‘An effective one, Anark, and a reliable one – Elize, keep your trained ape muzzled, please,’ Markos said, poring over the map unrolled across the bench.
‘Ape, am I? I am your Grand Master, Markos, and you had best not forget it!’ Anark said, reaching for his sword. Elize caught his wrist and prevented him from drawing it. Which was wise, in Erikan’s estimation. Markos was just looking for an excuse to humble Anark. Then, so was everyone else. Anark was fine in small doses, but they’d been cooped up with him for weeks, and he was champing at the bit to bully someone into a fight. Mostly he seemed to want to fight Erikan, but anyone would do, by this point. Erikan looked down at Anark and smirked, then he brought the femur up and recommenced playing his tune.
‘Oh believe me, I have not,’ Markos purred, without turning around. ‘You deserve your new position as surely as poor, late Tomas did.’
Alberacht cackled where he crouched, gargoyle-like, on the wall. Anark glared at him, but the monstrous vampire didn’t even deign to return it. Instead, he dropped from the wall and ambled towards Markos. He tapped the map with one of his claws. ‘Heldenhame, that’s where our trouble will come from, you mark me, children.’
‘The Knights of Sigmar’s Blood,’ Nyktolos said. He was running a whetstone along the length of his sword as he leaned against the garden wall. ‘Master Nictus is correct. I have encountered them before. They are dreadful creatures, pious and murderous in equal measure.’ He looked up and frowned. ‘And Heldenhame is a tough nut indeed. High, thick walls and an armed populace do not for an easy siege make, should we get that far.’
‘But it has its weak points. Everything has a weak point,’ Elize said. Hands behind her back, she paced back and forth. ‘We simply need to find it.’
‘And hit it,’ Anark added. Elize smiled and stroked his cheek. Erikan, still in his branch, rolled his eyes. He played an annoying little tune, causing her to look up at him. Her expression was unreadable.
‘Are you ever sorry that you taught him how to speak, cousin?’ Markos asked. Anark’s face flushed purple and he made a half-hearted lunge for the other vampire, only to be stopped by Elize and Alberacht.
Erikan made to play accompaniment to the farce below, but lowered his femur as the sound of bells shook the air. He tossed aside the bone and dropped from his perch. ‘The bells,’ he said.
‘Yes, thank you, Erikan. Any other blindingly obvious statement you’d care to make?’ Markos snarled as he swept aside his maps and shot to his feet. ‘It’s why the bloody bells are ringing that I’m interested in.’
A pack of yowling, slavering ghouls surged past the garden entrance, accompanied by slower-moving skeleton guards, clad in rusty armour and brown rags. ‘The prisoners are making another escape attempt,’ Elize said. She spun and pointed at Alberacht and Nyktolos. ‘Get to the courtyard. That’s the quickest way out of the castle.’ She turned to Markos. ‘Rally the rest of the order. We’ll need to search the castle, if it’s anything like last time.’
‘And who put you in charge, cousin?’ Markos purred.
‘I did,’ Anark growled, drawing his blade. ‘You will obey her as you would me, cousin.’
‘She’s right, Markos,’ Erikan said, striding past the three of them. ‘And we have no time for arguments regardless. The prisoners are too valuable to risk either their escape or their deaths at the hands of Lord Mannfred’s other guests.’ Markos made a face, but fell silent. In the last few weeks, more than one attempt had been made on Mannfred’s inner sanctums by various vampires and necromancers enjoying his hospitality. If it wasn’t the Lahmians, it was the Charnel Circle, or one of the lesser von Carsteins, seeking, as ever, to supplant their betters.
And while no one liked to mention it, food had been getting scarce. While Strigany caravans were still trundling along the old Vargravian road, bringing wagons full of kidnapped men and women to Castle Sternieste, pickings in Sylvania itself were growing distinctly thin. Only the Strigany or other human servants could pass through the barrier of faith, and fewer of them returned every day. Some likely fell to the Imperial patrols that guarded the hinterlands of the neighbouring provinces, but others had, perhaps, simply decided not to come back.
Erikan was out of the garden a moment later, the others trailing in his wake or splitting off to do as Elize had commanded. Soon it was just himself and Elize and Anark, hurrying in pursuit of the ghoul pack they had seen earlier. The dead that stood sentry in every corridor and stairwell were all moving in the same direction, directed by their master’s will.
Volkmar and the others had tried to escape before, with predictable results. Once, they had even made it as far as the stables. But as more and more vampires had flocked to Sternieste, so too had the likelihood grown that another such attempt would lead to more than a beating for Mannfred’s amusement. Hungry vampires had all the self-control of stoats in a hen house. Regardless, there were only so many ways that the prisoners could go. Erikan thought that it was likely that they would simply try to bull their way out this time. Subtlety had got them nowhere, after all.
His conclusion was borne out by the trail of shattered bones and the twisted bodies of fallen ghouls that littered the stairs leading down to the lower levels of the keep. Erikan felt a grim admiration for the prisoners. That admiration only grew stronger when they found one of their own, a Drakenhof Templar, with his skull caved in and a jagged length of wood torn from a postern shoved through a gap in the side of his cuirass and into his heart. Anark cursed. Elize shook her head. ‘They know us of old, these mortals.’
‘Well, you know what they say… Familiarity breeds contempt,’ Erikan murmured. He didn’t recognise the vampire. Then, there were many in the order he didn’t know. Elize had kept him by her side at all times. That was one of the many reasons he’d left, and sought out Obald again.
They heard the clash of arms and followed the screams of dying ghouls. Volkmar and the others had made it through Sternieste to the inner courtyard that separated the main keep from the outer. It wasn’t hard to figure out how they’d made it that far – though the castle’s population had increased, it was night, and almost all of its inhabitants were out hunting. Those who were left were likely trying to either avoid getting involved, or were waiting to see how far the escapees got. You had to make your own entertainment, in times like these. But it wouldn’t be long before certain vampires got it in their heads to try to get in on the fun.
Erikan sprang out into the rain-swept courtyard and took in the fight roiling about him. Only seven of the prisoners had made it this far, but they were giving a good account of themselves. Most of that was down to Mannfred’s command that they not be harmed. A matronly woman swung a brazier about her with determined ferocity, sending ghouls tumbling and scrambling to get out of her way. A one-handed man guarded her back, a polearm held awkwardly in his good hand.
Volkmar himself led the way, watching over the elf maiden, who sagged against the shoulder of the young priest of Morr. And the Ulrican and the Myrmidian kept the group’s flanks protected. The Myrmidian had found a sword from somewhere, and laid about him with enthusiasm and skill, crying out to his goddess all the while. The Ulrican had a spear, and as Erikan watched, he impaled a skeleton guard, hoisted it, and sent it flying towards the courtyard wall. Volkmar was leading the group towards the portcullis that separated the inner and outer keeps, where Count Nyktolos waited, leaning on his blade, his monocle glinting in the torchlight.
Above them all, shapes, lean and a-thirst, ran along the walls, keeping pace but not interfering, not yet. Erikan recognised a number of Mannfred’s more recent hangers-on in that group, their eyes glazed with hunger and ambition as they looked down on the Grand Theogonist. Erikan understood that look, though he didn’t feel it himself. Volkmar was the living embodiment of the church that had made the scouring of Sylvania and the destruction of its bloodthirsty aristocracy a central tenet of its dogma. To see him like this, running frightened, dying on his feet, must be like a gift from the gods that Mannfred had barred from his kingdom.