red thirst Read online

  Soon, she must feed. It was more than a physical need. It was a spiritual desire. The red thirst wasn't much like the simple need men and women felt for water. It had more in common with the acute craving of the far-gone weirdroot addict, or the lusts of the libertine.

  The soldiers had gone now.

  "We must find somewhere for the night," he said.

  She was irritated, but saw the sense. She was off her best in the day, but could still keep moving. He needed to sleep. They would have to proceed to his advantage for the moment.

  "The lodge. No one's using it."

  Slowly, their bodies pressed together, they made their way up to the hunting lodge. It wasn't especially large or luxurious, but it was better than a floor of pine needles, a roof of sky and a quilt of leaves.

  They didn't even need to break in. There was an unfastened window at the rear. Inside, the lodge was one large room, carpeted with furs, with a sleeping gallery running around the ceiling. Hunting trophies hung on the walls.

  Vukotich found a bottle of wine and unstoppered it, drinking deep. He offered it to her, but she declined.

  With some awkwardness, they climbed the ladder to the gallery, and found a corner where, under some furs, Vukotich could sleep. He finished the bottle, and passed out.

  Genevieve sat, her arm outstretched as Vukotich curled into a protective position, and let the night go to waste.

  Vukotich dreamed of the Battle at the Top of the World. He had had these nightmares since childhood, and the Strega of his village tried many times to read in them intimations of his future. In these dreams, his body was unfamiliarly heavy and hurt, not with the wounds of combat but with the weight of years. On a vast plain, where his breath turned to ice in the air, he found himself amid a conflict in which all the races of the Known World fought apparently at random. Hideously altered creatures clashed in purposeless jousts, many shades of blood darkening the ground. They were all knee-deep in the bones of the fallen. In the darkness, Vukotich fought...

  Then, he was awake. The vampire was close, her hand over his mouth. Annoyed, he made fists. Did she think he was a child who cried out in the night?

  There was light in the lodge, and he could hear voices.

  Genevieve's face loomed over his. With her eyes, she directed his attention.

  There were people in the lodge, standing around a blazing fire.

  "He will be here soon?" asked a tall, completely bald man in ceremonial armour edged with purple silks and wolfs fur.

  A robed and hooded figure nodded.

  The bald man paced impatiently, a goblet clutched in his hand. From his bearing, Vukotich could tell that this was a man unused to being kept waiting, a man of power. Vukotich was sure he had seen the man before, perhaps at the opening ceremony of the Festival of Ulric, along with all the other generals and barons and imperial heroes.

  Genevieve mouthed a name, and Vukotich caught it. Blasko.

  Vukotich looked again. Yes, it was Wladislaw Blasko, the Lord Marshal of the fortress city. Also, the man who had allowed Claes Glinka's crusade to take hold, who had let Zhufbar's famously riotous wine palaces be turned into glum coffee houses with religious tracts on every table and cold ashes in the hearths.

  Blasko drained his goblet at a gulp, and held it out for an attendant to refill. The glowing purple liquid certainly wasn't Glinka's Lustrian coffee.

  As Blasko paced, the robed figure stood as still as a devotional statue. He wore the hood of a Moral Crusader, but there was something strange, almost inhuman, about his bearing. Although his head was bowed, he stood a full hand's breadth taller than the Lord Marshal, and his elbows seemed to bend the wrong way. Vukotich guessed that whoever was underneath the hood had a touch of the warpstone.

  Morality and mutation. These were strange partners, Vukotich understood now why there had been soldiers in the village. The Lord Marshal was the commander of Zhufbar, and Zhufbar was a key link in the chain of fortresses that stretched from Karak-Ungor in the icy north down the Worlds' Edge mountains to Karak-Azgal in the volcano-blighted south. These were the only line of defence against the Dark Lands, where the goblin hordes still ruled, where daemons raged, where schemes were laid against humanity. Such an important man does not go anywhere without making sure no assassins lie in wait. If they survived this escapade, Vukotich would suggest that Blasko engage some new elite guards. His current crop had been easily fooled. Were he and the vampire bitch out to win favour with the Proscribed Cults, they could easily kill the Lord Marshal from their hiding place, and maybe an Empire would totter a little.

