands. Ulrika snarled at them, baring her fangs and lashing around with her rapier though her wounded arm protested mightily. They shrank back, terrified, and wailed all the louder.

Ulrika ran through them, swiping left and right and heading for the south edge of the square, but not too fast. Schenk and his men were behind her, parting the crowd with kicks and cudgels, and she didn’t want to lose them. At the same time, six mounted Reiksguard were ploughing through the crowd on the right, racing to close off a side street. If she timed it right, this would be perfect.

She ran towards the Reiksguard, holding out her hand. ‘Take me to the palace!’ she cried. ‘I must speak to the Emperor, in the palace!’

The knights turned towards her, raising their weapons and reaching for her, but as they got close she looked behind her, as if afraid of the witch hunters, and dodged past the Reiksguard into the side street.

‘Keep them away!’ she called. ‘I will not surrender to them. Only to you!’

‘Let us by, fools!’ shouted Schenk behind her. ‘You’ve let her escape!’

‘Leave her to us, you butchers,’ cried a knight. ‘She’s wanted alive!’

Ulrika darted into the crowd that filled the street and looked back, not wanting to get too far ahead. The witch hunters were pushing savagely after her and getting ahead of the knights, who seemed hesitant to crush honest citizens with their horses in order to go more quickly. Ulrika let out a sigh of relief. She’d done it. She made sure Schenk saw her, then darted into an alley too narrow for mounted knights to follow.

‘She’s breaking west!’ called Schenk. ‘After her!’

After several more blocks and a handful of near-misses, Ulrika ran into the back garden of a wealthy townhouse that butted against the Altestadt wall, sheathed her weapons, and started climbing, but slow, as if she was terribly wounded – which wasn’t far from the truth.

Heavy boots thudded around the house and a pistol shot splintered the stone by her head as she reached her bloody arm for another hand-hold. She fell back into the garden with a cry, and rolled up with her back to the wall, drawing and snarling like a trapped wolf as they surrounded her, swords and pistols at the ready.

‘I’ll not surrender to you, torturers,’ she rasped. ‘Take me to the palace. Bring me to Karl Franz. He is an honourable man.’

‘I’ll bring you nowhere,’ said Schenk. ‘You will die here, for the brothers you slew, for the lies you told, and the good man you corrupted.’

Ulrika swallowed, fear prickling her neck. She hadn’t accounted for this. Schenk was putting his personal vengeance above his duty to his order. This was not according to plan. Desperate, she sneered and gave him a mocking bow.

‘You offer me a quick death, captain? I accept.’ She spread her arms. ‘My words were for Karl Franz only. I am ordered to die before any other takes them from me.’

Schenk’s brow lowered. ‘Is that a challenge?’ He motioned his men forwards. ‘Take her. Alive.’

A new fear welled up inside her as they moved in. Ursun’s teeth! She had miscalculated by bringing them to so private a place! She had made herself known to Karl Franz, and had put herself in the witch hunters’ hands instead of the Reiksguard’s, all as planned, but there were no witnesses here – no one to see her arrest. Karl Franz would not know the witch hunters had caught her! She would be taken to the Iron Tower and subjected to Schenk’s tortures while von Messinghof waited in vain for the Emperor to arrive. But he would never come, and Ulrika would never be rescued!

With a croak of sheer terror, she lunged for a gap between two of the templars, trying in earnest this time to get away. She cut the arm of one and sent him reeling aside, then punched the other in the face with the guard of her dagger, splintering his cheekbone, but a pistol fired behind her and she went down, her left leg suddenly unable to support her weight.

She rolled over as she hit the ground and saw Schenk holding his second pistol, a grim smile on his face as his men swarmed around her, smashing her with cudgels and the butts of their guns. One cracked her between the eyes, and the moon-bright night went black.

chapter thirty-one

THE IRON TOWER

A glimmering point of pain dawned in the darkness, faint, but growing brighter. Another joined it, a second star coming out near the first. Then two more, glowing like hot coals. Ulrika could not tell what the pains were or where they touched her. She seemed an amorphous cloud, knowing neither up nor down, and burned by floating fires that drifted through her nothingness like windborne spores.

‘Is she secure?’

‘Aye, captain.’

‘Good. I’ll wake her.’

A harsh crack and searing agony flared across Ulrika’s middle, convulsing her, and the black void shattered, revealing red-edged stone and the silhouettes of men. She gasped and tried to sit up, but could not. Something held her at the shoulders, hips and knees, and her wrists and ankles were stretched to their full extent and circled in burning hard-edged pain. Was this a nightmare?

She strained her limbs, trying to force through the paralysis, trying to clear her head, to make sense of what she felt and saw, but the agony of her wrists and ankles made her head swim, and it was not her only pain. Every inch of her body ached and throbbed, and as she looked down at it she saw it was marbled with purple bruises and livid red cuts. The skin of her knees was completely gone, as if she had been dragged on them for miles – which was very likely the truth. Seeing the wounds, the memory of her capture returned, and the rest of the scene began to come into focus. She was indeed in a nightmare – a waking one.

She lay in a low-ceilinged stone room, stripped to her small clothes and bound spreadeagled to a rack with leather straps, and manacles at her wrists and ankles that burned with the foul black heat of silver. Three men stood at the edges of her vision, looking down at her. One was hunched and small and wore the robes of a monk, the second was a prune-faced old man, dressed in plain clothes of the severest cut but of the richest cloth, and the third was Captain Meinhart Schenk, and he held the cudgel.

‘Welcome to the Iron Tower, fiend,’ said the old man in a voice as cold and grey as river clay. ‘I must convey from the outset my deep regret that we will fail you here this night. The sacred duty of our order is to purify the wicked. With our holy implements we drive out the daemons that plague the souls of men, so that they can live better lives or die in peace. But as vampires have no soul, our ministrations will not save you, and for that I am truly sorry. You will die as you lived, an abomination, and will suffer eternal torment in the void.’ He looked sad for a moment at this, but then the corners of his mouth turned up in an insipid smile. ‘Know, however, that Sigmar will one day return to destroy the Ruinous Powers once and for all, and rid the void of its denizens. On that day, your tortured spark will be snuffed out and sweet oblivion will be yours.’ He patted her arm. ‘Be of good cheer, then. Your salvation is coming.’

‘Quicker than yours, you twisted old hypocrite,’ snarled Ulrika. ‘What hell awaits men who take pleasure from the pain of others?’

The smile sagged from the old man’s face and he turned towards the chamber’s heavy wooden door. ‘You may begin, captain. Bring me whatever information you obtain.’

Schenk saluted him as he walked out. ‘Aye, grand master,’ he said, then nodded to the monk. ‘To your quill, brother. Take down every word.’

‘Aye, captain,’ said the monk. He scuttled to a podium and climbed onto a high stool, then dipped a goose quill into a pot of ink and hunched over a parchment, ready to write.

‘Then take down this, brother,’ said Ulrika. ‘I will speak to no one but Karl Franz. The message I convey is from my queen, and a private matter between heads of state. Your tortures will only anger me and worsen my reprisals when I finally win free. Release me now and take me to the palace, or suffer the consequences.’

Captain Schenk snorted and began to circle the rack, slapping the cudgel against his leg with each step. ‘I see you have inherited the gift of blather from your silver-tongued mistress, but I will not be fooled again.’ He sighed. ‘There are so many things I wish to ask you – so much that remains a mystery from when we crossed paths before. But there are more pressing questions. Where is your mistress? Who attacked the Emperor at Ambosstein? Who is behind it all? Where should I begin?’

Ulrika strained at her bonds as Schenk stroked his lantern jaw in a parody of thinking. For all her brave words, she was terrified of what was to come, and panic welled within her like a swift tide, drowning all rational thought. If Karl Franz didn’t know she was taken she would be trapped here forever. Nightmare visions whirled behind her eyes. What could torturers do with a subject that couldn’t die? She wouldn’t have to go to the void to be tormented for all eternity. The witch hunters could keep her here for generations, flaying her and burning her and breaking her bones but never granting her death. Gods of her fathers, she had to get out! She had to get out!

‘Well,’ said Schenk at last. ‘Let us start simply. What is your true name?’

Ulrika hesitated, afraid to make something up for fear of being hit for lying, but knowing that he would also hit her if she refused to talk. Should she tell him her real name, then? Why not? What did it matter? Her family was dead. Schenk could do no harm with it. But some instinct made her pause nonetheless. If she told him one thing, it would be that much harder not to tell him the next, and the next after that. And why should she tell him anything at all? It wasn’t as if he would let her go once she had told him all he wanted to know. She would be tortured no matter what she said or did. And if that was the case, why shouldn’t she frustrate him as much as possible?

‘Countess Emmanuelle of Nuln,’ she said, curling her lip.

Schenk’s face turned red with rage, and he raised the cudgel over her left hand, but just as he was about to smash it down on her knuckles, footsteps and angry voices sounded outside the chamber. Schenk paused, the stick still raised.

‘She is our prisoner, mein herr,’ came the grand master’s voice, high now, and strained. ‘Her interrogation is ours to perform.’

‘She is the Emperor’s prisoner. You hold her against his direct order,’ said a much lower voice, and Ulrika breathed a sigh of relief, for it was that of Ludwig Schwarzhelm.

Two figures entered the chamber – the old man first, backpedalling and gesticulating as he talked, and second, the champion, a head taller and twice as broad. He was so big that his mere presence seemed to push Captain Schenk back from the rack.

‘We hold her for the Emperor’s safety,’ said the old man. ‘She is a dangerous, black-hearted fiend, and cannot be allowed to enter his presence.’

‘And is she so dangerous that you must keep her arrest a secret from him as well?’ asked the champion, looking down at Ulrika with his ham-hock hands on his hips. ‘When precisely were you going to inform us that you had her?’

The old templar drew himself up. ‘Champion, we have been dealing with fiends of this nature for centuries. You must trust us to determine when it is safe to share what we know of them.’

Schwarzhelm turned a cold eye on him. ‘Templar, it is never safe to hide what you know from your Emperor.’

Ulrika looked past them as the grand master shrank back, trying to see if there was anyone else coming through the door. There was no one. Nor did she sense any heart-fires approaching. Had Schwarzhelm come alone?

‘Where is Karl Franz?’ Ulrika croaked.

All eyes turned on her and Schenk slapped her across the mouth with all his strength. ‘Do not speak until spoken to, fiend!’

Schwarzhelm waved him away, then stepped to her, glaring down over the great black cascade of his beard. ‘I’ll not let the Emperor within miles of you, fiend. Whatever your scheme, he won’t be part of it.’

‘No scheme,’ said Ulrika, spitting blood from her split lips. ‘A challenge. Sword to sword for his Empire.’

‘Oh? And what do you offer in return? What will you give if you lose?’

‘Secrets,’ said Ulrika. ‘I know who sickened the Emperor. I know who put this game in motion. I know why. But I will only tell Karl Franz himself, and only if he defeats me.’

‘I am the Emperor’s champion, fiend,’ said Schwarzhelm. ‘When he is threatened, I do his fighting for him. He is not threatened here, as you are already defeated, so I will not fight you. But you will still tell me your secrets.’

He held out his hand to Captain Schenk. ‘Your cudgel.’

Ulrika’s guts sank as the witch hunter handed over the rod. She hadn’t thought things could get worse, but Schwarzhelm was twice as strong as Schenk. He wouldn’t just bruise her and break her skin once he got to work. He would break bones. He would hurt her in ways that no amount of blood could heal.

‘Champion!’ she blurted. ‘This is not honourable! I have made a formal challenge in the prescribed manner, and you answer it by attacking me while I am bound and defenceless?’

