The Red Duke Read online

  The vampire smiled, running his armoured hand along the fleshless neck of his steed, forgetting that El Morzillo no longer had a mane to stroke. The Estalian warhorse had died in Araby, his bones bleaching under the desert sun. It was the phantom of his faithful steed that served him now, conjured from the shadow world beyond death by the ghastly powers now at the vampire’s command. El Morzillo had answered his master’s call, returning to the Red Duke as a grisly nightmare of bone and sinew, balefire burning in the depths of its skull, smoke flaring from its jaws.

  The Red Duke turned in his saddle, glaring at those who followed him. The mortals trembled as his gaze fell upon them. The undead simply stared back at him with their lifeless eyes, waiting for their master’s command.

  The vampire’s eyes lingered upon the twisted face of Baron de Gavaudan. The baron had been the first victim of the Red Duke’s bite—the assassin sent to kill the rightful Duke of Aquitaine had been fortunate to have his life choked out of him. The Red Duke had not intended Baron de Gavaudan to rise as a vampire. Perhaps that explained the grotesque results of the baron’s resurrection. The baron’s skin was split and decayed, looking as though it had been six weeks in the grave. His arm was a shrivelled lump cradled against his chest, one of his legs as immobile as a lump of steel. One side of the baron’s face was paralysed, a stream of treacle dripping constantly from his slackened mouth. When the baron looked at something, only one eye moved, the other frozen into a vulturine stare.

  Moreover, Baron de Gavaudan sported another debility. He was utterly without a will of his own, a thrall completely dominated by the demands the Red Duke made upon him. The Red Duke had exploited the baron’s unresisting nature, at least when he had tired of torturing the wretch. Under interrogation, the thrall had eagerly confessed the plot against the man who had been El Syf—at least as much of it as the baron’s broken mind could remember.

  “Bring the cattle forward,” the Red Duke snarled at his drooling lieutenant. The lesser vampire giggled inanely as he set spurs into the decayed sides of his undead steed and moved back down the trail.

  The Red Duke regarded Baron de Gavaudan for a few seconds, then turned to face one of his mortal retainers. Many knights had flocked to the Red Duke’s banner, drawn by tales of his martial prowess and the cowardly attempt to usurp his domain from him. The vampire was more than willing to make use of such men, but he knew the strict codes they lived by. Whatever oaths they swore to him, there were other vows that might make them falter in his service. Fortunately, he had found other servants who were not so strict about matters of honour.

  Sir Corbinian was such a man, a refugee from the dukedom of Moussillon. He was a wanted man, declared outlaw by his own father for an outrage perpetrated against a Shallyan priestess. Corbinian had escaped custody, killing his brother in the process and fleeing to Aquitaine. Whatever chivalry the knight had ever possessed had died inside him long ago, replaced with a brutal sadism that made him a perfect vassal for a vampire.

  The Red Duke addressed the grim-faced knight. “You will take your men-at-arms and surround the hill. Let the scum know that if so much as one worker leaves the site, I will send ten of them to take their place.” The vampire glanced back at the hill, noting the sharp precipice that bordered it on two sides. “If any of the workers want to leave, they are free to choose the river.”

  Wailing cries and the sharp snap of whips heralded the return of Baron de Gavaudan. The vampiric thrall led a motley crowd of terrified Aquitainians flanked by decayed zombies and grinning skeletons. There were several hundred people in the column, the ragged tatters of their clothes ranging from the shawls of farmers to the cloaks of vintners and the bright tunics of merchants. Even the royal colours of the nobility could be seen clinging to the shivering bodies of several of the Red Duke’s “cattle”. As the crowd marched, half-drunk mercenaries urged them forwards with vicious snaps of cow-hide whips.

  The Red Duke raised his hand and the column came to a stop. He closed his eyes, savouring the stench of fear and despair that rose from the wretched throng. His mind revelled in the sobs of the women and the cries of the children. It was right that these vermin should suffer, it was right that they should know the pain and hopelessness that burned in his breast. These scum had stood aside and allowed Baron de Gavaudan’s plot to unfold, believing his lies and supporting the king’s claim upon Aquitaine.

