C. Werner - Blighted Empire

‘What was that all about?’ Mirella asked, confused by the exchange between prince and priest, and even more at its cause.

‘Your confessor claims I am meant for great things,’ Mandred said. Without any warning, he spurred his horse forwards, drawing a gasp of surprise from the woman. Mirella wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight.

Somehow, Mandred was sure the trip back was going to feel much shorter than the journey out.

Carroburg

Brauzeit, 1114

The appointments within Schloss Hohenbach had no part of the grim, imposing exterior of the castle. Inside, the halls were panelled in cherrywood and teak, the floors lined with expensive furs and exotic rugs, the ceilings bristling with chandeliers of silver and crystal. Lavish tapestries, exuberant sculptures and vibrant paintings were displayed in profusion wherever the eye was turned. Rich perfumes rewarded the nose, the melodies of master musicians delighted the ear, silks and satins caressed the skin. The plunder of an Empire had been poured into Boris’s palatial hermitage, exhibited in obscene splendour to astound and awe the chosen elite.

While a nation starved, while entire communities perished from want and disease, those within the castle were subjected to every delight they could imagine. Fine foods from every corner of the known world, dancers and performers, liquors and stimulants of every stripe and provenance. Each of the Emperor’s noble guests was nightly presented with a chalice of gold filled with elven wine looted from prehuman ruins by the most daring of adventurers. To enhance the richness of the flavour, a pearl of matchless colour and size was dropped into the cup, dissolved in the eldritch inebriant.

For most of his guests, the delights of the Emperor’s retreat were exhilarating, allowing them to abandon themselves in the pleasures of the moment and forget the horrors that raged beyond the castle. The Black Plague might reign in Stirland and Sylvania, in Averheim and Altdorf, but it had no place here. Here, the plague could not touch them.

Princess Erna could not share in such wanton indulgence. Each extravagance only increased her contempt for the Emperor and all that he represented. Only a monster could surround himself with such luxury while his subjects were decimated by famine and pestilence, while his realm was wracked by war and disease.

There were others, to be certain, who shared Erna’s loathing, but they were too afraid not to hide their disapproval. The castle offered sanctuary. If they displeased the Emperor, he might eject them from their refuge, cast them once more into the horrors of a world on the brink of apocalypse.

Erna knew she wasn’t alone. She saw the way Markgraf Luther von Metzgernstein glowered whenever the Emperor wasn’t looking, fuming over the imprisonment of his six-year-old son in the castle dungeons. She watched Baron von Kirchof’s alarm when the Emperor’s eyes lingered on the shapely figure of his niece. She saw the pious shock in the kindly eyes of Matriarch Katrina Ochs, the Empire’s supreme priestess of Shallya, when the Emperor cast aside decency in order to placate one of his jaded whims.

Unlike her, however, these dissidents hid their true feelings. Day by day, she saw their convictions slink deeper and deeper inside them, shrinking a little more with each outrage the Emperor presented. Whether it was making crippled halflings dance a waltz or forcing a stuttering buffoon to recite the line of emperors, Boris’s perverse amusements went unchallenged by the sycophants he had gathered to him.

It was strange that while the convictions of others should wither under the influence of Boris, her own courage should be awakened. Kreyssig had failed to beat the heart from her and the daily offences perpetrated by the Emperor and his court caused Erna to rediscover her idealism. From shuddering fear, she began to treat the Emperor with disdain, even insolence. She knew there would be punishment for her openness, her refusal to condone the Emperor’s wickedness.

What she didn’t know was the shape that punishment would take.

One day, after an opulent luncheon of roast pheasant and minced truffles, the Emperor led his guests out onto the parapet overlooking the approach to the castle. Servants waited upon the dignitaries, presenting the Grand Prince of Stirland with a goblet of Bretonnian wine, offering the High Duchess of Nordland a trencher of pickled sturgeon eyes, enticing the Arch-Count of Averland with a platter of smoked swan. Boris waited while his guests sampled the extravagant fare, then, with a smile that Erna knew was directed solely towards her, he strode to the battlements and beckoned his guests to join him.

‘A diversion to feast your eyes as you’ve just feasted your bellies,’ the Emperor announced. He brought his hands together in a loud clap when some of his noble guests were peering down from the parapet, ensuring that Erna was among them. ‘There are some of you who disapprove of frivolity,’ he announced, waving aside the protests from his more voluble sycophants. ‘There are some of you who think that all this pleasure is indecent and wasteful.’

Boris paused, looking straight into Erna’s eyes. Down below, a group of soldiers had appeared, escorting a mob of tatterdemalion starvelings that had been culled from the streets of Carroburg.

‘Oh, what means this?’ Palatine Istvan Dohnanyi, the dapper pretender to the Talabecland peerage, asked, leaning between the crenellations for a better look.

‘I think His Imperial Majesty has some clever amusement planned,’ the rotund Count Artur of Nuln laughed.

Gustav van Meers, a Westerland peasant who’d earned his place among the inmates of Schloss Hohenbach by dint of his immense fortune — a fortune looted from Marienburg during the Norscan invasion — waved a perfumed handkerchief at the wretches below. ‘Not the most appealing specimens,’ he observed, hoping to illustrate to his noble peers that he was far above such common beggars.

‘What are you going to do with them?’ von Kirchof asked. Knowing the Emperor’s distaste for the unsightly, he was at a loss to understand why Boris would have such a ragged mob assembled outside the castle. Because he found it disturbing, it was easy for him to forget the sadistic humour that his sovereign sometimes indulged.

Emperor Boris smiled at his champion, and again made a point of locking eyes with Erna. ‘Why, we are going to feed these poor creatures,’ he said. ‘Just as the Thuringian kings of old used to throw table scraps to their dogs.’ He waved his hand to the guards below. At his sign, they shoved some of the peasants forwards, allowing them to come close to the wall. Almost at once, the rabble sent whining entreaties to the nobles staring down at them.

Von Kirchof was the first to react to the pleas, reaching to one of the trenchers and tossing a cut of smoked eel to one of the ragged men. Von Metzgernstein followed his example with a slice of pheasant. A few of the noble guests started to likewise throw scraps of food to the beggars. Erna, however, made no move to the wall. She was watching Emperor Boris, watching as his face contorted again into that cherubic grin, as the imp of perversity once more asserted itself.

‘Friends! Friends!’ the Emperor shouted, motioning his guests away from the wall. ‘This is hardly a fitting spectacle! It lacks a sense of theatre. It is not a true representation of the Thuringian lords.’ His face still lit by his ghastly humour, he looked down at the hungry peasants. ‘It is not fit that such aristocratic sensibilities should be subjected to the presence of wretched beggars. That would be offensive. But if we were to feed a few stray dogs… Well, what man does not show compassion to a dog?’