‘Fiends have no honour and deserve no courtesy,’ said Schwarzhelm, then shot hard glances at the witch hunters before returning his eyes to her. ‘But I can give you this. When you have told me what you have to tell, I will not leave you alive. I will part your head from your neck, and spare you the hospitality of your captors.’

‘Herr Schwarzhelm!’ cried the grand master. ‘You cannot make this offer. Such a prisoner is too valuable to kill so quickly!’

Ulrika looked into Schwarzhelm’s eyes. There was no duplicity there. He meant what he said. He was offering her a way out. It was little enough, considering that she was doomed to eternal torment once she died, but to suffer centuries of torture before her inevitable fate? A swift death was still preferable. Despite the temptation, however, she could not yet drop the game. She must still try to make the plan work.

‘A kind offer, champion,’ she said, as he raised the cudgel over her left shin. ‘But I will still speak to no one but Karl Franz.’

‘Then speak,’ said a voice from the corridor.

Everyone turned, and Ulrika looked up in surprise. In her agitation she had not sensed his heart-fire nor heard his footsteps, but Karl Franz, Prince of the Reikland and Emperor of the provinces, was striding into the room with four Reiksguard at his back, his eyes flashing with anger and his skin glistening with fever.

The reaction of the other men in the room was instant and abrupt. Schenk and the grand master went down on their knees and lowered their heads. The monk fell off his chair. Schwarzhelm stepped between Karl Franz and Ulrika and spread his arms.

‘My liege,’ he said, ‘you must not be here. It is too dangerous. Please, depart, and I will return to you with what she knows.’

The Emperor snorted and stepped around him. ‘I am not a child, Ludwig. I do not need my wolf trussed and drugged so that I might kill it with my little bow.’ He looked down at Ulrika, his gaze quick and inquisitive. He was a tall, straight-limbed man, with a face kinder and more open than she would have expected upon one who wore such a heavy mantle. His kindness could not be mistaken for weakness, however. Steely resolve and keen intelligence blazed from his eyes like the light of the sun, and only the sheen of his skin and the gauntness of his cheeks betrayed his hidden illness.

‘I like my information raw and first-hand,’ he continued. ‘Not filtered through intermediaries, no matter how well intentioned. How can I rule an empire when I am not told what goes on within it?’

Ulrika gave an inward sigh of relief as he circled her. He had come. She was saved. The plan was back on track. She strained her senses for signs that the last stage had begun. Nothing yet, but it would come. She would be free, and the killing could begin.

Karl Franz leaned casually against the torture rack and smiled agreeably down at her. ‘Now then,’ he said. ‘All that you have said so far is a lie, I know that. You are no herald, and no Lahmian. You were attacked by Lahmians as my men escorted me from the fight below Ambosstein. I also know that most of the vampires in this “revolt” were as discomfited to be revealed as their neighbours were to find them in their midst. Something is going on, but it isn’t yet a war, and we are not fighting the enemy we are meant to think we are fighting. So…’ He reached out and brushed a lock of blood-matted white hair from her brow. ‘Who are my true enemies, and what do they want?’

A deep shudder went through the stones of the tower, so faint and distant that the men in the room didn’t feel it. Ulrika did, however, for even the slightest movement jolted her bruised and punctured limbs, and she knew what it was. It was the beginning of the end. She smiled up at Karl Franz.

‘We are your true enemies, Emperor,’ she said. ‘And we want your head.’ She laughed as his carefully casual expression curdled, to be replaced by angry contempt.

‘I thought you had secrets for me, fiend,’ he said. ‘Not empty threats.’

A heavier rumble shook the chamber, and this time the men felt it. They looked up, grasping their swords.

‘I did have a secret, my liege,’ Ulrika said, grinning. ‘But it is now revealed. You should have listened to your champion. You have walked into a trap, and it is closing as we speak.’

chapter thirty-two

TWISTING THE KNIFE

Ludwig Schwarzhelm grunted as if he’d been hit. He stepped to Karl Franz and took his arm in a white-knuckled grip. ‘Come, my liege. We must leave here – now!’

The Emperor stared at Ulrika, a mixture of fury and admiration in his eyes, as he let the champion pull him away. ‘Aye,’ he said, distracted. ‘It seems we must.’

Another tremor struck, strong enough now to sway the men on their feet. Dust sifted down from the ceiling.

The Emperor snapped out of his bemusement and strode to the door of the chamber ahead of Schwarzhelm, the four Reiksguard surrounding them.

The old templar stepped after them, calling to Schenk and the monk. ‘To your stations! Wake the barracks! We are attacked!’

The monk hurried to obey, picking up the skirts of his robe and running past the grand master into the hall, but Schenk drew his sword and approached Ulrika, a mad light in his eyes.

‘You led me to this,’ he rasped. ‘You tricked me into trapping the Emperor. Well, you won’t live to see your victory, you–’

At the door, the grand master stopped dead. ‘Captain Schenk! What are you doing?’

‘Killing her as I should have long ago,’ said Schenk, raising his sword.

The old man leapt at him, surprisingly quick for his age, and caught his arm. ‘Captain! No! I command you! She has told us nothing! If all goes for the worst, she will be our only link to the perpetrators. She must live!’

Schenk held firm for a long moment, but at last let out a breath and lowered his sword. ‘Very well. She will live, but she will wish it were otherwise.’

And with that he drew his dagger, a sturdy main gauche, and before the old templar knew what he was about, he stabbed it neatly between two of Ulrika’s ribs on her left side and sank it deep. Ulrika howled and bucked, but he wasn’t done. With a savage wrench, he twisted the blade so that it sat edge-on between the two ribs, flexing them apart, then left it there.

Ulrika screamed and flinched, then screamed again, for every movement she made, even the tiniest twitch, brought fresh pain from the wedged blade.

Schenk grinned down at her as the old templar pulled him anxiously away. ‘You should pray for my safe return, fiend, or that knife may stay sheathed there for eternity.’

‘Enough, Schenk. Enough,’ hissed the old witch hunter. ‘We must go.’

The captain nodded and they strode out the door, leaving Ulrika alone – and in blinding agony.

She fought not to black out. It was no part of her plan to stay here and hope for rescue while the final battle raged above her. Of course, now that she thought about it, she really hadn’t had a plan for this part of the scheme at all. She remembered having visions of snapping her shackles with a twist of her wrists and ripping out the throats of terrified witch hunters, but in her visions, the shackles had been iron, and she hadn’t had a knife in her ribs, or bullet wounds in her shoulder and calf. She hadn’t been recently battered to a pulp. She wondered if she would even be able to walk if she managed to get off the rack. Still, she had to try.

She craned her neck to look at her hands. The pain of just that small movement nearly sank her, and she had to clench her teeth and wait while flickering blackness retreated to the edges of her vision. When she could see again, she saw that the manacles around her wrists were thick circlets, crushingly tight, with chains that went down through holes in the wooden rack. Biting her cheek against the pain, she tugged experimentally on one, and the other pulled flat against the wood. They were linked. If she snapped one, both hands would be free, but snapping them seemed nearly impossible. If they had been solid silver she might have pulled them apart with steady pressure, for silver was soft, but they were silvered steel. Nor did the chain between them have enough play for her to twist it until it broke. No, there was only one way to do it, and even if it worked it would hurt more than anything since her fall into the Reik a lifetime ago.

A colossal rumble shook the tower, ten times the strength of the earlier tremors, and before it faded, a second struck, just as strong. Ulrika screamed as the rack bounced and pebbles pattered all around her. Then she heard terrified shouts from above, and she grinned through the pain. Emmanus had done his work. The two bridges connecting the Iron Tower to the banks of the river had collapsed, brought low by powerful incantations of entropy that piled centuries of weathering upon them in the space of a few minutes, loosening their mortar, cracking their stones, rotting their timbers until they fell apart of their own accord. The jaws of the trap had closed. Karl Franz and his few troops were hemmed in on the island with von Messinghof’s barges disgorging an army of the dead to surround him. No rescue could come in time now. The count would have the Emperor’s head. His plan would succeed, but not without her! She had to be there! She had to be in at the end!

With a savage jerk, Ulrika punched forwards with her right fist, trying to snap the manacle chain. Agony erupted across her knife-pierced side at the sudden movement, and her wrist burned as the silver abraded it.

When she could think again, she looked at her wrist. No change. With her hands high over her head, it was impossible to generate enough force. Grinding her teeth and trembling like a whipped dog, she tried again anyway, pressing her left wrist tight against the rack so that the right would have as much slack as possible, then snapping forwards as hard as she could. This time she passed out, but when she woke and raised her head, she saw that the link closest to the manacle had pulled apart a fraction of an inch. She groaned. She would almost have preferred that nothing had happened so that she could give up. Now she had to make another attempt.

Two more tries and two more blackouts and it was done. She heard the ping of the broken link bouncing off the flagstone floor as oblivion closed over her, and when she woke again she could lower her arms. That was nearly as painful as what had come before, and was accomplished in hissing, cursing inches, but at last she brought them to her sides and raised her hand to the main gauche.

Just touching the pommel made her cry out, and wrapping her fingers around its hilt darkened her vision again. She closed her eyes and steeled herself. If it were to be done, it would be best done quickly. With a Kossar curse she jerked it straight out, and…

…woke up a moment later with her left arm hanging over the edge of the rack and her hand empty. She cursed. She must have dropped the dagger in her faint. Fortunately, she had claws, though they were not nearly as efficient at cutting thick leather straps. What would have taken seconds took minutes instead. At least the pain in her ribs had diminished to a throbbing ache instead of razor-bright agony, and when she sat up, she only had to clutch the edge of the rack and fight swirling nausea, and did not pass out again.

Now all that was left were her ankles. With a grinding twist, she reached down to the floor and hooked the main gauche by its ring guard, then bent to her feet. She grimaced as she saw the mess that Schenk’s second bullet had made of her left calf. It looked like a messy bite. She wondered if she could even walk.

She stuck the point of the dagger into a link of the manacle chain and twisted. It was a good blade of finest steel. The link bent and parted, and the chain rattled through the holes in the rack. She was free, though the silver manacles still encircled her wrists and ankles, and her flesh beneath them was blackened and flaking like burnt paper.

The pain of it was excruciating, dizzying, but there was nothing she could do. She hadn’t the time or strength to tear them off. She had to get to the fighting. She lowered her legs to the floor and stood, then held on to the rack for a long second as the chamber swam around her.

When the motion stopped, she looked around. The room was bare but for the rack and a few other instruments of torture. The rest of her clothes were nowhere to be seen. Nor were her weapons. No matter. She had Schenk’s dagger, and would find more weapons as she went. She limped to the open door, her left leg barely supporting her and her chains rattling after her, and looked into the corridor. It angled around dark corners in both directions, but Karl Franz, Schwarzhelm and the witch hunters had all gone right when they exited, so she did too.

Coming muffled through the stone as she limped on were the sounds of fighting and death. Men were bawling orders and shrieking in terror. Beasts were roaring. Guns thundered and steel clashed and the tower shook. Then, much closer, Ulrika heard stealthy footsteps and the low voices of whispering men. She sensed their pulses a second later – ten of them, their hearts racing, moving in a cluster.

She slowed. They were just around the next corner. She saw the light of their lantern casting shadows on the opposite wall. She would jump them, smash the lamp and bite and drink as they flailed in the dark. The blood would give her the strength to fight the rest.

The footsteps stopped, and she heard the clatter of an iron door rattled in its frame.

‘Locked,’ said a voice. ‘Damn. Go back and see if one o’them corpses had a key.’

Ulrika gasped with relief and stumbled around the corner. ‘Sergeant! It’s me!’

Behind a door of iron bars Stahleker and his men looked up, bloodied and bruised. They had been in a fight.

