Blighted Empire

Chapter II

Middenheim

Sigmarzeit, 1118

Looming far above the loamy earth, the ancient trees of the Drakwald blotted out the sun with their intertwined branches, casting the forest in perpetual shadow. The only sunlight that filtered past their leaves was what snuck past as the boughs groaned and swayed in a cool spring breeze.

The men who rode beneath the trees did their best to avoid those rare patches of sunlight. The least reflection off a buckle or an exposed bit of armour would shine like a beacon in the darkened forest. The fell things that called the shadows home already had enough ways to detect strangers in their domain without making them a gift of still another.

They’d done their best to conceal their presence, limiting their numbers to half a dozen riders rather than a stronger company of horsemen. Under the guidance of Mad Albrecht, a trapper who had made his living off the Drakwald for decades, the riders had stained their leatherworks with the musky scent of forest buffalo and banded the hooves of their steeds with fur to muffle their steps. Anything that might make noise, from scabbards to loose bridles and straps, had been carefully secured lest they rattle against a bit of armour or a kicking spur.

Despite his attention to detail, Mad Albrecht didn’t think their chances of going unnoticed were very high. It truly was in the hands of Grim Grey Taal, Lord of the Forests, and the trapper whispered a constant prayer to his god as his eyes roved the forest, and his ears strained to catch every sound.

Watching the trapper from the saddle of his courser, Prince Mandred felt guilt pull at his heart. Mad Albrecht was the best woodsman in Middenheim barring one or two acolytes of Taal. A refugee from the Drakwald province, the man had an almost preternatural affinity for the forest. There was no better guide a patrol could ask for.

Which was why Prince Mandred felt the flesh behind his trim black beard flush with shame. Middenheim had lost several patrols to the forest, patrols that hadn’t been so fortunate to have a guide like Albrecht along. Patrols that hadn’t been so fortunate as to have Graf Gunthar making sure they had a man like Albrecht to guide them.

Mandred raised his eyes skywards, watching the branches rustle far overhead. He appreciated his father’s concern, was moved by his paternal devotion. At the same time, he resented being treated any differently from the brave men who risked their lives to keep the countryside surrounding the Ulricsberg secure. It was vital that the rural raugrafs and their peasants be protected. Without them, Middenheim and the refugee settlement of Warrenburg would starve. The patrols’ importance was why Mandred had insisted on leading some of them himself, as a gesture of solidarity with the rangers. But with his father showing him extra consideration, he was finding his presence to be detrimental rather than beneficial to morale.

The prince shifted in his saddle, glancing back at the other riders, catching them in a hushed conversation. They threw him a guilty look and quickly fell silent. A sense of regret tugged at him. He was an outsider to these valorous men, a pampered noble who could only play in their world, never actually share it. Mandred could almost curse his breeding, the vast fissure that separated noble from peasant, prince from dienstmann. The Black Plague hadn’t shown such distinction in its depredations. The turmoil and confusion left in its wake were similarly shared by all men regardless of class. Yet instead of drawing men closer, uniting them against the common adversity, it was rendering society ever more fractious and resentful.

‘I’ll report them to the graf,’ the stern voice of Beck growled, provoking a warning hiss from Albrecht up ahead. The burly knight just scowled at the wiry trapper. Quickly he turned his attention back to Mandred. ‘They have no cause talking about you.’

Mandred shook his head. Beck had been his bodyguard for six years now, ever since Franz had ridden with the prince to relieve the massacre of Warrenburg by marauding beastmen. Dear old Franz had contracted the plague in that expedition. He’d died down in the refugee camp, never again to set foot upon the Ulricsberg. Mandred was ashamed that it had taken the death of his friend to appreciate the meaning of sacrifice, of what it meant to put loyalty above one’s own life. A leader could command such loyalty. A good leader was one who would never abuse it.