  How many of them had watched his wife fling herself from the parapets of Castle Aquin? How many of them had seen her broken body lying sprawled upon the flagstones? How many of them had listened to her wailing in despair night after night, weeping for the husband liars had told her was dead?

  The vampire’s hand clenched about the hilt of his sword. He could cut them down, all of them. He could butcher them as he had butchered the Arabyans at the Battle of Magritta. He could leave their carcasses strewn across Aquitaine, fodder for the wolves and ravens. Yes, he could kill them all, but then their suffering would be over.

  And for these vermin, their ordeal had only begun.

  “There is an old quarry at the base of the mountain,” the Red Duke stated, pointing at the craggy feet of the Massif Orcal. “First you will tear down the ruin standing on this hill. Then you will bring stone from the mountain and build a new castle for your rightful lord. Day and night, fair weather and foul, you will work and you will build my castle. Forget the gods and the Lady, their words mean nothing to you now. The only words you will listen to now are the directions of my engineers and architects. Fail them, and discover what suffering really is.”

  Murmurs of horror swept through the crowd, wails of anguish rose from the women, the elderly fell to their knees and began to pray. One of the slaves, the rags of a nobleman’s tunic draped about his shoulders, pushed his way forwards.

  “Please, your grace, we beg you for mercy,” the man sobbed. “We have given you no offence, your grace. We will serve you loyally, as loyally as we did when…” The spokesman caught himself.

  “When I was alive?” the vampire asked, finishing the nobleman’s thought. There was no forgiveness in the Red Duke’s eyes.

  The spokesman turned, clutching at the stirrup of Baron de Gavaudan’s decayed steed. “At least spare the children and the women!” he begged. “Show them some pity!”

  The baron’s reply was another mad giggle. The half of his mouth that worked pulled back to expose a gleaming fang. The vampire reached down to seize the impertinent slave.

  “No,” the Red Duke’s stern voice froze his thrall, allowing the spokesman to scramble away from the baron. “This man does not deserve the mercy of a quick death. He will stay here and be spared the labour of his friends and neighbours. He will watch them slave to build my castle, will watch as they die one by one. And when the last stone has been laid and the castle is complete, he will be tied to a horse and sent into the mountains for the goblins to make sport of.”

  The vampire’s pallid face spread in a malignant grin. “Before death finds you, you will wish I had let you build my castle.”

  The Crac de Sang still stood upon its hill overlooking the River Morceaux and the Forest of Châlons. Time had eroded the cliffs, casting some of the old hill down into the precipice. The castle itself had fallen into ruin, razed by the victorious armies of King Louis after the Battle of Ceren Field, looted by orcs and goblins after the Bretonnian army rode away.

  The vampire stared up at the spiked battlements of his castle, the thick walls of granite, the soaring towers riddled with arrow slits, the thick gates of oak banded in steel. The road leading up to the hill was paved in the bones of those who defied him, flanked to either side by the twitching husks of his enemies impaled upon tall stakes. At night, the husks would be soaked in pitch and set alight, an avenue of corpse-candles to light the Red Duke’s domain.

  King Louis would never break him, not in a thousand years. The Red Duke would defy the treacherous usurper. He would not rest until he had broken the hypocrite, until he had brought ru
in upon all the realm. The king would live only long enough to see Bretonnia become the Red Duke’s Kingdom of Blood. Louis would know the price of evil then, the wage paid by all those who betrayed the blood.

  Renar stared anxiously at the vampire upon his spectral steed, unnerved by the strange way the Red Duke stared at the ruins upon the hill. There was an almost fanatical intensity in the vampire’s gaze. Renar quietly shifted away from his gruesome master, watching him carefully as he made his retreat.

  “Go to the castle and announce me,” the Red Duke declared, waving his hand through the air.

