The Red Duke Read online

  A pang of guilt passed through Maraulf’s heart. The knight lifted his eyes from the trench and its defenders to the vast graveyard beyond them. The cemetery was many times the size of Mercal itself, growing with each passing year. Many of those buried here were of the knightly classes, buried here so that they might be beside the Chapel Sereine and the grail knight interred within.

  It was the chapel and its holy aura that would draw the Red Duke to this place. The vampire would come for what had been buried in secret below the chapel. Maraulf couldn’t allow the Red Duke to violate those hidden catacombs. It was more important than his own life and the lives of the villagers. The Chapel Sereine had to be protected, to the last drop of blood if need be. To ensure that, the knight had devised a cruel deception.

  Maraulf had told the villagers that the safest place for them to seek refuge was within the blessed walls of the chapel. While the men defended the cemetery, their families took shelter in the marble-walled shrine. They never guessed that their safety was an illusion, that they had instead placed themselves at the very centre of the coming storm. True, the enchantments placed upon the chapel would prevent the Red Duke from raising the dead buried beneath it or those buried in the surrounding graveyard. But the holy wards were not so strong as to hold back the vampire or the undead that already marched under his banner.

  The knight’s fingers traced the raven embroidered upon his cloak. It was a knavish ploy, but there were some things more important than honour and chivalrous vows. The gods would understand. It would be for them to judge his actions.

  “You expect them to come tonight, my lord?” The question came from a grizzled old peasant. Despite his age and the lack of teeth in his lower jaw, Jeanot was a powerfully built man, his shoulders broad, his arms knotted with muscle beneath the coarse fabric of his robe. He wore a mail coif, the hood pulled back to form an iron muffler about his throat. Bits of garlic were tied to the cuffs of his sleeves and pinned to his belt. A horseman’s mace, its surface pitted with age, swung from a tether lashed about his wrist.

  “They are already overdue,” Maraulf told Jeanot. Unlike the villagers, Jeanot understood the ways of war. He was a grail pilgrim, the only man in Mercal who had known the knight interred in the Chapel Sereine when he was alive. As a boy, Jeanot’s village had been attacked by orcs. The brutish marauders had been stopped by the arrival of a lone knight who had given them battle and taken such toll upon them as to send the monsters scrambling back to their mountains. Since that day, Jeanot had followed the knight throughout the land, ringleader of a small cult that venerated the knight as a living saint. The cult of pilgrims had followed their knight throughout Bretonnia, fighting beside him in his many battles. When he had at last died and been interred in the Chapel Sereine, Jeanot and the other pilgrims had remained to watch over his grave.

  The original battle pilgrims were all gone, all save Jeanot, but others had come to take their place, men who had heard the tales of the grail knight and sought serenity through serving the holy warrior’s spirit. There were only a dozen of the pilgrims in Mercal, but Maraulf considered himself lucky to have them. They were the closest thing to real soldiers he had to draw upon.

  Instead of scattering the pilgrims along the trench, Maraulf kept them back near the chapel itself, a reserve to react to the Red Duke’s attack. He would have preferred a squadron of fast-moving cavalry, but in the crowded ground of the cemetery, Maraulf thought the dismounted pilgrims might actually prove more manoeuvrable.

  Maraulf stared at the battle pilgrims, a ragged group of unkempt men dressed in coarse homespun robes, each bearing some bit of armour on his person. One wore a vambrace suspended from his neck by a leather thong; another had a pauldron tied to his head like a helmet. Each man wore the scrap of armour not for protection but as a talisman, for each piece had been taken from the grave of their grail knight. A dark-haired pilgrim named Girard bore a heavy reliquary box fastened to a stout maplewood staff, the little wooden doors bearing a crude representation of the grail branded upon them. Inside the box itself were the helmet of the grail knight and the splintered skull of his warhorse. For the pilgrims, these were the most holy of relics, as important to them as the grail itself to the knights of the realm. As peasants, they could never hope to see the Lady or sip from the grail; all they could do was pay obeisance to a knight who had.

  It was a sentiment Maraulf could appreciate, for the grail was lost to him, though in his case it had been choice not birth that had denied him such a path.

