Genevieve Undead Part 25

He saluted, his hand shaking.

Rudiger lashed him across the face with a pair of leather gloves.

'Poltroon,' he said. 'If you dare to mention the Emperor again, I shall have you killed here and let the dogs eat your liver. Do you understand?'

Otho nodded vigorously, but kept quiet. Then, he clutched his stomach and his face went greasily grey-green.

He burped, and a dribble of vomit came out of his mouth.

Everyone, including Sylvana, stood back.

Otho fell onto his hands and knees, and his whole body shook like a stuck pig's. He opened his mouth wide and, in a cascade, regurgitated every sc.r.a.p of the food he had consumed earlier. It was a prodigious puke, worthy of legend. He choked and gagged and spewed until there was nothing but clean liquid to bring up.

'Seven times,' Count Magnus said. 'A record, I suspect.'

Otho heaved painfully, and made it eight.

'Get up, pig,' Rudiger said.

Otho snapped to it, and stood up.

'The wolf has its fangs, the bear its claws, the unicorn its horn,' Rudiger said. 'You too have your weapons. You have your wits.'

Otho looked at Sylvana. The woman was calm, defiant. Without her face paint, she looked older, stronger.

'And you have these.'

Rudiger produced two sharp knives, and handed them to Sylvana and Otho. Sylvana got the balance of hers, and kissed its blade, eyes cold.

Otho didn't know quite how to hold his.

'You must know,' Rudiger told Sylvana, 'that when I hunt you, I love you. It is pure, with no vindictiveness. The wrong you have done me is set aside, washed away. You are the quarry, I the hunter. This is the closest we could ever be, closer by far than we were as man and mistress. It is important you understand this.'

Sylvana nodded, and Doremus knew that she was as mad as his father. This game would be played out to the death.

'Father,' he said, 'we can't'

Rudiger looked at him, anger and disappointment in his eyes. 'You have your mother's heart, boy,' he said. 'Be a man, be a hunter.'

Doremus remembered his dream, and shuddered. He was still seeing things differently. The unicorn blood was in him.

'If you see dawn,' his father told Sylvana and Tybalt, 'you go free.'

Rudiger took a waxed straw from a servant, and touched it to the flame of one of Magnus' lanterns. It caught, and began to burn slowly.

'You have until the taper is gone. Then we follow.'

Sylvana nodded again, and stepped into the darkness, silently vanishing.

'Graf Rudiger' Otho choked, wiping his mouth.

'Not much time, hog.'

Otho stared at the burning end of the straw.

'Get you gone, Waernicke,' Count Magnus said.

Making his mind up, the lodge master pulled himself together and jogged away, fat jouncing under his clothes.

'The snow is slowing down,' Magnus said, 'and melting on the ground. A pity. That would have helped you.'

'I don't need snow to follow tracks.'

The taper was nearly half-burned. Rudiger took the dogs from Balthus, gathering their leads in one hand.

'You and your bloodsucking b.i.t.c.h stay here,' he ordered his guide. 'I'll only take Magnus and my son. We should be enough.'

Balthus looked relieved, although Genevievewho was more alive somehow tonightwas irked to be left behind. For some reason, the vampire had wanted to be in on the hunt. Of course, she must be used to the second most dangerous quarry.

The straw was a spark between Rudiger's thumb and finger. He flicked it away.

'Come on,' he said, 'there's hunting to be had.'

VII.

Otho Waernicke felt as if someone had just run him through the gut with a red-hot poker, and dug around a bit in his vitals.

He didn't know where he was in the forest. And he was more frightened than he'd ever been.

Brawling was more his line. Going out into the Altdorf fog with his League mates and tangling with the Hooks or the Fish on the docks, or with the thumb tax rioters along the Street of a Hundred Taverns, or with the blasted revolutionists. That was real fighting, real bravery, real honour. A good brawl, with a good booze up and a good bedding afterwards.

Rudiger was just a maniac out to slaughter him. The Graf von Unheimlich was no better than the Beast, that altered revolutionist who had ripped apart half a dozen wh.o.r.es in Altdorf two years ago. Otho had brawled well the night they had exposed the fiend.

