[Von Carstein 01] - Inheritance Read online

  Isabella von Carstein was her husband’s equal in every way. She was beautiful and cruel, a dangerous combination. Unlike Vlad she was predictable in her cruelly, though. Ganz had long since found her measure. She craved power in all shapes and forms. It was a simplistic desire compared to the confusing nature of her husband, but in that she proved the perfect balance, the perfect foil, the perfect mate. When the count had thought he had lost her to the wasting sickness he had been desolate. At first he had railed at the chirurgeons and the physicians, urging them to find the miracle that would cure his wife, and then when medicine failed he sought a higher salvation. He stood lonely vigil on the highest stones of the castle wall, night after night, as though proximity to the gods in the sky might somehow convince them to save his beloved Isabella. It was only on the final evening, when her carers feared her spirit had passed too far into Morr’s kingdom to ever find its way out, that Vlad banished everyone from her chamber and sat the loneliest of vigils, the death watch for his own wife.

  But she didn’t die.

  The count emerged the next day exhausted, physically drained to the point of collapse, and sent the gawkers on their way. My wife will live, was all he said. A simple four-word announcement. His wife did live. He was right. That night, looking better than she had in months, Isabella von Carstein emerged from her bedchamber to show the world that truly, she would live. By the grace of the gods she had conquered the wasting sickness that had so ravaged Sylvania.

  The narrow stone stairwell led to a gallery still high above the main house of the castle. The walls of the gallery were lined with portraits of von Carstein by some of the nation’s most beloved artists, each one seeking to capture on canvas some of the count’s most hypnotic qualities. It was the eyes they focussed on. Some might have considered the obsession with his own image vanity, but the more he grew to know the count, the less Ganz believed he was a vain man. No, it was just another dichotomy within the man. There were no mirrors in the castle, none of the usual trappings of narcissism that went with self-obsession. The paintings were obvious things of beauty and the count was an admirer of all such creations. He spoke often about great beauty being a gift from the gods themselves, a blessing, so he chose to surround himself with the pictures just as he surrounded himself with fine porcelain and marble statuettes, adorned himself with delicately crafted jewellery and furnished his home with plush velvets and brocades.

  It was about collecting things of beauty.

  Hoarding them.

  Oddly, there were no portraits of his wife in the gallery.

  Ganz walked briskly through the long room, pushing aside the thick red velvet drape at the far end and descending a second tightly spiralled stair into the servants’ quarters. Unlike the refinements elsewhere, there was an edge of decay about these rooms. The tapestries on the walls were worn a little threadbare in places. The colour was spotted and uneven after years of sunlight had leached them of their vibrancy. They showed scenes of the Great Hunt, some nameless, faceless van Drak count leading yapping dogs and men on a chase after wild boar. Given the mad van Draks’ well deserved reputations as barbarous fiends, Ganz suspected the invisible prey ran on two legs rather than four. The stained glass window at the far end of the hallway scattered a hypnotic array of yellows, greens and reds across the carpet.

  Ganz stalked down the hallway. Halfway along, two servants’ staircases led to different levels of the castle, the longest one descending directly into the kitchens, the shorter one leading to another gallery, this one overlooking the main hall.

  Ganz took the short staircase two and three steps at a time.

  He was out of breath by the time he reached the bottom.

  The gallery was designed to show off the grandeur of the main hall and the count’s obsidian throne. This was Ganz’s favourite place in the whole castle. From here he could observe the comings and goings of the count’s court unseen. Life played itself out in the room below, the scheming of the petty barons, the pleas for clemency, the terrible swift sword of the count’s justice, the everyday life of Sylvania, it all happened down there.

  From here Ganz watched, studied, and learned. He was not so different from Isabella von Carstein, he too craved the power his close association with the count conferred, but he wasn’t so ignorant as to believe himself irreplaceable. Far from it, he harboured no illusions as regards his own beauty: he was not something the count would willingly choose to have about his person. He had to make himself irreplaceable. That meant gathering knowledge, knowing each and every man in the count’s court, knowing their weaknesses and how to exploit them.