Beck was a very different sort of man than Franz. He was a grim, hardened warrior, a veteran of the Knights of the White Wolf. He was a man of constant vigilance, ready to see threat in the most innocuous things. A surly look, an unguarded word, and he was ready to condemn a man as a traitorous dog. Right now, Mandred could almost see his bodyguard formulating the report he would give Graf Gunthar denouncing the three Dienstleute.

‘Let it be,’ Mandred told Beck. He forced a tone of levity into his voice. ‘A soldier who doesn’t complain is one who doesn’t understand his job.’

Beck frowned back at the horsemen. ‘As you will, your grace,’ he said.

‘I mean it, Beck,’ Mandred warned. With all the other problems afflicting them, he found it absurd that so much attention was still devoted to custom and propriety. The Empire was tearing itself apart, decimated by disease, brought to its knees by warfare. Barbarians still held Marienburg and much of Westerland. The province of Drakwald was an abandoned ruin, her countryside ravaged by beastmen, her great cities exterminated by the plague. Nordland was ablaze with civil war after the death of her grand count, grasping barons striving with one another to expand their own petty interests. Ostland was much the same, and the Ostermark was teetering on the brink of annihilation after a goblin horde descended upon the weakened land. As bad as things were in the north, Mandred had heard it was even worse in the south.

The Empire was in its death throes, and the scavengers were already gathering about the carcass.

Middenheim had withstood the worst of the plague, a fact that Mandred wasn’t too proud to attribute to the draconian policies of his father. Graf Gunthar had sealed the city against the tide of refugees, preventing the disease from gaining a foothold on the Ulricsberg. It had been a cruel, inhuman thing to do. Mandred still considered it vicious and villainous. At the same time, it had spared the people of Middenheim untold death and misery. Once, the prince had excoriated his father for such brutality. Now, he understood it, hoped that if such hideous necessity ever arose again he would have the strength to make the same decision.

Alone among the great cities of the Empire, Middenheim had emerged from the plague stronger than before. As the disease abated, refugees were accepted into the city. Warrenburg evolved from a shabby camp into an organised settlement. Regular patrols were dispatched to bring order to the surrounding country, stabilising much of Middenland and extending to its scattered villages the protection of the Ulricsberg. Something approaching normality had settled upon the province.

The price for that fragile peace was vigilance. Patrols such as this one constantly ranged through the forest, watching for signs of bandits, goblins and the ever-present threat of marauding beastmen. The abominable creatures had been beaten back time and again, but with small bands of refugees still braving the forest to seek the safety of Middenheim, the lure of easy prey kept the monsters creeping back. No man, even Graf Gunthar, could cleanse the Drakwald of all the evil hiding in its shadows.

A flash of white among the dark tree trunks brought Mandred’s head snapping around, his hand flashing to the sword at his side. As his eyes focused upon the shape loping out from the forest darkness, his grip on the sword faltered, his breath caught in his throat.

Trotting out from the trees was a great white wolf, the biggest Mandred had ever seen. It moved with a boldness, a nonchalance he’d never witnessed in a wolf before, as though it were completely indifferent to the armed riders less than a dozen yards away from it. The animal loped to within a few yards of the trail, then sat on its haunches and turned its head towards the prince. Mandred was struck by the piercing gleam of the wolf’s pale blue eyes, eyes that were like chips of frost cut from the peak of the Ulricsberg. There was more than an animal’s understanding in those eyes.

For a moment, man and wolf simply stared at one another, locked in each other’s gaze. Mandred felt his pulse quicken, his chest grow heavy. He felt the primal yearning for wild places, the howl of the wild primitive that lurks beneath the thin veneer of civilisation. He knew the thrill of the hunt, the ecstasy of the kill. The devotion of the pack…

In one smooth motion, displaying a lithe grace, the white wolf rose and dashed across the trail. Though it sprinted directly ahead of Mad Albrecht and caused the trapper’s horse to shy, the Drakwalder didn’t see the animal. Beck and the soldiers likewise gave no shouts of alarm or surprise. Mandred alone, it seemed, had seen the wolf.