  A group of newcomers arrived, bringing with them a chill blast of night air, and a few traces of mist. Blasko was pleased that his wait was over.

  "Hah," he said, "good! Comrade, some wine?"

  The chief of the newcomers, robed like the tall figure, shook his head. Blasko had his own goblet refilled again.

  The two robed men exchanged bows and gestures, communicating in ways Vukotich did not understand.

  The newcomer, whose black robes were edged with discreet scarlet, broke off his silent conversation, and turned to Blasko.

  "I am Yefimovich," he said, pulling off his hood.

  Blasko spluttered his drink, and stepped back. Vukotich felt a rush of terror, as Yefimovich's inner fires spread red light up into the gallery.

  He was like a living statue of transparent glass, perfect in every detail, filled with fire. Eyes like black marble peered out of his infernal face, and he smiled.

  His robes fell away from his blazing hands, and he clapped Blasko on the shoulder. Vukotich expected the Lord Marshal to burst into flames, but although he flinched he was unharmed. With fascination, he gingerly laid his hand over Yefimovich's, and suffered no hurt.

  "Our dark masters demand strange sacrifices, Wladislaw," the fiery man said.

  Yefimovich spoke Old Worlder with a Kislevite rasp.

  "Will I...?"

  Blasko was unable to finish his question.

  "Undoubtedly," Yefimovich replied. "Something will be required of you. You must learn to leave your preconceptions about physical form behind. This might seem quite a startling condition, but it is surprisingly pleasant. With the changes of the warpstone come certain improvements. With strange sacrifices come strange rewards. It is different for each soul, Wladislaw. Who knows what is locked within your heart?"

  Blasko turned away. His goblet was empty again.

  Yefimovich's still-masked lieutenant walked across the room, swaying slightly. Underneath his robes, his limbs moved the wrong way. He must have more elbows and knees than was natural. Vukotich was thankful that this horror was decorously covered.

  Always, the marks of Chaos had filled him with a fear that made him detest himself. He had killed many of these warp-spawn, but he could never kill his dreams. The Battle at the Top of the World still waited for him each night.

  "Things are well, I trust?" Yefimovich asked.

  Blasko didn't look at the fiery man, but he replied. "Yes. I have made the arrangements for the closing ceremony of the festival."

  "Glinka will speak?"

  "He will preach. On the shores of the Blackwater, there will be a gathering of all the representatives. Glinka will call for the Emperor to embrace his Moral Crusade..."

  Yefimovich laughed, nastily. "Then he will die?"

  "Yes. The man you sent me will carry out the assassination. Glinka's wizard advisers are interested only in orthodox magic. The Celestial has methods unfamiliar to them."

  "Excellent, excellent. You are well placed to succeed to the position of power within the Crusade?"

  Blasko gulped more wine. "Of course, of course. My trusted aides already outnumber Glinka's people on the inner councils of the Temple of Purity. I shall be appointed in his stead."

  Yefimovich's face flared into a grin. "And as the power of the Crusade grows, so shall the influence of our Invisible Empire. There is an amusing irony, don't you think, in our taking advantage of a campaig
n against sin?"

  Blasko didn't say anything. He was sweating. Vukotich noticed that the attendant who brought him his wine was bone-white with terror. They weren't all monsters. Yet.

  Genevieve was intent on the conversation, her brows knitted. Vukotich wondered where her sympathies would lie. As a monster, she must have some affinity with Yefimovich and his like. But she had campaigned against Drachenfels, the Great Enchanter. She wasn't like the other creatures of darkness he had encountered.

  Yefimovich embraced the quivering Blasko and kissed him on the mouth, obviously enjoying the Lord Marshal's discomfort. Vukotich remembered how he had felt in Genevieve's cold embrace, feeling her razor teeth against his lips.

  "Tzeentch willing, we shall meet again in three days, Wladislaw," said the monster, "after the ceremony. I shall look forward to your elevation. As our friend from the east might say, you are to climb the Pagoda..."

  With his robed comrades, Yefimovich left. Blasko turned to his attendant, and wiped his lips. Vukotich remembered the sweet taste of Genevieve, the shameful moment when he had felt aroused by her, felt a desire for her to continue the dark kiss...

  The attendant was crying now, almost gibbering with fear.

