Everything, my champion? she whispered back. You have barely been tested.
That hurt. He had lost a kingdom, and forfeited any chance of taking it back by following her command. He had already lost more than most men would ever have to give away.
The way is barred, he said.
All ways are barred, she breathed, her voice little louder than a child’s whisper. Are you sure you wish me to unlock it? If this road is made straight, you will never return along it.
Leoncoeur stiffened. She had already warned him of this. What did she expect – that he would forget his vow?
Do you wish me to live?
That startled her. She looked at him, a sudden desire playing in her immortal eyes. Of course, beloved, she insisted. I desire that of all things. Turn aside, and I will preserve you for as long as my power lasts. When you die, my heart will break.
Leoncoeur nearly opened his eyes. For a moment, he saw a future unravelling before him – the two of them, mortal man and wife, riding out across a wide grassland, the sun rising swiftly in a dew-fresh dawn. He saw her face turn to his and smile, the care wiped from it. She reached out, and their hands touched.
The vision made his heart ache. It had been forbidden even to countenance such a thing, and here she was, showing it to him.
He looked down, still locked in the dream-image. His steed’s hooves trod in the damp earth. In the marks of the hooves, tiny worms wriggled. They were white and blind, and their mouths were ringed with fangs.
There would be no escape, he told her, letting go of her hand. It would pursue us to the ends of the earth. You know this.
The Lady nodded, smiling sadly. And now you do, too. So ask me again, my champion. You wish me to give you a path to Altdorf?
He did not. He wished for nothing but the vision, even in its falsity and its deception. He wished only for a scrap of time alone with her, just as he had always dreamed of, even if it meant an eternity of damnation thereafter.
But wishes were for peasants, and he was a knight of the realm.
If it lies within your power, Lady, he breathed, make the road straight.
She bowed, her expression a mix of sorrow and satisfaction, and the vision ebbed away. Leoncoeur opened his eyes again.
Nothing had changed. His warriors gave no sign of impatience – however long the exchange had seemed to him, it had clearly been no time for them.
He straightened in his saddle, and turned to the foul morass ahead.
‘Your reach does not yet compass the world,’ he announced, gazing out at it with his fierce, blue-eyed glare. ‘While we may yet contest you, we will.’
His words rang out, echoing strangely on the air. The vines shivered, and straggling roots withdrew. The entire forest seemed to falter, as if stirred by a sudden gust of wind.
Leoncoeur smiled coldly. He could feel the divine power now, warm against his flesh like summer sun. She was weakened, to be sure, but not yet destroyed.
‘Rise,’ he commanded, raising his blade and pointing it ahead.
The waters began to surge, let loose like a dam breaking. The river burst its banks, welling up and flooding the path ahead. Leoncoeur backed up, never letting his blade waver, as the road ahead dissolved into foaming silt.
The trees immediately shrank back, and a thin hissing broke out from among the branches. The waters kept on rising, boiling up out of the ground in defiance of all natural law. Fresh springs burst through the open rock, gushing in plumes of white before crashing to the ground again and sluicing down the slope.
Leoncoeur backed up further, watching with some satisfaction as the river’s banks crumbled away, unable to accommodate the roaring torrent that now coursed through it. Boulders were dislodged, rolling along with the flow and crashing into the twisted trunks ahead. The roar of the waters mingled with the snap and crack of wood breaking.
Where the Lady’s water-magic hit the sorcerous forest, great gouts of smoke leapt into the sky, fizzing and spitting with emerald aethyr-energies. The raging river seemed to carve straight through whatever it touched, burning the foul woods away as if acid had been poured onto them. A stench like burning flesh rose up, harsh and acrid.
‘Stand firm!’ commanded Leoncoeur, working to keep his steed from panicking. The waters frothed and swirled around its hooves, causing no more harm to it than a non-magical river. Ahead of them, the torrent gouged deeper, cutting a path through the woodland and leaving ragged wound-edges on either side. The up-swell of water kept on rising, roiling and churning out from the fractured earth. The forest was ripped open, its roots torn up and its tight-wound growths carried away. As the waters smashed onwards, tearing ever deeper into the country beyond, the sound of a woman’s laughter could be heard over the thunder, faint but unmistakable.
Soon the sounds faded away, heading north as the magically roused river cut its way onward. An empty road stood in its wake, dripping and sodden, overlooked on either side by the surviving trees. The path was like a tunnel, overhung and hemmed in on all sides. The Lady’s power had only been sufficient to rid the river’s path of its filth, and the clear route extended no further than the road’s edge.
Leoncoeur looked into the shadows, his heart thumping. Witnessing the extreme release of such magic had been a mixed experience for him. On the one hand, being in close proximity to the divine strength of his lifelong queen was what gave him the reason for living. On the other, he was under no illusions that this march would be his last. The brief, snatched vision of another life had made the choice even crueller, though he knew the purpose of it.
She had to be sure. Even the slenderest chance that he would turn aside had to be discounted. He did not resent her testing him, for his whole life had been a test, and the knowledge that he had passed it made up for some of the grief.
Not all of it, though. It would take him a long time to forget the vision.
‘You have been shown the way,’ he announced, lowering his blade at last and sheathing it. His horse stamped in the waters. Ahead of them, the river level gradually subsided as the tide-face worked its way further north. ‘Now we begin the final march. Ride on, for Bretonnia and the Lady.’
The warriors about him saluted piously, and began to move. One by one, trooping in file, the knights of Bretonnia passed under the shadow of the plague-wood, and trod the last road to Altdorf.
The host of the undead grew ever larger, feeding from the slain of the battles and pulling corpses out of the ground every passing hour.
It was all so familiar. Vlad remembered doing the same thing just the previous year – gathering the lost souls to himself, giving them purpose, making them far greater than they ever had been in their first life.
Then he smiled to himself, embarrassed by the false recollection. It had not been last year – it had been over a thousand years ago, and everything in the world had changed. It was so easy to forget how long he had been away. His old enemies – Kruger of the Order of the White Wolf, Wilhelm the Theogonist – had been dead so long that no mortals outside the dusty archives still remembered their names. And yet, to him, it felt like mere months ago. He could still see the walls of Altdorf reeling before him, ripe for destruction. He could taste the blackpowder on the air, and feel the pressure of Isabella’s hand in his as they jointly planned the final assault.