‘Turn to the left,’ Mandred called out, an eerie feeling rushing through his body. The men with him directed questioning stares his way, wondering what strange impulse had come upon the prince. Mandred barely acknowledged them. Raising himself in the saddle, he peered into the forest, spotting the white blur of the running wolf.

‘You heard his grace,’ Beck snarled at the others. The knight did not know what reason Mandred had for his strange order, nor did he care. It was enough that the prince had issued a command. ‘Into the trees.’ Beck spurred his horse from the trail, charging into the forest.

Mandred smiled at the man’s unquestioning loyalty as he turned his own mount and left the trail. He could hear Albrecht and the others following close behind. Ahead, drifting between the trunks, its white pelt shining in the shadows, the wolf seemed to beckon.

For what seemed leagues, the rangers maintained their silent pursuit of a quarry only the prince could see. Several times, Mandred had despaired of the hunt, but always the white wolf would suddenly reappear, tantalisingly near yet frustratingly far away. He was reminded of old nursery fables about the hunter who had dared to pursue the sacred stag of Taal and been cursed by the god to forever pursue a quarry he would never catch. He thought of tales he had heard of the haunted Laurelorn forest and the fairy creatures that lurked within its borders.

Mandred felt the urge to pull rein, to stop this reckless hunt before he led his followers into disaster. There was magic here, try as he might he couldn’t dismiss that frightful realisation. Even as the decision to call off the chase came to him, he saw the wolf turn its head, stare back at him with its uncanny gaze. The prince’s determination faltered. He was reminded of another legend, one that wasn’t an obscure rumour or fable, but a part of everyday life in Middenheim. The white wolf, the sacred animal of Ulric.

The wolf dashed off among the trees, vanishing in the shadows. Mandred tried to catch some sign of it, standing up in his stirrups, craning his neck as he attempted to see through the thick cluster of trunks. Throughout the chase, he’d always caught sight of the wolf again after it had disappeared. This time, however, no trace of that lupine form rewarded his efforts.

‘Stop,’ Mandred called out, tugging at his reins. The command was quickly echoed by Beck, and soon the entire patrol was gathered about the prince. He could feel the sullen annoyance of the rangers as they stared at him with questioning eyes. None of them had seen the white wolf, so none of them understood the purpose behind this mad chase through the forest.

Mandred opened his mouth to explain when a strange smell struck his nose. It was the odour of smoke, and beneath it a loathsome stench he’d become horribly intimate with during the worst of the plague, when the refugees of Warrenburg had burned their dead. The stench was that of burning flesh.

Albrecht made a sound like the croak of a raven, a warning signal for the rest to remain silent. Dropping down from his saddle, the trapper gave his reins to one of the rangers and scrambled off into the forest gloom, his steps as silent as any beast of the wild. Beck drew his sword, one of the rangers unlimbered the bow strapped to his saddle. An expectant tension filled the air. These men were veterans of many patrols. This close to the Ulricsberg, they knew what the stink of cooking human flesh meant.

The Kineater was back in its old haunts.

Carroburg

Ertezeit, 1114

Carroburg had been the jewel in the crown of Drakwald. Less cramped and confined than Altdorf, more accessible than Middenheim, spared the foetid atmosphere of Marienburg, the city had been growing in prominence for the better part of a century. It had become a serious rival to Marienburg for trade on the River Reik, once even going so far as to blockade the river and exact a toll from all ships wishing to proceed northwards into Westerland. That practice had ended only after the elector of Westerland agreed to support the bid by a Hohenbach to become emperor.

The line of Drakwald emperors had continued to foster the growth of Carroburg, grooming the city to become a cosmopolitan jewel to rival Altdorf, Mordheim and even Nuln itself. Indeed, there had been many who thought the Imperial court would move to Carroburg when Nuln was abandoned by the Emperor. An old grudge between Count Vilner and the Emperor was rumoured to be the reason for Altdorf’s restoration as the capital.

