Wolfsbad - Darknight

It was difficult to tell which bits of bloody light came from the dying sun, setting like a great bloodshot eyeball in the east, and which came from the dancing tongues of flame spreading their gossip of destruction over the village of Wolfsbad.

Men ran to and fro, ferrying water from the river in buckets, bowls and leather bottles. With the grim, repetitive movements of those who have done this many times before – this was the sixth time the raiders had come – they threw the water, trying to douse the flames.

The eddying wind blew the flames this way and that along the village in the valley floor, pushing soot into the faces of the men and fanning the red tongues onto the kindling-dry thatch of neighbouring houses. With a crackle and a curse, the rest of the village began to burn. The weather was not being kind; it had not rained for three weeks.

The menfolk were grim-faced and silent – speaking allowed more smoke into the lungs; any tracks of tears on soot-grimed cheeks were the results of embers irritating the eyes, not sadness. The women cried mechanically and pathetically, as they had been brought up. Young children were unable to comprehend what had happened, but picked up on the anguish and smoke in the air and wailed incessantly. Older children, learning rotes that would keep them in the ploughed peasant furrow that their parents had long tilled in the Empire, aped their parents, either trying to cry or trying to be stoic.

The noise of a horse, heavily armoured, barding rattling as it rode towards the village, iron-shod hooves clattering on the stones of the river-side path. Men and women turned, wary of the sound of riders.

But this was no motley collection of raiders, but rather a single knight, magnificently arrayed in the full-plate armour of a member of an Empire Order. Lacquered black with gilded piping at the edge of the plates, the armour enclosed the figure from head to foot, hiding his features behind a plain grille. But the armour could do nothing to hide the stature of the knight; well-over six feet in height with shoulders like the World Edge Mountains, it looked as if a charging minotaur wouldn’t throw him off balance.

His steed was suited to its rider – a glossy black pelt straining over bulging muscles and iron-shod hooves the size of bucklers pawing at the ground, striking impatient sparks from the flinty floor. Breath like a bellows snorted in its nostrils. With calm, unhurried movements the knight dismounted, his shield catching the light, highlighting the device of a dragon rampart gules on a sable field. He rested one massive hand on the dragon-head pommel of the longsword that was girt at his side – just resting it there, not ready to draw. A variety of other weapons – lance, horseman’s axe, morningstar, greatsword – hung from the saddle of the horse.

The village elder, Hans, got to his feet as swiftly as his arthritic joints would allow. Supported by his son, he hobbled over to the massive black armoured figure. He stopped a respectful distance from the knight – partially out of deference and partially because to stand too close would be to force himself to raise his head painfully too-far in order to look the knight in the face.

Normally, Hans would have been polite and courteous to the stranger, but the hurts he and his village had suffered had burned away his civility. "Who are you?" he asked in a short, sharp voice, cracked with age and smoke.

The knight’s head moved a fraction to face the source of the noise. "Siegfried," he said. His voice was cold and heavy – the fires nearby seemed to die more readily when he spoke. The total lack of interest in his voice suggested that he hadn’t been answering the question, rather just practising his name.

Hans was taken aback slightly by the calm of the knight and his total lack of expressed concern for the burning village. He paused for a second, allowing the knight – who certainly looked and sounded young although not inexperienced – to overcome any possible shock at seeing the devastation and ask what had happened here.

The question never came.

"What Order are you of, Sir?" asked Hans’ son. There was a pause for a second. "I do not recognise the device on your shield."

The knight inclined his steel-clad head slightly. "I doubt you would have heard of the Order I am pledged to, sirrah," he said slowly, "Few of my Order have passed this way before."

Hans finally plucked up the courage to ask the question the village wanted answered. He had nothing more to loose – with Winter coming, with no food the village would soon starve. "Sir, we are sore-pressed by brigands, some score of them. They come to our village every month and pillage. Many of the villagers are dead and our homes are burnt. We have nothing to offer you – all we have has been taken by the brigands – but we beg of you in Sigmar’s name to deliver us." Hans stopped, coughed against the tightness in his chest and looked beseechingly into the knight’s mask.

A pause, and then a word said with disinterested distaste. "Brigands?"

"Aye."

"Twenty?" Bored and contemptuous now.

"Yes, Sir."

A long pause. "No livery? No uniform? Twenty untrained brigands? Ill-equipped, rusting weapons, reeking leather armour?"

Hans misunderstood his guest’s contemptuous tone. He laughed, "Aye, Sir – no match for the likes of you."

"Not worth my time," he stated calmly, turning back to his horse. In the moment of shock, as potent as abandonment by a lover, the villagers couldn’t think of anything to say. In this silence the knight walked to his horse and took a heavy bag from the saddle. With a casual gesture he flung it at the chest of Hans’ son. Stupefied by shock, the peasant barely brought his arms up in time, and the sack slammed into his chest with the chink of coins and the grunt of air driven from the lungs. Unready for the impact the peasant staggered back under the weight of the heavy blow, tripped and ended up on his behind in the ash.

"There should be enough gold there to rebuild your village, buy more food and hire mercenaries," the knight said, "With luck, you will survive. Pray to whatever gods you hold dear for that luck." He placed one steel-toed boot into the stirrup and prepared to mount. "Farewell."

It was perhaps the sight of their saviour vanishing that galvanised the village into action. Acting like a single, collective organism, the village sent forward only one of its number to beg. Not old Hans this time, but Maria – her figure only recently turned womanly and so not ruined by the ravages of peasant motherhood. She was not betrothed and so still tried to make herself as beautiful as possible.

It was perhaps too late for the village to try the tactic of the beautiful damsel in distress, but it had perhaps been delayed in this by the absence of its main weapon in that form of attack – Kristina, the prettiest girl in the village, had been taken in the raid four hours previously.

So Maria, with the courage of the village behind her, ran to the knight and grabbed his arm imploringly. She pulled, trying to turn him to face her, but it was as if he’d been carved from stone. Slowly, he turned of his own volition and looked at her.

"Sir, please! We beg of you!" Maria whimpered, "They took Kristina today! They dragged her away, the dark warrior said she was a pretty thing, that he’d enjoy her!" Maria gulped, tears that were partly anger and partly jealousy that – in all the raids – no-one had ever taken her beading in her eyes. "She’s my friend, you can’t let them do . . . that to her!"

The knight seemed to become even stiller than usual. "Dark warrior?" he asked, sounding slightly curious now. He looked down at Maria, at her clothing purposefully dishevelled and her heaving bosom and he smiled behind the mask. He took his foot from the stirrup. "Tell me more," he said.