‘Captain!’ barked Stahleker. ‘You live!’

‘No,’ said Ulrika, reaching the door and catching herself against the bars. ‘But I am walking. I–’

As she said it, however, she wasn’t. Her legs gave out and she crashed to her ruined knees. The pain from her various wounds was too much and she curled up like a dead spider, groaning and heaving.

‘Taal’s horns!’ swore Stahleker, kneeling on the opposite side of the bars. ‘What did them witch burners do to you?’ He looked back at his men. ‘Find that damn key!’

‘We searched the bodies as we came, sergeant,’ said one. ‘There weren’t no key.’

Stahleker cursed and shook the door. The bars were an inch thick, and the lock set behind heavy steel plates. He looked at Ulrika.

‘Can you open it, captain?’

‘I can try,’ said Ulrika.

But as she pulled herself up the bars she knew it was impossible. Her wounds were too great. The pain was too much. Her silver shackles were making her weak. She braced herself anyway, and pulled with all her might. The hole in her ribs tore further and her blood sizzled as it welled from the bruises on her wrists and touched the silver manacles. She hadn’t moved the door an inch.

She bent over, dizzy. ‘I – I don’t think–’

Stahleker pulled up the sleeve of his leather jack and stuck his arm through the bars. She raised her eyes to him. His face was set and grim.

‘Drink,’ he said.

She stared at him, them shook her head. ‘No, sergeant. Not from you.’

‘There’s nothing else to do.’

‘No. It was Mags’ condition. I swore.’

He left his arm where it was. ‘I’m not leaving you here, captain.’

Ulrika glared at him. ‘There has to be another way. Go find some witch hunter. I’ll drink from him.’

‘There isn’t time.’ A cannon barked somewhere above and Stahleker looked up, then back down at her. ‘It’s not going von Messinghof’s way up there. Schwarzhelm brought fifty men with him when he came, and the Emperor brought forty more, plus magisters. There’s near the same amount of witch hunters as well, and they shot a flare towards the navy docks. There’ll be warships coming soon – and more men.’

Still Ulrika didn’t take his arm. She didn’t want Stahleker to become a swain. She didn’t want him fawning over her. He loved Mags. She didn’t want to be the death of that.

‘You are our leader, captain,’ said Stahleker. ‘Not the count. We didn’t come here to help him kill Karl Franz. We came for you. Now, drink!’

Ulrika closed her eyes, hiding the pain in them. Damn him! Did he think she could resist when she needed it so desperately? When it pulsed inches from her mouth? With a sobbing snarl she snatched his wrist and clamped her mouth to it, breaking the skin and sucking greedily.

His men cried out, but Stahleker waved them off.

‘Leave her be,’ he said, grimacing. ‘Leave her be.’

Relief flooded her as his blood coursed through her veins. She could feel the strength returning to her withered muscles, and the edges of her wounds knitting together. She could feel hot red fire burning along her nerves, waking her, filling her with vigour, readying her for battle.

Stahleker moaned and steadied himself on the bars with his other hand. Ulrika didn’t care. Her need was too great. She had to drink until the black char at her wrists and ankles faded to grey scars, until the torn muscle between her ribs and the punctured organs beneath them were healed.

No. No, she mustn’t. She mustn’t lose herself to her hunger, not with Stahleker. With a cry of frustration she tore her mouth away from his wrist and shoved his arm back through the bars.

‘Enough!’ she gasped. ‘Stay away! I – I–’

Stahleker sagged back into the arms of his men, his eyes clouded and a distant smile on his face. Ulrika glared at him, her borrowed blood thumping in her temples.

‘Snap out of it, sergeant!’ she snarled. ‘I won’t allow it!’ She rose and tore the silvered manacles from her wrists and ankles like they were paper, then gripped the bars. ‘Stand clear. Get him back.’

The lancers retreated, dragging Stahleker with them, and she pulled again on the door, just above the lock plate. It still didn’t move, but this time the bars began to groan and flex. Inside her, she could feel the partially healed knife wound tearing again, and her blackened wrists began to bleed, but she had the heart to fight the pain now, and the power in her limbs.

A gap appeared between the lockplate and the door frame, and she could see the tang of the deadbolt bending. She braced her foot on the frame and pulled harder, clenching her teeth so hard they creaked.

With a tortured screech, the deadbolt sheered clean, and the door flew open, sending her flying back onto her posterior. She rolled to her feet then picked up Schenk’s dagger and stalked through the door, straight to Stahleker. She slapped his face.

‘None of that from you,’ she growled. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

Stahleker nodded and rubbed his reddening cheek. ‘Aye, captain,’ he said, then shook his head, bemused. ‘Quite a feeling, though. Quite a feeling.’

‘Well ignore it! Pull yourself together. You’re an Ostermark man, not some soft southern skirt-sniffer.’ She started down the corridor towards the stairs, still limping. ‘Come on, we’ve got an Emperor to kill.’

Behind her, Stahleker’s men put him on his feet and he followed after her with them, a little wobbly, but under his own power. Ulrika swallowed, guilty. Had she weakened him too much to fight? Would he be able to take care of himself out there? Well, she would look out for him until he recovered. He had saved her. She would save him.

The bottom of the stairs was littered with dead witch hunters, pierced with pistol balls and sabre cuts. She looked for Schenk, but didn’t see him among them. Good. She wanted him for her own.

As she started stepping through them up the stairs a cold, gunpowder-scented breeze from above reminded her that she was nearly naked. She paused. The cold had ceased to trouble her since her death, but she could certainly use some protection from sword cuts. She stooped and tore the leather greatcoat from a tall corpse about her size. There was no time to strip him entirely, but the coat should help a little. She shrugged into it, then took up his sword, a basket-hilted broadsword with a long, heavy blade. She wrinkled her nose. It all smelled much too much of witch hunter, but that couldn’t be helped. She continued up the stairs, her new coat flaring behind her and her lancers loping after her like a pack of wolves.

At the top of the stairs was a dark entry hall, all hanging chains and torches and skull-faced statues, and more dead witch hunters sprawled across the dirty stone flags, as well as some dead lancers. The doors to the outside were wide open, and through them came the orange glow of fire and the din of battle. Steel clashes and pistol shots cracked over the roars and screams of fighting men.

Then, through it all, Ulrika suddenly heard von Messinghof, bellowing at the top of his voice. ‘The barge! To the barge! Hurry!’

She picked up her pace. What did it mean? Was the count retreating? Was the battle over? Had she missed it?

Halfway across the hall, running footsteps thudded outside and a handful of witch hunters ran in, panting, then leaned on the heavy doors to close them.

‘Quick!’ said the smallest of them, clutching his chest. ‘They must not get in!’

Ulrika recognised him as the grand master, and then saw that the man to his left was Schenk. The rest were Schenk’s men. She grinned and strode forwards.

‘They are already in,’ she said.

The witch hunters spun, dropping into guard, as she and the lancers stepped out of the shadows of the dark hall behind them. They outnumbered the witch hunters two to one.

‘You!’ gasped Schenk, stepping back.

‘Aye. Me. And I’ve brought you your dagger.’

The grand master jerked a flintlock pistol from his coat and aimed it at her, but one of Stahleker’s men was quicker on the draw, and the old templar fell back as the shot boomed, a red crater appearing in his chest.

Schenk didn’t turn at his superior’s death. He edged forwards, eyes only on Ulrika, as his men tried to keep the lancers in front of them.

‘Shall I answer your questions now, captain?’ asked Ulrika. ‘My name is Ulrika Magdova Straghov, daughter of a boyar, and daughter in darkness to Countess Gabriella of Nachthafen.’

She beat at his blade, knocking it aside, and cut his arm as he tried to parry.

‘You know her as cousin to Lady Hermione von Auerbach, and you were right. They are vampires. Lahmians.’

To her left and right, her lancers were pressing back his witch hunters. She thrust again and sliced his cheek.

‘But you are wrong to think the Lahmians are behind the current troubles. They are the work of my new master, Count Grigor von Messinghof of Sylvania.’ She cut Schenk’s arm, then gashed his leg. ‘It is he who masterminded the vampire revolt, and he who attacks Karl Franz – as precursor to the army of Sylvania mounting an invasion on the Empire that will bring it to its knees and make Mannfred von Carstein its new Emperor.’

The lancers superior numbers had overwhelmed the beleaguered witch hunters. Schenk was the only one still on his feet. Ulrika smiled at him as she smashed his sword from his hands.

‘Now you know everything,’ she said, putting her point to his neck. ‘If you could only warn the Emperor, you would be the hero of the day, but alas…’

Her left hand blurred as she stabbed forwards with Schenk’s dagger and buried it between his ribs on his right side. He gasped and jerked in pain, then shrieked like a child as she twisted the blade so that the razor edges wedged tight between his ribs, flexing them.

He sank to his knees before her, deep red organ blood spewing from the wound.

She sighed as she looked down at him. ‘I wish I could let you relish the pain, as you did for me, but you have taught me that it is unwise to leave your enemies alive behind you – and with access to a dagger.’

She raised her borrowed sword, then slashed down with all her strength. The blade chopped through Schenk’s breastplate at the shoulder, then snapped his clavicle, and came to rest last in his heart. A sick shiver of satisfaction came over her as she felt it touch the tip of the dagger where it was still buried in his lungs.

She leaned forwards and whispered in his ear. ‘But if you go now to the reward you deserve, then your torment is just beginning. I hope you burn as you burned Famke, for eternity.’

She wrenched the blades from his body and let him fall, then kicked wide the doors and strode out onto the broad stone steps of the tower with Stahleker and the lancers following.

The scene that spread before her was a confused jumble of fire, ruin and scattered fights. The two bridges that had connected the Island of the Iron Tower to the north and south bank of the Reik were gone, their crumbling ends still occasionally dropping fragments of masonry into the rushing water. The thick wall that surrounded the tower, separating it from the cobbled embankment that encircled it, had been breached near the main gate, its granite blocks spilled into its yard. Had this been more sorcery? The work of some massive beast? However it was done, the hole had been the site of heavy fighting. The bodies of Reiksguard knights, zombies, vampires and lancers lay strewn on both sides of the gap.

The fighting had moved on, however. Through the breach, Ulrika could see Reiksguard knights battling Blood Knights and armoured wights on the rugged, wave-lapped rocks beyond the embankment, as giant bats and other winged monsters wheeled overhead. The knights seemed to be trying to keep the Sylvanian troops from boarding von Messinghof’s barges, which had been driven up onto the rocky shore. It seemed a hopeless retreat. One barge was swiftly burning to the waterline, its smoke and flames reaching to the clouds overhead, while the other was beginning to catch fire as well.

The third barge, to Ulrika’s surprise, was a hundred yards down the river, drifting in the grip of the current, and also starting to burn. There were men on it, running to and fro, but with the smoke and the distance she couldn’t see who they might be.

‘Come on!’ she called to Stahleker, then ran down the steps of the Iron Tower and bounded over the rubble into the gap in the wall, still peering towards the drifting barge. Had von Messinghof left them behind? Was it Lassarian?

A hulking figure loomed out of the smoke on the barge’s deck and put his massive armoured shoulder to the tiller, trying to turn it towards the shore. Ulrika grunted when she saw him. It was Schwarzhelm! Karl Franz had escaped!

Now she understood the battle on the rocks. Von Messinghof was fighting to reboard his barges and pursue, while the Reiksguard were trying to stop them. She looked back in time to see branching forks of black lightning shoot into the Reiksguard, staggering them, and the wights and Blood Knights surge through them to the barges. Von Messinghof leapt onto the deck of the smouldering one, Nuncio Emmanus floating up beside him as their troops followed.

