CHAPTER TWELVE

Reckoning

Varik surveyed the carnage of battle through the unblinking eyes of Haarland Krug. He gazed upon the dead with equanimity. He had not chosen to count the number fallen, but knew that it was many. It mattered not. It was of no consequence to him whether he had lost ten of his men or a hundred, so long as he had resources left to finish the job.

And he had. A dozen or more of the Scarandar, the youngest and sturdiest of the crop, were gathered round him at the entrance to the tombs. They had borne their share of wounds inflicted by the Kislevite and her mercenaries, but their lust for blood was undiminished. They would not have long to wait.

On the open field their quarry had proved elusive; fast on horseback and—Varik was forced to concede—skilful with the sword. But now, in seeking refuge below ground in the tombs they had allowed themselves to be trapped. There was, he knew, just a single way in—or out—of the tombs. The iron door was still secure, but not for much longer.

He would gain entrance to the tombs by the simplest of means.

The emissary sank down upon one knee and squeezed shut his eyes. His mind floated free of the shackles of its human form. He had not far to reach out; it took but a moment to touch the tortured soul sitting alone amongst the exhausted mortals below ground. It took but a moment to utter the command. And this time the command was straightforward: Open the door.

The emissary rose to his feet, and waited, his ears attuned to the slightest of stirrings below ground. There were footsteps upon a stone stairway, deep beneath him still but growing ever closer.

Varik shouted a command and had three of the men around him ready to haul upon the iron doorway set into the ground at their feet. The footsteps grew louder until they had all but reached surface level. The emissary listened to the sound of a key turning inside a heavy lock, and smiled as the lock sprang open.

The Scarandar seized the door and freed it from the earth. Varik stepped forward and stared down into the vault. The expression on the face looking back up at him was both terrified and expectant.

Emissary Varik moved down onto the first step, a chosen dozen of his men close behind.

“Yes,” he affirmed, in answer to the unspoken question. “You have done well.”

Deep below ground, Elena sprang round in sudden alarm. “Fathers of Kislev,” she cried, “What was that?”

“The door,” Stefan shouted. “They’ve breached the door above us.”

He looked around desperately for some means of barring the passageway leading to the great hall, but knew it was almost certainly already too late. The chamber echoed with the sound of the Scarandar descending from above. They would pour into the tombs like water through a breach in a dam.

“We’ll have to stand and fight them here,” Stefan declared. “I’ll kill the first that dares to show himself. And we’ll take it from there.” It wasn’t much of a plan. But, right then, it was the only plan he had. He braced himself at the sound of footfalls upon the steps.

The sounds from above had reached the bottom of the shaft. Now their pursuers were in the short tunnel that led to the great hall. If they are to take us, Stefan vowed, then it will be at a handsome price. As he raised his sword to deliver the first blow, two figures emerged out of the gloom of the tunnel.

“No!” Elena shouted. “Wait!”

Stefan’s blade hung poised in mid-air. In front of him stood a huge, bear-like man with a pock-marked face like a battleground. Somewhere, Stefan knew, he had seen him before. But it was the figure being held captive by the giant that really caught Stefan’s attention. Lisette’s face was white with fear, her trembling frame dwarfed by that of her captor. The man looked directly at Stefan and spoke in a voice that seemed somehow not to be his own.

“Behold,” he said. The man’s face was immobile, yet the voice was full of mocking laughter. “Your faithful thief is returned to you.”

Elena stretched out a hand towards her maidservant, then hesitated, confused. “What is he talking about?” she demanded, of Lisette, of anyone.

“Lisette took the key from the priest as he lay dying,” Stefan said. “She’s our traitor. The one that Andreas tried to warn us of.”

“It can’t be true,” Elena cried. But they could both see, from the look in Lisette’s eyes, that it was. For a moment, Stefan actually experienced relief. The dark, almost unbearable suspicions about Alexei, even about Bruno, were suddenly washed away. Then he found himself facing the Bretonnian girl again, and his question echoed that voiced out loud by Elena.

“Why?” She gazed at Lisette in stunned disbelief. “Why have you betrayed me?”

Tears were streaming down Lisette’s face. “I’m powerless against them,” she sobbed. “It’s like there’s someone inside my body, someone evil. And the voice—the voice inside my head. I can’t get rid of it. It tells me what to do. I have no choice but to obey it, mistress, I have no choice.”

The man shoved Lisette forward, roughly. Light glinted off the blade of a knife that he had pressed close to the girl’s throat. As they moved into the chamber, more of the Scarandar followed in behind them.

“We are here for the Star,” the man said, speaking again with that strange, disembodied voice. “We have no other interest in any of you. Surrender the two parts that you have, and it’s over. Otherwise—” He traced a gentle line along Lisette’s throat with point of his blade. “Otherwise we start here.”

“Give them the Star and they’ll let us live,” Lisette said, desperately. “I’m sorry mistress, with all my heart, I’m sorry.”

Elena struggled with the emotions warring inside her, anger battling with pity. “I can’t let him kill her in cold blood,” she said finally to Stefan. “Whatever she’s done, I can’t let that happen.”