Grateful though the villagers were, they were cynical about the knight’s motives. No altruism entered here; it was the comely charms of Maria and the promise of the grateful Kristina’s body that excited the knight’s curiosity. Despite all his airs, the villagers thought, under that armour his desires were still base and human.

They had no idea how wrong they were.

*

It had been five months previously, shortly after Kristina had left Wolfsbad to study in the Temple of Shallya in Talabheim. Spring had been crawling at the edges of Winter’s corpse like maggots in a sword wound; unwanted after the village had got used to Winter, but necessary and beneficial all the same.

Fields that had lain in the same iron-hard furrows of frozen earth since the harvest were broken open by teams of men and oxen tilling the soil, the fleshy wriggling of chopped worms awoken from sleep by the ploughshare attracting the attention of the crows. All over the Empire, the agricultural villages shook themselves awake and the year was born again, fair and virginal as Kristina.

It had been Father Otto who had noticed her first; her quietness and gentleness, the bright intelligent stare in her eyes and her willingness to help those in need. She had nursed her father through his long illness and – when old Elsa the wisewoman said nothing could be done to stop the consumptive cough – only she had not given up. While the rest of the village prayed Morr would treat his soul justly, she remained in lonely vigil by his bedside. And, after seven days and nights, her father had walked from his sickbed – tired, stiff and with a tightness in his chest, perhaps, but there was no doubt she had saved his life.

Father Otto – himself, like the rest of the village, a devotee of Sigmar – nevertheless acknowledged the existence and power of other, older deities. The hammer-wielding Unberogen who had become a God was not a healer, although Shallya was. And so Sigmar visited him in a dream, or so he said, saying that she must go to study in Talabheim at the healer’s temple of Shallya. The seventeen year-old’s gift was too valuable to waste.

What the young woman thought about the waste of her potential future motherhood was not discussed – her father sent her packing at Father Otto’s request, wanting to do the will of Sigmar.

Shortly after Kristina had left for Talabheim, the raiders first attacked. They were to attack four times more before she returned. She had no time even to change – although the villagers would not have let her exchange the white robes of the Sisters for the simple peasant smock – and certainly none to recount her experiences in the monastery before the sixth attack came, the attack that took her.

*

The knight and his charger rode deeper into the forest. After sifting his way through the stories of the peasant villagers like a glitterhawk through the detritus of battle, looking for the sparkle of relevancy, he had discarded his baggage at the village – leaving weapons worth more gold than the village saw in a decade. Armed only with his longsword and an arming dagger tucked into his boot, he felt that pleasant erosion of confidence that comes from knowing you might be tested.

He needed no particular skills to find the brigands’ camp – the villagers had told him it was in the burnt-out ruins of the village of Foxberg, five miles to the north. From here, they struck out against the surrounding hamlets, taking what they needed and wanted. Normally this was food, but – recently – people had been taken too.

In the last two raids, the brigands had acquired a new leader – a massively built warrior, taller even than the knight – if the villagers’ tales were to be believed – armoured top to toe in exotic amethyst armour; curved plates of an iridescent purple topped by a crest of yellow and white fur. His strength and power were incredible; his blows had smashed housebeams like matchwood and cut men down like dolls. No weapon seemed to bite on him, glancing from his armour like water from an oilcloth cloak.

On the fifth raid, he had taken the miller’s daughter; thrown her over his horse and galloped off. The menfolk had not said – in front of their wives and daughters – what they had found in the woods five days after the raid, but it was clear enough that her end had been neither pleasant nor swift.

When the raiders came for the sixth time, Kristina had just dismounted from the pony-and-trap she had hitched a lift on. Her white robe and peach-marble skin had glowed like a beacon in the afternoon sun and the dark warrior had spotted her from afar. He had hacked down her father and the priest with a single sweep of his axe and stunned her with a blow from his mailed fist. Perhaps it had been the projected innocence of the virginal robe, perhaps it had been the baser appeal of the curves beneath which it did nothing to hide which had drawn him. Either way, he had thrown her across his saddle before continuing with the pillage. When it was done, he and his band had ridden off, taking her insensate form with them.

It was the dark warrior, not his actions, which had interested the knight – if the villagers had not exaggerated or falsified in order to secure his aid. Another warrior might have sworn vengeance if it happened that the peasants had lied, but the knight did not care about such things – he very much doubted he would spend longer in the village than was necessary to collect his belongings.

He’d reached the edge of the wood and was beginning to dismount when a faint rustle drew his attention to the leaves above him. In one fluid movement, the rasp of armour on leather almost masking the twang of bowstring, he slid back into the saddle and raised his shield. The broad-headed hunting arrow – designed for use against unarmoured targets – glanced and span away from the red dragon motif, barely scratching the lacquer. Before the archer could nock another arrow, he’d spun his horse and drawn the arming dagger from his right boot. An arm jerked up and – with a crackle of branches and then bones – a badly-dressed unshaven ruffian fell the fifteen feet to the ground. He was certainly dead from the fall – an ugly blue-black bruise was spreading around his neck – but it was more than likely that the wound inflicted in the chest by the dagger would have proved fatal.

Leaning over, the knight withdrew his dagger, wiped it clean on the man’s greasy tunic and tucked it into his boot. Nudging the horse forward, he moved from under the eaves of the wood.

One.

*

Foxberg had been a typical farming village, common for all the knight’s life throughout the Empire, and even he felt a faint stirring of nostalgia as he saw it bathed in moonlight. But any perfection of remembrance was cut down by the shattered look of the shells of the buildings, the cannibalised cottages and hastily-erected defences.

The knight had fought in more sieges and assaults than he cared to consider, and he knew that nothing there would even slow him down until he was well inside the village. Carried on the wind were the smells of burning wood, roasting meat and ale, together with the sound of laughter and off-key singing. The knight’s lips twisted ruefully – when drunk they would provide even less of a challenge. He shrugged – he was here for one person, the rest were irrelevant. He spurred his horse down the slope, bridle and armour jangling, trusting the horse’s senses to avoid hollows and hummocks – he had no desire to loose his steed to a broken leg.

The horse had only sprung maybe a hundred yards before two men leapt out from behind some bushes. Each carried a spear which they levelled at the onrushing horse and rider. The distance was five yards and closing – no time to turn, no time to stop. Rolling to the right and drawing his blade, the rider swung forward with a powerful stroke as the horse, with barely any urging, leapt over one of the men, the speartip grazing its belly as he ducked.

With a clatter of hooves the horse landed on the ground again, its rider instantly wheeling it around. For half a moment one of the brigands seemed to stare stupidly at the fountaining stumps of his wrists, and then his head, arms and the top half of his torso slipped forward to the floor and the rest of his body slumped backwards.