‘Hurry!’ cried Ulrika, turning back to Stahleker and his men. ‘They’re leaving! We–’

Something huge swept down from the sky, ploughing through the lancers and smashing Ulrika to the ground. Heavy wings beat overhead as a stinking body dragged her across the cobbles.

Ulrika groaned under a massive paw as the thing came to a stop at last. It was her old mount, the undead griffon, but it had a new rider, who snarled down at her from the saddle on its neck.

‘This is my night, whore!’ cried Otilia, raising a hunter’s spear. ‘Mine!’

chapter thirty-three

ASSASSINATION

Otilia stabbed down with the spear. Ulrika batted it aside with a weak hand and it pierced her coat, not her flesh. She grabbed for the haft. Otilia jerked it back, but before she could thrust again, there was a loud bang and she flinched sideways in the saddle, red spraying from her shoulder.

Stahleker and the lancers swarmed in, howling and hacking with their sabres and calling Ulrika’s name. Otilia cursed and stabbed at them as the griffon spun and lashed out with claws and tail. Her spear struck the man closest to her – Stahleker, who stood directly over Ulrika, protecting her.

It was a clumsy strike, made off balance and in panic, and the sergeant should have blocked it easily, but he was reeling on his feet and raised his blade too late. The point tore through the side of his neck and blood gouted from his main artery as he toppled backwards.

‘Stahleker!’ cried Ulrika, struggling to break the griffon’s grip.

Her cry was echoed by his men, who surged around Otilia, slashing and thrusting at her with the strength of rage. Blades cut her arms and back and chopped scales from the griffon’s hide. Otilia shrieked in fear and jammed her spurred heels into its flanks, and with a bound and a flare of its wings it sprung into the air and swept away.

Stahleker’s men immediately crowded around him, calling his name. Ulrika pulled herself to her knees and crawled through them, dread pounding at her like a hammer. The sergeant’s face was as white as a vampire’s. She clapped a hand over his haemorrhaging neck, but the hole was too big. He didn’t have long.

‘You fool,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you stay back? You were weak. I weakened you.’

He looked up at her with glassy eyes. ‘Didn’t… didn’t even occur to me.’

Ulrika balled her fists. ‘This is what happens. You shouldn’t have let me drink.’

Stahleker snorted, then choked, and Ulrika had to lift his head so he could spit blood. He looked up at her again, and gripped her arm with hard fingers.

‘Ye… y’don’t win an Ostermark man’s loyalty with… with filthy blood magic,’ he slurred. ‘I didn’t do it as yer swain. I did it as yer… sergeant.’

Ulrika choked and would have wept, could vampires shed tears. ‘Aye, sergeant. Aye.’

With a fumbling hand, he reached up and tore the braid of ginger hair from his head, then held it out to her. His own hair had come with it. ‘Would… would y’give this back to Mags? Tell her… next time, she should find a better man t’give it to.’

His hand sank to the ground as Ulrika reached for the braid, and by the time she pulled it from his fingers, he was gone. Ulrika closed her fist around the light hair and the dark and hung her head.

‘I don’t think she could.’

And nor could Ulrika. Horse thief, renegade, mercenary, willing to switch sides at the drop of a hat if it meant more money, willing to ride against the Empire in the ranks of its greatest enemies, and yet in all his dealings with her he had been as true as oak. His loyalty had never wavered, not in the face of threats, insurmountable odds, or death.

Heavy wings flapped above her. She looked up, Otilia was swooping down for another pass, aiming straight at her, spear raised.

‘Look out!’

Ulrika shoved the lancers out of the way as the winged horror streaked down, its claws spread. On its back, Otilia howled in triumph. Ulrika dived aside as Otilia hurled the spear. It struck the cobbles to her left, and the griffon skimmed over her head to land skidding behind her in the midst of the men.

Ulrika rolled up and snatched her sword from where she had dropped it, then charged for the griffon and Otilia. Otilia twisted away as she slashed, and Ulrika’s blade glancing off the griffon’s scales. The beast clubbed her with its wing, and she fell against Otilia, stunned. Otilia kicked her in the teeth and flailed a dainty dagger at her. Ulrika knocked it aside with her sword, then swung for her neck. She was not alone. The lancers had recovered and were crowding in again, hacking at her and the griffon from all sides.

‘Get away, you fools!’ shrieked Otilia as she ducked and spurred the griffon’s sides. ‘It’s not her that pays you! You follow von Messinghof!’

Once again the undead beast’s wings swept out, knocking the men to the ground as it bounded forwards to spring into the air. Ulrika staggered after it, clutching at Otilia’s leg and swinging again for her head. A great upwards lift threw her aim off, and suddenly she was dangling from Otilia’s stirrup by one hand as the island and the Iron Tower fell away beneath her and von Messinghof’s barge streamed after the one that carried the Emperor. Its speed was unnatural – impossible. It would catch it in minutes.

Otilia laughed and stamped on Ulrika fingers. ‘Into the river with you!’

Ulrika slashed awkwardly with the long sword, but Otilia turned the blow and stamped again, loosening her grip. Ulrika’s fingers were slipping. She was going to fall. With a desperate grunt, she dropped her blade and grabbed the stirrup with both hands. The sword spun towards the waves beneath her.

Otilia leaned down, raising her dagger over Ulrika’s clinging fingers. ‘You have made a great sacrifice, sister, dying so the count could kill the Emperor. We will all mourn your death.’

She stabbed down, gashing the fingers of Ulrika’s left hand, but at the same instant Ulrika shot up her right and clutched her wrist, then pulled as hard as she could.

Otilia shrieked and nearly pitched out of the saddle, but grabbed the pommel and clung on with desperate strength. Ulrika clambered up her like a cat, clawing her neck and hair for purchase, then kneeing her in the back of the head as she crashed onto the griffon’s back between its pumping wings.

‘Leave off,’ she said, as Otilia turned after her. ‘Fly for the Emperor. We must help the count.’

Otilia crouched backwards in the saddle, raising her dagger again. ‘Noble Ulrika, always thinking of the great plan. I know your real game. You want to drive me from him, but tonight will be my night. Tonight I will be the hero!’

She made to leap, but Ulrika drew Schenk’s dagger and she hesitated. Ulrika pushed to her knees, straddling the griffon’s spine and clutching one of the straps that trailed from its saddle.

‘Nothing drives you from him but your own incompetence,’ she said, wrapping the strap around her leg. ‘He is my commander. I want nothing else from him. I serve him because he gives me battle and treats me with respect.’

Otilia laughed, shrill and wild. ‘Does he? You poor fool. He has treated you worst of all!’

‘How so?’ asked Ulrika. She touched the black scars on her face. ‘Because he cut me with silver? I have forgiven him that.’

‘Because he lured you to his side as neatly as cheese lures a mouse to a trap – and more cruelly.’

‘Nothing turned me to his side but the vileness of man,’ Ulrika growled. ‘The count had nothing to do with it.’

‘He had everything to do with it! Who do you think sent me to tell those whores your sweetheart was a vampire? Who do you think tipped the witch hunters to your hideaway?’ Otilia laughed. ‘He knew you wouldn’t come without a goad. He knew you’d have to hate mankind with all your heart before you came to him!’

Ulrika stared at her, nerveless, riven with shock, momentarily unable to comprehend her words. Von Messinghof had been behind Famke’s burning? It had been nothing but a ruse to get Ulrika to join him? It couldn’t be true. Otilia was lying to hurt her, to drive her from the count.

Otilia laughed and leapt, slashing at Ulrika with dagger and claw. Ulrika parried the dagger and caught Otilia’s left wrist by instinct, but was too stunned to fight back. Could it be true? Von Messinghof had always seemed an honourable man – cunning, certainly – but loyal to his subordinates when they were loyal to him. Now, however, she began to remember things – things she hadn’t given a second thought to before. Von Messinghof had pretended to be a vampire hunter to goad the humans into fearful rioting. He had given Rukke the dark kiss in order to keep Blutegel at his side, never intending to let him live past his father’s death. He had tricked the addled Strigoi, Murnau, into attacking the Lahmians by making him think they had hurt him.

Ulrika shuddered. Gods of her fathers! It was true! She was Murnau! Von Messinghof had played her exactly as he had that poor, crippled dupe, and she had fallen for it, exactly as he had!

Another memory came back to her, of the first time she had been on the undead griffon’s back. Von Messinghof had swept them low over the walls of Nuln to show that they were invisible to the defenders. ‘No one sees what I do not wish them to see,’ he had said. What a fool she had been to believe she was the only one he was being honest with.

Anger exploded through her shock, and as Otilia ripped her knife and hand free, Ulrika caught her by the neck instead, eyes blazing. ‘You burned Famke,’ she whispered, as they slid alarmingly towards the griffon’s rump. ‘You will die.’

Otilia scrabbled frantically to halt their slide, dropping her dagger to clutch at the griffon’s scales. ‘You madwoman! We’ll both die!’

The strap around Ulrika’s leg pulled taut as it reached its limit and she jerked to a stop. She smiled savagely at Otilia, showing all her teeth. ‘No, just you.’

Otilia started to scramble back towards the saddle, but Ulrika caught her and stabbed her in the side with the witch hunter’s dagger. Otilia spasmed and tried to pull away, eyes wide, but Ulrika plunged the knife in again.

‘Mercy,’ Otilia whimpered, spewing blood across Ulrika’s breast. ‘Please, sister.’

‘Anything less than burning is mercy for you, bitch,’ Ulrika snarled, then pulled Otilia close and tore out her throat with her fangs. Otilia tried to scream, but the air in her lungs escaped through the hole, and she only hissed. Ulrika buried her face in the ragged wound and gulped down her blood by the mouthful.

It was the rich blood of a vampire, distilled into an elixir of strength that surged through Ulrika’s veins like a spring flood. Stahleker’s blood had saved Ulrika’s life and partially healed her cuts and bruises, but Otilia’s blood was giving her Otilia’s strength and adding it to her own. She could feel the puncture wound in her side closing, and the bullet wounds in her arm and leg healing. Her muscles twitched and clenched with vitality. Her head was clear and her senses sharp. Gods of Nehekhara, if she drank it all she would be strong enough to wrestle a giant!

No. No. She would be so bloated and sick that she couldn’t fight, and that was the last thing she wanted. Otilia was only a minor revenge. Her true vengeance was coming, and she had to be ready.

She pulled her mouth from Otilia’s neck and pushed her away. The vampiress looked down at her with lust-glazed, half-conscious eyes, and reached a trembling hand to stroke her cheek.

‘Mistress,’ she hissed. ‘You feed so strongly.’

Ulrika grimaced, revolted, and hacked at Otilia’s neck with Schenk’s dagger. It was a heavy blade, made for prying open coffins and punching through armour, and with Ulrika’s new strength behind it, it cut halfway through Otilia’s spine before it stopped.

Otilia’s eyes bulged, staring accusingly. Ulrika struck again and cut through the rest. Otilia’s head bounced past her shoulder and rolled off the griffin’s back to the river below. Ulrika heaved her body after it, then sat up and caught the strap and began to pull herself back to the saddle. A few seconds later she heard a splash from below.

‘There is your mercy,’ she spat, then surveyed the river.

Von Messinghof’s spell-sped barge had caught the one that bore Karl Franz, and the two rivercraft were locked in a deadly, spinning embrace, drifting rapidly beyond the walls of Nuln as flames consumed them. Figures milled across both decks, but the fighting was fiercest on the Emperor’s barge. Von Messinghof’s undead troops had surrounded the Reiksguard in the waist, and were keeping them from going to the aid of Karl Franz and Ludwig Schwarzhelm, who were back to back at the stern, being pressed to the rail by Lassarian and von Messinghof and a handful of Blood Knights. Of Emmanus she could see no sign.