  The black-garbed knight watched as the sky began to grow darker. Storm clouds were sweeping across the night sky, blotting out the stars one by one. His flesh crawled as his spirit sensed the workings of foul magic in the air. Grimly, Maraulf drew his sword. “Get your men ready,” the knight told Jeanot. “Send the swiftest of them to warn the villagers.”

  The knight’s voice was like a metal snarl as he spoke through the steel mask of his helm.

  “The waiting is over.”

  The Red Duke’s skeletal steed marched through the muddy lane that formed Mercal’s main thoroughfare. Except for a few pigs and some chickens, the village was deserted and as quiet as the grave.

  Armoured skeletons patrolled ahead of him, smashing down the wicker doors of each hut they passed, searching each hovel for any hidden inhabitants. The vampire could smell the rich spices and salty sea air as his troops secured Lashiek, scouring the city for the sultan’s corsairs. There was no mercy for the heathen pirates; as each was found he was dragged into the street and beheaded. It was a kind fate for such loathsome villains.

  Wheeling his horse about, the Red Duke closed his eyes, forcing his mind to focus. When he turned his steed back around, the white walls of Lashiek faded hack into memory, the mud huts and thatch roofs of Mercal springing back into stark relief. The vampire snarled in annoyance as a pair of skeletons pulled clown a straw shack and began to sift the debris looking for anyone caught inside.

  They wouldn’t find Baron de Gavaudan and the company of undead knights he’d used to attack Mercal in a straw shack. The Red Duke knew his thrall was nearby, he could sense the lingering essence of the other vampire like a dull ache at the back of his skull. He wasn’t sure how Baron de Gavaudan had been vanquished, he only knew that he had. It hadn’t even been King Louis or his household knights that had worked the ruin of de Gavaudan, for there had been no shortage of cavalry when the Red Duke had met the king upon Ceren Field. Even as bait, Baron de Gavaudan had been a disappointment.

  Renar came slinking down the street, flanked by packs of ghouls. Degenerate as they were, the necromancer and the cannibals were still living creatures, able to operate more freely than the true undead. It took no part of the vampire’s arcane power to spur his living vassals to greater effort, only a snarled command.

  The necromancer’s long face was pinched with dissatisfaction. Renar had considered himself too important to be employed for mere reconnaissance. It was both humiliating and humbling for him to be sent ahead of the Red Duke’s army, sent to sniff about the terrain with the loathsome ghouls.

  The Red Duke little cared for Renar’s opinion. A peasant’s only purpose was to obey the will of his lord.

  “We could have trouble ahead,” Renar informed the vampire. The Red Duke scowled back at the gaunt man, not liking the surly note in his voice. “The villagers… they’ve gathered in the cemetery… built earthworks…made spears…” Renar injected a healthy dose of contrition in his tone as he noted the vampire’s displeasure. “There’s a chapel at the centre of the graveyard. I could sense power emanating from it… a force antithetical to that which sustains the undead.”

  The Red Duke nodded as he digested Renar’s report. “Then it will be your task to secure the chapel and break its enchantments. Take the ghouls with you.”

  Fear filled Renar’s eyes. “My magic will be useless!” he protested. “I won’t be able to call a single corpse from ground sanctified by such…”

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��Then you will just have to break the enchantment,” the Red Duke snarled. “Your spells were powerful enough to shatter the wards which trapped me in my tomb. They should be enough to break those protecting the chapel.”

  Renar shook his head. “I had time to examine the spell laid upon your tomb. I have no idea what magic guards this place!”

  The vampire bared his fangs. “Then you will find out, mortal. Take the ghouls and circle the cemetery. I will lead my troops in a frontal assault upon the defences. When the defenders converge upon me to throw back the attack, then you shall fall upon them from behind and strike for the chapel.”

  Still dubious, the necromancer squirmed inside his long black coat. “Master, what if I cannot break the spell? All of this will be for nothing. Isn’t it more reasonable to find another…”

  “If your magic is not strong enough to serve me, then you are useless to me, peasant,” the Red Duke hissed. He gestured with his hand, beckoning the skeletal Sir Corbinian towards them. The armoured wight stared at Renar with its witch-fire eyes. “Sir Corbinian will accompany you. He will protect you and see that you reach the chapel in safety. If you fail to break the enchantment, he will remove your wormy head from your shoulders.”

