The War Hound and the World's Pain (13 page)

I held my ground. “Drive us they might,” I said, “and it would be a good sport for them, no doubt, for they would drive us like game, Sedenko. Those are hunters and I would say that their prey is Man.”

“But they are not human!”

“Human once, I’d guess. But far from mortal now.”

I saw white faces in the wake of the bearded horseman. The lips grinned and the eyes were bright (though not as bright as their leader’s). But they were dead men, all of them. I had come to recognize the dead. And, too, I could recognize the damned.

“Sedenko,” I said, “if you would leave me now, I would suggest you go at once.”

“I’ll fight with you, captain, whatever the nature of the enemy.”

“These could be your enemies, Sedenko, but not mine. Go.”

He refused. “If these are your friends, then I will stay. They would be powerful friends, eh?”

I had no further patience for the discussion, so I shrugged. I walked towards the door, strapping on my sword. The door creaked open.

The huntsmen were already gathering in Ammendorf’s ruined square. I felt the heat of the hounds’ breath on my face, the stink of their bodies. They flattened their ears as they began to lie down round the feet of their master’s horse.

The chief huntsman stared at me from out of those terrifying eyes. White faces moved in the gloom. Horses pawed the weed-grown cobbles.

“You have come for me?” I said.

The lips parted. The giant spoke in a deep, sorrowing voice, far more melodious than I might have expected. “You are von Bek?”

“I am.”

“You stand before the Wildgrave.”

I bowed. “I am honoured.”

“You are a living man?” he asked, almost puzzled. “An ordinary mortal?”

“Just so,” I said.

He raised a bushy eyebrow and turned his head to look back at his white-faced followers, as if sharing a small joke with them. His reply was given in a tone that was almost amused:

“We have been dead these two hundred and fifty years or more. Dead as we once reckoned death, in common with most of mankind.”

“But not truly dead.” I spoke our High Tongue and this gave Sedenko some puzzlement. But it was the speech in which I had been addressed and I therefore deemed it politic to continue in it.

“Our Master will not let us die in that sense,” said the Wildgrave of Ammendorf. He evidently saw me as a comrade in damnation. “Will you guest with me now, sir, at my castle yonder?” He pointed up the cliff.

“Thank you, great Wildgrave.”

He turned his glowing eyes upon Sedenko. “And your servant? Shall you bring him?”

I said to Sedenko: “We are invited to dinner, lad. I would suggest you refuse the invitation.”

Sedenko nodded.

“He will await me here until morning,” I said.

The Wildgrave accepted this. “He will not be harmed. Will you be good enough to mount behind me, sir?”

He loosened his booted foot and offered me a stirrup. Deciding that it would be neither diplomatic nor expedient to hesitate, I walked up to his horse, accepted the stirrup and swung onto the huge beast’s stinking back, taking a firm hold of the saddle.

Sedenko watched with wide eyes and dropped jaw, not understanding at all what was happening.

I smiled at him and saluted. “I’ll return in the morning,” I said. “In the meantime I can assure you that you will sleep safely.”

The Wildgrave of Ammendorf grunted a command to his horse and the whole Hunt, hounds and all, turned out of the square. We began to race at appalling speed through the streets and onto an overgrown path which climbed through low-hanging foliage and outcrops of mossy rock to the top of the cliff, where it was now possible for me to see that my eyes had not earlier deceived me. I had thought that I had detected masonry from the village and here it was—a horrible old castle, part fallen into ruin, with a massive keep squatting black against the near-black of the sky.

We all dismounted at once and the Wildgrave, who stood more than a head taller than myself, put a cold arm about my shoulders and led me through an archway directly into the keep. Here, too, staircases and flagstones were cracked and broken. The hall was lit by a single guttering brand stuck into a rusting bracket above a long table. Over the fire a deer’s carcass was turning. The white-faced huntsmen moved with agility towards the fire where they wanned themselves, paying no heed to two shaking servants, a boy and a girl, who were evidently neither part of this clan nor among the living-dead, but could have been as damned as the rest of us.

The Wildgrave’s eyes seemed to cool as he placed himself at the head of the table and made me sit at his right. With his mailed hand he poured me brandy and bade me drink deep “against the weather” (which in fact was relatively mild). To him, perhaps, the world was permanently chill.