A dozen oarboats and sloops had set sail from the naval docks and were in hot pursuit of the barges, but they would not reach them in time. Karl Franz would be long dead before they came to his rescue.

Ulrika spurred the dead griffon towards the floating battle, her jaw set. She had done this. When von Messinghof had been ready to admit defeat, she had suggested the mad plan that had put the Emperor’s neck within the reach of his blade. She had set the doom of the Empire in motion, and likely the doom of mankind as well. She had been glad to do it, for she had believed that it had been mankind, with its fear and ignorance and hatred, that had burned Famke beyond hope of recovery, and she had wanted vengeance upon it for its crime.

Of course, mankind had burned Famke, but Ulrika could no longer blame them – not entirely. Von Messinghof had manipulated them, just as he had manipulated her, using their fear and ignorance and hatred to turn them against ‘the other’. No matter who set the torch to the kindling, it was the count who had struck the flame, and it was he who would pay – with his life, and his dreams.

In the greater scheme of things, she cared little one way or the other if Karl Franz died. Emperors and Tzars came and went and the world went on. But because his death was von Messinghof’s greatest wish, Ulrika would stop it. She would save the Emperor and kill the count, and make him know why.

She heard the distant rattle of gunfire, and a second later heavy impacts thudded into the dead griffon’s body and wings. It slewed sideways in the air, losing altitude. Ulrika cursed and hauled on the reins to pull it up. She had been so intent on catching the barges that she had forgotten the naval ships.

A line of handgunners on the deck of the lead boat was tracking her as another line knelt and reloaded. A flash of flame and smoke drew her eye to the boat’s swivel gun, and with a sickening rip, a two-pound shot tore through the griffin’s right wing.

‘Fools!’ cried Ulrika. ‘I’m going to save your Emperor!’

The horror listed dangerously to the right and lost even more altitude. The water was getting much too close, and they were still several hundred yards from the barges.

Ulrika spurred the thing savagely, jerking at the reins. ‘Hold together, you beast!’

It regained a little height as it straightened out, climbing to the height of a ship’s mast, but the wind was rattling through the holes in its wings and tearing them wider with every sweep. More gunfire popped from behind, but Ulrika was long out of range. Her only enemy now was gravity.

She eyed the burning barge, yet two hundred yards ahead, and now with its nose pointed towards her. She could still look down at it, could still see Karl Franz and Schwarzhelm at the stern, holding their own against Sylvania’s finest, but she was sinking fast.

‘Up, you misbegotten bag of bones!’ shouted Ulrika. ‘Up!’

Men at the prow were shouting and pointing and raising long guns at her, but the battle beyond them went on unheeding, a mad dance of the living and the dead, chopping each other to pieces in the midst of a maelstrom of fire.

Ulrika’s spurs tore scales from the griffon’s flanks as the horror dipped below the level of the rail, and her vantage vanished.

‘Up! Damn you!’

With a last mighty beat of its ruptured wings, the undead griffin lifted itself again and topped the forward rail by inches.

The handgunners fell back, firing into its belly as it wallowed over them, and then, with a groan that was almost a sigh of relief, it crashed nose-first to the deck and slammed into the middle of the melee, knocking flat Reiksguard, Blood Knight and wight alike with its wings, and crushing still more under its stitched-together body before it finally skidded to a stop in a smear of black ichor.

Ulrika launched herself from its back like an Estalian bull dancer and sprang over the heads of the intervening knights and undead.

‘Hold them, brothers!’ she called to the Blood Knights as she landed beyond them, then sprinted to the stern, passing the body of Nuncio Emmanus, burned to a cinder with a dead bright wizard’s throat clutched in his charred black hands, and scooping up a decapitated Reiksguard’s long sword as she dodged through burning debris.

Since her last glimpse, the fight at the stern rail had divided into two. On the port side, Lassarian and a handful of Blood Knights had separated Ludwig Schwarzhelm from the Emperor, and hemmed the champion within a ring of flashing steel. On the starboard side, von Messinghof fought Karl Franz alone, sword to sword, as sheets of flame billowed all around them. It was almost too easy.

Despite his centuries of swordplay and his inhuman strength and speed, the Sylvanian was having trouble dispatching the plague-stricken mortal man. The few times he managed to slipped past the Emperor’s guard, his blade hardly scratched Karl Franz’s armour. Worse, whether it was the proximity of the fire around them, or some ward or relic that the Emperor wore, something was slowing the count, and he had a deep gash on his arm and another across the chest to show for it. He was driving Karl Franz inexorably back, but it was taking all his strength and concentration to do it. He didn’t seem to sense Ulrika behind him. It would take but a single thrust from her to kill him and save the Emperor, but where was the satisfaction in that? She wanted the count to see it coming, and to know why she did it.

‘Lord,’ she said, stepping behind him. ‘I escaped.’

Von Messinghof darted a look back before returning to his fight. ‘Well done,’ he gasped. ‘Help Lassarian kill that cursed juggernaut. The Emperor is mine!’

‘Lord,’ said Ulrika, ‘Otilia told me who betrayed Famke to the witch hunters.’

The count faltered, but only for the briefest of seconds, then renewed his assault on Karl Franz, who fought silently, and with complete concentration.

‘I merely forced a lesson you needed to learn,’ said von Messinghof without looking back. ‘That humans are not to be trusted. Only when we rule them will we be safe.’

Karl Franz slipped a cut through the count’s defences during this oration, and gashed him across the wrist. Von Messinghof snarled and redoubled his attacks, slashing in a blind fury.

Ulrika took another step. ‘Lord, the vampires I encountered in your service were without exception backstabbing plotters who sought nothing but their own advancement. The – the humans, however–’ She choked as she remembered Stahleker handing her his braid. ‘The humans were brave and true to their word, and – and I wish to all the gods I have lost that I was still one of them.’

Von Messinghof laughed as he drove Karl Franz back. ‘But you are not! You are a vampire, and your brave humans would slay you for it! Your only hope for a future is my master, who will give you a world in which you are not hunted or staked or–!’

A staggering impact knocked him sideways and sent Ulrika staggering towards the flames. The barge had slammed backwards into an outcropping of rocks that thrust from the river bank, sending everyone reeling. Karl Franz crashed into the rail and a falling spar struck his helmet, clubbing him to the deck and stunning him.

Von Messinghof regained his balance first and lunged forwards, laughing, to smash the sword from the dazed Emperor’s hand, leaving him helpless as the stern ground against the rocks and the entwined barges fishtailed around to smash side-on into the bank. From both decks came thuds and crashes and cries of pain and surprise.

‘Hate me if you will,’ said von Messinghof to Ulrika as she recovered, ‘but I am your salvation. This is your salvation. Kill me and your “honourable” humans will cut you down. You will die the true death. Your eternity of torment will begin.’

Ulrika hesitated as the Karl Franz struggled to stand and Von Messinghof put his blade to the Emperor’s throat. Her mind flashed back to the silver-manacled rack in the cellar of the Iron Tower, to the flames that had consumed Famke, to the hundred other horrible things men had done to her and hers. Mankind was cruel, there was no doubt about that, but the count was crueller. Whatever they might do to her if they caught her was nothing to what he had already done.

‘I am ready,’ she said, and stabbed for von Messinghof’s spine with her sword.

The count spun and slashed it aside before it connected, then thrust for her chest, snarling. ‘Fool! Our empire will be better without you!’

The thrust was swift, and nearly struck home, but Ulrika was swifter. Filled with righteous rage and Otilia’s blood, she had never felt stronger or more alive. She parried the blow an inch from her sternum and riposted with a thrust of her own, punching through von Messinghof’s plate and piercing his chest where the muscle connected to his sword arm.

The count pulled away, roaring, and raised his sword two-handed. To Ulrika he moved as if through honey, slow and clumsy. She blocked the strike and kicked him barefoot in the chest – straight into the fire.

The count fell backwards into a pile of blazing crates and immediately started to burn, his centuries old skin going up like paper. Still, he tried to stand, tried to crawl from the flames.

Ulrika snarled and stepped forwards, kicking him back, then reached into the fire and stabbed down, pinning him to the deck, though the flames licked at the leather of her witch hunter’s coat and burned her naked feet and hands.

‘For Famke,’ she said, then sprang back, stamping and beating at her burning coat as von Messinghof writhed and shrivelled in the flames.

A cold blade touched her throat. She turned. The Emperor had recovered, and held his sword to her neck. She swallowed, then straightened and met his gaze.

‘You are my prisoner, vampire,’ he said. His voice and hand were steady though she could see that sickness, pain and concussion were crippling him. ‘You will submit to me and we will continue the conversation that the closing of your trap interrupted.’

Ulrika darted a look around the barge without moving her head. The Reiksguard were finishing off the last of von Messinghof’s troops in the centre of the boat, and Schwarzhelm had killed all the Blood Knights and was driving Lassarian back, desperately trying to get around him to his liege. No one was close enough to stop her if she wished to kill the Emperor – and with the strength and speed she had gained from Otilia’s blood she was sure she could do it easily.

But she didn’t wish it.

Knowing von Messinghof and Otilia had been behind Famke’s burning, the rage against humanity that had boiled within Ulrika for so long cooled now to a simmer. She did not forgive them entirely, but she did not blame them either. Their kind and hers were inevitable opposites – predator and prey – though which was which changed in her head even as she thought it. In any event, she no longer wanted vengeance upon the whole race for the vileness of the few. All she wanted to do was leave.

At the thought, a sudden longing filled her breast. No. Not just leave. She wanted to go to Famke. She had to tell her that von Messinghof and Otilia had been behind her burning, and that Ulrika had slain them. She had to tell her that she was avenged!

She returned her eyes to the Emperor’s. ‘I will not be chained again.’

Karl Franz pressed the blade harder against her neck. ‘I heard what passed between you and the assassin. You know who is behind this. You know all the players. I cannot let you–’

‘You cannot stop me.’

Ulrika beat his sword aside with a lightning swipe and leapt back, going on guard. Karl Franz recovered and went on guard as, behind her, Ulrika heard Schwarzhelm shout, and his heavy boots thud closer.

Ulrika gave the Emperor a fencer’s salute, then turned for the rail where the barge had run aground, meaning to leap to the shore. Schwarzhelm stepped in her way, his terrifying sword at the ready, and closed warily, his eyes glittering in the light of the flames. Off to one side, Lassarian lay headless and burning in the flames.

‘It is past time for you to die, fiend,’ Schwarzhelm growled.

‘Wait, Ludwig,’ said the Emperor.

The champion stopped, but did not lower his guard.

‘Without chains, then.’ Karl Franz circled so he could look into Ulrika’s eyes. ‘Speak freely and be free. I heard your words. I heard where your loyalties lie. Tell me. What empire did the vampire speak of? Who was his master?’

Ulrika looked at him, considering. She owed him and his people nothing. At the same time, she had sworn to destroy von Messinghof and all his works, and while she had killed him and foiled his assassination attempt, the invasion he had worked so hard for might still come if Mannfred von Carstein were allowed to continue plotting his return. If she wanted to destroy everything von Messinghof had held dear, Mannfred’s plans too would have to be foiled.

‘Forget the Lahmian uprising, Emperor,’ she said at last. ‘Look instead to Sylvania. An old evil dreams there, ready to wake and grind the world beneath his heel again. Do not wait for him to reveal himself.’ She raised her chin. ‘Now, may I go in peace?’

The Emperor hesitated, but Schwarzhelm took a step closer. Ulrika swallowed. Even with blood-strength filling her, she did not want to face him. He had killed Lassarian and his vampire henchmen single-handed, and looked ready to fight for hours more.