Two.

The other brigand had not fully recovered from the horse leaping over him, and so he had only half-turned to a rising crouch when the knight’s blade neatly removed his head from his shoulders. For a second, his body stood upright, gore pumping from the neck, and then the head bounced on the ground and he, too, crumpled.

Three.

The knight glanced down at his bloodied blade and watched as the crimson stain seemed to drain away down an invisible hole in the hilt. His hand unclenched and clenched; once, twice, and then he sheathed the sword once more and spurred his horse down the hill.

*

The drunken revellers never really had any idea what hit them. As the knight’s horse leapt the basic ditch and primitive stockade of sharpened stakes, the one with his back to the wall turned to face the noise. He was rewarded for his curiosity and quick reactions by an iron hoof to the forehead. His brain turned to a meaningless pulp shortly before his skull was crushed to flinders between the ground and over a tonne of knight, steed and armour.

Four.

The horse trampled straight through the fire the men had been sitting around as the knight laid about him with grim determination. A blow to his left severed one man’s body from the juncture of left shoulder and neck all the way to under the right armpit. Swinging the sword up, over and down, the man on his right was split from crown to crotch with the backstroke.

Five, Six.

The horse was well into the old village square now, and the knight leapt from its back, even as it lashed out with its back legs. He vaulted over its head as its rump came up, aware of the cracking of bone behind him as hooves found their mark.

Seven.

The sword was pristine once more, seeming to drink the blood – purple-black in the moonlight – it had spilled. The knight stood at guard, watching the small knots of men who were beginning to stand and draw their weapons.

A pause for a second. The eyes of one of the men flickered betrayingly, and the knight reversed his blade and stabbed behind him, shockingly swift. The sword’s point found the heart and guzzled greedily at the lifeblood within.

Eight.

It was perhaps at this point that the brigands realised that there was no hope of defeating this figure in single-combat and so – with a throaty and intoxicated battlecry – four of the men charged forwards, swinging a motley collection of swords and axes.

The first man swung a notched axe towards him, he swung his sword sideways and down, catching the blade and bearing its wielder to the floor. As the axeman struggled to free his blade, pinioned as it was to the ground, the knight struck out with a punch and an almost horizontal kick. Two of the brigands span away, the blows connecting perfectly with their heads. The kicked man flew backwards three yards, twitched once and was still. The nose of the punched one concertinered inwards and he took two steps backwards, tripped and sat down heavily. After a heartbeat, he slumped to the floor, eyes glazing.

Nine. Ten.

Twisting his body more upright, the knight slammed his shield into the sword of the other man, bearing down on him with all his weight, even as he twisted his sword, slicing through the axe haft and the man’s neck.

Eleven.

Holding the blade high, the knight reversed his grip and – sliding the shield down the brigand’s body – stabbed dagger-like over the rim, piercing the soft triangle of flesh between the collarbone and trapezius. The sword rattled slightly in his hand as it glutted itself on the heady cargo of the jugular and carotid.

Twelve.

The remaining eight brigands – it seemed the villagers had actually managed to be accurate – saw with wonder and horror that the two men merely kicked or punched were quiet categorically dead – the spreading pools of blood from shattered skulls attested to that. A man who would do that damage with bare hands was a man to be feared, a man they did not want to anger. However, it was certainly too late for that.

A knot of four men had been about to charge the knight, but – having seen the way their companions had been disposed of – had thought better of it and paused, considering their options. The knight was on them in a second, sword raised high, sweeping it down in a figure of eight, whirling the blade around his head. It juddered and jarred in his arms as it sawed through bone and flesh. Inside a fine rain of blood mist chunks of bleeding meat splattered to the ground.

Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.

Two of the remaining raiders trembled, dropped their weapons, spoiled their britches and ran. The knight paid them no heed, but his horse – its nostrils full of the scent of blood and picking up the excitement in the air – started after them and trampled their bodies into wet ruin on the hard ground with a few well-placed kicks.

Seventeen. Eighteen.

The two survivors had backed towards the single building in the village which still had a roof – it looked like the inn. They looked nervous and unsure, but not as much as might be expected. The knight knew what they were waiting for, and waited with them, for the one reason he was here.

A series of heavy footfalls, something in armour clattering down stairs. The door to the inn crashed open, revealing the armoured something. The knight’s eyes narrowed as he took in his adversary.

It was a tall warrior – over seven feet and almost eight, broad and obviously well-muscled beneath the massively thick plate armour. The villagers had described this suit using terms they knew, but exactly what this suit was – Chaos Armour – was beyond them. It moved in a wholly organic fashion, not like a man clad in armour, primeval and strange. The description of the armour’s colour had not done it justice – it was more purple than purple, like amethyst lit from within, glowing with its own power, or perhaps with the power of the Champion of Chaos whose body it was fused to.

The crest that ran from just above the elegantly sculpted face-mask – more beautiful than beauty itself – to halfway down the back was part of that living suit as well; bristling in argent and or as the Champion became more and more angry. Resting casually in one massive fist was an enormous axe of yellow gold, studded with hundreds of iridescent purple stones. On the edge of his awareness, the knight could hear the siren-song of the axe, seductive and heady, like a fine wine or musky perfume.

"One man?" asked the Champion, hefting his axe carefully, "Just one man? Are you warriors or are you mice?" His voice was – even when soured with contempt – still sweeter than the sweetest honey, smother than oil and more persuasive than gold.

Perhaps it unnerved the Champion slightly that the knight did not seem to be effected by the magic of his voice. He raised his sword to a salute and spoke for the first time since leaving Wolfsbad. "I am Sir Siegfried of the Order of the Blood Dragon," he said. His voice, cold and heavy, sounded harsh as a raven’s cry beside the enchanting tones of the Champion. There were no other words – no challenge, no instruction to prepare to die. He would let his blade speak for him.

"A Blood Dragon?" the Champion asked, the lips of the metal mask moving as he spoke. Purple steel flowed like frost-bitten flesh as his brows pursed. "A Vampyre? I’ve never killed a Vampyre before."

The Champion paused, his sense of theatrics waiting for the boast that he would not kill one tonight. It never came. The metallic face drew again into annoyance – didn’t the Vampyre know the rules?

The Vampyre waited, his sword held loosely in his hand, ready for anything. From behind the Champion, a figure in ripped white slunk from the door; Kristina. Carefully, she edged away, her eyes never leaving the Champion and his two companions, their eyes fixed intently on the knight.

