Castle of Blood, page 10
Bruno also came to Notker’s defence. ‘The count wanted us to turn on each other. If we stick together, if we fight this thing together, we can beat it.’ He turned to the duardin. ‘The chapel has only one way in, a gate with iron bars. We’ll be able to see Reiner if he tries to get in. Maybe we can fight him from behind the bars. Spears, swords, whatever it takes. Keep fighting him. Keep him from ever getting in.’
Alrik nodded. ‘So you still want to use Notker as bait,’ he stated. He shifted the weight of the mattock on his shoulders. ‘Well, let’s go have a look at this chapel and then see what kind of trap we can set.’
The cogsmith had winced when he said trap, something that wasn’t lost on the humans who heard him. For the moment, however, no one challenged him about it. Bernger suspected that they were of much the same mind as he was. Somewhere in the vastness of Mhurghast, Reiner was prowling the halls, and wherever he was, he would eventually come looking for Notker.
An iron gate and the holy protection of Sigmar sounded like good things to have between themselves and the daemon.
Magda paced behind the iron gate and cast frequent glances through the bars into the darkened hall. Ottokar and Bruno had lit some of the candles when Bruno had left, but as yet there’d been no hint of activity beyond a few rats slinking around.
Ottokar sat in the barricading pew and watched his daughter. Inge was resting in one of the other pews, reluctantly surrendering to her husband’s theory that at least one of them should get some sleep.
‘Worrying won’t make them show up any faster,’ Ottokar told Magda.
She stopped pacing and looked at the swordsmith. ‘Have you ever tried not to think about something?’
Ottokar nodded in defeat. He rapped the hollow silver of his false arm. ‘Every day. It doesn’t work. The more you try to ignore some things, the more you think about them.’
Magda held her father’s gaze. She wanted to talk to him about it, to ask what had happened. He’d never told her before. Not really told her. Everything she knew was bits and pieces picked up here and there. She thought if she asked this time, he would tell her everything. That was why she didn’t ask. It might be better not to know.
‘Do you think Reiner will come?’ she said. ‘I mean here, to this sanctuary?’
‘Not until it gets Notker,’ Ottokar said. He stared off, no longer looking at Magda but at some image in his mind. Something too terrible for words. ‘The count said it’d look for a new host once it… did what it was going to do.’
Magda leaned down beside Ottokar and laid her hand on his knee. ‘If what happened to Reiner happens to me…’
Ottokar took hold of her and crushed her against him. ‘Sigmar’s grace, don’t say that. Don’t even dare to think it! Nothing is going to happen to you. Nothing!’
Sounds from the hallway caused Magda to pull away from her father. She cried out in joy when she saw Bernger and Bruno coming back with the other guests. Her shouts brought the others in the chapel trickling forwards to watch the approaching group.
‘So they still have Notker with them,’ Roald observed. ‘Reiner still hasn’t come for him.’
‘Maybe… maybe there is no… maybe it isn’t real,’ Hartmann muttered. ‘Maybe it’s all just some cruel trick. Maybe Reiner went crazy, had some kind of fit!’
Abarahm rose from the pew Saskia had laid him out on. The aelf’s laugh was malicious. ‘You can believe whatever idiocy you like, but the count did not wait twenty years and slit his own throat simply to play a trick.’
Hartmann wilted under the aelf’s scorn. He withdrew towards the altar, where Sigune continued to offer prayers.
Ottokar and Heimo helped Magda move the blockade. Roald took hold of the gate and regarded the approaching group.
‘I will allow the rest of you to enter, but not Notker,’ the baron declared. ‘He stays outside.’
Magda spun around and glared at him. ‘What gives you the right?’
‘Rank and breeding.’ Roald sneered at her. ‘Things your common blood wouldn’t appreciate.’ He tightened his hold on the gate. ‘I’m in command here, and I say that man doesn’t enter.’
Roald did not back away, even when Magda’s fingers closed around the grip of her falchion. It was when Hiltrude approached him that his swagger vanished.
‘If rank and breeding are the measure we are using,’ the baroness stated, ‘then I would remind you that in our alliance, you are the junior partner.’ Hiltrude waved at the gate. ‘Open it. Let them in. All of them.’