‘You cannot allow it, my liege,’ said the champion. ‘She is a fiend. She meant to trap you in the tower.’

‘And yet she saved me from my assassin, and did not attack me when she might have.’

Schwarzhelm didn’t move. ‘My liege, she is evil by her very nature. You are the Emperor. You must embody the morals of the–’

‘She said that men were brave and true to their word,’ said Karl Franz. ‘To my mind, those are the morals of the Empire.’ He nodded, coming to a decision. ‘I gave my word. I will be true to it. Let her go.’

The champion glowered at Ulrika through the smoke and flames, but at last lowered his sword and stepped aside.

Ulrika inclined her head to Karl Franz. ‘Thank you, my lord.’

She turned on her heel, gave Schwarzhelm a cold look, then leapt to the balustrade and sprang to the shore and away. Now, at last, it was time to find Famke and tell her of von Messinghof’s death!

chapter thirty-four

REUNION

Every uniformed man in Nuln had gone to the rescue of the Emperor – the Army of Nuln, the city watch, the witch hunters, Countess Emmanuelle’s personal guard, all the various knights and lords who made up his train, all spilled out of the city and north along the river to the site of the burning barges in order to come to his aid.

A thick fog had come up, boiling off the river like steam from a sewer, so Ulrika had little trouble avoiding the rushing men. Their eyes were all focussed on the glow of the ship fire that lit the drifting mist like the sun seen through frosted glass. She had only slightly more trouble culling a witch hunter from the throng, then taking from him all his gear. The coat she had stolen before had been an excellent idea, but only covered so much. She had picked a witch hunter to strip not just out of vengeance for her time in the tower, but because, as she had seen the last time she had worn them, the long coat and the broad hat were a passport that opened any gate.

And she was proved right as the gates of Nuln appeared before her. Though armed men continued to stream out of them, the guards were barring the way of anyone who tried to enter the city.

‘Nobody comes in till they call off this emergency,’ Ulrika heard a guard say to a coachman as she approached. ‘You’ll have to wait.’

‘What’s the emergency?’ asked the coachman. ‘When will it be over?’

‘Never you mind,’ said the guard. ‘It’s an emergency. That’s all you have to know.’

Ulrika strode past them as if she was on a mission, hat low, eyes straight ahead, and her walk stiff with angry impatience. The guard raised his hand to stop her, then saluted instead. She didn’t return it. A real witch hunter certainly wouldn’t.

There was clamour as well in the Lahmians’ tunnels beneath the city. Messengers came and went from the under-entrance of the Chalice of Caronne, bearing rumours of the fate of Karl Franz and news of the panic in the city. Observing from the shadows of a side tunnel, Ulrika noted however, that for all the activity, no messengers were travelling between the brothel and Hermione’s mansion. That suggested that Hermione was at the brothel, in the thick of things. Was Famke with her? Ulrika doubted it. She was most likely at home, still recovering from her burns.

Ulrika hurried north. With all in chaos and Hermione busy, there would be no better opportunity to talk with Famke, and if she wasn’t at home, she would find some way of seeing her, no matter if she had to kill Hermione and all her blood-swains to do it.

Lahmian swordswomen stood guard at the mansion’s tunnel entrance. Ulrika briefly considered attacking them and fighting her way in, but why should she? There would be no difficulty getting in. She was a wanted fugitive. They would drag her in by force if she didn’t go quietly. Better to save all her strength for fighting her way out – and perhaps she would have Famke to help her. She strode openly to the door.

The women came on guard when she was still fifty yards away, their sharp ears catching her bootheels on the tunnel floor. Ulrika’s ears were sharp too, and heard them whisper to each other.

‘A witch hunter? Here?’ asked the shorter of the two – a dark-skinned Tilean.

‘A witch hunter with no heartbeat,’ said the second, an icy blonde nearly as tall as Ulrika. She raised her voice. ‘Come no further, vampire! Name yourself and your business.’

Ulrika swept off her broad hat and inclined her head as she continued towards them. ‘Ulrika Magdova Straghov, calling upon Lady Hermione on private business.’

The women stiffened at her name, and gripped their weapons more tightly.

‘The traitor,’ said the blonde one.

‘The Sylvanian,’ spat the dark one.

‘We are ordered to kill you on sight, betrayer,’ said the blonde.

‘Then I will die with the secrets of Sylvania’s masterplan unspoken, for I will speak them only to Lady Hermione.’

The Lahmians paused, considering.

Ulrika spread her arms. ‘Kill me if you must, but Hermione will not thank you for it. I’m sure she would wish to do the deed herself.’

The blonde pointed with her blade. ‘Drop your sword and dagger and kick them away, then place your hands behind you.’

Ulrika followed her instructions and the Tilean came forwards with heavy iron manacles. She locked them around Ulrika’s wrists, then hauled her to her feet as the blonde one kept her sword at her throat.

They took her through a door that led to a dusty, brick-lined tunnel. A tiny guard room opened off it. Two swains slept within on narrow cots.

‘Wake up,’ barked the blonde. ‘Guard the door until we return.’

She and the Tilean dragged Ulrika on as the men blinked awake. At the end of the tunnel was a spiral staircase, and at the top, a door that led into the cellars of Hermione’s mansion – a dark, arch-ceilinged storage space filled with trunks, casks, furniture and dry goods. As soon as they entered it, Ulrika started shouting at the top of her voice.

‘Famke! It’s Ulrika! I’m here! Come to me!’

The Tilean cuffed her on the ear so hard that she fell into a heap of flour sacks, then the blonde dragged her back to her feet and shook her.

‘Sister Famke is not to be disturbed, betrayer. Now be silent or I shall gag you.’

‘Famke! It’s Ulrika! I’m here! Come to–’

The blonde punched her in the stomach, then stuffed her kerchief into her mouth as she gasped. The Tilean tied another rag across her lips to hold the first in place, and they shoved her on, out of the store room and into a corridor with a narrow stair at one end, and sturdy doors on each wall. These, Ulrika guessed, had originally been the strong rooms where the fine tableware and the most expensive wines had been kept, but they had been converted into makeshift cells, with heavy crossbars bolted across them for added strength.

The Tilean unlocked one and lifted away the bar, and the blonde shoved Ulrika in then slammed the door. As the bar thudded home and the key turned in the lock, her face appeared in the tiny barred window.

‘We shall inform Lady Hermione that you have come to call when she returns,’ she said with mock courtesy. ‘Take your leisure until then.’

Ulrika looked around as the Lahmian’s footsteps echoed away. The cell was a bare, windowless closet, barely big enough to lie down in, without cot or chair. There was nothing she could use to escape – nothing to use as a weapon. If Famke hadn’t heard her, she might never leave this place. Hermione would come, question her, then kill her, and that would be the end of it.

Well, she could at least be ready for when they came for her. First, she let out her fangs and chewed through her gag, then spat out the handkerchief. Next, she dropped down on her back, then inched her manacled wrists under her posterior, down her legs and under her feet until they were in front of her. The chain that held the manacles together was thick and strong, made for holding beings of monstrous strength, and normally, she doubted she would have been able to break it, but with Otilia’s distilled blood still surging though her veins, she thought she might manage it.

She began to rotate her left wrist so that the short chain twisted upon itself until the links were locked tight against each other. She kept turning. The links creaked, and the edges of the manacles bit cruelly into her wrist bones, but compared to the pain of the silver manacles that had burned her earlier, it was nothing, and she ignored it. For several long minutes she kept up the pressure, shaking with the strain of it and gritting her teeth, but then, with a snap, one of the links gave way, and the chain flew apart.

Ulrika gasped with relief and massaged her wrists for a moment, then dug her claws under the manacles. Before she could tear one free, however, she heard footsteps in the corridor, and sensed two heart-fires coming closer. Why were living men coming to see her? Who were they? They were dead men, that’s who they were. She would overpower them once they opened the door and escape to find Famke. She stepped on the broken link to hide it, then put her arms behind her back as if still bound.

A key turned in the lock, the bar was lifted, and the door swung open. Ulrika crouched, ready to spring, but the men remained on guard outside the cell, and a figure in a black shroud drifted in instead, a figure with no heart-fire and no face.

Ulrika edged back, wary. ‘Who are you? What do you want? I will only speak to Lady Hermione.’

The figure stopped in the middle of the cell and regarded her. Ulrika could see now that under the shroud, every inch of its body was wound with black linen. Even its clawed fingers were wrapped, and its face was hidden beneath a long black veil.

‘Don’t you know me, sister?’ it asked. ‘Don’t you remember your dearest companion?’

The voice was like burnt paper, so broken and dry that Ulrika could barely hear it. Even so, she recognised it – the softness, the received pronunciation masking the slum accent.

‘Famke! Thank the gods! You heard me!’ Ulrika stepped forwards, arms outstretched to embrace her, but Famke shrank back.

‘No!’ she rasped. ‘You must not touch me!’

Ulrika stopped, aghast at what she had been about to do. She swallowed. ‘Your wounds… your wounds haven’t healed?’

Famke seemed to shiver under her shroud. ‘Why have you returned? What have you to tell Lady Hermione?’

‘Nothing,’ said Ulrika. ‘That was only a ruse. I came to see you, to tell you that I have made good on my vow. I have killed everyone who was responsible for your burning – all the whores, all the witch hunters, Captain Schenk, his commander, and more importantly, the architects behind it all, the puppet masters who pulled the strings of all the rest – Mistress Otilia and her new master, Count Grigor von Messinghof. I know it is small comfort, but all are dead. You are avenged.’

Famke looked at her in silence for a long moment, her black veil betraying no emotion. ‘All are not dead,’ she whispered at last. ‘And I am not avenged.’

Ulrika frowned, confused. ‘What do you mean? Who have I missed?’

Famke raised a bandaged hand and pointed directly at her. ‘Yourself.’

Ulrika stepped back, dread creeping up her spine. ‘What do you mean? I didn’t burn you. You know I didn’t. I tried to save you.’

‘You brought me to the fire,’ said Famke in her terrible hissing voice. ‘Were it not for you, taking me from our sisters and into the world of men, I would not have been burned. You seduced me. You murdered me with lies.’

Ulrika’s guts knotted like icy chains. Panic prickled her skin. ‘But – but you came of your own accord. You didn’t want to go back.’

‘Only because you filled me with false dreams,’ snarled Famke. ‘You made it seem a grand adventure. You made it seem that freedom was worth any price!’ Her wrapped claws curled around the end of her veil. ‘It was not worth this!’

With a sharp jerk, she tore it away, and Ulrika recoiled. Famke’s wounds had not healed. Indeed, it seemed they had grown worse. But for a few grey wisps, her hair was gone, and her head was a blackened skull, cracked bone showing between patches of charred flesh. Her eyes were lidless orbs, cloudy white, and her lips had been burned away, exposing her heat-yellowed fangs in a permanent grin. The skin of her neck was torn black strips, revealing the glistening red muscles beneath, raw and exposed.

‘Would you like to see the rest?’ asked Famke.

Ulrika flinched. ‘No! No, sister. I…’ She opened her mouth to make some condolence, but nothing came out. What could she say? What could be enough?

‘I don’t understand,’ she said at last. ‘Has Lady Hermione not given you blood? Why have you not recovered?’

Famke shrugged, and skin flaked from her neck and fluttered to the floor. ‘All the mistresses have tried their magics and their blood. I am told that some sisters are less afflicted by the sun, some are more. I am one of the latter.’ She raised the veil and began to drape it over her head again. ‘The pain remains the same as the morning I burned. I cannot sit or lie or lean against anything. The agony is too great. So I stand. The mistresses say it will be like this for eternity.’

