The War Hound and The World

Chapter VI

AMMENDORF AT CLOSE quarters gave off an odour of rot and decrepit age. Slates had fallen from roofs; thatch and wooden shingles were broken and tattered; only the heavy stones of the buildings were in one piece and they were covered in damp foliage and mildew.

The whole village had been abandoned suddenly, it seemed to me, and the green cast of the light through the gloom of the overhanging crag, the distinct and regular drip-drip of water, the soft yielding of the ground underfoot when we dismounted, all contributed to an impression of desolation.

Sedenko sniffed at the air and put his hand to the hilt of his sabre. "The place stinks of evil."

We peered upwards. I thought I detected more man-cut stone at the top of the crag, but a tangle of ivy and hawthorn obscured everything.

Could Lucifer, I wondered to myself, be losing His memory to send me to a place deserted for so long? There was none here to direct me to a Wildgrave doubtless long since dead.

Sedenko's look was questioning. Plainly he did not wish to say what he was thinking: that I had been, at the very least, badly misdirected.

The day was closing hi. I said to Sedenko: "I must camp here. But if you wish to travel on now! would suggest that you do not hesitate."

The Muscovite grunted, fingering his face as he considered the prospect. Then he looked up at me and uttered a small laugh. "This could be the adventure I have been expecting," he said.

"But not one you would relish."

"It's in the nature of adventure, is it not, to risk that possibility?"

I clapped him on the back. "You are a companion after my own heart, Kazak. Would that you had been with me in some of my former engagements."

"I have it in mind, captain, to be with you in some of your future engagements."

The future for me was so mysterious, so numinous, that I could not answer him. We began to explore the houses, one by one. We found flagstones cracked and pushed apart by plants. In some, small trees were growing. Everything was damp. Pieces of furniture were rotting; fabric fell to shreds at a touch.

"Even the rats have gone." Sedenko returned from a cellar with a wine-jar. He broke the seal and sniffed. "Sour."

He dropped it into an empty fireplace.

"Well," he said, "which of these comfortable houses shall we make our own?"

We decided in the end upon the building which had evidently been the town's meeting place. This was larger and airier than the others and we could light a fire in the big grate.

By dusk, with our horses billeted in one corner of the room and the fire providing us with sufficient heat and some light, we were ready to sleep.

Outside, in the deserted streets of Ammendorf, there was tittle movement. A few birds hunted for insects and occasionally we heard the bark of a fox. Soon Sedenko was snoring, but it was harder for me to lose consciousness. I continued to speculate on Lucifer's reasons for sending me to this place. I thought about Sabrina and despaired of ever seeing her again. I even considered retracing my steps partway and seeking service with the Swedish King whose army was just now marching at some speed through Germany. Then Magdeburg came back to me, as well as Lucifer's threats of what should happen if I betrayed Him, and I lapsed into despondency. Two or three hours must have passed in this useless state of mind before I nodded off, whereupon I was immediately aroused by what I was sure was the sound of hoof beats.

I was on my feet almost with relief, picking up my scabbarded sword as I ran towards the window and looked out into the murk. A thin drizzle had begun to fall and clouds obscured moon and stars. I thought I saw the glow of an oddly coloured lantern moving between the buildings. The light began to grow brighter and brighter until it seemed to be flickering over half Ammendorf, And the hoof beats grew louder, filling my ears with their din…yet still I could see no rider.

Sedenko was beside me now, his sabre ready in his fist. He rubbed at his face. "In the name of God, captain, what is it?"

I shook my head. "I've no idea, lad."

Even the meeting hall was shaking and our own mounts were stamping and whinnying, trying to break free of their halters.

"A storm," Sedenko said. "Some kind of storm, eh, captain?"

"It's like none I've ever witnessed," I told him. "But you could be right."

He was convinced that he was wrong. Every gesture, every movement of his eyes, betrayed his superstition.

"It is Satan's coming," he whispered.

I did not tell him why I thought that explanation unlikely.

All at once, from around a bend in the street, a horseman appeared. As he came into sight the hounds which surrounded his beast's feet, an undulation of savagery, began to bay. There were other riders behind him, but the leader was gigantic, dwarfing all. He wore a monstrous winged helmet framing a bearded face from which the eyes glowed with the same green-blue light which flooded the village. His great chest was encased in a mail shirt half-covered by the bearskin cloak which hung from his shoulders. In his left hand was a long hunting spear of a type not used in at least a hundred years. His legs were also mail-clad and the feet stuck into heavy stirrups. He lifted his head and laughed up at the sky, his voice joining in the note his hounds made until all seemed to be baying together, while his companions, shadows still behind him, began one by one to give forth the same dreadful noise.

"Mother of God," said Sedenko. "I'll fight any man fairly, but not this. Let's go, captain. They are warning us. They are driving us away."

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 recognise the dead. And, too, I could recognise 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 warmed 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 Wild-grave, "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 hi 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 He 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 Wildgrave 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 Wild-grave.