  Renar trembled as he heard the vampire pronounce his doom. Gazing upon the Red Duke, however, he saw that the monster would hear no further debate. The fiend’s mind was decided. It was the necromancer’s job now to serve or die.

  Resigned to his fate, Renar led the ghouls away. They would circle around the village of Mercal and strike the cemetery from the thin stand of woods that bordered it to the north. As the necromancer withdrew, the skeletal figure of his protector and potential executioner kept pace with him, one bony fist locked about the grip of its rusty blade.

  “Loose arrows! Loose arrows!”

  Sir Maraulf waved the blade of his sword overhead, torchlight shimmering across the steel. In the unnatural gloom that enveloped the cemetery, the knight’s blade acted like a banner, drawing peasants to his position. He risked a look over his shoulder, trying to penetrate the dark and see how many men were stirring from their positions to reinforce the embattled southern flank.

  Too few and too slow, Maraulf decided. Most of the villagers had never even been in a tavern brawl, much less a real life-and-death fight. He could see several paralysed with fear, clinging to the walls of their ditches like babes at their mother’s breast. If only the local lords had heeded him. If only they had sent him a few dozen men-at-arms and a handful of knights.

  Maraulf chided himself for his thoughts. There was no use wishing for things that would not be and there was no sense berating scared men for their fear. All was in the hands of the gods.

  The Red Duke’s attack came in silent suddenness. One of Jeanot’s battle pilgrims saw them first. The man had quitted the trench to relieve himself and come scrambling back behind the defences, muttering about a company of dead men marching out of Mercal village. A minute later, the first of the zombies had appeared within the flickering ring of light cast by their torches.

  Arrows brought down several of the rotting creatures, but even the way they fell, soundlessly and with a peculiar motion more like a broken puppet than a dying man, evoked a sense of horror in the peasant bowmen. With each volley, their shooting became more erratic and imprecise. At first admirably accurate, their archery became as sloppy as that of any giggling goblin lunatic. Maraulf and Jeanot were compelled to maintain a steady stream of orders just to keep the bowmen loosing arrows into the oncoming horde.

  Despite the slovenly archery, the ranks of zombies were thinned out considerably by the time they reached the earthen walls. The undead scrabbled clumsily at the barrier, trying to climb over the loose earth. Peasants and pilgrims crouching in the trenches rose up, driving spears into them, transfixing the decayed creatures so that pilgrims armed with clubs and maces might smash in their rotting skulls.

  Maraulf had dared to believe they might hold the position until a second wave of attackers appeared behind the zombies. These were the fleshless husks of men, living skeletons drawn out from their ancient graves. They bore heavier armour than the rags and scraps worn by the zombies and in each bony fist was a sword of steel or a spear of iron. In numbers and armament, the skeletons far excelled Maraulf’s men.

  The knight’s blood ran cold when he looked past the marching skeletons and spied their gruesome general. Seated atop a spectral steed barded in crimson, his red armour gleaming in the torchlight, the vampire’s face was contorted into a mask of vicious pleasure as he watched his monstrous host converge upon the peasants. Maraulf was no stranger to the undead. Across Bretonnia and beyond he had fought their foul kind in the name of his god. He had penetrated the hidden crypts of several vampires and brought to them Morr’s justice. But this creature was different—this was a monster whose exploits had haunted Aquitaine for centuries. This was no nameless fiend of the night, this was the Red Duke, a black legend returned to visit his revenge upon the living.

  Maraulf felt fear pound through his veins for the first time in decades. He glanced to east and west, finding neither side of the cemetery under attack. There was, perhaps, still time to escape. He could order the retreat, leave Jeanot and his pilgrims to fight a rearguard while the rest of them escaped.

  The thought shamed him. There was much more than his life and honour at stake here. The Red Duke had to be stopped from entering the Chapel Sereine if it cost all their lives. Right now, the vampire was a menace. If he could recover the bodies of his vanquished knights, the Red Duke would become a threat to all Bretonnia.