  Blasko was in a cold fury, trying to purge himself of his rage. He looked around for something to hurt.

  "Stop that whimpering, Meyyes," he snarled.

  The attendant, no more than a lad, fell to his knees, and began to pray to Shallya for forgiveness.

  Blasko threw the dregs of his goblet into the fire, and looked for a long moment into the flames. The attendant kept praying, his pleas to the goddess interrupted by sobs.

  The Lord Marshal turned round, a dagger in his hand, and shut Meyyes up.

  He kicked the corpse, and left the lodge.

  As he did each morning, Dien Ch'ing cast the yarrow sticks. Something about the configuration disturbed him. This close to the assassination, he was liable to fuss over details, to take additional precautions. He was still in an ill humour over the pair who had escaped from the coffle yesterday. They weren't important, but they were a flaw in the tapestry of his life, and if he were to neglect such things the whole fabric would come apart.

  He uncrossed his legs and stood up. His cell in the Temple of Purity was bare of all decoration, but there was an exquisitely carved trunk under his cot. It was the only thing he had brought with him from Cathay, and it had been blessed by a High Priest of Tsien-Tsin with a blood sacrifice.

  Reciting the words of restraint, he opened the trunk. If he were to stray by so much as a syllable from the ancient ritual, he knew his heart would burst in his chest. Tsien-Tsin demanded perfection.

  From among the other magical implements, Ch'ing drew out a shallow, unpatterned bowl. He set it on the flagstone floor, and filled it with water from the jug by his cot. Then, he added three drops of jaguar oil from a phial he found in its slot in the trunk. He slipped a thumb into his mouth and sank his teeth into the fleshy part, piercing the skin. He squeezed out precisely three drops of his blood, and set the bowl spinning.

  The oil and the blood swirled in the water, clouding it over. Ch'ing focused his mind, trying to see the Pagoda in the water, its lower levels strewn with lotus and chrysanthemum, its upper levels decorated with the bones of those who had failed Tsien-Tsin.

  Music was forbidden within the Temple by order of Claes Glinka, who claimed that even the most devotional air was an invitation to lewd behaviour. But Ch'ing heard the orchestra of the Fifteen Devils playing on the Pagoda. For a moment, he was melancholy for the land of his birth.

  He gave the bowl another spin, and it revolved as if on an axis like a potters' wheel. The impurities in the water collected around the rim, and the bowl became a window.

  Ch'ing saw a hunting lodge in the forests, first from the outside, then from within. He nodded to himself. This was where Wladislaw Blasko and High Priest Yefimovich should have met last night, to discuss the work of the Proscribed Cults. The window was high up in the lodge, and Ch'ing saw Blasko and Yefimovich talking silently below.

  What was wrong with this picture?

  The conspirators were not alone. Ch'ing cursed Blasko's western wizards and their lack of true vision. The Lord Marshal should not have, need not have, allowed his business to be overheard.

  There were two of them, in the gallery, listening attentively to things that were not their concern.

  The window sank towards the eavesdroppers, and Ch'ing recognized them. The vampire and the mercenary. He included himself in his curses. This would not have happened had he not been careless.

  The bowl slowed, and the window closed. He was simply staring at a bowl of water.

  The Celestial thought things through. He could not admit his mistake to Blasko, lest he be replaced as assassin. It was important to Tsien-Tsin that he, and not some feeble initiate necromancer of Nurgle, deliver the Moral Crusade into the hands of the Chaos Lords. If he were to step aside, his bones would adorn the Pagoda.

  Genevieve and Vukotich must be found, and silenced.

  He took a bamboo flute and blew a silent note, conjuring the spirit of a humble ancestor who had been buried under the tree which provided the wood for the instrument. Ancestor Xhou formed in the air, and he despatched the spirit at once to harry the pair.

  Then he set out to perform his devotions for the Crusade.