Yefimovich was the sort of creature who should be hunted through the night. He would probably take to it.

His feet hurt in the unfamiliar boots, and he was cold to the bone.

Where was Sylvana? She had got him into this; now it was her duty to save his fat from the furnace.

His fat was weighing him down now. It had never been such a nuisance before. Meat and drink gave a fellow a figure.

Running was all very well, but he kept banging into trees and cutting his face open or ripping his clothes. He had fallen on his ankle a few minutes ago. It was already throbbing, and he was afraid he had broken something.

This was a nightmare.

He couldn't remember how it had happened. He had only been on that harlot Sylvana a moment or two when he was being hauled off, and slapped silly.

Graf Rudiger had hit him.

That was why he had been so sick.

A treebranch, ridiculously low, came out of the dark and smashed his face. He felt blood pouring out of his nose, and just knew his teeth were loose.

He wished he were back in Altdorf, snoring in his bed at the League's lodge house, dreaming of hot women and cold ale.

If he got out of this, he would enter the Order of Sigmar. He would take vows of temperance, celibacy and poverty. He would offer to all the G.o.ds. He would donate his money to the poor. He would volunteer for missionary work in the Dark Lands.

If only he were allowed to live He ducked under the branch, and stepped forwards.

All the blood he had been spilling and the trees he had been bashing would be a trail the graf could follow. Huntsmen were good at all that rot, tracking their quarry through scratches on bark and bent twigs on the ground.

Merciful Shallya, he wanted to live!

He kept seeing the graf's arrow going through the unicorn's head, the amber eye bursting, arrowpoint prodding out of the mane.

At once, there wasn't any ground under his feet, and Otho fell. His knee struck stone, and then his back, his head, his a.r.s.e. He rolled down a slope, stabbed by stones and branches. Finally, he came to a halt, face up.

He would just lie and wait for the graf's arrow.

It couldn't be any worse than running in the dark.

Above him he saw the moons, Mannslieb and Morrslieb.

He prayed to Morr, G.o.d of death, pleading with him to hold off. He had exams to pa.s.s, a life to live.

He remembered the pain in his stomach, and rolled over. There couldn't be anything more inside him to come out, but his belly clenched and he coughed, choking on bile.

This was how he would die.

He ground his face into the icy dirt, and waited for the arrow in his back.

Behind him he would leave three unacknowledged b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that he knew of, and unpaid bills in a dozen taverns. He didn't know if he had killed any men, but he had thrown stones and knives in brawls and any number of his opponents might have died of the pummellings he had given them. He had served his Emperor, and he had looked forward to a lifetime of defending the House of the Second Wilhelm from his enemies.

A point jabbed him between the shoulderblades, and he knew it was over.

'Kill me,' he said, rolling over to present his belly to the sword. 'Kill me to my face.'

The graf was not standing over him.

Instead, he found himself staring into a pair of huge amber eyes, set either side of a long face. A sparkling horn stuck out from between the animal's eyes and prodded him.

The unicorn mare breathed out, and plumes of frost shot from its nostrils.

Unicorns are horses with horns, but horses have no range of expression.

This unicorn was smiling at him, mocking him. The stallions' eyes had been cloudy, but the mare's were bright, glowing, alarming.

He froze, and felt his bladder giving out, flooding his trousers with warm wetness.

The unicorn whinnied a laugh at him, and took its horn away.

It was taller than the tallest cavalry horse Otho had ever seen, and long-maned, powerfully muscled. Immensely strong, it was also sleekly feminine.

Horrified at himself, Otho couldn't help but respond to it as he would to a woman.

For the first time in his life, Otho Waernicke saw something he considered beautiful.

Then, with a ripple of white in the darkness, it was gone.

Otho could not believe his luck. He sobbed relief, and laughed out loud, choking on the emotions unloosed from him.

Then he heard the other animals coming.

They were growling, barking, tearing across the distance between him and them.

The two dogs exploded out of the night, and sank their teeth into his fat.

Otho screamed.

VIII.