Roald hesitated just a moment too long for Magda’s liking. She stepped past him and seized the gate, pulling it from his grip. Roald withdrew, casting dark looks at anyone who glanced his way.
Bernger and Bruno escorted Notker into the chapel. They stepped aside while the others entered. Lothar and Thilo went over to Saskia while the two duardin examined the gateway and began discussing how best to reinforce it.
Magda joined the two Walkenhorsts. ‘I talked with my mother. She explained everything. She felt guilty about what happened to Hagen, but I don’t think it was her fault.’ She laid her hand on Bruno’s arm. ‘I don’t think it was your fault either.’
Bruno shook his head. ‘Fault and blame are hard things to accept and even harder to let go of. Hagen made mistakes, but we helped him make them.’
‘I talked with my mother beside Hagen’s sepulchre–’
‘His what?’ Notker asked.
Magda pointed to the stone sarcophagus near the altar. ‘Hagen’s buried there.’
‘He can’t be,’ Notker muttered. ‘I didn’t allow it.’ He walked towards the sarcophagus, mumbling under his breath.
‘But there’s a sepulchre there,’ Magda said.
‘Maybe,’ Bruno conceded, ‘but he can’t be inside. Hagen took his own life. His remains would have to be burned and scattered over water to keep his spirit from coming back as a wraith. Count Wulfsige would never have risked that happening to Hagen.’
‘But I’ve seen his sepulchre,’ Magda persisted.
Notker was almost at the foot of the steps that climbed up to the altar and the sepulchre beside it. Suddenly there was a furious agitation around the sarcophagus. The heavy stone lid was flung upwards, launched like a boulder from a catapult. It landed among the pews, smashing three rows into kindling. A foul, charnel smell billowed across the sanctuary, the stench of congealed blood. Magda nearly gagged as the reek washed over her. It was an effort to turn her eyes towards the sepulchre. What she saw there turned her blood to ice.
Hagen was not inside the sepulchre, but something else was. It rose upwards on thin legs, rising and rising until it was so tall it had to bow its head to keep from striking the ceiling. Crimson bones showed through the wet, dripping meat of its body, and when it reached out with its skeletal arms, the flesh peeled back in bloody tatters. The head that turned and fixed Notker with its murderous stare was devoid of skin, a huge and fanged skull with hellish fires blazing from its sockets.
‘Reiner!’ Notker clutched at his chest and tears fell from his eyes.
Magda screamed. She was not the only one. Terror fairly dripped off everyone in the chapel. Sigune wailed in an agony of fear and prostrated herself before the altar, her hands waving frantically to make the sign of the Hammer again and again. Hiltrude pushed Liebgarde behind her and backed away towards the gate. Lothar fumbled in his pockets, dislodging strange charms and talismans. Thilo cried out and fell in a faint across one of the pews. The Walkenhorsts and the duardin gripped their weapons, but stood frozen in horror at the sight before their eyes.
‘The daemon!’ Roald shouted. ‘You see! I warned you!’
The daemon turned its grisly stare away from Notker and looked towards the altar. Hartmann fled from the dripping monstrosity, running across the chapel until he fell over one of the pews and collapsed to the floor. Sigune screamed. She grabbed the candlesticks from the altar, crying out to Sigmar for protection. In her panic she threw them at the daemon. Even before she did, the bony arms were lifted to ward off the attack. Magda had the ghastly idea that the fiend knew what Sigune was going to do even before she did it. The gilded missiles struck the arms and clattered to the floor. The daemon stepped away from the sepulchre and its bony talons closed around Sigune’s head. It picked her up and flung her into one of the windows. The stained glass shattered under the impact, but the metal frames held and tossed her back into the chapel, her body shredded by the glass.
‘No!’ Magda cried. Without thinking about what she was doing, she ran towards the grotesque daemon. Ottokar caught hold of her and spun her around, flinging her into the arms of Bernger and Bruno.
‘Hold her!’ Ottokar ordered, before drawing his sword and charging towards the sepulchre. Magda struggled against the Walkenhorsts, desperate to break free.
‘By the mercy and glory of Sigmar!’ Notker was moaning, his hands closed together and raised towards the daemonic beast in appeal. ‘Reiner, have pity on me!’