“I was warned of your coming,” he told me. “There is a rumour, too, amongst the likes of us, that you are entrusted with a mission which could redeem us all.”

I sighed. “I do not know, Lord Wildgrave. Our Master has greater faith in my capabilities than have I. I shall do my best, of course, for should I succeed, I, too, might be redeemed.”

“Just so.” The Wildgrave nodded. “But you must be aware that not all of us support you in your Quest.”

I was surprised. “I cannot follow you,” I said.

“Some fear that should our Master come to terms with God, they will be worse doomed than ever before, with no protector, with no further means of preserving their personalities against the Emptiness.”

“Emptiness is not a term I am familiar with, Lord Wildgrave.”

“Limbo, if you prefer. The Void, my good captain. That which refuses to tolerate even the faintest trace of identity.”

“I understand you now. But surely, if Lucifer is successful, we shall all be saved.”

The Wildgrave’s smile was bitter. “What logic provides you with that hope, von Bek? If God is merciful, He provides us with little evidence.”

I drank my brandy down.

“Some of us came to this pass,” continued the Wildgrave, “through just such an understanding of God’s nature. I am not amongst them, of course. But they believed God to be vengeful and unrelenting. And some, I would guess, will try to stop you in your mission.”

“It is difficult and numinous enough as it is,” I said as, with a clatter, the boy placed a plate of venison before me. The meat smelled good. “Your news is scarcely encouraging.”

“But it is well-intentioned.” The Wildgrave accepted his own plate. With the manners of a former time he courteously handed me a dish containing ground salt. I sprinkled a little on my meat and returned it to him.

He picked up his venison and began to munch. I noted that his breath steamed as it contacted the heat. I copied him. The food was good and was welcome to me.

“We have still to hunt tonight,” said the Wildgrave, “for we continue to exist in our own world only so far as we can provide fresh souls for our Master. And we have caught nothing for almost a month.”

I chose not to ask him to elaborate upon this, and he seemed grateful for my tact.

“I have been instructed to take you through into the Mittelmarch,” he said. As he spoke, others of the Hunt brought their plates to table. They ate in silence, apparently without interest in our conversation. It seemed to me that they had an air of slight nervousness, perhaps because they resented this interruption to their nightly activities.

“I have not heard of the Mittelmarch,” I told him frankly.

“But you know there are lands upon this Earth of ours which are forbidden to most mortals?”

“So I was told, aye.”

“Those lands are known by some of us as The Middle Marches.”

“Because they lie on the borderlands between Earth and Hell?”

He smiled and wiped his mouth on his mailed sleeve. “Not exactly. You could say they lie between Hope and Desolation. I do not understand much about them. But I am able to come and go between them. You and your companion shall be taken through tomorrow evening.”

“My companion is not of our kind,” I said. “He is a simple, innocent soldier. I shall tell him to return to a world he will better understand.”

The Wildgrave nodded. “Only the damned are permitted to pass into Mittelmarch,” he told me. “Though not all who dwell in Mittelmarch are damned.”

“Who rules there?” I asked.

“Many.” He shrugged his gigantic shoulders. “For Mittelmarch, like our own world, like Hell itself, has multitudinous aspects.”

“And the land I go to tomorrow. It will be marked on my maps?”

“Of course. In Mittelmarch you will seek out a certain hermit who is known as Philander Groot. I had occasion to pass the time of day with him once.”

“And what am I to ask of him? The location of the Grail?”

The Wildgrave put down his venison, almost laughing. “No. You will tell him your story.”

“And what will he do?”

The Wiidgrave spread a mailed hand. “Who knows? He has no loyalty to our Master and refuses to have any truck with me. I can only say that I have heard he might be curious to talk to you.”

“He knows of me?”

“The news of your Quest is rumoured, as I said.”

“But how could such news spread so quickly?”

“My friend”—the Wildgrave became almost avuncular as he put a hand upon my arm—”can you not understand that you have enemies in Hell as well as in Heaven? It is those you should fear worse than any earthly foe.”

“Can you give me no further clue,” I asked, “as to the identity of these enemies?”