“They’re going to kill us all anyway,” Stefan said, quietly. “They just want us to surrender the Star before the butchery begins.”

“The Star will be of no use to you,” Elena told the man wielding the knife. “Killing Lisette or the rest of us will bring you no closer to its power.”

“I’m waiting,” the man said, the voice cold and emotionless. “Surrender the Star and we’ll leave you alone.”

“Mistress, I beseech you,” Lisette begged. “The Star is all they want.”

Stefan weighed their chances of survival. In the confined spaces of the tombs they would doubtless despatch a good many of the Scarandar. But this was no phantom army of cadavers waiting to be cut down. These flesh and blood men were well armed, and would fight until the last. Their minds might be enslaved but their bodies looked anything but feeble.

Stefan rated the chances of success as slim at best.

“All right,” he called out. “Let the girl come over here and I’ll give you what you want.”

“The Star,” the pock-faced man repeated. “First the Star, then you can have the girl.”

“Tomas,” Stefan said. “Give our friend here what he asks for.” Tomas looked momentarily blank, then, after a few seconds’ hesitation made a show of fumbling in the pockets of his breeches and shirt. “Here somewhere,” he said. “Sure it’s here somewhere.”

Stefan was directing his focus on the leader. If he could get close enough before the guards on either flank moved against him, he might be able to get one clean strike. They might not win the day, but their deaths would not be without a price.

Varik’s patience was reaching an end. It would have been easier to retrieve the Star of Erengrad before they put the woman and her escort to the sword, but if they had to tear the tombs apart to find it, so be it. The Star would be his, before or after the Kislevite and her friends met their doom. He would not tolerate being made a fool of by this callow mercenary and his followers. The emissary tightened the grip upon the knife in Haarland Krug’s leathery hand. The girl was as good as useless to him now. He may as well start the work of slaughter there.

Lisette writhed and whimpered in his arms, begging for her life to be spared.

“You promised me,” she screamed at Varik. “You promised you would set me free.”

“So I did,” the emissary concurred. “Never let it be said I failed to honour a promise.”

In a single motion he drew the blade of the knife back across the exposed flesh of the girl’s throat. Lisette’s dying scream echoed through the chamber as her body crumpled upon the ground.

Varik had already forgotten the girl. He was fixing his attention upon the swordsman they called Stefan. Here, he knew, the real threat lay. The emissary focused all of his energy like a single beam of light into the mind of Haarland Krug. The miller’s normally feeble brain was racing at a speed that would have defeated all but the quickest-witted of men. Stefan moved fast, but for Varik it was like watching events unfold in slow motion. He drew his own sword, relishing the combat to come. He was going to enjoy this.

In the moment before their swords met, a sudden commotion somewhere in the passage behind distracted him. Simultaneously, Varik registered irritation, panic and alarm. One of his men emerged from the darkness, clutching at his side.

The emissary had just enough time to see the crossbow bolt protruding from the man’s flank. Just enough time to notice the second figure, further down the corridor in the gloom, leveling the weapon at him.

Steel rang upon steel as Stefan Kumansky’s sword drove against his own with a force that Varik would scarcely have believed possible. In the fractured second that his host body toppled backwards, the emissary saw his second assailant level the bow and curl one finger around its trigger. Time enough for him to remember that this should not be happening. That they had trapped all their enemies below ground, and set a watch above. Time enough to realise that the bolt now spinning in the air between them had been launched with unerring aim.

The view of the crossbow bolt racing in was the final image ever to pass through the mind of Haarland Krug.

Werner Schlagfurst lay face down in the filth of blood and soiled earth. He was cold, wet, and confused beyond all comprehension. A few futile attempts to stand or even move his prostrate body along the ground told him that he was badly wounded, though shock was numbing most of the pain. Even as he tried to ask questions of his own memory, the answers relating to events of only minutes ago seemed to flee from him. He no longer even remembered who he was, or had been.

Images crowded into crumbling thoughts like soldiers marching in and out of a fog. He remembered himself as a warrior of some kind, a killer of men. Remembered how good that had felt. Remembered a leader that he had followed, and an image of himself in a bar brawl flitted through his thoughts. He remembered waiting, being told to wait with the others, somewhere near where he found himself now. That had been frustrating, hadn’t it? Waiting, not killing? But the leader had commanded it. Werner was to be a guard now.

Most clearly of all Werner remembered the daemon who had come, the daemon in the shape of a man. The daemon had fallen upon them like a remorseless machine, its only purpose to kill or be killed. Werner had enjoyed that at first, until he realised that the man-daemon was more than a match for all of them.

He watched them die, those strangers who were also his comrades, falling one after another beneath the red-dripping blade of this merciless enemy. And then it had been his turn. He was the only one left to guard—to guard—Werner struggled and failed to remember what it was he had been guarding. He had fought hard; he had no other thought but to fight. But it was never going to be enough.

A face swam into view in Werner’s fading memory. The face of the man who had struck him down. He had bent low over Werner to claim the crossbow that he had been carrying. Snatch it away from him as though he were a baby.

