he would be next.
And then, even as Feldmann gave out his last, thin gasp of life, I looked beyond Hellander and saw, distinct yet vaguely insubstantial, my doppelganger. That strange, cloaked albino whose eyes were mine.
And for the first time I thought I heard him speak.
'The sword,' he said.
Hellander was looking away from me, looking to where the albino had stood. I asked him if he had seen anything. He shook his head. We laid Feldmann out on the flagstones and tried to say some useful service for him. But Hellander was wretched and I didn't know how to help him.
My dreams were of the white hare, of my doppelganger in his hooded cape, of the lost black sword and of the young woman archer whom I had nicknamed Diana. No dragons or ornamented cities. No armies. No monsters. Just my own face staring at me, desperate to communicate something. And then the sword. I could almost feel it in my hands.
Half-roused, 1 heard Hellander moving uncomfortably. I asked him if he was all right. He said that he was fine.
In the morning I awoke to find his hanging body turning slowly in the air above Feldmann's. He had found his means of escape as 1 slept.
A full twenty-four hours passed before the guards removed the corpses from my cell.
Chapter Five
Martial Music
Fritzi and Franzi came for me a couple of days later. Without bothering to move me, they took out their blackjacks and beat me up on the spot. Fritzi and Franzi enjoyed their work and had become very expert at it, commenting on my responses, the reaction of my strange, pale body to their blows. The peculiar color of my bruises. They complained, however, that it was hard to get sounds out of me. A small problem they thought they would solve over time.
Shortly after they left, I received a visit from Klosterheim, now an SS captain, who offered me something from a hip flask which I refused. I had no intention of helping him drug me.
'A sequence of very unfortunate accidents, eh?' He looked around my cell. 'You must find all this a bit depressing, Herr Count.'
'Oh, it means I don't have to mix too much with Nazis,' I said. 'So I suppose I am at an advantage.'
'Your notion of advantage is rather hard for me to grasp,' he said. 'It seems to get you in this sort of predicament. How long did it take our SA boys to finish off your friend Feldmann? Of course, you could be a little fitter, a little younger. How long was it? Three days?'
'Feldmann's triumph?' I said. 'Three days in which every word he had written about you was proven. You confirmed his judgment in every detail. You gave extra authority to everything he published. No writer can feel better than that.'
'These are martyr's victories, however. Intelligent men would call them meaningless.'
'Only stupid men who believed themselves intelligent would call them that,' I said. 'And we all know how ludicrous such strutting fellows are.' I was glad of his presence. My hatred of him took my mind off my injuries. 'I'll tell you now, Herr Captain, that I have no sword to give you and no cup, either. Whatever you believe, you are wrong. I will be happy to die with you believing otherwise, but I would not like others to die on my behalf. In your assumption of power, sir, you have also assumed responsibility, whether you like it or not. You can't have one without the other. So I present you with your guilt.'
I turned my back on him and he left immediately.
A few hours later Fritzi and Franzi arrived to carry on their experiments. When I passed out, I immediately had a vision of my doppelganger. He was speaking urgently, but I still couldn't hear him. Then he vanished and was replaced by the black sword, whose iron, now constantly washed with blood, bore the same runes but they were alive-scarlet.
When I woke I was naked with no blanket on my bed. I understood at once that they meant to kill me. The standard method was to starve and expose a prisoner until they were too weak to withstand infection, usually pneumonia. They used it when you refused to die of a heart attack. Why this charade was perpetuated I was never sure. I guessed this 'message' was a bluff. If they still thought I could lead them to the sword or the cup they set such store by, they wouldn't kill me.
In fact Major Hausleiter came to my cell himself at one point. He had Klosterheim with him. I think he attempted to reason with me, but he was so inarticulate he made no sense. Klosterheim reminded me that his patience was over and made some other villainous, ridiculous threat. What do you threaten the
damned with? I was too weak to offer any significant retort. But I managed something like a smile with my broken mouth.
I leaned forward, as if to whisper a secret, and watched with satisfaction as, drop by drop, my blood fell upon his perfect uniform. It took him a moment to realize what had happened. He pulled back in baffled disgust, pushing me away so that I fell to the floor.
The door slammed and there was silence. Nobody else was being tortured tonight. When I tried to rise I saw another figure sitting on my bunk. My doppelganger made a gesture and then seemed to fold downwards onto the bare mattress.
I crawled to the bunk. My double had gone. But in his place was the Ravenbrand. My sword. The sword they all sought. I reached out to touch the familiar iron and as I did so it, too, vanished. Yet I knew I had imagined nothing. Somehow the sword would find me again.
Not before Fritzi and Franzi had returned once more. Even as they beat me they discussed my staying power. They thought I could take one more 'general physical' and then they would let me rest up for a day or two or they would probably lose me. Major von Minct was arriving later. He might have some ideas.
As the door slammed and was locked, leaving me in darkness, I saw my doppelganger clearly framed there. The figure almost glowed. Then it crossed to the bunk. I turned my head painfully, but the man was gone. I knew I was not hallucinating. I had a feeling that if I had the strength to get to my bed I would see the sword again.
Somehow the thought drove me to find energy from nothing. Bit by bit I crawled to the bunk and this time my hand touched cold metal. The hilt of the Raven Sword. Fraction by fraction I worked my fingers until they had closed around the hilt. Perhaps this was a dying man's delusion, but the metal felt solid enough. Even as my hand gripped it, the sword made a low crooning noise, one of welcome, like a cat purring. I was determined to hang on to it, not to let it vanish again, even though I had no strength to lift it.
Strangely the metal seemed to warm, passing energy into my hands and wrists, giving me the means to raise myself up onto the bunk and lie with my body shielding the sword from anyone looking into the cell. There was a fresh vibrancy about the metal. As if the sword were actually alive. While this thought was disturbing, it did not seem as bizarre as it might have a few months earlier.
I do not really know if a day passed. My own head was full of images and stories. The sword had somehow infected me. It could have been later that night Franzi and Fritzi arrived. They had brought some prison clothes and were yelling at me to get up. They were taking me to see Major von Minct.
I had been gathering my strength and praying for this moment. I had the sword gripped in both hands and as I turned I lifted the blade and threw my body weight behind it. The point caught short fat Franzi in the stomach and slid into him with frightening ease. He began to gulp. Behind him Fritzi was transfixed, unsure what was happening.
Franzi screamed. It was a long, cold, anguished scream. When it stopped, I was standing on my feet, blocking Fritzi from reaching the door. He sobbed. Clearly something about me terrified him. Perhaps my sudden energy. I was full of an edgy, unnatural power. But I was glad of it. I had sucked Franzi's lifestuff from him and drawn it into my own body. Disgusting as this idea might be, I considered it without emotion even as, with familiar skill, I knocked Fritzi's bludgeon from his red, peasant hand and drove the point of my sword directly into his
