03 - Sword of Vengeance Read Online Free PDF Page B

darkness beyond, he could faintly make out a
rattling sound. Something was moving.
    “I saw the blow that felled him,” said Grosslich, trying to
concentrate on the task at hand. “He may yet die from it.”
    “Possibly. But we have to be sure. Come forwards.”
    The last command hadn’t been directed at him. The rattling
grew louder. Something was shuffling into the light.
    “What is this, my goddess?” asked Grosslich. He was nervous.
Despite all his training, all his immersion in the world of the Dark Prince, he
was still nervous. He still had some way to go.
    “A new toy,” she replied, eyes fixed on the approaching
shape. “A refinement of the creatures I was working on before. I call them my
handmaidens. What do you think?”
    The figure that emerged had been a woman. She had once been
beautiful, perhaps. She was slim, pale-skinned, with mouse-brown hair arranged
in long plaits. Maybe in the past she had moved with an easy grace, laughing in
the sun and trying to catch the eye of the troopers marching to war.
    Now she moved silently. Her once flawless skin was covered in
incisions and sutures. Her eyes were gone, replaced with blank brass plates.
Black rags had been draped over her naked shoulders, but they did little to
obscure the surgery that had scored her body. Exposed bone glinted from her
hips, her knees, her neck. Most strikingly of all, her fingers had been replaced
with long curved talons. They shone coldly in the dark. What was left of her
face was contorted into a silent, frozen howl of agony. It was unclear if she
could still speak. It looked like she could barely walk.
    “Impressive,” said Grosslich, trying not to imagine the full
horror of the transformation. “What can she do?”
    “There has been extensive replacement,” said Natassja coolly.
“At her heart there burns an iron casket containing a shard of the Stone. That
keeps her alive, despite the removal of the spine. Once given an instruction,
she will never stop. These ones no longer need to be near me to retain their
power.”
    The handmaiden shuffled closer. It seemed blind as well as
crippled. Every movement it made was tight with pain.
    “It doesn’t move fast.”
    Natassja smiled and ran a finger gently down the handmaiden’s
scarred cheek. “Do not be fooled by her current state. When given the proper
command, she will change.” Natassja looked at her tenderly, like a proud mother.
“For now, she only has her own private world of pain. That can be altered by
giving her a name.”
    “A name.”
    “A name is a mystical thing, Heinz-Mark. It has resonance in
the aethyr. They can use it to find their prey. When they are ready, I will give
it to them.”
    “She’s not ready?”
    “Not yet,” said Natassja, stroking the handmaiden’s remaining
hair. “There will be three of them, at least to begin with. Their creation is
long and difficult. Then I will send them out. They will sweep across Averland
like crows, never pausing, never resting.”
    She looked back at Grosslich, and her eyes were shining. “All
they need is the name. Helborg .”
     
    Rufus Leitdorf looked down on the stricken face of Kurt
Helborg. The Marshal slept still, propped up on bolsters of duckfeather. The two
men were alone in the bedchamber of one of his father’s houses, far out in the
eastern reaches of Averland. The room was typically grand, with a high plastered
ceiling and heavy wooden furniture against all four walls. The bed itself was
larger than some peasants’ hovels, with fanciful images of dragons and crested
eagles carved into the headboard.
    The night was old. Candlelight made Helborg’s face look even
paler. The craggy features, so admired and feared across the Empire, were now
haggard, and the proud moustache hung in lank strands across his cheeks. His
breathing was shallow, and a thick layer of sweat lay on his skin.
    Leitdorf took up another towel and began to dab the moisture
away. Only a few months