  Renar glanced at the hill and the pile of collapsed walls and broken towers. Nervously he looked about him. The animated bodies of Earl Gaubert’s bodyguards and Jacquetta’s dark cult stood in a double file behind the Red Duke’s horse. The zombies made no motion to obey the vampire. Renar cast a hopeful eye towards Jacquetta, but the ghostly banshee continued to flit aimlessly along the path, muttering to itself. That was when his heart sank, because he knew the Red Duke intended his command for the only living thing among his grisly retinue.

  “My lord,” Renar said, bowing before the vampire. “The castle is in ruin. There is nothing but rats and spiders living up there now.”

  The Red Duke glared at the necromancer, his fingers closing about the hilt of his sword. “Do as you are told, peasant,” the vampire snarled. “Sir Corbinian will be eager to receive me.”

  Renar scratched his head as he studied the wrecked fortress. One look at the Red Duke convinced him that whatever his opinion of this fool’s errand, there would be decidedly unpleasant consequences if he delayed any longer. Unless Sir Corbinian was a rock lizard, Renar didn’t think the vampire was going to find anyone waiting for him.

  The necromancer sighed and began the long march across the rubble-strewn path that climbed up from the valley to the top of the hill. With every step, with each desolate pile of broken masonry he passed, Renar felt more perturbed. Surely the Red Duke understood there was nothing here.

  Halfway to the shattered castle gates, Renar heard a scuttling sound rising from the darkened halls of the fortress. He hesitated, feeling his skin crawl as he felt unseen eyes watching him. Nervously, the necromancer looked over his shoulder and cast an imploring gaze towards the Red Duke. The vampire was unmoved by Renar’s anxiety, waving his hand impatiently, gesturing for the man to hurry about his errand.

  A low hoot echoed from the ruins, followed by more scuttling footsteps and the clatter of falling stone. Renar licked his lips, his mind turning over the spells he’d spent his life learning and considering which of these magics would be the most beneficial should something suddenly lunge at him from the darkness.

  Renar was still trying to remember the full incantation that would cause a man’s skin to blacken and shrivel when something suddenly lunged at him from the darkness.

  A charnel stink struck the necromancer first, a stench so foul that even the grave-robbing sorcerer was sickened by it. Then a wiry body smashed into him, pitching him to the earth. Renar landed hard, his bony arse slashed by a sharp piece of stone. He yelped as the rock cut him, but the exclamation was quickly stifled when a set of fangs snapped at his face. Renar quickly forgot about his bruised backside.

  The necromancer crossed his arms and tried to push away the slavering thing that crouched atop him. Its build was thin and emaciated, even more so than the necromancer’s sickly frame, but there was a ghastly strength in the creature’s limbs, more than enough to defy Renar’s efforts to shove it off of him.

  Other creatures came scuttling out from the shadows, some loping on all fours like starveling jackals, others creeping about in a hunched, manlike fashion. The things were hairless and naked, their pasty skin blotched with sores and scabs, their faces pinched and distorted. Their hands ended in long black claws, the teeth in their mouths were sharpened like fangs. There was little in the way of intelligence in the beady, hungry eyes that fixed upon Renar’s struggling frame.

  The necromancer recognized the creatures in an instant. Many times he had encountered their like, slinking about graveyards, trying to gorge themselves upon freshly interred bodies. They were ghouls, debased men whose bodies and souls had been corrupted by the hideous provender they had gorged themselves upon. Renar had driven their like from a dozen cemeteries, routing the cowardly ghouls with a display of magic, driving them back into the shadows and leaving the necromancer free to conduct his own morbid researches in peace.

  This was different, however. The necromancer had done more than disturb these ghouls at their dinner. He had trespassed into their lair, the decaying ruin they called home. There was just enough of a man lurking within their diseased brains that the ghouls would fight for their home.

  With a moment to prepare himself, Renar might have driven the ghouls back, but the necromancer had been taken by surprise, his thoughts on the distemper of the Red Duke rather than the ruins and what might be hiding within. That was a mistake that had left the Bretonnian helpless before his feral attackers.

