He swung his warhammer. It was a fine strike, one that Huss himself would have been proud of – fast, hard, well-aimed. The hammer-head flew out, angled at the vampire’s neck.
At the same time, a single shot pierced the night, just as well-aimed. It struck Wolff clean in the forehead, penetrating the bone and punching a clean, round hole through his skull. The warhammer clanged to the ground, and the warrior priest tumbled backward, collapsing under the lintel of his own temple before coming to rest amid the shattered bones of his victims.
Vlad looked down at the corpse thoughtfully. The man’s zeal had been striking. Had he himself been capable of such fervour, once? Of course he had, but it was hard to remember just how it felt.
Herrscher emerged into the light, his pistol still smoking. The witch hunter had a tortured look on his face.
‘There,’ said Vlad, turning away from Wolff to look at him. ‘That was not so hard.’
‘I could not let you be harmed,’ said Herrscher, his voice shaking. ‘I killed... my own.’
‘He is not your own,’ said Vlad, impatiently. ‘Look around you. We are yours, you are ours. You have killed for us, and we will kill for you.’
Herrscher looked like he wanted to vomit, though his body was no longer capable of it. Before he could reply, the sound of overlapping laughter wafted across the temple courtyard.
Liliet and her sisters had climbed on to the dome of the temple. Their gowns were streaked with blood, and it dripped from their long fingernails like tears.
‘Rejoice!’ they chorused. ‘A thousand new blades for the army of the night-born! A thousand more to come before dawn-fall!’
All across Wurtbad, those of Vlad’s army with the self-command to respond lifted their parched voices in victory-cries.
Vlad laid a gauntlet on Herrscher’s shoulder. ‘The Empire trains its hunters well – that was a good shot.’ Then he turned on his heels, his cloak swirling about him, and strode away from the temple, back towards the river-front where the empty barges had been tethered, ready for the passage of the Reik. ‘Do not dwell on it. The night is still dark, and we have work to do. By the dawn, our new servants must be on the move.’
Martak’s fury took a long time to ebb. He had stormed up to his barely used chambers in the Imperial Palace and smashed a few things up in there. He gave a glimmering simulacrum of Helborg’s gaunt face to every item he hurled across the room before it smashed into the wall.
No one dared interrupt him. By then, every servant in the Palace had all heard tales of the half-feral Supreme Patriarch, and kept their distance. Gelt had been capable of rages, but at least he was vaguely understandable. Martak, deprived of even that measure of respect, took a grim satisfaction in causing fear instead.
Let them fear me, he snarled to himself. They deserve what is to come.
He did not mean that. No one deserved the horrors that lay ahead, not even the stiff-necked Reiksmarshal, and certainly not the flunkeys who struggled to do his impossible bidding.
By the time he had calmed down, his personal chamber was a mass of ripped parchment and broken crockery, and he was a sweaty, panting mess.
Martak cracked his knuckles, stomped over to the chamber’s narrow window and pushed the lead catch open. The window faced east, giving a view out over the great mass of the city.
He took a deep breath. The stench was becoming unbearable, even at such a height. He thought again of Margrit – sensible, dutiful Margrit. He had promised her that something would be done. Every hour that the Rot was allowed to swell and grow was another hour for the temple’s supplies to run down and the energies of the sisters to ebb a little further.
He propped his elbows on the sill and rested his chin gloomily on locked hands. Far below, the Reik was the colour of spoiled spinach and barely flowed at all. He could make out the sullen blooms of algae lurking just under the surface, and could smell the acrid stink of its steady fermentation.
He had made a mess of his short time as Patriarch. Helborg was making a mess of the city defences, and the electors were making a mess of assisting him. They were like children caught by the glare of a predator, frozen and witless, unable to do more than bicker in the face of oncoming disaster.
It is the city.
The realisation came to him so suddenly and so easily that he immediately wondered how he had not seen it before.
It is the poison.
Martak was a creature of the wilds, of the windswept tracts of unbroken forest. He had been known to spend months in the wilderness, kept alive by his arts and native cunning, eschewing all comforts and embracing the idiosyncratic path of his college’s disciplines.
I have allowed them to cage me. This is their world, not mine, and they have made me useless in it.
He was a sham Patriarch in a sham Empire, playing out his role in dumb-show as the world unravelled around them. He could not command men, and had no desire to. Helborg had been right about one thing: this was his city, not Martak’s.
He stood up again, and shuffled over to the writing desk he had just half-smashed. After a few moments scrabbling around, he found a scrap of intact parchment and a near-empty jar of ink. He pulled a quill from under a disarranged collection of broken-spined tomes, and started to write. Once he had finished, he folded the parchment and sealed it, stowing the letter in his grimy robes.
Then he moved over to Gelt’s old Globe of Transmigratory Vocalisation within a Localised Aethyric Vicinity – a bronze-bound sphere set atop an iron web of intricately-woven threads. It was a meagre device for one of such talents, but it had its uses.
Picking it up and setting it before him on the floor, Martak placed both palms on the cool surface of the sphere. Something like clockwork clicked inside it, and he felt the tremble of moving parts. Previously hidden runes glowed into life on the bronze, welling softly with a sudden heat.
Martak concentrated. This was Gelt’s toy, and he still was not sure he had mastered it properly.
‘Search her out,’ he whispered gruffly, imposing his will on the machine’s. ‘The soul of Sister Margrit.’
It resisted him. The device knew its gold-masked master, and resented being used roughly by a stranger. In the end, though, Martak’s presence prevailed, and the Globe performed its function. The air above it trembled, warmed, then parted, revealing a blurred and translucent image of Margrit’s garden. The priestess herself was standing with her back to the Globe’s view. As soon as Martak laid eyes on her, she stiffened, turned, and made a warding gesture.
‘Be at ease, sister,’ said Martak, knowing that he would appear to her as nothing more than a ghost, hanging above the herb-garden like a puff of steam in summer.
‘Patriarch,’ said Margrit, her voice muffled and distorted. She looked at him through the Globe’s portal, peering as if into murky water. ‘Could you not come in person?’
‘I am leaving the city,’ said Martak. A soon as he saw her face fall, he regretted his clumsy way with words.