  The count was right; life in his court really was very much like the ravens they had watched squabbling over scraps of food. Survival came down to being willing to sacrifice others in order to ensure your continued existence.

  Alten Ganz was a survivor.

  It was in his nature.

  The main hall was abuzz with activity. Some lesser noble from the outer reaches of the county had taken it upon himself to make a pilgrimage to Drakenhof to petition Vlad von Carstein for aid in feeding his own people. The count had laughed in his face dismissively and told him to get on his knees and beg. When the noble did as he was told von Carstein laughed even harder and suggested that he might as well kiss the dirt at his feet for all the respect he had for a man who would beg at the feet of another. Instead of aid, von Carstein disenfranchised the noble, allowing him to leave Drakenhof with the shirt on his back and nothing more, no shoes, no trousers, no cloak to guard against the elements, and promised to send one of his most trusted family members to the man’s home to rule in his stead. “A man should be able to care for his own, not prostrate himself at the feet of strangers and beg for mercy. It is a lesson you would all do well to learn.” That was the count’s judgement and the ramifications of it were still playing out in the main hall hours later.

  Ganz found Herman Posner in the drill hall, running a number of the count’s soldiers through a series of punishing exercises. Posner was taller than Ganz by a good six inches, and had a much heavier build, all of it due to his well-defined musculature. While the others looked on, Posner duelled a younger soldier. Posner used two short slightly curved swords while his opponent opted for a longer blade and a small shield. Posner’s swords wove a dance of death between the two men, keeping his opponent at bay with dizzying ease. The blades shimmered in the torchlight. Such was Posner’s skill that the two blades appeared to blur into one, so quick was the movement.

  As Ganz stepped onto the duelling floor Posner’s left-hand blade snaked out to nick the young soldier’s cheek, drawing a line of blood with the shallowest of cuts. He bowed to his opponent and turned to Ganz who was applauding slowly as he walked across the floor.

  “Very impressive,” Ganz said.

  “If it isn’t von Carstein’s esteemed chancellor. To what do we owe the pleasure, Herr Ganz?” Posner said, his sepulchral tones echoing loudly in the vast emptiness of the drill hall.

  “Work. We are going to visit Baron Heinz Rothermeyer. The count would have him brought to heel.”

  “Hear that, men?” Posner said to the men who had been watching his duel with the young soldier. A feral grin spread slowly across his face. The count wants us to instil just the right amount of terror in the baron’s heart to convince him mend his ways, eh?”

  “Something like that,” Ganz agreed.

  Posner sheathed his twin blades in the scabbards slung low on his back.

  “When do we leave?”

  “Sunrise,” Ganz said.

  “Too soon. We have to make preparations for the journey. Sundown. We can travel under cover of darkness.”

  “So be it, sundown tomorrow. Be ready.” Ganz turned on his heel and left. The echo of steel on steel rang in his ears before he was halfway across the duelling floor.

  “Better!” he heard Posner encourage one of his men. The count had selected Posner for a reason, and for all that Ganz disliked the man, he
was the first to admit that Posner was among the best at what he did.

  And what he did was kill people.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Something Wicked This Way Comes

  ACROSS SYLVANIA

  Early autumn, 2009

  Five black brougham coaches rolled through the night.

  Horses’ hooves drummed like thunder on the hard-packed dirt of the makeshift road.

  Clutching the reins tightly in their fists the five coachmen driving the broughams hunched low over the footboard irons, their occasional whip cracks spurring their teams of horses on to greater speeds. The coachmen wore heavy road-stained travel cloaks and had hoods pulled high over their heads and scarves wrapped around their faces.

  The brougham coaches bore the crest of von Carstein on their doors.

  The further north they travelled the worse the condition of the roads became. Three of the five coaches had had to be re-wheeled after rocks in the road had broken the existing wheel’s felloe. One coach had needed its elliptical spring replaced and the other had developed cracks in its axle and had broken a lynchpin. None of the carriages had escaped unscathed.