The Champion’s sense of theatre made him respond to the Vampyre in kind. "I am Sardis Varn, Champion of Slaanesh," he boasted, "chosen one of the Lord of Pleasure, consort of the Prince of Chaos, lover of . . ."

"Slaanesh?" interrupted the knight, "I’d hoped for Khorne – they at least pose a challenge." It was calculated to provoke rage, and it did so.

"You have no idea what you face, bloodsucker," the Champion snarled, his voice loosing his melodious quality for a second. "This axe has drunk the souls of hundreds, binding them in chains of unspeakable pleasure for all eternity. Watch and learn, you unawakened puritan." The Champion raised his axe, the bulging of his muscles shown clearly in the flexing of the plates of his armour. With a grunt of pleasure and effort, he span and slammed the edge of the blade into the larynx of one of the men beside him. His head span off instantly, his last vocalisation a hideous scream that increased in pitch long after his death as his soul was sucked shrieking into the axe.

Nineteen.

The Champion span again, shifting his axe from his right to his left hand, and lashed out at the other man. But he was already fleeing, running in terror from his capricious master.

The Vampyre narrowed his eyes as he watched, taking in all the details. Nominally ambidextrous, but a stiffness in the movement of the left arm – doesn’t favour it often. Obviously favouring the right leg. Probably taught himself to use his left hand. As the Vampyre watched, a new gemstone beaded obscenely on the axe blade, forming like a drop of sweat on lust-heated flesh. Soul-drinking blade, he noted, Stay clear of it – I have no desire to test the theory Vampyres have no souls.

Without warning or preamble, the Vampyre swung his sword. Almost contemptuously, the Champion parried the blow, flexing his muscles to push the blade aside. The Vampyre relaxed his arm, letting the sword be pushed, simultaneously taking a half-step around and to the left. As the Champion lost his balance slightly, the knight slammed his left foot into the back of the Champion’s knee and – as he crashed kneeling to the ground – smashed him in the face with his shield. As the Champion’s head snapped back, pinkish blood leaking from his nose and mouth, the Vampyre drove his knee into his chest, throwing his body backwards.

The Champion leapt to his feet, hastening to defend against the attack he would make if he were the Vampyre. But the Blood Dragon simply waited for him to regain his feet. This chivalry infuriated the Champion – he wanted to win against an evil foe; one who cheated and gave no quarter – not one who fought fairly. How could he live up to his personal image of the dashing rake with a chivalrous opponent?

With an inarticulate roar of rage, the Champion charged. The Vampyre took the blow of the axe on his shield, the steel splitting with a shriek, and stabbed upwards with his sword. The Champion pulled backwards and only the first three inches of the blade penetrated his body. Snarling in pain, the Champion smashed his fist into the side of the Vampyre’s head. Both hurt now, the two combatants staggered apart.

The Vampyre shook his head and removed his helm, its side curled inwards, the lacquer chipping off. His features were firm and regular, blandly handsome, framed by long black glossy hair, and marred by an ugly bruise on his right cheek. As the Champion watched, the puffed eye subsided and the broken skin knitted back to its pristine alabaster.

The fleshy magenta ichor of the Champion was sucked from the blade and into the Vampyre’s veins. As it did so, he felt a numbness spread from his palm, up his arm and across his shoulders. He felt dizzy, drunk as if he’d glutted himself on an alcohol-sotted human. His mouth and nose felt as though they were full of flower petals, the perfume spiralling up into his brain.

He did something he hadn’t done in centuries – he mis-stepped, his foot slipping on a pile of nameless gore on the dusty earth. The Champion’s axe was sweeping down on him in an instant, and his shield barely rose to deflect it, failing completely to angle correctly and letting the blade push the shield into his unprotected head. He stumbled to his knees, the world a distant blur as the poison worked its magic on him. His mind was filling with visions of things he hadn’t wanted or desired for centuries. The Champion smiled, and drew the axe back, holding it in two hands, fiendishly preparing to fell the Vampyre like a tree.

It was perhaps the poison’s undoing that the pleasures it offered were sensual ones – the taste of fine wine, the touch of a maiden’s soft flesh, the robust scent of roasted cormorant, the texture of silk on your skin – all things the Vampyre had professed no interest in for decades uncounted. Since his life-blood had pooled on the floor of that clearing while he searched for his father’s lord and master and the pale warrior with the strange accent had offered him that terrible choice so long ago, nothing had mattered for Siegfried but skill at arms. He’d rejected the temptations his new flesh could offer him, ignored the perfection of his Vampyric senses. He’d sacked cities without a qualm, merely to seek out and destroy a master fighter; he’d thrown a Dwarf-king’s ransom into the sea to provoke a duel; he’d found fear and terror meaningless – both in him and others. If you were a fighter worthy of his time then you would die, if not, you would be ignored. Pleasure and pain were empty concepts to him, compassion and cruelty irrelevant, cowardice and bravery something other people tasted. And so the pleasures this blood whispered to his senses were totally alien and easily ignored. The poison was a different matter, but after two and a half thousand years of unlife, the Daemon driving his blood howling along was not likely to give up its grip on this carcass.

The Champion swung his axe, and the Vampyre’s hand came up and caught the haft almost casually, twisting with inhuman strength and sweeping the Champion off his feet. As he rose, the Blood Dragon drove the heel of his left hand into his opponent’s breastbone with sufficient force to send him crashing back three yards. As the Champion bounced heavily to earth, his plastron dented, the Vampyre hurled his axe at the wall of the inn. It stuck in a thick beam, quivering, as the Knight kicked his sword and shield back into his waiting hands.

Slowly, the Champion got to his feet, rage and pain marring his features. But, as he retrieved his axe, he knew that the fight was his. The bloodsucker dare not use his blade against him – to drink more of his blood would be fatal even to the Undead. As it was, the Vampyre was reeling slightly, his body moving with less of the fluid grace that it had. The Champion knew all he had to do was graze the Vampyre’s flesh with his axe and his soul would belong to Slaanesh – and the Champion would be rewarded with yet another Daemonic concubine.

The Champion moved forwards, his axe held high, ready to slash forward and rake the Vampyre across the forehead. The Blood Dragon darted forwards with an impossible speed, inside his guard, and drove the hilt of his sword into the Champion’s chin, following up quickly with a punch to the stomach, a blow to the side of the head and a kick to the throat. The dark warrior staggered backwards, his axe falling limply to his side, as a series of heavy punches crashed into his face. The Vampyre had sheathed his sword and dropped his shield and was fighting with his guard held high in the manner of the brawlers of the fighting pits of Middenheim. He moved like a dancer in that heavy armour, and the sound of his mailed fists hitting the alien metal of the Champion’s head awakened memories of bells calling the faithful to prayer for Sardis Varn, memories of the hammer and anvil of the blacksmith in the village of his birth, the pretty daughter whom he had wanted so badly, for whom he had sold his soul to the Lord of Pleasure. But the more pleasant aspects of that memory – the way she had squirmed and screamed under him – remained beyond him as those terrible fists crashed again and again into his unprotected face.

