The Warlord's Domain (6 page)

“Sir!” Hault saluted again, then brought the sword down from the salute and straight out into a thrust. It went into Voord’s flank in the soft place just under his ribcage, met nothing more resistant than internal organs and came out the other side as a repellent peak in the
hautheisart’s
tunic that tore just enough to let its point glitter briefly in the lamplight. Voord gasped and went more pallid even than his normal complexion; he gasped again as it was withdrawn, but not loudly enough to drown the sucking sound as entrails reluctantly released their grasp on steel.

There was no blood, and only two small rips in a previously undamaged military tunic betrayed that anything untoward had happened. “Uncomfortable to feel,” said Voord, panting slightly, “and unsettling to watch, but having a tooth pulled is more painful.”

“Father of Fires…” Etzel choked out the oath, then covered his mouth and gagged.

“That One has nothing to do with it!” snapped Voord, suddenly and unreasonably savage. “Or with me!” And then, more controlled and so softly that he might have been speaking to himself: “The Old Ones give me more than stories to believe, and my sacrifices in Their name reward me with more than the stink of burnt beef or the babbled second-hand benedictions of some disinterested priest…”

Woydach
Etzel looked up at the windows of his private chamber and beyond them to the low, cool sun of winter noon. He knew that he was soon to die, and though the certainty of that knowledge took away his fear of death as he had seen it leave so many at the foot of the scaffold steps, what remained and was enhanced by his familiarity with Voord was a terror of the manner of his dying. And because of that, because nothing he might say now could make his situation worse or better, there were the questions that he wanted to ask no matter how useless their answers might now be. About belief in tales to frighten children, and Voord’s strange, twisted fervor; about the why and the how of such sorceries as even the darkest of old stones only hinted at.

As Voord crossed to the books that were strewn across the floor and squatted down as though to begin putting them to rights, Etzel drew breath to ask the first of all his questions, but it caught in his throat when Voord turned to face him. He was holding one of the books, cradling its opened weight like a child in his arms while his mouth silently shaped words from its handwritten pages, and his speculative gaze at Etzel was that of a butcher sizing up a joint of meat. “Hault,” he said without looking at the guard, “go outside. Let nobody in. Don’t come back until I call you. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.” There was something terrible about hearing Hault’s relief at being sent away, and about the haste with which he left the room.

Etzel wanted to look after the soldier, to take this one last chance of escape as Hault went through the door and out into the world where none of this had happened and where he, Etzel, was still a man of power and influence, but he was unable to tear his eyes away from Voord’s corpse-pale face. The
hautheisart
was muttering something in the hasty monotone of a priest hurrying through the familiar part of a boring litany, but Etzel could still make sense from the slipshod tumble of syllables and that sense turned his belly sick within him.

“... call upon thee O my lord O my true lord O my most beloved lord O Granter of Secrets I pray thee and beseech thee hearken now unto thy true and faithful servant…”

The book was balanced on Voord’s right forearm now, leaving his left hand free to creak dryly as he spread the remnants of its fingers, obscenely aping a priestly sign of benediction. “... O Dweller in the Pit Jeweled Serpent Flower of Darkness I give now unto thee this offering this blood-offering this life-offering O Lord Devourer…”

Voord’s voice stumbled on the words of the invocation and began a gasp he couldn’t finish. Some Power beyond that of its withered sinews was straightening his hand, twisting it from the curled and broken claw it had become five months before into a poised fork of bone and leather, twisting it with such violence that it took away his breath and even his ability to scream.

It was Etzel who closed his eyes and screamed, but only very briefly and in a small, lost voice before the thing that had been Voord’s hand reached out and pulled his face off.

Woydach
Etzel, erstwhile Grand Warlord of the Drusalan Empire and would-be maker of emperors, was grateful for the shock that stopped his heart an instant later and permitted him to die…

When Voord’s nausea had faded, all that remained was the tremble of realization that his offered sacrifice had proven so acceptable that the Old Ones had used his hand to take it for themselves. “Their gifted power of deathlessness was freshly renewed in his body, the corpse of an enemy lay at his feet and the insignia of still more power glittered about that corpse’s neck.