The face that held nothing but contempt for him, and the dark eyes that shone with a lust for battle that easily outshone his own.

Werner had no idea who the man had been, or why they had been attacked. A few minutes after the daemon had left him lying in the mud, something else had happened to Werner. It was as if a light had suddenly been snuffed out, and all reason and purpose channeling his being vanished.

Of one thing, at least, Werner Schlagfurst could be fairly sure. Soon he was going to die.

Varik was dying, too. It was not an experience he had ever expected to become familiar with. Over the course of lifetimes in the service of his lord he had perfected the art of evading death, fleeing from the failing body of one human host into another at the moment of dissolution. Many times he had mocked the heralds of Morr, turning back from their dread portals at the moment of final reckoning. He had come to consider himself immortal.

But, this time, he had left it too late. Long before Haarland Krug’s clumsy frame had crashed finally upon the hard ground, he should have fled, sought sanctuary in one or other of his servants gathered round him. But the attack had come too quickly. Varik had focused his whole being upon the destruction of Stefan Kumansky. He had not considered for a moment that another, equal threat might lurk behind him. Filtered through the consciousness of Krug, his mind had a fleeting instant to register the mocking smile on the face of his second assailant. Then Kumansky’s sword had crashed down upon him like a mighty hammer and, as he turned his surrogate face away, the crossbow bolt had struck, piercing him through the heart.

Varik lay upon the cold floor of the tombs, blood pouring in a red tide from the wound. The light was fading; it was as though he was drifting away into the mouth of a dark tunnel.

With what remained of his mortal sight, Varik stared up at the two men standing above him. The cursed Kumansky, leaning arrogantly upon his sword, and the smiling assassin with the crossbow.

“This one’s dead,” Varik heard him say to Kumansky.

Dead. The word reverberated through Varik’s disintegrating thoughts like the taunting laughter of the gods.

Dead.

It could not be. This couldn’t happen. With what strength yet remained to him, Varik channeled every ounce of his being into breaking free of his host. He would be revenged upon them, he would be revenged.

But the physical limitations of Haarland Krug’s dying body were lying heavy upon him now, weighing him down like chains. The gateway to the outer world was closing. He was barely capable of thinking any longer.

Lord Kyros, he beseeched. Do not desert your servant now.

Stefan looked round at the scene inside the tombs with a mixture of bewilderment and relief. With their leader fallen, the rest of the Scarandar had lost all interest in the fight. Some slumped to the floor, seemingly stripped of all energy. Others wandered around as though unable to remember why they were there. Or even who they were.

Looking down upon the figure lying on the ground, Stefan suddenly felt very tired. He raised his sword once more then lowered it to the ground and rested the weight of his body upon it. For a while he simply stood there, watching.

“This one’s dead,” a voice next to him said. “The rest of them will be easy meat now.”

Stefan turned to look into the glittering eyes of Alexei Zucharov. In contrast, his appetite for battle seemed barely whetted. Then again, Stefan noted with some bitterness, he hadn’t already had to fight off the army of the undead.

“Leave them,” Stefan said at last. “They’re no threat to us like this. We won’t waste any more time on them.”

“They’re the scum of Chaos,” Alexei retorted. “Impotent or not, they should be cleansed from the face of the world.”

“Not now,” Stefan told him. “We have to get out.” Weariness was pouring over him. He doubted he had the strength to fight on. “What happened to you?” he demanded of Zucharov. “We could have done with you down here.”

“I wasn’t of a mind to run and hide,” Alexei replied. “I decided to stay above ground where I had room to swing my sword. Anyway—” he grabbed the hair on the dead man’s head and twisted the body round, exposing the bloodied stock of the crossbow bolt still embedded in the chest of Haarland Krug. “I reckon I’ve played my part down here, don’t you?”

“I’m not arguing with you,” Stefan persisted. “But if we’re going to come through this then we have to work together, not follow our own whims.” He saw Zucharov’s face darken, and realised that exhaustion was drawing him into a quarrel that he neither needed nor wanted. Suddenly another voice cut across them.

“Both of you,” Elena shouted. “Shut up.” Her face was drawn and stained with tears, but there was a hard edge to her voice that made both men step back and listen.

“There are good times to have arguments,” she said, “and there are bad times. This is a bad time. A very bad time.” She moved towards Alexei and, to his obvious surprise, put her arms around him and kissed him once. “We’re glad you found us,” she said. “Very glad. And, now that we have, we need to get out. We need to leave, and leave now.”

“I’ll second that,” Tomas said.

“It makes sense to go while we have the chance,” Bruno concurred. Stefan looked around at the four of them. He paused at Alexei, waiting for any word of dissent he might have to offer. Zucharov shrugged in a way that suggested the argument was set aside, but not necessarily forgotten. He slung the crossbow back over one arm.

“We’re agreed then,” Stefan said. “There’s still a few good hours in the night yet. Let’s put as much distance as possible between Middenheim and us before the sun lights the new day.”