Ulrika covered her mouth with her hands to stifle a sob. ‘Oh, Famke. How can you bear it?’

Famke turned her veiled face towards her. ‘Because I am assured that my afterlife will be worse.’

Ulrika sobbed again. Famke just looked at her, unreadable for a long moment, then turned towards the door.

‘I meant to kill you for what you had done,’ she said. ‘But vengeance will not heal my skin. I will leave you to Mistress Hermione’s pleasure. Luck to you, sister.’

Ulrika stepped after her, reaching for her. ‘Famke! Famke, wait! I won’t leave it like this. I–’

Famke looked back at the door. ‘Do not call me by that name,’ she whispered. ‘Famke is dead. My name is Wither.’

Ulrika stared after her, unmoving, as Famke drifted out the door and disappeared out of sight down the stone corridor. She stood numb as the swains pushed the door closed and it boomed against the frame, but as she heard the scrape of the bar being lowered into place she snapped out of it and sprang forwards and kicked it as hard as she could.

The door flew open and the swains fell back, crashing to the floor in surprise as the bar clanged away. Ulrika strode from the cell and tore the sword from the nearest one, then stepped towards Famke, who had turned back at the noise.

‘Come with me,’ said Ulrika, holding out her hand. ‘Come and I will find a way to heal you. I will make it up to you. I–’

A clatter of footsteps from the store room interrupted her and she spun as the door opened. Hermione stepped into the corridor with the two Lahmians and a pack of swains at her heels.

‘So, it is true,’ she said as she met Ulrika’s eyes. ‘The traitor has returned. Kill her!’

chapter thirty-five

THE BRIDGE AND THE ROAD

The blonde and the Tilean sprang at Ulrika as the swains surged in behind. Ulrika beat aside the Lahmians’ attacks and bulled past them into the men. Swords came at her from all angles. She darted left, grabbing the wrist of a dandy with a rapier, then hurled him behind her into the blades of his companions.

Beyond them, Hermione was moving her hands and mouthing the words of a spell. Ulrika cursed. That was a worse danger than the fighters. Her wards could lock Ulrika within the house. She had to stop her.

The Lahmians came in again, more cautiously this time. Ulrika didn’t wait for them. She drove towards Hermione, parrying a thrust from the Tilean, but could not bring her blade back in time to block a cut from the blonde. Her sword gashed Ulrika’s left forearm to the bone, but she staggered past and skip-lunged at Hermione. Hermione dodged aside, so fast that Ulrika didn’t see her move, and her sword struck the wall instead.

Hermione’s claws raked Ulrika’s breast and her off hand pinned her sword arm in an iron grip. Ulrika snarled and backhanded her with her free arm. The iron manacle cracked Hermione in the temple and she slumped to the floor like an empty dress.

‘Mistress!’ cried Famke, hurrying forwards.

As the swains ran to Hermione’s aid, Ulrika parried another lunge from the Tilean then riposted and ran her through. The blonde thrust as Ulrika tried to free her blade. Ulrika swung the Tilean into her, then kicked her full in the face. The two swordswomen fell back and there was only Famke between Ulrika and the door.

Ulrika strode ahead. The blonde was already staggering up, and the Tilean would only be seconds behind her.

‘Stand aside,’ she said. ‘I only want to leave.’

Famke held her ground for a moment, then shifted aside, shaking. ‘Never return,’ she whispered. ‘Never.’

Ulrika stepped through the open door. She looked back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I can’t promise that.’

The blonde and the Tilean were starting for the door. Ulrika gave the blank black veil of Famke’s face one last look, then turned and ran for the stairs to the underground tunnel.

Even after she had eluded the Lahmians and reached the streets of Nuln, Ulrika could not stop running. Too many things chased her that she could not escape. The horror of Famke’s unending agony, the shock of her hatred, the pain of losing her friendship, the sinking certainty that she had been right, and that Famke’s living hell was all her fault – all hounded her through the fog-bound streets like a pack of hell hounds.

She could blame von Messinghof for everything if she wished, but would he have done what he had done had she stayed with the Lahmians and taken her punishment? No. She would have spent the duration of the hidden war under guard, or until Countess Gabriella’s skilled diplomacy set her free, and afterwards she would have spent the rest of eternity with Famke as her friend. The count would have had no opportunity to lure Ulrika away, and therefore no reason to burn Famke.

Again, it had been her wilfulness, her inability to accept the right of her superiors to rule her, that had caused all her heartbreak and ruin. Her rebellion had brought her nothing but pain – but it was too late now to return and say that she had learned her lesson and was ready to obey.

Though Ulrika’s defeat of von Messinghof and her rescue of Karl Franz would do much to win her back into the sisterhood’s good graces, and though she suddenly wanted nothing more than to fly to Gabriella’s arms and beg for forgiveness, she couldn’t. How could she return to the Lahmians when Famke was among them? How could she bear the cold scrutiny of her faceless veil whenever their paths crossed? It was a cruel joke. The tragedy that had made her finally ready to come home was the same thing that made it impossible for her to do so.

But if she did not return to Lahmia, where did she go? What did she do? Sylvania was closed to her now, and she wouldn’t go back even if they asked. Should she return to Praag, and resume her role as defender of the city? For a second the idea thrilled her. Before Stefan and Boyarina Evgena had ruined it, she had enjoyed that more than any other thing she had done since her rebirth. Then the thrill turned to bitter bile. After all she had done under von Messinghof’s command, calling herself a protector of mankind was an irony too black to contemplate. She had slaughtered an entire town – men, women and children. She had kidnapped, killed, and fed from scores of innocents. She had become the monster people thought she was, the monster she had sworn never to become!

Ursun’s teeth and claws! Von Messinghof hadn’t just tricked her into betraying the Lahmians and joining the Sylvanians. He had tricked her into betraying every ideal she had ever held! With the burning of Famke, he had turned her into a fiend more completely than Adolphus Krieger ever had.

The shame of it was unendurable – not just for the countless deaths that now weighed upon her, but for how easily she had been fooled, and how swiftly she had abandoned her principles. Von Messinghof had offered her an excuse to give in to the beast within her, and she had jumped at it. She had revelled in it!

Nausea overwhelmed her as the memories flooded back. This was what undeath had made of her, a rabid, impulsive animal, as easily goaded as a bull. She had been a grown woman before her death. Now she was a child, an infant monster spreading ruin and death wherever she went.

She reeled out of an alley and found herself at the river, already bustling with stevedores and merchants two hours before dawn. The Great Bridge that crossed the Reik to the Faulestadt was to her left. She ran to it and thudded onto its span, but as she neared the middle, with the dense river fog closing in on all sides so that she could see neither end of it, her steps faltered and she leaned across the stone railing, sobbing.

Below her, the glossy black water flowed and rippled like liquid basalt, mesmerising her. Her sobs quieted. Perhaps this was the answer. She had turned away from ending herself many times before, but that had been before she knew just how vile she could become. Now she knew she was a monster. Now she knew that the world would be better off without her. She should have died beneath the blade of Gotrek’s axe the night Adolphus Krieger turned her.

Well, here was her chance to do what the Slayer had failed to. One leap and the current would tear her essence from her body. One leap and the eternal torment that she deserved would commence.

‘Don’t do it, child.’

Ulrika turned, hand on the hilt of her borrowed sword. Countess Gabriella stepped out of the fog behind her, ten paces away, dressed in modest skirts and a high-collared bodice. Her face was calm, and she made no move towards Ulrika, only watched her coolly, her hands folded together.

‘What else is there for me to do?’ Ulrika asked bitterly.

‘Come back with me, as I offered before.’

‘I cannot!’

Gabriella’s stern look softened. ‘Daughter, your crimes against us are many, but they pale in comparison to the vile deeds of others we have welcomed back into our sorority. You will of course have to submit to punishment and a time of imprisonment, but I think I may be able to–’

‘It isn’t that,’ interrupted Ulrika. ‘If that was all, I would come back and gladly. But – but Famke. I – I cannot–’

‘Ah,’ said Gabriella. ‘That. Personally, I think she takes too little blame upon herself. And, knowing you, I would guess you take too much.’

‘I should not have run from you!’ cried Ulrika.

‘She should not have followed,’ said Gabriella.

‘I should not have left her alone.’

‘She should have been more cautious.’

Ulrika snarled. ‘Don’t counter everything I say! You can make anything not my fault. Your tongue can justify any action. But it is my fault. I cannot return to face her.’

‘Daughter–’

‘It isn’t only that! I have done worse things, things I cannot forgive myself. I murdered an entire town! I am what I swore I would never be!’ Ulrika closed her eyes and backed against the rail. All she had to do was lean back and it would be over. ‘I cannot live with myself. How can I live with you?’

A hard hand closed around her wrist and pulled her back. Ulrika opened her eyes. The countess had been ten paces away. Now she was beside her, gripping her tight.

‘It isn’t a matter of how. You must. You have no choice.’ Gabriella looked into Ulrika’s eyes. ‘Our Queen is our absolute ruler. She decides how we live, and when we may die. To take your own life is an act of treason against her. If you wish to make penance for your crimes, then do good. When your internment is over, you shall have an allowance.’ She shrugged. ‘You may give it to the poor if that will ease your pain.’

Ulrika moaned. ‘Why can’t you just let me be? I have betrayed you, run away from you, wounded you! Cast me out! Banish me from the sisterhood! I beg you!’

‘You have also killed a great enemy of the Lahmians, and foiled his plans, making you an asset the Queen would not care to lose.’

Ulrika looked up at her, startled. ‘You know I killed the count? I told no one.’

Gabriella smiled. ‘You didn’t have to, dearest. The entire episode bore your signature. Lahmia owes you a debt of thanks.’

‘Then Lahmia can repay the debt by letting me go,’ said Ulrika. ‘Please, mistress. Two steps and I will never trouble you again.’

Gabriella’s smile faded. ‘It seems I have failed to make myself clear. None of us is allowed to leave the sisterhood. No vampire is allowed to live – or die – outside its hierarchy. By our Queen’s reckoning, all of the deathless, no matter what bloodline they claim, are her subjects and owe her service, and she is at eternal war with any who deny her sovereignty. So far, at my urging, she has been willing to forgive you your youthful rebellion, but her patience is at an end. If you do not come now of your own accord, you will be our enemy, and I will bring you back to be tried for treason.’

Ulrika rolled her eyes. ‘Why not just let me jump and save yourself the trouble of a trial?’

‘Traitors do not die in the Silver Mountain,’ said Gabriella, her voice cold. ‘There is one I know of who has been spitted upon a red-hot skewer since before Sigmar was born.’

‘And you wish me to come back to that?’

‘If you come willingly I will speak in your defence, and your slaying of von Messinghof will stand in your favour. Your punishment will be minimal, and your–’

‘No.’ Ulrika closed her eyes. ‘A moment ago I wanted to come back more than anything in the world, but when you offer me no choice? When not even my death is mine to choose?’

‘What ruler would demand less?’ asked Gabriella. ‘Can a peasant say no when his lord calls him to war? Can a lord decline when his king demands his service? Your objection baffles me. You are a leader by birth and a soldier by inclination. Obedience should be in your blood.’

‘Obedience is in my blood!’ said Ulrika, tearing her wrist from the countess’s grasp and stepping back. ‘My blood! The blood of my father! The blood of my country! To them I owe loyalty! To them I owe obedience! I owe you much, countess, but you are not my blood. Lahmia is not my country. Neferata is not my Queen. I am her subject by misadventure. Why then should I obey her?’

‘Neferata became your Queen, and you her servant, the moment you rose from the dead,’ said Gabriella.

‘You speak as if I chose it!’ cried Ulrika. ‘Krieger turned me against my will. You took me in without my consent. I had no choice in those things, but I will have a choice in this. If you and your Queen want my service, then ask for it, and accept my decision, whether it is yea or nay.’