  The coaches afforded the travellers some small luxury, with Herman Posner and his men sharing four of the broughams, leaving Ganz alone in the fifth. Even so, tempers among the passengers had long since worn thin, and several frayed to breaking point. It was inevitable, Ganz realised. His travelling companions were killers. They craved space and solitude, perhaps to contemplate or come to terms with the murders they were prepared to commit in the name of their master, or perhaps simply to clear their minds of the tedium of the endless road.

  After a month cooped up in the carriages it was inevitable that a few fights would break out, but whenever they did Posner was quick to stamp them out. The man ruled his soldiers with an iron fist and backed his threats up with the steel of his twin blades. Few pushed the arguments once Posner interjected himself into them. It was part fear, part respect, Ganz realised, appreciating the man’s leadership skills. He was very much like the count in that regard, commanding the love and the fear of his servants.

  They travelled by night and slept in the velvet darkness of the brougham coaches by day. It was a peculiar arrangement and Ganz found himself missing the touch of the sun on his face but he was growing used to it.

  At sundown every day Posner put his men through a rigorous series of exercises aimed at minimising the effects of the journey on their bodies and keeping their minds sharp. Much of the exercises looked, to Ganz, like an elaborate form of dance, with Posner focussing on the footwork of his seven warriors as he drove them through a punishing series of blocks, strikes, parries and cuts.

  Posner practised what he preached. He matched his men exercise for exercise and then pushed himself further still, focussing on his body dynamics and balance. The man was the consummate athlete. He manipulated his own body with preternatural grace. Without doubt, the man was a deadly adversary.

  The eight of them together would be more than a match for local militia.

  Rothermeyer’s barony, Eschen, was one of the smaller outlying territories along the north-west border of the province, between the Forest of Shadows and the fork in the River Stir, a mere four days’ travel from Waldenhof, Pieter Kaplin’s home. The coaches might easily have been travelling through the Lands of the Dead for all the life the land offered. Given the season, the trees ought to have been a thousand shades of copper and tin. Instead, they were thick with lichen and mould, while others were lightning split, stumps of rotten trunks and dead wood. On the roadside dilapidated buildings crumbled to rock dust and rubble, and barren fields lay where there should have been a bountiful harvest waiting to be reaped. The sickness had spread to the very soil itself, poisoning the province.

  Ganz rode alone in the last carriage. With plush red velvet banquettes and padded backrests the interior was luxurious, the drapes were thick enough to block out the sun, even at the height of the day, and the banquettes were more than comfortable enough for sleeping on.

  He had thought through what he was going to say to Rothermeyer a thousand times, couching it in terms as disparate as a friendly warning and a pat on the back to outright threat and physical violence, playing through all of the wayward baron’s possible responses in his mind. It was like an elaborate game of chess, trying to see through to the endgame with the best possible strategy. Soon enough it would move out of the realm of the imagination and become all too real. And it would come to blows, as he had told the count. Rothermeyer was no fool, and being on the very fringe of the count’s territory it was little surprise the man felt invulnerable.

  Vlad von Carstein’s reach may have been long, but Rothermeyer must have been gambling on the fact that it was almost impossible to exert any real control on his barony over such great distance. The miles were his greatest protection from the count. They could also, just as easily, prove to be his death warrant as they had proved to be for Pieter Kaplin.

  No doubt Rothermeyer knew they were coming. The five black broughams bearing von Carstein’s crest had raised more than a few eyebrows as they cut through the night, and their practice this evening had been witnessed by a handful of farmers and their curious families from Eschen’s outlying farmsteads. The strangers would most certainly be the topic of conversation for miles around and it was only to be expected that the lesser baronies they had swept through along the way would send word of their passing. It was part of the culture of fear that enveloped Sylvania. The black coaches could only mean ill news for someone further up the road. The word would spread by messenger birds: von Carstein’s men were coming.