The daemon glared down at the priest for only a moment, then swung around and glared at the swordsmith as he charged across the chapel. It seemed to relish the man’s defiance.
‘Father! No!’ Magda could only watch as Ottokar put himself between the daemon and Notker. His sword flashed out in the rakish sweep she knew so well. The fiend’s belly was opened by the slashing blade. A killing blow, if Ottokar’s enemy had been truly alive.
The daemon snatched at Ottokar with one skeletal hand. It caught hold of his fake arm and crushed the hollow limb in its murderous grip. The swordsmith thrust at the daemon, his blade taking it between the ribs. Rancid blood spurted from the wound, but still the monster ignored its hurt. It pulled, and the silver arm ripped away as its straps snapped. Suddenly seizing Ottokar’s real arm, the daemon swung him around and bashed him against the altar. A sickening crunch sounded from the impact as his spine folded around the unyielding stone.
The brutal, hideous deaths stunned those who watched. Magda fell to her knees, all the strength drawn out of her when she saw her father die. She could see her mother sitting in open-mouthed horror in one of the pews, paralysed by the havoc around her.
After Ottokar’s death, no one made a move when the daemon turned towards Notker again. Least of all the former priest. He was staring up at the death that loomed over him. His gaze was not fixed on the fanged skull or the skeletal talons. Instead he was looking at the tattered rags that clung to the giant daemon. All that remained of the clothes Reiner had been wearing when the Mardagg took possession of him.
‘By Sigmar, let there be some pity…’ Notker’s pleas echoed through the chapel.
The daemon’s claws closed around Notker’s head. Blood cascaded from the man’s neck as the monster pulled. His body started to lift off the ground, then there was a wet, tearing sound, and it flopped to the floor without its head.
The daemon opened its hand and looked at the ghastly trophy it held. Then its malignant gaze swept across the rest of the chapel. Magda thought the fleshless skull smiled at them. The monster crumpled to its knees. The tattered flesh and elongated bones began to bubble and froth. A pink foam erupted from its mouth and chest, from the now empty sockets of its skull. Slimy strings of blood drooled from its giant body, pooling on the floor in a mire of gory scum.
The long arms crumbled, disintegrating into a charnel mash. The chest melted into crimson ooze. The skull sank into the putrid mass, its bones boiling away. Soon all that remained was bloody residue, a few tatters of cloth and the soiled blade of Ottokar Hausler.
‘It… it is dead!’ Roald exclaimed.
Magda looked away from the corpse of her father and glanced over at the baron. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It simply left Reiner to find itself another host.’
Chapter VI
Roald poured himself another glass of brandy. The first had steadied his hand enough that this time only a little of the liquor spilled across the mahogany cabinet. The baron drank it down in a single jolt. At once he felt a fortifying warmth rush through him. Feeling more secure, he turned from the cabinet and looked across the room.
The surviving guests were back in the parlour. No one had any desire to linger in the chapel.
So much for the vaunted protection of Sigmar.
Roald looked across to Hiltrude and Liebgarde. His wife and daughter were sitting together on a couch, each holding the other’s hand. The baroness retained a stolid appearance, but she didn’t fool Roald. There was just a bit too much detachment in the expression for it to be real. Inside, he knew, she was every bit as rattled as the wide-eyed Liebgarde. A slight bit of positivity to come out of this horror, he thought.
The two duardin were keeping to themselves, leaning against the far wall of the room. They’d appropriated two decanters from the liquor cabinet and were gradually draining the contents. Even so, there was a sharpness about their eyes as they watched the door leading into the hall. Roald wasn’t sure what they thought they’d see. The daemon certainly wasn’t going to make much use of the pile of mush it had turned Reiner into. The thing would need a new host to continue its murderous work.
Hartmann and his children were sitting near the fireplace. The younger Senfs were distraught over Sigune’s horrible death. They sat close together on two chairs, crying and consoling one another. Their father was standing apart from them. He was trying to keep his eyes focused on the fire, but Roald caught the merchant casting furtive glances at Heimo and Herlinde. When he looked at his children, it wasn’t with sympathy. Hartmann had the attitude of a rabbit watching a fox. It wasn’t hard to understand the reason for his fear. The rest of them had only a single child for the daemon to possess. Hartmann’s chances that he would be the next to be marked for death were double.