A final blow sent him staggering back, slipping pathetically to the ground, drunkenly reaching for his axe and reeling to his feet. With an enraged bellow, he charged the Vampyre, axe held high. The Blood Dragon didn’t move, standing stock-still as the blade whistled down towards his bare head. And then, at the last instant, the Vampyre simply stepped to one side, drew his blade and – with a fluid grace that Varn had no time to admire – drove the reversed sword behind him, through the Champion’s spine and into his heart. With a snarl of pain, Siegfried tore his hands from the hilt as the narcotic fluid pumped through the blade.

Crimson blood dripped from the tears on his palms where the steel thorns had ripped his Undead flesh and he watched dispassionately as the lifeblood of the Champion gushed freely from the razor-sharp metal tubes on the sword’s hilt, puddling wastefully on the ground. For a second, the pinkish blood formed a swirling pool in which grimaced a face beautiful in its Daemonic hideousness, and then the pool soaked into the ground and the Champion’s hands stopped scrabbling at the blade and he pitched forward, quite dead.

Twenty.

The Vampyre watched with satisfaction as – with a quiet snick – the thorns vanished into the hilt again and he tugged the sword free from the desiccated body and sheathed it without pause or pretence. He whistled and his horse trotted eagerly over, fragments of human flesh and blood flecking its muzzle. He mounted swiftly, beginning to kick the mount into a trot.

He was stopped by a scream coming from near the site of his duel with the Champion. He turned, perhaps expecting some final trick from the pawn of Chaos. And so it was he saw that the peasant girl had been grabbed by the remaining brigand and was being forced to the ground, her hands pinioned above her head. The knight began to turn back – such things did not concern him, he’d tested his skills against a worthy opponent today, he saw no reason to kill another unworthy one.

Kristina struggled and got one arm free, held her hand in front of the brigand’s face and twisted the fingers into a strange configuration. The power she had kept hidden for years, the power that had healed her father and so many others, twisted and reformed into something she had always known she could do, but had never before tried. Sorcery gathered in the ruined village and poured through her fragile frame.

The brigand screamed as her eyes blazed blue-white and his exploded with blood. A thousand smoking knives of magical power flayed the flesh from his burning bones, sending it arcing out in a fan of charred meat. After a second, the screaming stopped abruptly and an explosive shattering noise heralded the destruction of the carbonised skeleton.

Twenty-one.

Kristina rose unsteadily to her feet and looked over towards the knight, nodded at him once. He drew his sword and saluted her, acknowledging perhaps her spirit or skills, and then pointed his horse’s blood-flecked muzzle towards the river he could hear burbling away to itself over the rise.

She stopped him with a simple, "Sir Siegfried." She was holding out his helm to him, having picked it up from where it had fallen. He reached down and took it, his armoured gauntlet brushing her fingertip, cold as the flesh beneath. "Thank you for giving me the chance to save myself," she said softly.

He nodded again, smiled perhaps, and galloped off in a cloud of bloody dust.

Neither he nor Kristina saw the village lad spying on them from the scrub at the village’s edge.

*

Kristina found the journey back to Wolfsbad merely difficult. She tore some strips from the blood-stained clothes of the dead raiders and bound her tattered garments back together. Then – shaking as the backwash of excitement flowed through her veins – she approached a skittish horse, jumping at the slightest sound and snorting through nostrils thick with the scent of blood, and managed to coax it into its saddle and bridle. She mounted and set off at a nervous trot towards Wolfsbad.

She arrived a bone-chillingly cold hour later. The burnt-out ruins hurt more than her bruised jaw or aching wrists, and even the ice in her fingers seemed warm in comparison to the snow that gathered on her heart.

She slid painfully from her steed, her bare feet touching the still-warm earth. She looked around, searching for the villagers. Slowly, like rabbits appearing from a grassy bank, the villagers came out from the few remaining intact buildings.

She gazed at them blankly – after what she had seen today, the world she had touched, there was nothing left for her here. Even the cosmopolitan delights of Talabheim – unsampled as they were by the devout Sister she had been – paled beside the magical world of Vampyres and Chaos Champions she had glimpsed. She knew she could not stay here – not with these ignorant peons.

"He saved me," she said quietly, "they’re all dead" She paused, the magnitude of this feat seeming to require further detail. "He killed them all."

The villagers’ faces were slack, emotionless through over-use of emotion. And then – like people waking from sleep – they began to smile and crowd around her. Brittle, tired laughter broke as she was helped towards the inn.

Old Elsa looked at the bruise on her jaw and applied a herby poultice to the mottling while glutinous soup was heated over the remnants of the fire in the grate.

"The bruise’ll go down in a few days, dearie," Elsa creaked. Kristina barely heard her – she was already wondering how she could get enough gold together to buy passage to Altdorf and the Colleges of Magic – she could vanish and never be found by her village. The difficulties of actually entering the Colleges had not occurred to her naive mind.

"She should be healing herself," joked one of the youths of the village, sitting too close to Kristina for comfort. His skin was unsullied by bruise or break – he hadn’t fought in the defence. You are a coward, she thought, you didn’t defend me and now you leer at me. You are nothing.

A wild idea entered her head – Why don’t I heal myself? Call on that power that has been my constant companion – use that vein of potency that marks me out from them.

The skin of her jaw had started to tingle almost involuntarily. She might have smoothed her lily-white flesh back to perfection had it not been for Heinrich dashing – pale, sweating and gasping – into the inn.

He didn’t waste time on preliminaries, the words of his accusation blurting from his mouth as quickly as his unfit lungs would allow. "She’s a Witch and he’s a Vampyre!"

The villagers – products of centuries of bedtime tales of cannibalistic Witches and snow-skinned, ice-taloned Undead horrors – snapped their heads up at this revelation. However, even their ignorant, superstitious and fickle mind-set did not allow them to immediately grab Kristina and drag her to the pyre. But it was clear that an element of distrust had entered the happy-homecoming.

"She’s a Witch, I tell you!" Heinrich snarled, "I saw her use her magic to burn the flesh from one of the brigand’s bones! And he’s a Vampyre – the dark warrior said so! He had fangs and white skin and a sword that drank blood!"