  They had stolen an ox-cart, and were on the road to the Blackwater. It was as good a direction as any, considering that to the east were the Dark Lands, to the south the Blood River and the Badlands, and to the west the Black Mountains. What they had learned last night troubled Vukotich a little, but it was really none of his concern. Like Genevieve, he had no especial cause to wish to protect Claes Glinka from his enemies. He was not a citizen of the Empire, and he was not currently sworn to serve anyone. If the Crusade of Purity were to be infiltrated completely by the proscribed cults, then it could hardly inflict any more damage than it was already wreaking in its intended form. Until someone paid him, this was not his fight. And Genevieve, he suspected, stood to profit from the encroachments of Chaos. Surely, her filthy kind would be more likely to be tolerated if the likes of Yefimovich were to rule over the Old World.

  Their best plan was still to find a smithy, and go their separate ways. Vukotich could certainly breathe easier without the leech girl as an anchor.

  They had found some rag blankets in the cart, and wrapped them around themselves. Genevieve was dozing now, her head against his shoulder, the blanket tight over their shackles. He held the reins in his left hand and let the ox do the work. They were supposed to be an old peasant couple. They had met no one on the road worth lying to.

  If Blasko's followers were to come to power in the fortress cities, they would be able to betray the Worlds' Edge defences to the goblin hordes. There would be wars. Noble houses would be set against each other. The Empire's armies would clash with the forces of Chaos. Kislev, Bretonnia and Estalia would have to pitch in. Everyone would have to take sides. There would be plenty of work for a mercenary. A war would be good for business.

  But still Vukotich remembered his dreams. There was little honour, glory or profit in his nightmare of battle.

  Cloaked in the robes of Purity, the inhumans could get close to the Emperor himself, could all but take over the Empire. Maybe there would be no great fields of combat, only a series of treacheries, betrayals and ignoble victories.

  The cart trundled across a crossroads. There was a sturdy gallows built there. A dead dwarf hung from the rope, flies swarming on his face.

  They were getting near civilization again.

  Genevieve was awake, her fingers digging into his side.

  "There's something dead here."

  "Just a sheep thief," he told her.

  "No. His spirit is gone. Someone else remains. A foreign spirit, from a very great distance..."

  There was a miniature explosion in the air, and something took shape. It was indistinct, and it flew as
fast as a hummingbird. It danced above the ox's head.

  Genevieve threw back the blanket, and made some passes in the air with her hands. Vukotich's right hand had gone to sleep. It dangled under hers from their chain.

  "I'm not very good at this. I've never been much of a spellslinger."

  The spirit settled, and became a small old man in patterned golden robes, sitting cross-legged in the air over the ox. He had long fingernails and stringy moustaches like the Celestial's.

  "Greetings, honoured ones," he said, in a tiny voice, "I bring you the multiple blessings of my most worshipful descendant, Master Dien Ch'ing, who has attained the exalted position on the Fifth Tier of the Pagoda of Tsien-Tsin. I am Xhou Ch'ing, unworthy dog of a servant, and I request your kind permission to convey to you a proposition upon which I hope you will look with merciful favour."

  Genevieve managed to get a charm to work, and violet fire sprung from her nails. Xhou waved the bolts aside as if a light breeze had disarranged his moustaches, and continued.

  "My descendant bears you no ill-will, and promises that he intends to do you no further harm. All he requires is that you remain within these forests for three days, and not attempt to communicate any information you may have come by at the hunting lodge last night to anyone in the city of Zhufbar. Thereafter, he will reward you with anything you desire... riches, a position, spiritual guidance, arcane knowledge. All these can be yours if you simply refrain from taking action..."

  Xhou had floated nearer, and was now holding steady an arm's length away from them. He kept his position in the air relative to the cart even as it moved forwards. Vukotich's reins passed through Xhou, remaining visible inside the transparent spirit.

  Genevieve was working frantically, but she had very little magic. Xhou kept absorbing her blows with ease. He purred suavely, making more and more offers. Vukotich had the feeling that they were in trouble.

  "It pains me to raise the possibility," Xhou said, his face an exaggerated tragic mask, "but were you not to give your assent to my descendant's honourable and equitable proposition, I would suspect that he intends to do you considerable injury. As a favoured associate of the Lord of the Fifteen Devils, he can summon up considerable enchantments, against which you would have no chance at all of prevailing. Indeed, I am privileged to be familiar with the exquisite torments to which you are likely to be subject if, regrettably, you do not hold your worthy tongues, and I can assure you that the pains you will experience will be extensive, varied, unmerciful and..."