  Maraulf waved his sword overhead, crying out to the peasant bowmen to loose arrows into the oncoming horde. He waited only long enough to hear the first volley, then turned back to the trench. He rushed to support a peasant spearman as the villager collapsed before the combined assault of a zombie and a skeleton. The man cried out in terror as the zombie held him down, its decayed fingers clawing at his tunic. The skeleton raised a corroded bronze axe and prepared to brain the screaming man.

  Soundless as the undead themselves, the dark-garbed Sir Maraulf fell upon the monsters. His sword smashed into the skeleton’s arm, cutting it in two, sending axe and forearm spinning away in the darkness. In the same brutal sweep, Maraulf brought the edge of his weapon slashing through the zombie’s scalp, opening the decayed head like a pot of rancid jam. The creature shuddered and slumped across the peasant, its greasy brains running down its rotten face. Maraulf’s finished the disarmed skeleton with a backsweep of his blade that broke its spine and left it twitching on the floor of the trench.

  The rescued peasant scrambled out from underneath the unmoving zombie, his face pale with horror. The man did not even glance at his discarded spear, but instead turned and ran screaming from the battle.

  Maraulf watched the fleeing man stumble his way across the graveyard. He could not fault the man for his terror, as much as it might doom them all. There was a limit to what could be expected of peasants unversed in the art of war.

  The knight quickly forgot the fleeing peasant as he saw movement among the gravestones. It was not the wholesome motion of men, but the loathsome scuttling of inhuman creatures. Maraulf was familiar enough with the ways of the undead to recognize the animalistic scurry of ghouls.

  He cursed himself for a fool. He had allowed himself to concentrate upon the Red Duke as a monster, forgetting that he had been a man first, a man who had led armies into battle. The seemingly mindless attack on the earthworks was not the unthinking assault of a monster, it was the calculated feint of a tactician. While Maraulf had concentrated his forces to repulse the Red Duke’s attack, the knight had opened the way for the vampire’s more nimble slaves to penetrate the cemetery from behind.

  “Jeanot!” Maraulf cried out. “We are attacked from behind! Break away! Fall back to the chapel!”

  The knight’s orders must have been heard by the Red Duke. At once, the ferocity of the attack increased, a savage vita
lity infusing the skeletons and zombies trying to capture the trench. A spectral figure with a filmy white gown appeared among the bowmen, her beautiful face corroding into a leering skull as she opened her mouth and emitted a deafening shriek that brought men to their knees.

  Maraulf clasped his hands against his helm, trying to block out the banshee’s scream. Even with her shriek piercing his brain like a piece of hot iron, the knight would not be swayed. Resolutely, he turned and raced back towards the chapel.

  His sword licked out, slashing through the neck of a ghoul feasting upon the body of a pilgrim. The cannibal collapsed across his victim. A second ghoul reared up, her jaws caked in gore, a human toe caught between her fangs. Maraulf kicked out, his boot smashing the creature’s face into mush. Like a stricken cur, the ghoul whined and scurried away.

  Maraulf turned away from the savage tableau and resumed his dash towards the chapel. He could see a gaunt figure in a shabby black coat standing before the steps of the chapel, his long hands reaching out towards the barred doors. No ghoul, this one, but a man. Maraulf’s guts churned with loathing. There was only one sort of mortal debased enough to traffic with vampires and ghouls. As a rule, the knight tried to remain dispassionate about killing, but the destruction of a necromancer was one pleasure no amount of pious serenity could quell.

  Another pair of ghouls lurched up from their cannibalistic meals as Maraulf drew near the chapel. He brought his sword crunching through the shoulder of one, leaving the creature strewn across a grave, life-blood jetting from the ghoul’s ruptured veins. The second monster pounced at him, long claws spread to rip the knight’s flesh. Maraulf twisted aside from the ghoul’s lunge, then brought his blade smashing down as the beast swept past. The sword chopped through the ghoul’s back, bisecting him cleanly above the waist. The mutilated monster’s momentum sent its severed halves rolling among the graves.