War had brought the first blemish to the glories of Carroburg. When northmen attacked Westerland and occupied Marienburg, a veritable tide of trade was ended, decimating the coffers of Carroburg’s burghers and merchants. Worse was to come when the beastmen rampaged through the province, laying waste to the land. The brutes were never so bold as to lay siege to the city itself, but their depredations were felt almost as keenly. The agriculture of Drakwald was virtually annihilated, forcing the rich burghers to spend their hoarded wealth on the extra expense of importing food and wool. Waves of refugees flocked to the city, seeking protection behind its stone walls, further taxing the resources of the burghers.

Then the Black Plague struck. Already on the edge of disaster, the plague was the final push Carroburg needed to descend into the pit. The stream of food reaching the city from downriver slowed to a mere trickle while the waves of refugees increased tenfold. A vast squalor of shacks engulfed the fields beyond the walls, thousands of displaced peasants with nowhere else to turn. In these conditions, starvation ran rampant, disease flourished and the embers of despair grew into the fires of anarchy. Riots broke out across the city and shantytown, exploding into a conflagration of disorder and violence. For ten days the inferno raged, and before it exhausted itself a third of Carroburg was in ruins, a quarter of its people were dead. The shantytown was put to the torch, the land beyond the walls becoming a blackened desolation.

One tiny spark had pushed the dejected and the desperate to cast aside generations of obedience, adherence to the ancient distinctions between peasant and noble. They died by the hundreds in their futile revolt against a system that had enslaved and abused them, giving their lives to tear down the thrones of their callous masters. In the end, the revolt failed, crushed by the knights and soldiers of the Hohenbachs. The rebel dead were cast into an open pit beyond the walls, left exposed to feed worm and crow. Left as a lesson to those who survived that they should be thankful for what little they were allowed to have.

One tiny spark, a new tax upon a people already reduced to nothing, a fee upon each ear on each head. The penalty for non-payment was mutilation. No coin, no ear.

The tax was a penalty exacted upon the people of Drakwald for the role their last count had played in the conspiracy against the Imperial throne. The execution of Duke Konrad had done little to placate the ire of Emperor Boris. Others had to suffer for his cousin’s treachery, even if they’d had no part in it.

Emperor Boris drew back the velvet curtain covering the coach window. He sighed as he looked upon the blackened desolation ringing Carroburg. It seemed such a waste. After more than a year, he would have expected von Metzgernstein to have done something to reclaim the land, put it to some manner of usefulness. There was nothing that upset him more than seeing something that was unproductive, something that wasn’t being employed to the utmost to feed the Imperial treasury.

Boris looked away, a scowl on his face. ‘Remind us to reprimand von Metzgernstein,’ he told the wizened little man sitting next to him. The little man uttered a squeak of surprise and hurriedly drew quill and parchment from the bag he carried. The Emperor waited while his scribe started to write. ‘We find his management of the province to be lacking. Perhaps Count Vilner tolerated such laxity, but We will not.’ Boris tapped his chin as an idea occurred to him. ‘When we arrive at the castle, have his son arrested. Or his daughter,’ he reflected, uncertain what manner of relations the seneschal possessed. A lewd twinkle crept into his eye as he gazed across the carriage and stared at the young woman seated across from him. ‘Especially if she is pretty,’ he added.

Princess Erna’s skin crawled as she felt the Emperor’s eyes slither across her body. She struggled to keep the disgust from showing. Not from any sense of propriety or courtly decorum, but because she knew Boris enjoyed provoking her.

The effort was wasted. Boris laughed gustily at her expense. ‘Is it a crime that We desire to be surrounded by beautiful things?’ He laughed again as another thought occurred to him. ‘If it is, then as Emperor We will simply have to change the laws!’