  The ghoul atop his chest snarled something that sounded horribly like the word “Supper” in a glottal sort of debased Breton. The cannibal’s mouth spread impossibly wide, displaying the rows of sharpened teeth. A string of drool spattered onto Renar’s cheek as the ghoul leaned over him.

  Suddenly, the ghoul’s hideous face was wrenched away, the creature’s hungry leer dissolving into an expression of shock. Renar could hear the other ghouls wailing and shrieking as they scurried back into the darkness, abandoning their fellow to the malignant force that had seized him.

  El Morzillo’s spectral hoofs clattered about the broken tiles of the courtyard, the skeletal warhorse cantering in a wide circle through the ruins. Upon the horse’s back, the Red Duke towered, his right hand closed about the scruff of the ghoul’s neck, effortlessly holding the struggling cannibal off the ground. The vampire scowled at the rancid creature, his face pulled back in an attitude of noble disdain.

  “You dare foul this place with your filth?” the Red Duke hissed. “The Crac de Sang is my refuge, my bastion against traitors and usurpers! By what right do peasants trespass in my domain!”

  The ghoul continued to flail about in the vampire’s grip. The Red Duke dashed the creature to the paving stones, its skull cracking open as it struck the ground. A pool of blood began to form around the ghoul’s twitching body.

  The Red Duke dropped from his saddle in a fluid dismount any knight of Bretonnia would envy. Instantly the vampire marched towards the dead ghoul. His breath was ragged, at once violent and excited. He paced towards the pool of blood, his eyes staring longingly at the crimson liquid pouring from the corpse. The Red Duke’s face crinkled in disgust and he turned his back to the vile carcass. He started to walk away, then turned back towards the gory scene. Three steps towards the pool of blood and the vampire reasserted control over himself. Angrily he turned away from the ghoul’s body.

  “De Gavaudan!” the Red Duke bellowed. “The stupid peasant bitch has spilled the wine!” The vampire’s words boomed through the ruined courtyard. “Pull the fingers from her hand one by one and feed them to her!” The vampire glared up at crumbled walls and broken battlements. “De Gavaudan! Attend me you faithless coward!”

  Renar rose from the ground and watched as the Red Duke roared at the ruins, his fury mounting with each moment. A horrible thought occurred to the necromancer: if the vampire did not find the men he was calling for, then he might direct his rage towards the only person around.

  Discreetly, Renar crept away from the courtyard and back down the winding path. He’d decided it might be safer to wait in the valley below with Jacquetta and the zombies.

  The Red Duke prowled through the corridors of his castle, feeling the rich carpet sink beneath his armoured feet. His long crimson cape billowed out behind him, brushing against the bare stone walls at either side of the hall, sometimes upsetting the vibrant portraits and rich tapestries adorning them. The vampire had liberate
d these heirlooms of his ancient family from the galleries of Castle Aquin where they had hung undisturbed for generations. He had brought them to Crac de Sang not simply as plunder or for the greedy pleasure of hoarded wealth. He had kept them with him because they were a link to his past, something that allowed him to remember who his family was.

  Who he was.

  Daily, the Red Duke could feel the hungry darkness inside him growing, devouring his identity with cancerous persistence. The hate within his heart remained strong, but the sorrow that had fed that hate was fading away, vanishing a little more with each dawn. It was an effort now for the vampire to recall the smell of his wife’s hair, the feel of her fingers clasped in his. The thought that one day he would lose even the memory of her voice tormented him like a hot iron pressed against his skin.

  The Red Duke’s sweeping march down the corridor came to a stop. He turned and faced the wall, his eyes staring keenly at a pair of portraits hanging above a cherrywood table. The portrait on the right was that of a stern young knight, proud and bold in his expression. There had been a time when the vampire had seen this face looking back at him from any mirror he held. Now there was only a grisly shadow that glared back at him from the single looking glass he had allowed to remain within his castle.

  Swiftly the vampire turned his face from his painting, his eager eyes racing to the canvas upon which the smiling face of his wife would beam down upon him, shining some light into the darkness that had become his soul.