The villagers – now that the danger of the brigands was past – wanted some sort of scapegoat, some target for their rage. Lacking a wounded raider they could drag to the adder pit, an Undead Daemon and his dam were the next best thing.

"Get some garlic . . . cut a hawthorn stake . . . no, applewood, you fool . . . don’t touch that gold he gave us . . . remember not to invite him indoors . . ."

Sir Siegfried was obviously a Vampyre – despite the fact none of them had seen him unmasked and despite the fact Heinrich had never seen a Vampyre before. The fact that the villagers found themselves believing the word of their former oppressor also seemed to have passed them by.

Amid the flurry of activity in the village, Kristina was trying to slink quietly away. Of course, he was a Vampyre and she was a Witch – depending on your definition. However, she had no intention of letting herself be burned at the stake. The knight, she reasoned, would and could look after himself and – as she expected no help from any quarter – she’d better do the same.

Heinrich, basking in his new-found status as Witch-Finder, was eager to drag his former playmate and friend to the fire. He reached out one scrawny arm and caught her by the wrist.

"Don’t forget the Witch!" he shrieked, "Find the Witches’ Nipple!" He grabbed at the collar of her robe and tugged savagely. The cloth tore, exposing half of her torso and – outraged and ashamed – she slammed her balled fist into his cheek, raising a red bruise.

Despite the fact that handling a woman like that had been what sickened the village only hours before, her resistance to this legitimate scouring for the conduit through which the Ruinous Powers would pour their hellish power into her incensed the mob and further cemented her guilt. More and more hands grabbed at her and tore away her clothes, stripping her naked. Her hands and arms were held as her body – bruises standing out livid on her pale skin in the wan lamplight – was examined minutely. Her face burned red with rage and shame as men poured over her with a mixture of hatred and lust. After a second or two Heinrich raised his flushed face with a cry of satisfaction and pointed a shaking finger to a tiny mole on her stomach.

"See?" he crowed with glee, "See? She has the Witches’ Nipple!"

Kristina was amazed and wailed despairingly, "I’ve had that since I was born! Ask Elsa, she delivered me! It’s just a . . ." She got no further as Heinrich’s fist slammed into her face.

"Silence, Witch!" he snarled. And – as if Heinrich was worthy of attention – the whole room fell silent. It was as if, with that blow, the village had realised the enormity of what it was doing, and perhaps considered whether it should.

Cold fury burned in Kristina’s eyes. Her nakedness and hurts were forgotten – she’d kill them all. A trickle of blood marched down her upper lip from her nostril as she softly hissed, "You’ll pay for that, Heinrich." Balefires began to crackle in the depths of her eyes and her fingers began to twitch and tingle. Magic gathered in the corners of the room.

And then a bottle shattered at the base of her skull and she remembered nothing more.

*

After twenty-five centuries of unlife, very little surprised Siegfried, but the moonlit sight of the village man-handling the unconscious form of Kristina to the top of a large bonfire and tying her to a stake had to rank as coming close.

She was the one I was asked to rescue, he mused as he cantered into the village square and bent to retrieve his weapons. Doubtless they are afraid of her magical powers – but how would they know about them? She is obviously untrained – perhaps she accidentally used them here.

The knight had spent twenty minutes bathing and washing the gore off his armour in the ice-cold river before returning for his arms. The dent in his helm would have to wait and besides, it was nice to let his hair dry in the moonlight – Morrselieb’s glow was one of the few pleasures he allowed himself.

The villagers had just finished trying Kristina to the stake when they turned at the sound of his horse. Shock and horror swept their faces, but one seemed to master his fear and – with a cry of "Sigmar!" – charged the Vampire wielding a long spar of wood.

The only muscles which twitched were those making the knight’s face assume a wry smile – how ironic that this mortal used the name of the Unberogen as a battlecry against him of all people – until the last possible instant, when his armoured foot lashed out with a gentle kick, sending his solleret stabbing into the base of Heinrich’s ribcage and Heinrich himself spiralling away to land heavily on the ground.

"Vampyre . . . Nosferatu . . . Undead . . ." the villagers hissed. Siegfried casually turned his horse and began to ride out of the village.

"Don’t just stand there!" gasped Heinrich, cradling his broken ribs, "Kill him!" The villagers didn’t seem overly eager to obey, but Hans blocked his path, holding the icon of the hammer from the village shrine in trembling hands. The Vampyre didn’t react, but his horse shied and reared, planting a hoof firmly on the elder’s forehead. He went down without a sound other than the terrible crunch of bone.

The villagers gasped in horror and – heedless of danger, forgetting the Witch and their fear – charged the Vampyre, armed with a mixture of fragments of wood, garlic and farming implements. The knight, for his part, calmly got his horse under control and, with the merest twitch of the reins, sent it leaping over the closing ring to land with a clatter of hooves five yards away. There was no point in killing them – they presented no challenge at all.

He was just about to kick his horse into a gallop when a sluggish voice stopped him. "Sir Siegfried," Kristina said, "Please."

He turned the horse, looking at her, straining drunkenly at her ropes. A few villagers had gathered beneath the pyre and were beginning to put flames to the kindling. The rest were holding at bay, scythes lowered, preventing him from coming closer.

"Burn her!" roared Heinrich from the ground, "Burn her before she puts a hex on us!"

Siegfried looked at her, at the fear in her face and realised she was not afraid of him – she knew why he fought and killed. That was why she had said please – she knew he was not honour-bound to save her. She, afraid as she was of death, might understand him. She did not begrudge him the unique path he had chosen to tread.

He could not, in good faith, let them extinguish her life before she had chosen her path. These insects could not be allowed to destroy something so much greater than themselves.

He stepped lightly from the saddle – if he remained mounted he’d have to kill them – and drew his sword. "Untie her and let her leave unmolested," he ordered, his voice as flat and heavy as ever, "Deny me my request and become my prey."

The villagers – despite outnumbering as they were fifty to one – were not confident that they would survive that bloody hunt, and they might have yet done as he asked has it not been for the incensed shriek of Heinrich. "Kill him! Drive a stake into his heart and cut off his head!" Heinrich began to struggle to his feet as a few of the villagers – braver or more stupid than the rest – charged Siegfried.

"So be it," said Siegfried, and attacked.

The peasants never really had a chance – five of them died at the first sweep of the knight’s sword, the backstroke took another two across the faces, sending them sprawling crazily away from the blow, blood pumping from a ruin of shattered bone. The knight didn’t even bother to defend himself, letting blows rattle and ricochet off his armour as he sawed the sword two-handed through the sea of humanity, paddling upstream towards his objective; the just-catching pyre.