En sh’Va’t’Chaal
was its formal name in the inventories of State Regalia;
t’Chaal
, the Jewel, so much a symbol of the Grand Warlord that it had been incorporated into the sigil and cresting of the rank. Voord stooped to fumble with the catch of Etzel’s collar of office, undid the snap at last and lifted the Jewel from the puddle of blood and slime where it had lain…

Then swore at the sudden freezing chill of the thing, stabbing through his leather glove, and all but dropped it again. Glove or no glove, had the Jewel not been crusted almost an inch thick in frozen gore it would have taken the flesh off his hand. Voord’s studies had taught him about many objects which radiated such appalling cold, but none of them were things that any Imperial-race Drusalan of the Central Provinces would wear openly around his neck. Cautiously he lifted it higher, and even the slight warmth from his exhaled breath was so different in temperature from the Jewel and its bloody casing that the crust shattered and fell away in tiny splinters of crimson ice. Small wonder that it was mounted in so elaborate a framing of gold filigree and fine velvet, for no man born of woman could wear such a thing against his skin. Looking at it more closely, and glad in his heart of hearts to have something to distract him from the sights and the smells that went with violent death, Voord wondered from what mine the gem had come and how in the name of the Dark it had
been
mined.

It was rectangular, and small enough to rest comfortably in the palm of his hand had he been fool enough to place it there; colorless in itself, but cored with green and a delicate cobwebbing of gold that seemed to lead out to the minute gold studs which crowded three of its edges. Voord breathed on it again, watching as the warm exhalation” in that warm room became first cold-weather mist and then a heavy downward roll of white smoke that tinkled faintly with the ice-crystals in it. Whether it was man-made or demon-made was of little consequence to Voord right now. All that mattered to him was that he was alive when he had expected to be dead, and that the confirmation of his ultimate promotion dangled from his fist.

Securing the collar around his neck was difficult with only one usable hand—the left had retracted back into the crippled talon to which he had grown accustomed— but he managed the task at last. It was heavy, and for all the filigree and velvet he could feel the coldness of the Jewel seeping through into his flesh. Nor was the Grand Warlord’s seat as comfortable as he thought it might have been, when he sat down in it and tried to relax his nerves from the jangling tensions of the past few minutes.

And now
he
was Grand Warlord. He had aspired to the position for years, from the time when his first promotion had proved how one man might rise more quickly than others equally capable if he was that much more ruthless—and had the proper support. There would be no questioning of his right, not once the soldiers of the
Tlakh-Woydan
regiment had been thoroughly sweetened with gold. Apart from the occasions when they had themselves seen fit to take a hand, the Bodyguard had shown small interest in who—or what—carried the title of Grand Warlord. Just so long as they were accorded the respect, the privileges and the high pay they regarded as their due, the regiment had as little interest in the political machinations of those who struggled for places at the top of the heap as they would have in the squirmings of a bucketful of crabs.

The air in the chamber stank of blood and sweat and he looked at the mess of death—shivered slightly, wondering:
Was it worth all this
?

The unaccustomed self-doubt startled him. Of course it was. A little killing, something to which he was more than accustomed, and let him become the most powerful man in the Empire, stronger than Lord General Goth and his whelp of an Emperor, backed by elite military forces and by powers that no other man would dare to call upon or challenge.

The question now was, what to do with all this newfound power… ?

Voord looked around the room again and knew quite well what he was going to do with it, at least for the next few minutes. “Hault,” he called, “get in here.”

The soldier came in at once, so quickly that Voord might have suspected him of listening outside the door— except that Hault was beyond all such suspicion since the man would have listened as a matter of course, just as Voord would have done, and had done in similar circumstances. Information gleaned from the wrangling of senior officers could prove useful in all sorts of ways to an ambitious subordinate, and if there was one characteristic shared by the men of the Secret Police on either side of the Empire’s political divide, it was ambition. Whoever they claimed to serve, the foremost was always themselves.

