Stone
I first saw the ghost of Baron Tschudi four months ago, the day I arrived at the Höhleburg. I stood on the battlements watching the sun go down behind the Bedauerlich Woods, which is a sombre enough sight without the need for an additional memento mori. Nevertheless the baron appeared, as gory a spectre as one could wish. He indicated to me a certain stone, loose in its mortar, where the old wall meets the new. I extracted it with but a little effort, and later I used it to smash in the skull of Father Koberger. It was an unremarkable stone, and I threw it away.
The baron appeared to me day and night, often in my dreams, often to my waking sight. When Graf Martin paraded with pomp and ceremony through the gate I saw him among the crowd: the dead man among the very lowest of the living. His image reflected in my glass of ’36, an otherwise excellent vintage, at the celebration for the taking of Reuwich. When I slit Uri’s throat he cavorted before me, his tongue protruding and his hands raised to his head in a pantomime of horns. I am told that Tschudi was murdered by Vlad von Carstien, many years ago. He never speaks of it; but then, I have never heard him speak at all. Though I have pursued the question with some vigour, I have not been able to ascertain if it is even in the power of a spectre to speak. Time passes. I have been here too long.
We printed propaganda for the war, there in the servant’s quarters of the part-derelict keep. Much of it aggrandised Martin: his selfless valour, his humble devotion, his inestimable mercy. Much of it demonised the Otillia and her corrupting regime. Especially popular, I am told, was a brief tale of a quiet but steadfast young man who faced torture and death at the hands of the Otillia’s priests, rather than forsake his trust in Sigmar. It was Uri’s work, pure fiction and melodramatic in a most distasteful way. I think that when I killed Uri, four nights ago now, I did it in part because I disliked his work. I have always hated writers, and mediocre ones most of all.
Ah, not just writers. How many others have felt my displeasure? Koberger I detested as a preening fool, so certain and smug in his humility. Always with an apposite verse of the Deus Sigmar at his lips, a superior glint in his eye. The man was a jackal. I saw him pronounce sentence on the Ulrican missionaries von Plauen brought to the castle. I heard his glee when news was brought of Breytenbach’s murder in the taproom of the Uneasy Watchman. Sigmar himself would not, I am certain, begrudge the taking of such a life. I took him to a secret place below the wall, and the stains left by his blood mingle with those left by other, forgotten crimes.
In the deepest chambers of the keep I came upon a forgotten library, thick with the dust of ages. The baron led me there but would not enter, and I think I know now why that should have been. All of the books contained plays and poetry, nothing of value nor meaning but the sum of the vanity of the indolent. He had been a man of action, a man of purpose. There was not a thought passed his mind that was not rooted in the realities of the world. The baron showed me these empty works, and by their neglect proved the folly of those who value such things. I stayed there for a while, skimming cracking pages and faded text for some fragment of truth. I found none, though a few of the phrases stayed with me, haunting me as surely as did the baron himself. Here life has death for neighbour. I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
They brought the girl to the castle. I met her as she emerged, flanked by sullen bodyguards, from the gilded coach. She looked so tiny and bemused – a child, but a child who might one day wear the tarnished crown of Ostermark upon her dainty head. As was my duty as castellan, I showed the gräfin and her guardians to their apartments, in the process discovering her manners and bearing to be beyond reproach. There was a great feast that night, the Graf Martin and the Gräfin Helena seated together on the high table as we toasted the return of royalty to Ostermark. I had half expected the baron to appear, like a bad cliché from the gutter theatre, and foretell the doom of this house and all within. When it became clear to me that he would not come, and when also I had become woozy with drink, I started to feel a strange sense of optimism come upon me.
But later that night I was walking the battlements alone, and I caught my foot on something unseen in the darkness. I hurt my wrist rather badly in the fall. Cursing, I at length groped for the thing that had tripped me and discovered a single stone, such as might have been removed from the masonry of the battlements. I felt, rather than saw, the lingering bloodstain and the echoes of violent death that surrounded it. I was sure I had discarded this thing far from here, in the Bedauerlich Woods as the sun went down. Was the baron able to move a physical object? Could he leave the confines of his ancestral home to do such a thing? Was he a part of the stones themselves, a memory married to the fabric of the castle? He has never spoken to me, as I have said. Yet at that moment I nonetheless heard his suggestion clearly in my mind. I lifted the stone in both hands, my injured wrist screaming protest at the considerable weight. I am dying in my own death… I knew the secret ways by which I could reach his chamber unseen. Would the people of Stirland mourn the death of their Elector? Would the people of Ostermark rejoice? The baron’s face flickered across my closed eyelids. Here life has death for neighbour. Sigmar’s will acting through my body. With faltering steps, I headed for Graf Martin’s apartments. Blood dripped in my wake.