Three of the villagers had grabbed his sword arm, trying to stop the wholesale slaughter, but Siegfried simply flexed his muscles and sent them flying backwards through the air like wind-blown leaves. A single bound and he was standing on the pyre, his left hand holding the thick stake just above Kristina’s head. The girl’s head was bowed under the weight of the smoke from the smouldering wood – the unbreathing Vampyre had no such problems. He bent his knees and lifted the heavy wooden beam, the firewood shifting as the central column was removed from the pile. A single sweep of his sword and the wood splintered impossibly, the ropes binding Kristina falling away loosened. She coughed and seemed to regain some of her senses, trying to keep her balance on the treacherous scree of wood fragments.

"Get to your horse," said the knight softly, "I will finish here." She nodded, choosing to not thank him now so she would have to accompany him and thank him later. She half-walked, half-slipped down the now-burning pyre, her nakedness meaning she had no clothes to catch fire, and moved gingerly towards where her stolen horse was tethered. A few villagers blocked her path but they had become mortally afraid of her and the Vampyre and all she had to do was snarl theatrically and they fell back, cowed.

Up on the burning bonfire, Siegfried whistled and his horse, hearing the noise, whinnied and reared, pawing the air and then coming crashing through the circle of villagers, trampling one of them to the ground. With a clatter of armour, the Vampyre leapt and landed squarely on the horse’s back, wheeling it expertly and kicking it into a gallop away from the village.

Kristina had mounted her own pony and was making to follow Siegfried when she spotted Heinrich staring at her with utter hatred. She stopped her horse, turned it to face him and looked him in the eyes.

"Heinrich," she said quietly, beginning to summon her energies, "Burn."

The patch of ground where he fell is still burned barren black.

*

The sweat raised on a naked body by riding hard through the woods of the Empire at midnight evaporates quickly in the dry, moonwashed air of Autumn, leaving the rider chilled to the core. Siegfried noticed Kristina was shivering and reined in his horse. Her exhausted pony shuddered to a grateful halt.

"There’s a clearing not far from here," he said. He spoke Reikspiel with a cultured air, but there was a metallic rasp in the voice, possibly from disuse. She couldn’t place the accent, but she suspected it was from some province long-since swallowed by the burgeoning city-states of the Empire. "We’ll build a fire there and catch something for you to eat." She nodded as best she could amid her shivers, her blue-tinged fingers rubbing her shoulders. She’d crossed her arms to provide herself with some warmth, not to hide herself from him. His gaze didn’t avert itself from her as a human’s might – he seemed to look straight through her body to the soul beneath. A shiver that was not entirely due to the cold slunk down her spine – this creature was totally inhuman, regardless of how it looked.

They arrived at the clearing five minutes later, and Siegfried vaulted lightly from his horse and unhitched the saddle buckle, lifting the heavy load from his horse’s back. He began to undo the barding’s buckles, taking each piece of armour off carefully as Kristina slid painfully from her horse.

She busied herself gathering fragments of wood and dry twigs, her fingers numb and unfeeling, and building a fire in the centre of the clearing. She finished as the Vampyre stripped the last of the armour from his steed, and she crouched before it as he approached with a tinder box and a bundle of fur in his arms. He dropped the fur in her lap and struck the flint and ironstone together, letting the sparks fall on the dry tinder. As the brushwood caught and crackled, Kristina unfolded the fur bundle.

It was a heavy cloak, of fur and velvet lined with silk. Ermine fur and blue-black velvet and red silk, embroidered with gold thread in ancient letters she could not read and sewn with rubies and black pearls to demarcate the sentences. A precious and priceless thing. "Thank you," she said, wrapping its comforting warmth around her. Almost immediately the pain in her extremities began to recede.

She was glad he had acted the way he did; not wrapping her in the cloak – merely giving it to her; leaving her to build the fire; saying that they would catch food together. For the first time in months, it seemed as if she was being allowed an opinion.

The fire was going well now, the larger branches beginning to catch. She huddled more into the cloak, relishing the softness on her cheeks and smelling the warm scent of the perfumes it had been anointed with.

"This is a lovely robe," she said, "Where is it from? I’ve never seen the like."

Siegfried was skewering two long forked sticks into the ground on either side of the fire to act as a roasting spit. "It was a present from Queen Neferata of the Silver Pinnacle," he explained, standing, "She made me a present of it when I slew one of her enemies."

"You were a knight at her court, then?" asked Kristina, "I’ve never heard of the Silver Pinnacle."

He seemed surprised at her question. "No," he said, "He was just a challenging foe – my service to her was entirely accidental. I’ve never worn it myself – it seems too fine to soil it with the blood of my foes. You may keep it."

Kristina was unsurprised at the Vampyre’s casual attitude to money and wealth – what need did he have for it? But she still felt awed to receive such a gift – not even the Elector Count of Talabheim, whom she had seen on the few occasions he made pilgrimage to the temple of Shallya, owned such a robe as this. This was a rare work of art, something that – if she could find someone to buy it – would allow her to eat for three months or more. "I find myself in your debt again, Sir Siegfried," she stammered.

He cocked his head, listening for something that only he could hear. "Would you like venison this evening?" he asked, "The woods are full of deer."

Kristina knew the taste of venison well – it had been a popular dish in Wolfsbad, although she had subsisted on a diet of vegetables while a Sister. Her mouth watered at the thought of the unaccustomed taste of meat. "Please," she said, rising. Part of her wanted him to tell her to remain by the fire while he hunted, but more of her wanted to be allowed her independence.

He didn’t stop her following him as he moved with the silent, agile grace of a big cat through the forest. She followed behind him, trying to be stealthy but – despite her smaller stature and his armour – she still made more noise than he. Nevertheless, the two of them still managed to sneak up on a large stag, his antlers denuded of velvet save for a few scraps, curled up in a leafy hollow asleep.

Siegfried leant forward and – to a gasp of amazement from Kristina – prodded the stag awake. It staggered to its feet and – glancing around with furtive, hunted eyes, darted away deep into the forest. The Vampyre snarled like the supreme predator it was and gave chase.

*

The second haunch of venison was roasting on the spit, drops of melting fat dripping off it to land sparking and flaming in the fire, raising wisps of greasy smoke, as Kristina chewed her way through the first, hot juices dripping down her chin. She wiped her jaw clean, trying not to soil the beautiful cloak she was still wrapped in. At the side of the clearing, Siegfried’s horse was making short work of the rest of the deer’s carcass, bones, skin and all. If the armour had weighed it down, it gave no sign.

