Part 25 (1/2)

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 vanis.h.i.+ng.

'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.