The Walkenhorsts and the Hauslers were together, gathered around the divan. The Hauslers were taking the death of Ottokar hard, especially the daughter. Magda sat staring at the floor, unresponsive to the efforts of Inge and Bernger to comfort her. Bruno stood away from the three, one hand on the hilt of his sword. As though he’d be able to do anything to protect them when the time came.
The Krebs and Abarahm were towards the back of the room. Lothar was having a hushed conversation with the aelf while his son stood back and listened. As ever, Saskia had that listless, careless attitude, slouched in a chair with a vapid expression on her pretty face. Roald wasn’t sure what concoction the alchemist was administering to his wife, but its potency couldn’t be argued. Even the scene in the chapel hadn’t been enough to rouse the woman.
Roald took up one of the empty glasses from the cabinet. He dashed it to the floor with a dramatic flourish. The sound of breaking glass had everyone except Saskia looking his way. The baron seized upon their attention.
‘Well, now we know that the count’s threats are real,’ Roald said. ‘No room for doubt now. The question is, what are we going to do about it?’
Alrik ran his hand through his beard and shook his head. ‘Last idea someone came up with was to hide in the chapel. That didn’t work out so well. The daemon was there just waitin’. Like it already knew what was goin’ to happen.’
The cogsmith’s words had Hartmann recoiling away from the fireplace. ‘Can that be true? Does the… thing know what we’re going to do before we do it?’
‘The daemons of Khorne are not known for their subtly,’ Lothar said. The alchemist smiled at Hartmann. ‘The… Mardagg is a being that exists only to kill. To harvest death for the Blood God. In such readings as I have made into the subject, there is no suggestion that it has any prophetic abilities. Fate and possibility are more the province of the daemons that serve Tzeentch.’
‘Yet it knew we would go to the chapel,’ Roald pointed out. ‘You can’t deny that.’
Lothar conceded the point, but had an explanation. ‘When it took possession of Reiner, the daemon also claimed the boy’s mind and memories. It knew everything Reiner knew about his father. From that, it could predict that Notker would pray for the protection of Sigmar and seek safety in the chapel.’
‘It looked like it knew who was going to strike at it before they did,’ Magda said, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘It knew my father was going to attack it.’
‘Coincidence,’ Lothar said, but there was uncertainty in his tone. He shook his head. ‘No, it was only using Reiner’s knowledge to plot its actions.’
‘But would the daemon subject itself to the sanctity of such a place?’ Hiltrude wondered. Roald took a grim pleasure in the undercurrent of fear behind her words.
‘There was no sanctity in the chapel,’ Lothar stated. ‘If there had been, the daemon could not have long endured there. Yet it must have been hidden in Hagen’s sepulchre for hours. No, whatever sanctity had been there was abolished.’ He paused and nodded as he connected an idea. ‘Yes, by Notker himself. Recall what he said about removing the ancient protections placed in Mhurghast by the Stormcasts? He did not scruple about de-sanctifying even Sigmar’s chapel. Reiner must have known what he’d done.’
‘At Count Wulfsige’s behest,’ Bruno cursed.
Roald walked towards Lothar. ‘But was Notker aware of why he was doing it? Did he know this hellish night was part of the count’s plans?’ The baron shook his head. ‘I think not. No man of Notker’s timidity would stick his head into the dragon’s mouth like that. Perhaps he agreed as a concession to the count’s loss of faith in Sigmar after Hagen’s suicide.’
‘There can be no question that Notker was unaware of why he was de-sanctifying the castle,’ Lothar stated. He looked over at Abarahm. The aelf motioned with his slender fingers for him to continue.
‘I have been consulting with Abarahm, asking if his mother had any contact with the count after Hagen’s death. His information confirms my worries. It was from Nushala Iliviar that he learned of the…’ He hesitated before speaking the fearsome name. ‘Mardagg, and how it might be summoned. The count had consulted with her frequently on the subject of daemons. It is no doubt a measure of her arrogance that she believed no human could possibly put such esoteric knowledge to use.’