“Naturally I cannot. As it is I have been kinder to you than is sensible for a creature in my position. I am feared in the region of Ammendorf, of course. But as with all our Master’s servants, I have no real power. Your enemies could one day, therefore, be my friends.”

I became distressed at this. “Have you no courage to take your own decisions?”

The Wildgrave’s great face became sad for a moment. “Once I had courage of that sort,” he said. “But had I had the courage to be self-determining in my own mortal life I would not now be a servant of Lucifer.” He paused, looking out from eyes which, moment by moment, had begun to glow again. “And the same must be true of you, too, eh, von Bek?”

“I suppose so.”

“At least you have a chance, however small, of reclaiming yourself, captain. And oh”—his voice became at once bleak and heartfelt—”how I envy you that.”

“Yet if I am successful and God grants Lucifer His wish, we shall all be given the chance again,” I said, innocently enough.

“And that is what so many of us fear,” said the Wildgrave.

SEDENKO, HE SAID, had slept well all night. When I returned at dawn he had been snoring, certainly, as if he was still a little boy in his mother’s tent.

As he breakfasted he asked eagerly of my encounter with “the Devil.”

“That was not the Devil, Sedenko. Merely a creature serving Him.”

“So you did not sell your soul to him.”

“No. He is helping me, that’s all. I now know the next stage of my journey.”

Sedenko was awed. “What great power must you possess to order such as the Wildgrave!”

I shrugged. “I have no power, save what you see. It is the same as yours - good wits and a quick sword.”

“Then why should he help you?”

“We have certain interests in common.”

Sedenko looked at me with some trepidation.

“And you must go back to Nürnberg,” I said, “or wherever you think. You cannot go where I go tonight.”

“Where is that?”

“A land unknown.”

He became interested. “You travel by sea? To the New World? To Africa?”

“No.”

“I would serve you well if you would permit me to go with you …”

“I know you would. But you are not permitted to follow where I travel now.”

He continued to argue with me, but I rejected all his proposals until I was weary and begged him to leave, for I wished to sleep.

He refused. “I will guard you,” he said.

I accepted his offer and eventually was able to sleep, waking in the later afternoon to smell Sedenko’s cooking. He had found a pot, suspended it over the fire and was boiling some sort of stew.

“Rabbit,” he told me.

“Sedenko,” I said, “you must go. You cannot follow me. It is not physically possible.”

He frowned. “I have a good horse, as you know. I am not prone to the seasickness, as far as I have been able to tell. I am healthy.”

I again fell into silence. Only the damned could travel to Mittelmarch. Follow me as he would, he could not enter that Realm. I determined to waste no energy on the matter, contenting myself with advice to the young Kazak to go back to Nürnberg and find himself a good captain or, if he thought it a better idea, to leave the conflict altogether and begin to travel homeward, where he could direct his energies, if he wished, against his Polish overlords.

He became obstinate, almost surly. I shrugged. “The Wildgrave comes for me tonight,” I said, “and I must ready myself for that journey. The stew is good. Thank you.” I got up and began to see to my horse.

Sedenko sat cross-legged beside the fire, watching me. He hardly moved as I donned my battle-dress, strapping my steel breastplate tightly about my body, adjusting the set of my greaves. I thought it wise to enter the Realm of Mittelmarch with as much of the odds in my favour as possible.

Night fell. Sedenko continued to watch me, saying nothing. I refused even to look at him. I fed my horse. I oiled my leather. I polished my pistols and checked their locks. I cleaned my sword and my poignard. Then I gave close attention to my helmet. I whistled. Sedenko watched on.

By midnight I was beginning to grow a little nervous, but refused to show my state of mind to my silent companion. I looked through the windows at Ammendorf which, tonight, was lit faintly by the moon.

Even as I began to turn back I heard the echoing yell of a great horn. It sounded like the Last Judgment. It was a cold, desolate noise—a single, prolonged note. Then there came quiet again.

The building shook to hoofbeats. The green-blue glow nickered through the buildings outside. I heard the baying of the hounds.

I took my horse by his reins and led him through the hall and out down the steps into the square. I longed to say farewell to Sedenko but I knew I must discourage him at all costs from following me.