‘As Your Imperial Majesty wishes,’ Erna answered, her voice demure. Years of suffering under Adolf Kreyssig’s hate had beaten the spirit from her.

‘That goes without saying,’ Boris chuckled. He pulled the curtain wide so that all within the carriage could see the burned desolation. ‘Everything exists only as long as it pleases Us. The moment it forsakes that sacred obligation to the Imperial crown…’ He snapped his fingers as though snuffing a rushlight.

‘A wise policy, Your Imperial Majesty,’ the rotund Doktor Wolfius Moschner agreed, his voice less that of a wolf and more like a yipping lapdog. ‘Noble and peasant alike must remember to whom they owe their loyalty.’

After so many years serving as the Emperor’s personal physician, Moschner knew exactly the right things to say to evoke his patron’s pleasure. Boris leaned back against the leather cushions lining his seat, smiling as he digested the doktor’s flattery. An impish smile teased the corners of his mouth as he considered the other occupants of the carriage.

‘What do you think, Pieter?’ Boris asked the man seated in the opposite corner. ‘Do you agree? Are the nobles as beholden to Us as the peasants?’

The man the Emperor addressed was Baron Pieter von Kirchof, a swordsman of such renown that his fame was known in every corner of the Empire. He had risen to become the Emperor’s Champion, defending the virtue of his master in judicial contests and private duels for more than a decade. Few who crossed sword with him had lived to tell the tale. None had ever left the field of honour without feeling the bite of his blade.

Despite the fame of his sword, the formidable reputation he had earned in mortal combat a hundred times over, it was a subdued man who answered his Emperor. Von Kirchof kept his eyes lowered, his tone deferential as he spoke. ‘All men are beholden to their Emperor,’ he said.

Boris laughed at his champion. ‘You more than most, eh? What sort of lands did your family possess before you entered Our service? A miserable demesne in the middle of a swamp with a few hundred inbred peasants to serve you!’ The Emperor’s eyes left von Kirchof, lingering for a moment on the young woman seated beside him. ‘Yes, Pieter, you owe much to Us.’

Von Kirchof’s niece looked away as the Emperor scrutinised her, unable to repress the shudder that swept through her.

‘We all owe you much, Your Imperial Majesty,’ Doktor Moschner said, trying to ease the tense atmosphere. Boris ignored the physician, turning to gaze out the window once more.

‘When you have advice about Our health, you may speak,’ he told Moschner. ‘Otherwise, if We want your opinion, We’ll tell you what it is.’

The Imperial procession was passing the gates of Carroburg now, but the scene beyond the window was hardly more cheerful than the blackened desolation outside the walls. The once opulent residences of the burghers were fallen into disrepair, plaster peeling away from timber walls, roofing tiles lying strewn in the streets. Iron lamp posts, an affectation absent even in Altdorf, bore the marks of rust and neglect. The road was pitted with holes, much of the masonry cracked and broken. Heaps of rubbish lay strewn in the gutters, and hordes of rats brazenly prowled the alleyways.

The city that had only a few years before been the great light of the Empire was now a wallow of decay. The handful of people walking the streets were ragged, scrawny apparitions that hid their faces as the Imperial procession rode past, the last dregs of self-respect scourged from them by the Emperor’s henchmen and his purges.

Emperor Boris reached to his jewelled belt and removed a few coppers from a leather pouch. Squinting at the coins for a moment, he turned back to the window and threw them into the street. He laughed as he watched the ragged scarecrows rush to retrieve their bounty, hobbling along on withered legs, groping in the gutter with skeletal hands. Still laughing, he took another clutch of coins and threw them in the direction of an old char woman leaning against a lamp post. Caught by surprise, the woman staggered back as the coins struck her. A mob of more observant beggars came running down the street, trampling the old woman underfoot in their hurry to gather up the money.