Hault would have been well aware that he had been sent away so that he could with perfect truth deny that he had witnessed murder done. He would have been expecting to see Etzel’s body on the floor when he was summoned back, for a trooper serving with Lord-Commander Voord—or who was acquainted with any man who had—knew of the
hautheisart’s
predeliction for dreadful violence as the final solution to almost any problem. But from the expression on his face as he rolled the corpse over—an expression fortunately shad-owed for the most part by the peak and cheek-plates of his helmet—even he had not expected a response quite so drastic as
this
. “At your command, sir,” the soldier said in a flat voice meant to conceal what he was really thinking.

The attempt failed; Voord knew the men who served him far too well for their collective peace of mind and now was no exception. “Call some servants, have them get this garbage out of my throne room, summon Tagen and five men and take that bloody disapproving look off your face
right now
.”

Hault flinched. That “my throne room” had not been lost on him. For diplomacy’s sake he went through the full sequence of an Imperial parade salute and carefully changed his acknowledgment of the order from “sir” to
Woydach
. It seemed to Voord that the man was even more grateful to be dismissed this time than before. The notion brought a smile of sorts to the new Grand Warlord’s thin lips that would have made Hault hurry even faster to get out.

No matter what they said about me then, they’ll sing a new song now. To a tune of my own choosing
. Voord sat back in the uncomfortable chair, determining privately to have it replaced—or at least reupholstered— and then closed his eyes and let his mind wander far away from the here and the now.

They were pleasant memories, perhaps the only truly innocent pleasure that he still possessed. Voord seldom indulged in reminiscence; it was a sign of softness, of weakness—and a waste of valuable time in so busy a life as he lived now. But just once in a while he deliberately let the defenses slip, to try to remember how things used to be. The trying had slowly grown more difficult over the past year, almost as if those few pleasant recollections were being rubbed off the slate of his memory. Maybe the things that he had heard said behind his back when the speakers thought him out of earshot held more accurate observation than the veiled insults or crude jests they seemed. Perhaps he was going mad after all, losing his mind a piece at a time. It had never been like this before… Before. Voord took care never to let that thought go any further.

He had been born not far from Drakkesborg, and on clear days the lowering citadel at the heart of the city had been visible on the horizon. His father Eban had served there, first as an ordinary soldier and then, with accumulated merits and good conduct awards, as a sergeant and an officer. One of the images that still remained, one of the very few that were as clear as the very first time, was that of
vosjh’
Eban sitting in the kitchen with his parade harness on the big table in front of him, encircled by the admiring audience of his family as he clipped the paired silver bars of
kortagor
rank in place for the first time. And that was as high as he had gone despite all the other merit marks that he gained in the rest of his career. A short career. Of the wife and four children who had watched him apply the shiny new insignia, not one could have dreamed that in ten more months their father would be dead of the lung fever contracted during urban patrol on a particularly cold, wet night. That he was buried with the partial military honors due an officer who died as a result of duty but not active service was small comfort. Nor was the meager pension due the dependents of an officer dying in such circumstances of any real use to a widow with a growing family. Voord—third child, only son and already listed for entry in the Service—had two long years before he entered barracks to wonder what a bowl of porridge would be like if he had salt and honey and milk to stir into it, enough to taste and even some to spill. Or to eat it only when he wanted to and not because that was all his mother could afford. What was most frightening was the way his mouth forgot the flavors of other food, even that of the thick, rich oatmeal of cold winter nights, and could remember only the dismal taste of the thin gruel. The hungry time had been Voord’s first step toward acquiring high military rank, regardless of arm of service or specialization, just so long as its duties did not include late-night patrols in dirty weather. And even now, nine years later, he still loathed the taste of porridge plain and unadorned…