  Those barons yet to fall in line with the count’s rule would hear of the black coaches coming their way and would know fear.

  Ganz admired the simplicity of the count’s manoeuvre. Instead of travelling like any anonymous wanderer trudging the roads of the province by foot or horseback, the sumptuous brougham coaches not only afforded comfort, they made it plain exactly who was travelling in them. The knowledge that the count’s men were abroad would be more than enough to stir the ever-present fear and self-loathing of the Sylvanian people.

  The coachman rapped on the ceiling of Ganz’s carriage, three sharp knocks.

  The chancellor rolled up the velvet curtain, drew down the glass window and leaned out through the opening.

  “What is it, man?” Ganz shouted over the noise of the wheels and the horses’ hooves.

  “Just crossed the River Stir, sir, and that’s Eschen in the distance. We’ll be there by dawn.”

  Ganz strained to see through the gradually lifting darkness but it was impossible to make out more than a smudge of deeper darkness along the line where the land met the night sky. Sunrise was little more than an hour away. Eschen would be a hive of activity already, bakers preparing the day’s bread, grooms readying the horses, stable boys mucking out the stalls, servants slaving away to make their work of the day appear effortless. How the coachman could possibly know that that inky smudge on the horizon was Eschen baffled him but Ganz was gradually coming to suspect that there was more to this peculiar entourage than met the eye.

  In the month they had spent on the road the coachmen had barely said a word to each other, though they occasionally spoke to him in low inflectionless voices, and they did not fraternise with Posner’s men. The five drivers were vaguely disquieting. It was something about them, a peculiar quality they all shared. Five deeply introspective men, almost identical in build, focussed so utterly on the road as though their very lives depended upon mastering it, permanently wrapped up against the elements despite the fact that it was late summer, drifting into autumn, and the nights were pleasantly balmy. Little more than the arch of their brow and the shadowed recesses of their eyes were exposed, and still they were capable of seeing for miles in the dark with greater clarity than Ganz could during the day.

  Slowly, as the first blush of the sun began to rise and the distance to the town narrowed, the out
line of Eschen came into focus.

  It was a daunting silhouette, far grander in scale than Ganz had expected this close to the edge of the province. Not as vast as Drakenhof, Eschen still verged somewhere on the border between being called a town and a city. Spires rose into the reddening sky, and the rooftops of two and three-storey buildings crowded in on each other. Ganz’s knuckles whitened as his grip on the sill of the carriage door tightened. Eschen Keep rose on a mile long crag-and-tail mount behind the houses, a brooding sentinel watching over the streets and houses below. Most surprising of all though, the thing that Ganz had most definitely not expected, were the high walls. Eschen was a fortified town.

  It made sense, given the proximity of the Kislev border. Fortifications would act as a deterrent to prospective raiders.

  As they drew closer Alten Ganz’s suspicions began to crystallise.

  The walls were new and had nothing to do with keeping raiding parties at bay.

  Rothermeyer’s rebellion was more serious than von Carstein suspected. The man was making preparations for civil war. Walling his city was a declaration of intent. Ganz could only wonder how many more of the border barons were with him in this. It would be a foolish man who stood alone against the might of Vlad von Carstein, and from the little Ganz knew about Heinz Rothermeyer the man was a lot of things, stubborn, honourable, curmudgeonly, but he was not a fool.

  The coaches thundered on towards the gates of the walled town.

  Ganz forced himself to reassess the situation. When they embarked it was to warn an errant baron from stepping out of line, not put down a burgeoning rebellion. Suddenly he felt like a fly crawling into the spider’s sticky web.

  Two soldiers standing square in the middle of the road blocked their entry through the Eschen Gate. More soldiers in the livery of Rothermeyer lined the battlements above them. Ganz studied the men. They ranged in age, two were very young, and another was well into his fifth decade. They were nervous. It was in their body language. They were tense. Expecting trouble. With good reason, considering the fact that their baron had obviously been plotting his coup for some considerable time. The next few minutes were going to be interesting.