Siegfried himself, of course, ate nothing. Kristina’s mind was still full of the vision of him running through the forest after the fully-grown stag, outrunning it and bearing it to the ground, twisting its neck in his powerful hands until the massive muscles gave way and its spine snapped with a loud crack. There had been a savage joy on his face immediately after the hunt, but that had been swiftly swept off his face, replaced by his usual mask, more inflexible than the visor of his armour, when he realised the hunt was over far too quickly for his liking. He now sat cross-legged on a flat rock, still in the armour that moved like his true skin, with his sword lying sheathed on the ground beside him. He was holding his helm in his hands, pressing and hammering with his knuckles and fingers and occasionally holding it up in front of him to check the symmetry, gradually removing the dent in the right temple.

Kristina finished the final morsel of flesh on the joint she was eating and – with a slight belch – threw the bones over her shoulder. She wiped her mouth again and reached for the bottle the Vampyre had produced from his saddlebag – it was a Bordeleaux vintage red wine, extraordinarily expensive. Siegfried had said he had found it in the saddlebag of a Grail Knight he once slew. She put the neck of the bottle between her teeth and tilted it backwards. Half-a-hundred gold crowns worth of wine gurgled down her gullet and chased the cold in her limbs to the distant land of memory.

"Why did you save me?" she asked flatly. Siegfried looked up from the now-symmetrical helm, the lacquer mostly peeled off, and smiled.

"Why not?" he asked, "It cost me no effort." He reached for a small cloth-wrapped bundle and began to undo it, producing a jar filled with an oily black substance, a brush and a soft cloth.

"But you only saved me when I asked you to, you were going to leave me to burn. So what changed your mind?"

He paused in his task of re-applying the lacquer, and carefully placed the brush and helm on the ground. "You have a right to choose your own path in life – no-one has the right to deny another their choices in life." He looked at her, "And you weren’t afraid of me – you knew I wouldn’t hurt you."

She shrugged, the cloak slipping from one shoulder. "You didn’t seem eager to slaughter those who couldn’t offer you a challenge – you looked almost bored as you tore those brigands apart. And you tried to avoid killing the villagers as long as possible." She pulled the cloak back onto her shoulders. "That’s what your life it all about, isn’t it? A challenge at arms?"

"You sum up the life of an immortal with a terrifying speed," he smiled, "But, yes, that is what my life is about – what all my kind’s lives are about." She sensed that he did not mean Vampyres, and raised her eyebrows quizzically. "All Blood Dragons," he clarified, "Every member of my bloodline seeks to better himself at the arts of combat, so that we can join Abhorash and transcend our curse. Only when we have proven ourselves worthy will we be allowed to become free of the necessity to drink blood to survive." Perhaps it was just the wine, but to Kristina it seemed as if his voice was becoming less rasping and smoother – perhaps as it was used and the rough edges were rubbed off.

Kristina gave him a moment of silence – she had no words to say to him. She had no idea what it must be like to loose your humanity like he had, to be forced into a life of killing. She herself had killed today, disobeying the most sacred of the strictures of her Order and forever driving a wedge between her and the Sisters of Shallya . And – although she would be prepared to do it again – she recognised that she had opened a gate she could never close. She would forever be removed in some way from the rest of humanity – and this Vampyre tried to regain something of his lost humanity by moving further and further away from it. A void of loneliness stretched before her, and she was glad she had no real idea what it must be like.

"What path do you wish to follow, Kristina?" asked Siegfried, finishing the application of lacquer and setting the helm down to dry, "What do you wish your life to be about?"

Kristina tipped another half-pint of the wine down her throat and reached for the second haunch of venison. Wincing slightly as the hot fat burned her fingers, she bit into the succulent flesh and chewed briefly before swallowing. "I don’t know, but I do know I want to make my own decisions." The wine was having its effect on her, and she pointed drunkenly at Siegfried with the haunch of venison to punctuate her points, "My father and that priest decided that I would become a Sister – they never asked me. And then they decided that I should be burned – because I had a gift they didn’t understand. And I’d have been married off to one of those oafish local lads without a by-your-leave if I hadn’t had that ‘gift for healing’." She tore off another chunk of venison, shreds of meat dropping from the corners of her mouth as she chewed. "I mean," she gulped, swallowing with an effort, "I never really wanted to be a wife and mother, but it would have been nice to have been given the choice, rather than packed off to a nunnery. Do you have any idea how dull nuns are?"

She paused for a second to pour more wine into her mouth, and before Siegfried could say anything ploughed on. "What I want is to be able to make my own choices, have my own life. I want to see how far I can take this gift of mine – how far it can take me. I want to train in the Colleges at Altdorf – I want to see something of the world." She looked at him, polishing the new lacquer on his helm with the soft cloth. "I always knew I was different – that I had some sort of power. And I hid it for years, trying to use it for good. And then I use it to defend myself and I get accused of being a Witch and my own village tries to kill me. I’ve seen today that there is another world out there, and I don’t want to leave it. I want to live in your world, Siegfried," she said seriously, "I want to be part of this strange, magical tapestry that surrounds us all and we’re too blind to see."

Siegfried pursed his lips. "You’ve seen a tiny fragment of that world, Kristina," he said, "and I can assure you that this fantastic place of Chimeras and Griffons is far darker and bloodier than you can imagine. Are you sure about this? I can take you to another village, to Talabheim, even to Altdorf. I’m sure you can hide your power, learn to forget it. I can give you enough gold to keep you comfortable for the rest of your days." He looked deep into her eyes.

Tears beaded in them. "Why won’t you give me what I want?" she wailed, balling her fists beside her, "Why won’t anyone let me do what I want to?"

"I am giving you what you want," Siegfried said sharply, "A choice. Choose wisely – do you want to walk this strange and wondrous path it is given to few to walk and fewer to survive? Magic is a fey and powerful thing, difficult to wield and harder to master. The entrance tests for the Colleges are said to be terrible ordeals – many applicants do not survive with their minds or bodies intact. Taking a step into this world means abandoning everything you ever knew. Are you sure you want to do this?"

Something in the Vampyre’s voice cut through the drunken haze surrounding her mind. Am I sure? she wondered, Is it worth it? Could I do this? Do I so dearly want to see clearly what I have half-glimpsed for so long? And then it came to her crystal-clear. Yes, I do. I have to try, even if it costs me my soul and sanity – or otherwise I will spend the rest of my life wondering if I ever would have had the strength.

She didn’t need to give voice to her decision. He could see it in her eyes. He inclined his head and turned to his horse, just crunching down the last fragment of hoof.

"Well, Cauchemar, it appears we have a travelling companion."

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