The Crowfiend sat on one of the cracked, discoloured marble benches that encircled the garden’s single, crooked tree. The fat-trunked monstrosity was long dead, but somehow it still grew, drawing gods alone knew what sort of nourishment from the castle into whose mortar it had sunk its roots. Erikan stood as Mannfred approached. Mannfred gestured for him to sit. He gazed at the other vampire for a moment.
The Crowfiend had a face that radiated feral placidity. There was no obvious guile in him. Cunning, yes, and cleverness, but no guile. He was not a subtle creature, but neither was he stupid. There was something familiar there as well – a raw need that Mannfred recognised in himself. A hunger that was greater than any bloodthirst or flesh-greed. Mannfred drew close to the other vampire and caught his chin in an iron grip. He pulled Erikan’s face up. ‘I can see the ghoul-taint in your face, boy. Elize tells me that your kin were corpse-eaters, though not so debased as those that prowl these halls.’
‘They were, my lord,’ Erikan said.
‘They were burned, I am given to understand.’
‘Yes,’ Erikan said, and he displayed no more emotion than if he’d been speaking of a rat he’d killed. Mannfred wondered if such lack of feeling was a mask. Vampires, contrary to folk belief and superstition, did not lose the ability to feel emotion. Indeed, undeath often enhanced such things. Sometimes every emotion was redoubled and magnified, stretched almost into caricature. Love became lust, passion became obsession, and hatred… Ah, hatred became something so venomous as to make even daemons flinch. And sometimes, they became as dust, only a fading memory of emotion, a brief, dull flicker of fires burned low.
‘If I were to say to you that the world is soon to die, what would you say?’
‘I’d say that I’d like to see that, my lord,’ Erikan said.
Mannfred blinked. He meant it, too. He let him go. ‘Is existence so burdensome to you?’
Erikan shrugged. ‘No. I merely meant that if the world is to burn, I might as well help stoke the fires,’ he said.
‘You believe it is time for a change, then?’
Erikan looked away. ‘Change doesn’t frighten me, my lord.’
‘No, perhaps it doesn’t, at that. Perhaps that is why Elize chose you – she has always had a streak of perversity in her, my lovely cousin. She was a sister of Shallya once, you know. She was at Isabella’s side, when she passed over from the wasting illness, and Vlad wrenched her back from Morr’s clutches. Poor, gentle Elize was Isabella’s first meal upon awakening. And she served as the countess’s handmaiden until her untimely end.’
Erikan said nothing. Mannfred smiled thinly. ‘Very loyal is Elize. Loyal, trustworthy, her ambition kept on the tightest of leashes. Why did she toss you aside, I wonder?’ The other vampire cocked his head, but did not reply. For a moment, Mannfred was reminded of a carrion bird. He gestured airily. ‘I don’t suppose it matters. She brought you over, and that is more a gift than most get in this fallen world.’ He turned away and strode to the tree. ‘You came from Couronne, I’m given to understand,’ Mannfred said. He gazed up at the tree. Idly he jabbed a talon into the spongy surface of the trunk. Black ichors oozed out of the cut. He glanced back at Erikan and sucked the sour sap off his finger.
Erikan nodded slowly. ‘I did.’
‘The Serpent fell, then,’ Mannfred said.
Erikan nodded again. ‘We were defeated.’
‘And what of Arkhan the Black?’
Erikan jolted, as if struck. ‘What about him, my lord?’
‘What happened to him in the aftermath?’
‘I don’t know, my lord,’ Erikan said. ‘I and– I was with Mallobaude’s bodyguard.’ His face twisted slightly. He shook himself. ‘Some say Arkhan was never there at Couronne to begin with. That he had used Mallobaude as a diversion for some other scheme. Others say that the Green Knight struck off his head as he had Mallobaude’s.’
Mannfred grunted. ‘No such luck,’ he muttered. He looked back at Erikan. ‘But he was there – in Bretonnia – of this you’re certain?’
‘I saw him, though only at a distance, my lord. It was him. He rode in a chariot of bone, which bore banners of crackling witch-fire and was pulled by skeletal steeds surmounted by the skulls of men, which screamed out in agony as they galloped.’
Mannfred nodded. ‘That sounds just ostentatious enough to be truthful,’ he murmured. The liche had long since lost any subtlety he had possessed in life. Arkhan had none of a vampire’s inbuilt sense of discretion. He was almost… theatrical.
What had the liche been after, he wondered? He was about to inquire further as to Arkhan’s activities when movement drew his eye, and he glanced up. A pale face stared down at him from among the crooked, arthritic branches of the tree, its features twisted in a mocking smile as flickering shadows gathered at the corner of his vision. Was it Vlad’s face? Or someone else’s… The features were at once Vlad’s and those of a youth from some other land, handsome and terrible and noble and bestial all at once. The thin-lipped mouth moved, but no sound came out. Nonetheless, Mannfred heard it as clear as if it had whispered in his ear. ‘La Maisontaal Abbey,’ he muttered. He blinked and shook himself. The face was gone, as were the shadows, leaving behind only a dark echo of a man’s sonorous chuckle. He felt like a child being guided towards a treat. Irritated, he gouged the trunk of the tree again, leaving five suppurating wounds in its soft bark.
Of course it was La Maisontaal. Of course! Why else would the liche have bothered with a backwater like Bretonnia? Mannfred stared at the sap seeping from the tree. But why come here, now? Unless… He grunted. Arkhan’s goals were as unsubtle as the liche himself. He had ever been Nagash’s tool. He had no more free will than the dead who served him.
He was coming for those items that Mannfred now possessed, and had spent no little effort in acquiring. His lips peeled back from his fangs as he contemplated the audacity of the creature – to come here, to Sylvania, to take what was Mannfred’s by right of blood and conquest? No, no, that would not do.
‘Once a thief, always a thief,’ he snarled. He turned, his cloak flaring about him like the stretched wing of a gigantic bat. Erikan started, and tried to stand as Mannfred swooped upon him. He grabbed the other vampire gently by the throat with both hands, forcing him to remain still. ‘Thank you, boy, for your candour. It is much appreciated,’ Mannfred purred. ‘Tell your mistress and her oaf of a progeny Anark to ready the defences of this citadel. I expect the Drakenhof Templars to defend what is mine with their lives, if it comes to it.’
He released Erikan and strode towards the doorway, cloak swirling. Erikan rose to his feet and asked, ‘And what of you, Lord Mannfred? What should I say you are doing?’
‘I, dear boy, am going to confront the invader in person. I would take measure of my enemy before crushing his skull to powder beneath my boot-heel.’
If he had been capable of it, Arkhan the Black would have been in a foul mood. As it was, he merely felt a low throb of dissatisfaction as he led his rotting, stumbling forces through the blighted foothills of Vargravia. It had been a matter of mere moments to use his magics to rip a hole in the immense bone wall that carved off Sylvania from the rest of the world, but the blackened and shattered bone had repaired itself with an impressive speed. More than half of his army had been left on the other side of the gap, but there was nothing for it. He could always raise more to replace them. If there was one thing that Sylvania didn’t lack, it was corpses.