‘That is not our way,’ said Gabriella, stepping after her. ‘No matter how you came to undeath, no matter your loyalties before you died, you are hers, to do with as she pleases.’

Ulrika edged back. Despite the measured tone of her words, the countess’s fangs were showing.

‘Now,’ Gabriella continued. ‘Will you come, or must I drag you back?’

Ulrika snarled and drew her sword. She could have dodged past Gabriella and jumped into the river, but she was too angry now to think of ending her life. What the countess was demanding wasn’t the loyalty a lord owed to his king. She wanted the submission a she-wolf gave to her pack leader. She wanted Ulrika to roll over and offer her neck.

‘Take me if you can,’ she said, and went on guard.

The countess stepped past Ulrika’s blade with blinding speed and punched her in the solar plexus as hard as she could. Ulrika folded up, gasping in pain and shock. Her sword dropped from nerveless fingers. She had never felt Gabriella’s true strength before. It was terrifying.

‘Little fool. What did you think would happen?’

The countess threw Ulrika over her shoulder and started towards the Neuestadt end of the bridge as easily as if she were carrying a baby. At the same time, her left hand moved in a hypnotising fashion while she murmured strange syllables under her breath.

Through a tingling fog of pain, Ulrika felt strands of lethargy begin to wrap around her. Her arms were growing limp, her eyelids heavy. Gabriella was wasting no time in senseless brutality. She was putting her to sleep and taking her to her imprisonment.

Ulrika fought against the soft web of slumber. Her head and torso were hanging down Gabriella’s back and growing heavier by the second. Her arms dangled by Gabriella’s legs. She clawed at them weakly, then saw a better way, and gathered up the full skirts of Gabriella’s dress and pulled them tight.

Gabriella fell forwards as her legs were pinned together by the cloth, and let go of Ulrika, her whispering cutting off with a curse. Ulrika hit the cobbles hard, but the sleepiness was gone. She rolled up and clambered onto Gabriella, claws sprung and reaching for her throat.

Gabriella grabbed her wrists, sinking her talons to the bone. Ulrika cried out and pulled away. Gabriella’s claws shredded her arms and the backs of her hands.

Ulrika crabbed back, bleeding and shaking, as Gabriella tore away her skirts and crinolines in a single jerk, then crouched, slippered and bare-legged, in a wrestler’s pose.

‘I told you once that I had been many things in my thousand years,’ she said. ‘Pit fighter was one.’

She pounced, silent, just as Ulrika pushed to her knees, and took her down in a roiling, slashing tangle. There was no attack and parry, no move and counter-move. There was only mad animal savagery. Ulrika could barely follow Gabriella’s hands. They blurred like hummingbirds and hit like punch-daggers, gouging deep trenches in her arms, back and legs. The countess’s teeth tore flesh from her shoulders and neck. Yet, through it all, her face was as calm as when she had been speaking.

Ulrika got a leg up between them and pried the countess away with knee and hands. That was one small advantage at least. Ulrika was not quicker or stronger, but she had reach. She could keep Gabriella’s claws from her neck by holding her away. Unfortunately, that did nothing to keep Gabriella from raking her arms to bloody tatters.

With a hoarse cry, Ulrika flung Gabriella aside, slamming her face first into the bridge’s stone balustrade. Another advantage, then – mass. She could use her weight to her advantage.

Gabriella came up bleeding from the mouth and nose, but still composed, as Ulrika staggered to her feet, snorting and spitting blood. There was an annoying trickle running down the left side of her neck. She slapped at it, and found her left ear had a chunk missing from it the size of a gold crown.

Ulrika charged, roaring with rage, and tore into Gabriella with both hands. She still had a dagger, but that was forgotten. She had become a beast, incapable of using any weapons but those her nature had given her. Her vision was reduced to a crimson tunnel with Gabriella’s face at the end of it, and she tried to claw her way to the end so she could tear it off.

A stiff right brought her back to herself, and she woke from her rage in the middle of staggering back towards the balustrade, her head ringing and Gabriella flying at her, claws dripping red.

Ulrika caught her in mid-leap and flung her into the balustrade with a thud she felt through the soles of her feet.

Ulrika stormed in as the countess sagged, stomping down at her with the heavy boots she had stolen from the witch hunter. Gabriella caught her foot and kicked the other out from under her. Ulrika fell ribs-first across the balustrade, and Gabriella was up in an instant, one hand at her throat, pressing her backwards over the black water that glittered forty feet below.

Ulrika clutched at Gabriella’s fingers for dear life as they constricted around her neck. Another inch and she would topple to the death she had been resigned to only moments before. It did not seem so appetising any more.

Gabriella looked her in the eyes. ‘Daughter. It is not too late. No one has seen this. Submit and I will say you came without a fight.’

‘I’ll die first,’ rasped Ulrika, as blood bubbled between her teeth.

Gabriella shook her, her composure cracking at last. ‘Fool! Can’t you see that I am trying to save you? I love you! I could not bear it if you were taken to the mountain!’

Ulrika fought to force her words through her constricted windpipe. ‘Will… will you let me leave if I say no?’

Gabriella bared her teeth. ‘You know that I cannot!’

‘Then – I say no,’ said Ulrika.

With a growl of fury, Gabriella slammed Ulrika’s spine against the balustrade and sank her claws deeper into her neck as she pushed her further out over the drop. It took all of Ulrika’s courage to let go of those claws, but she had to take the chance. She released Gabriella’s fingers and caught the rail, then jerked her knee up between Gabriella’s legs, lifting her off her feet and tipping her head-first towards the water.

Gabriella shrieked and scrabbled to the side, letting go of Ulrika’s neck to cling to the balustrade as her legs swung over the edge and dangled over the waves.

With a desperate twist, Ulrika righted herself, then caught Gabriella’s neck in one hand and pushed her away from the rail while tearing at her clutching hands with the other.

Gabriella’s claws scratched white lines in the stone as they tried to hold, but Ulrika pried away first one then the other. All at once, Ulrika was holding all of Gabriella’s weight by the neck. It almost overbalanced her, and she braced against the balustrade for support.

Gabriella clung to her arm with claws like hot needles, but Ulrika knew she only had to drop her arm and slam her against the side of the bridge and she would fall away. The more pressing question was whether she could hold her up at all. Gabriella had shed a lot of her blood, and her muscles were torn and weakened. Her arm was trembling.

‘Daughter,’ whispered Gabriella. ‘Do not let me go. I beg you.’

Ulrika laughed, spraying blood. ‘You beg? Then I ask again. Will you let me go? If I spare you, will you let me choose my fate?’

‘I – I…’ Gabriella struggled at the end of Ulrika’s arm, her eyes bulging. She grimaced and shook her head. ‘I cannot. Even with – tables turned, I cannot. I do the bidding – of my Queen.’

Ulrika stared at her, maddened and yet filled with grudging admiration. With unthinkable death sweeping past below her, the countess remained loyal to her ruler and her principles. She was doing right according to her laws, and trying to save Ulrika at the same time. It was too bad Ulrika no longer wanted to be saved.

‘Mistress,’ she said, shaking. ‘Mother…’

A sob racked Ulrika’s body and her arm gave out, but she threw out the other and hauled Gabriella back over the balustrade then fell in a heap with her on the cobbles next to Ulrika’s dropped sword.

They lay panting together for several seconds, but then Gabriella circled her wrist with her hand in an iron grip. ‘Daughter, I am sorry. I wish–’

Ulrika caught up her sword and put it to Gabriella’s throat, then pulled her trapped hand free as the countess froze. ‘I am sorry too, mistress. And I also wish. But I cannot go with you. Not now. Not yet.’

Gabriella looked like she was going to cry. ‘Ulrika, there is only now. You will not have another chance.’

‘Not ever, then.’ Ulrika took Gabriella’s hand in hers and kissed it with her bloody lips, then stood and raised her boot, and broke Gabriella’s right knee with a savage kick.

Gabriella gasped in pain and surprise as Ulrika stumbled back from her.

‘So you will have an excuse not to stop me,’ Ulrika said, then turned away.

For a second Ulrika considered jumping over the side as she had nearly done before Gabriella interrupted her, but the moment was gone. She still felt guilt for all the atrocities she had committed, still knew herself to be a monster, but something – Gabriella’s bravery perhaps, her loyalty – made her feel that killing herself now would be gross selfishness.

Ulrika had promises that she must keep. She had promised Famke she would find a way to heal her, she had promised Stahleker she would return the lock of hair to Mags, and the souls of all the innocents she had killed weighed upon her shoulders as well – murdered for sins committed by another. There were hundreds of them – thousands. Could she kill herself now, before making amends for killing them?

With a grunt of determination, she wheeled clumsily in the direction of the Faulestadt, using her sword for a cane.

‘There are guards at both ends,’ said Gabriella behind her. ‘Lahmians. You won’t survive.’

Ulrika stumbled to a stop and looked north and south into the fog. It was impossible to tell if the countess was lying. She cursed, and turned, then turned again, thinking of a hundred things she could do if she wasn’t too wounded to move. She could climb down to the bridge’s understructure and sneak to the embankment under their noses. She could run and leap over their heads before they knew where she was. She could–

A slap of water and the groan of rope against rope made her pause, then step to the balustrade. The dark shape of a river boat was materialising out of the fog. She heard men aboard it and felt their heart-fires. It was a municipal craft, a salvage boat with winches and cranes at both ends, going to clear the wreckage of von Messinghof’s barges, no doubt. Well, it was going beyond the city walls at least. Ulrika stepped up on the rail as it came closer.

‘Daughter, please…’

Ulrika looked back at Gabriella, still lying on the cobbles nursing her shattered knee. ‘Mannfred von Carstein lives, countess. The war was to pave the way for his waking, and his invasion. Perhaps that is stopped now, but he is not. He will come, sooner or later. Tell your Queen to be ready.’

She leapt down to the mast of the ship, only a few yards below the bridge, and clung there, silent, listening for raised voices or alarms. There were none.

As the boat came out the other side, she looked back to the balustrade, but Gabriella’s face did not appear above it. She made a silent goodbye anyway, then turned and looked down the river.

Though guilt and grief and regret for all she had done and those she had hurt crushed her chest and made her wish that she could weep, she felt a strange elation as well. The world was before her, and though she didn’t know what she would do or where she would go, she was glad to be on her own. She had spent enough time in the nest, and far too much time seeking another nest after leaving the first. From here on there would be no more mistresses or masters, no more lovers or nemeses. She would not follow the dreams of others, or rebel against them. She would walk her path alone, until she discovered what she really was – human or monster, hero or villain.

The first rays of the sun touched the top of the mast only inches above her head. She edged down behind the sail, and looked ahead again. The smouldering remains of von Messinghof’s wrecked barges were just coming into view around a bend in the river. Only a few hundred yards and she would be able to drop to the deck, bound to the shore, and make for the trees.

With so much blood lost, she would need to feed soon, but she knew where to go. Von Messinghof had told his followers to make their rendezvous just a little way down the river. There would be Sylvanians there, and Sylvanians had strong blood.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nathan Long hails from Los Angeles, California, where he began his career as a screenwriter in Hollywood. He has written a wide selection of Warhammer fantasy novels, including the Blackhearts trilogy and more recently the adventures of Ulrika the Vampire. To many fans, he is best known for his work on the hugely successful Gotrek & Felix series, including five full-length novels and the first Black Library fantasy audio drama, Slayer of the Storm God.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Winona Nelson.

Map by Nuala Kinrade.

© Games Workshop Limited 2012. All rights reserved.

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ISBN 978-0-85787-652-2

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