The Brothers Cabal (5 page)

‘Subject unable to identify even the language of the ritual due to lollygagging around in his youth instead of applying himself,'
Cabal recited as he wrote. He looked back at Horst to check his brother was suitably chastised, but only found him smiling and nodding.

‘I did apply myself, Johannes. Very enthusiastically. Just not on anything you'd find interesting.' He leaned forward and said in a confidential tone, ‘My lollygagging was of a very high standard.'

‘Get away from me, you vile sewer,' said Cabal coldly.

Horst's smile widened. ‘You really have missed me.'

‘I…' Cabal wavered. He closed his eyes and said, ‘Yes, I really have.' He reopened his eyes and was relieved to find Horst looking somewhat surprised rather than smirking. ‘I bear a soul now, Horst. A wretched nuisance much of the time. Much of the time.' He waved his pen impatiently at the momentarily befuddled vampire. ‘Carry on. What happened when you arrived at your destination?'

Horst took a moment to gather his wits, and returned to his tale.

 

Chapter 2

IN WHICH HORST MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF HORRID PEOPLE

The arrival at the castle had been carefully timed to occur shortly after dusk, that the Lord of the Dead would be up and about and able to appreciate the power and the glory of the grand scheme to which he was being introduced. Encausse had spoken to the yacht's captain to perhaps hurry things along a little so their undead cargo might be decanted while it still slumbered, but the captain said they were already at full speed just to stay on schedule and that they would arrive as planned, the only other option being to tarry a little and arrive late. Would that please M. Encausse? The thought of being cooped up in a small space like the
Catullus
with something like Horst Cabal was suddenly less bearable to M. Encausse after the events of the previous night, and so, no, M. Encausse would not be pleased by any delay. The captain had clicked his heels and returned to his post, and the yacht had sped on through the lightening skies.

Now, hours later and the darkness deepening her lines, the
Catullus
angled her approach and swept down towards the landing area prepared on the top of a wide circular tower, part of the great castle's central keep.

The castle, a great looming monstrosity of clashing styles from both eastern and western Europe, stood above a small city that had certainly seen better days. Parts of it were in ruin, burnt to the ground during riots, while others were armed camps. It was a dying metropolis in a decaying country, and the castle rose above it all, haughty and unconcerned. It was a place for evil to fester, because none would or could stand against it. The castle was an abscess of corrupt ambitions in a place the world deemed unimportant and so, within it, wickedness fermented unseen and unchecked.

Horst was a friendlier creature when they opened his box; he didn't mention that he had heard them lock the door previously and knew full well their attitudes to him had changed. Even without smelling the fear that swelled from their pores, the tension was clear in their faces, and this he sought to defuse with a smile and a weak joke about travelling cargo class. He also made a point not to mention that he had been conscious for some minutes already and could have unboxed himself quite happily before they arrived. Better to give them an illusion of at least that much control over him, he thought. The return of the silly fop persona did much to settle their nerves, although he could still almost see a little extra adrenaline pulsing around their weak, mortal bodies, to give them a head start on a fight-or-flight response should he suddenly decide that they were of more use to him as nourishment than companions.
For all the good it would do you
, he caught himself thinking, and crushed it down into a dark place in his mind that he did not recall being there previously.

‘We have arrived, my Lord Horst,' said Encausse.

‘At this castle of yours?'

‘Not
my
castle,' said Encausse, and laughed just awkwardly enough to obscure whether he was joking—as if
he
would have a castle—or truly thought Horst had believed that.

Horst was unsurprised that they were at their destination; he had known by the tilt of the yacht as it manoeuvred that it was no longer cruising and the timing fitted with what he had been told about the length of the trip. Oddly, he no longer felt very interested in exactly where they were. Such concerns—borders, territories, flags, and nations—seemed very artificial and trifling. When he imagined the world now, it wasn't as the political jigsaw of countries he had studied on maps as a schoolboy, but rather a living, physical world of mountain and forest, river and coast.

‘I have little luggage,' said Horst, indicating the coffin and a small trunk containing several changes of clothes that had been waiting for him when he boarded. Remarkably, they were excellent fits. Less remarkably, he didn't much care for the cut and choice of colours. They were very restrained, and black dominated throughout, with a little scarlet and imperial purple to lift affairs. But for these small peacock flashes, Horst thought they may as well have been chosen by his brother, a man for whom black and white would do until something less gaudy was devised.

‘That will all be attended to, my lord,' said Encausse, and gave a sideways nod at the coffin while looking at Bolam to tell him that this was now his concern, thereby satisfying Encausse's personal definition of ‘attended to'. Bolam shambled off to talk to the captain about it, thereby satisfying his.

‘It's raining,' said Horst suddenly.

Encausse looked at him with surprise. ‘Well … yes. How did you know?'

‘I can hear it,' said Horst, and he could. He could smell it, too, along with a faint scent of wet stone, but this he kept to himself. He already made them nervous enough.

*   *   *

The rain was not heavy, but it was persistent and it swept in waves across the castle rooves. The
Catullus
had not set down—there was not quite enough room to do that safely—but instead had dropped off anchor lines fore and aft that were gathered up and run through heavy iron rings deeply emplaced in the stout stone parapets. Drawn tight by the gentle ascent of a few feet, she was held in position, barely moving even in the gusting wind that came in from the east. It was clearly a well-practised routine, and was carried out with familiarity and competence.