Boris clapped his hands together, his face glowing in a cherubic smile. He noted the revulsion on the face of the woman across from him. Reaching into his belt, he removed a few more coins. ‘Great sport,’ he told Erna. ‘Would you care to try?’ The woman shook her head, but Boris persisted. Reaching out, he took her hand and forced the coins into her palm. ‘Just once,’ he told her.

‘Perhaps I might try,’ Moschner offered.

Emperor Boris directed a withering look at his physician. ‘Pay for your own amusements,’ he said, then turned his attention back to Erna. ‘Go ahead,’ he prodded her. ‘They’re just peasants. They won’t bite. They wouldn’t dare!’ The levity drained from the monarch’s features; his voice became a low snarl, his hand tightened around Erna’s. ‘Do as you are told.’

Her cheeks flushing with shame, turning her head from the window, Erna cast the coins into the street. Emperor Boris leaned his head from the window, laughing at the bedlam as the beggars scrambled for the discarded coins.

‘A poor cast,’ he chuckled, then grinned as a thin shriek rose from somewhere behind them. ‘We’re afraid your coins landed in the street. One of the wretches has gotten himself crushed by the Count of Stirland’s coach.’ He leaned back inside and patted Erna’s hand.

‘We thank you for an amusing diversion,’ the Emperor told her, smiling as he felt the shudder that passed through Erna’s body.

Soon the urban mire of decayed Carroburg was behind them. They passed through the western gate, following the long causeway that reached out across the Reik, rising in a spiral of brick and mortar to the crest of a tall hill. Here, upon the natural spire, a succession of fortresses had been built by the old Thuringian kings, culminating in the great stone walls of the Schloss Hohenbach.

The mighty castle dominated the landscape, looming over the sprawl of Carroburg, commanding the approaches along the Reik. It was the situation of the Otwinsstein that had dictated the construction of the original timber tower and the first mud-hut village to shelter in its shadow. It was the existence of the castle that allowed Carroburg its command of the river trade and had many times earned its burghers the epithet of ‘pirate barons’.

Now, the Schloss Hohenbach opened its monstrous iron gates to admit a plunderer who made the grasping dealings of Carroburg’s worst burgher seem petty. Emperor Boris breathed deeply as he watched the imposing gatehouse with its bronze gargoyles and megalithic statuary draw close.

‘The ancestral seat,’ the Emperor commented with a smile. ‘It is good to be home again.’

‘I understood you had never visited this place before,’ Erna said. It was the first time she had spoken since the incident with the beggars.

Emperor Boris frowned at the woman’s insolence, but after a moment of consideration decided to overlook it. ‘One is never a stranger to one’s legacy,’ he pronounced. A moment of reflection and he motioned for his scribe to record the statement for posterity.

The carriage was soon within the walled courtyard. Emperor Boris waited until von Kirchof left the carriage before making any move to leave his seat. The attempt to usurp his throne had taught him to be cautious. To always let one of his subjects precede him. After a moment, von Kirchof appeared at the door. Bowing low, he waited while his sovereign disembarked. The rest of the occupants followed close behind.

The towers of the Schloss Hohenbach glowered down at them like primordial titans. They were cold and severe, devoid of the artistry and elegance that characterised the Imperial Palace. The castle had been built as a fortress, and ten generations of Hohenbachs had been unable to endow it with warmth or cheer.

Emperor Boris paced across the courtyard, shaking his head as he gazed up at the hoary battlements and ancient towers. Forcing a smile onto his face, he looked back at Princess Erna and Sasha, von Kirchof’s young niece. ‘Now, perhaps you ladies understand why it was necessary to bring some pretty things to this place.’ He turned away as the rest of the Imperial procession started to enter the gates. Twenty carriages conveying the highest echelons of Imperial society, the most affluent potentates in the whole Empire. The men and women hand-picked by Emperor Boris to be preserved from the plague, to share this refuge from the blight ravaging the land.

‘We may be here quite some time,’ the Emperor continued. ‘Long enough, I think, for all of us to become well acquainted.’