The yacht's forward gangway lowered smoothly on its cables until the leading edge touched down with a reassuring steadiness. In the rain, a welcoming committee of sorts—the sort that isn't very welcoming—waited beneath umbrellas. They were lean and ascetic people, all men, and they dressed as if in permanent mourning. The appearance of a corpse proceeding down the ramp followed shortly by his coffin borne by Bolam, Donner, and two members of the yacht's crew did nothing to alter this impression.

The group of waiting men looked no more excited by Horst's arrival than if he'd been a London omnibus arriving exactly on schedule, so he did not entirely take the words of the first of the men who stepped forward to greet him at face value. ‘My Lord Horst,' said the man. His tones were dry, educated, and perhaps a little arch under the circumstances. ‘It is a delight to meet you.'

‘The pleasure is all mine,' replied Horst with equal sincerity.

‘I am Velasco de Osma.' A strong brow and nose were betrayed by a weak chin on an otherwise noble countenance. It was the sort of face that would have looked at home over a polished chest plate while busily engaged in the infection of South American natives with Catholicism and smallpox, while all the time robbing them blind of every grain of gold they might have. ‘And these are my associates.' He turned to the two men who stood by, and indicated them one at a time.

‘Ewald von Ziegler.' A small man bowed and attempted to smile graciously, but the effort made his neck retract into his collar slightly and the smile slipped up one side of his face as if trying to escape before admitting failure and settling into a weak beatific smirk. The outmoded ‘wipers' of hair in the middle of his cheeks did little to improve matters.

‘And Burton Collingwood.' The third man was tall, perhaps three inches over the six-foot mark, and broad shouldered. He was sleek with the effects of wealth, but it lay upon him like a silk scarf on a wolf. He regarded Horst with calculating eyes for a moment before speaking. ‘My Lord Horst,' he said, ‘Lord' sounding as false on his tongue as titles always did with every American. ‘It is surely good to have you with us.' Horst detected no mendacity in his tone, but nor did he find any friendliness. He realised Collingwood was only pleased to see him as one might be for an expected package.

‘It's kind of you to say so,' he replied. ‘Such a pleasant reception. Thank you, gentlemen.'

He was directed through the double doors of a tile-roofed shelter to descend via a broad curving stone stair that followed the tower's outer wall. Behind him processed the coffin bearers, and behind them von Ziegler, de Osma, and Collingwood. Horst noted a possible significance of the order—if the coffin were to be dropped, it would careen down the stairs causing all sorts of alarums and excursions en route. His welcoming committee would likely end up battered and broken, a very sensible reason for their following rather than preceding it. He, however, would have to deal with the situation himself. He was confident of his ability to do so—at the very least he could evade an errant coffin with ease or, if the whim took him, he could stop it providing he could find enough traction. Was, therefore, the order of the descent a test? Would the coffin be ‘accidentally' dropped? He hoped not. It was a nice coffin, well finished and very comfortable, and he would hate to see its corners dashed and its surfaces scratched by a short career in stair tobogganing.

His hosts, however, had decided on nothing so cheaply dramatic, and the landing below was reached with all due decorum.

Horst's welcoming committee inveigled him to walk with them, while his coffin was conveyed off in another direction. ‘It is being taken to your chambers, my Lord Horst,' de Osma explained.

‘My chambers?' Horst wasn't really used to the concept of ‘chambers' since his change in subspecies. A cellar or especially spacious cupboard would certainly have sufficed. Indeed, his last habitual resting place during the daylight hours had been a chest of the type used for storing out-of-season clothes or blankets. He halted for a moment, unexpectedly nostalgic for the cosy darkness and scent of camphor.

Misinterpreting the hesitation for displeasure, Ziegler interjected, ‘The windows have all been bricked up, my lord. All but one of a northerly aspect, that is, through which the sun never shines.'

The men stood and regarded Horst—an implacable expression on de Osma's face that might even have been hiding boredom, and all the time Collingwood watched Horst as a man might watch a snake at feeding time in a terrarium, his distant coolness a mask over an expectation of sensation. As for von Ziegler himself, the apparent eagerness to please overlaid an evident lack of surety, and Horst realised that this was a man unused to making accommodations for others in either the material or immaterial sense.

‘That is very thoughtful of you,' was all Horst could think to reply, to his own disappointment. Everything he said, however, seemed to carry a subtext for the men. They nodded sagely before moving on again. Horst followed, deciding as he did so to say as little as possible to them in future. He wasn't sure whether to be pleased or irked that they believed him to be more intelligent, or wiser, or perhaps both, than he actually was. In any event, it was certainly wiser to keep them believing that, and he appreciated ruefully that there would be no quicker way of disabusing them of those notions than opening his mouth.

As they processed—and Horst could not help feeling that they were in a procession without an audience—he heard the hollow beats of a dinner gong sounding some way ahead of him.

‘Ah, just in time for dinner!' said von Ziegler. It was a lie; they had passed a low table upon which a French bracket clock had been sitting and Horst had noted the time in passing. Unless it was customary to keep remarkably eccentric mealtimes in whatever part of the world they had brought him to, then the gong had been sounded specifically for their convenience.

They arrived at what was apparently the dining room, double doors closed and, beside it, a well-Macassar-oiled butler of the shimmering sort waited with the implacability of an Easter Island sculpture. On their approach, he opened the doors and moved smoothly through ahead of them as if it were a dance step in a particularly graceful waltz.

‘Graf von Ziegler, Vizconde de Osma, Mr Burton Collingwood, and,' he announced, pausing a beat before continuing, ‘Horst Cabal.' Another beat, and then he added in an odd, rapid diminuendo like an English vicar finishing the parish announcements, ‘Lord of the Dead.'