C. Werner - Blighted Empire

Emperor Boris drew back the velvet curtain covering the coach window. He sighed as he looked upon the blackened desolation ringing Carroburg. It seemed such a waste. After more than a year, he would have expected von Metzgernstein to have done something to reclaim the land, put it to some manner of usefulness. There was nothing that upset him more than seeing something that was unproductive, something that wasn’t being employed to the utmost to feed the Imperial treasury.

Boris looked away, a scowl on his face. ‘Remind us to reprimand von Metzgernstein,’ he told the wizened little man sitting next to him. The little man uttered a squeak of surprise and hurriedly drew quill and parchment from the bag he carried. The Emperor waited while his scribe started to write. ‘We find his management of the province to be lacking. Perhaps Count Vilner tolerated such laxity, but We will not.’ Boris tapped his chin as an idea occurred to him. ‘When we arrive at the castle, have his son arrested. Or his daughter,’ he reflected, uncertain what manner of relations the seneschal possessed. A lewd twinkle crept into his eye as he gazed across the carriage and stared at the young woman seated across from him. ‘Especially if she is pretty,’ he added.

Princess Erna’s skin crawled as she felt the Emperor’s eyes slither across her body. She struggled to keep the disgust from showing. Not from any sense of propriety or courtly decorum, but because she knew Boris enjoyed provoking her.

The effort was wasted. Boris laughed gustily at her expense. ‘Is it a crime that We desire to be surrounded by beautiful things?’ He laughed again as another thought occurred to him. ‘If it is, then as Emperor We will simply have to change the laws!’

‘As Your Imperial Majesty wishes,’ Erna answered, her voice demure. Years of suffering under Adolf Kreyssig’s hate had beaten the spirit from her.

‘That goes without saying,’ Boris chuckled. He pulled the curtain wide so that all within the carriage could see the burned desolation. ‘Everything exists only as long as it pleases Us. The moment it forsakes that sacred obligation to the Imperial crown…’ He snapped his fingers as though snuffing a rushlight.

‘A wise policy, Your Imperial Majesty,’ the rotund Doktor Wolfius Moschner agreed, his voice less that of a wolf and more like a yipping lapdog. ‘Noble and peasant alike must remember to whom they owe their loyalty.’

After so many years serving as the Emperor’s personal physician, Moschner knew exactly the right things to say to evoke his patron’s pleasure. Boris leaned back against the leather cushions lining his seat, smiling as he digested the doktor’s flattery. An impish smile teased the corners of his mouth as he considered the other occupants of the carriage.

‘What do you think, Pieter?’ Boris asked the man seated in the opposite corner. ‘Do you agree? Are the nobles as beholden to Us as the peasants?’

The man the Emperor addressed was Baron Pieter von Kirchof, a swordsman of such renown that his fame was known in every corner of the Empire. He had risen to become the Emperor’s Champion, defending the virtue of his master in judicial contests and private duels for more than a decade. Few who crossed sword with him had lived to tell the tale. None had ever left the field of honour without feeling the bite of his blade.

Despite the fame of his sword, the formidable reputation he had earned in mortal combat a hundred times over, it was a subdued man who answered his Emperor. Von Kirchof kept his eyes lowered, his tone deferential as he spoke. ‘All men are beholden to their Emperor,’ he said.

Boris laughed at his champion. ‘You more than most, eh? What sort of lands did your family possess before you entered Our service? A miserable demesne in the middle of a swamp with a few hundred inbred peasants to serve you!’ The Emperor’s eyes left von Kirchof, lingering for a moment on the young woman seated beside him. ‘Yes, Pieter, you owe much to Us.’

Von Kirchof’s niece looked away as the Emperor scrutinised her, unable to repress the shudder that swept through her.

‘We all owe you much, Your Imperial Majesty,’ Doktor Moschner said, trying to ease the tense atmosphere. Boris ignored the physician, turning to gaze out the window once more.

‘When you have advice about Our health, you may speak,’ he told Moschner. ‘Otherwise, if We want your opinion, We’ll tell you what it is.’

The Imperial procession was passing the gates of Carroburg now, but the scene beyond the window was hardly more cheerful than the blackened desolation outside the walls. The once opulent residences of the burghers were fallen into disrepair, plaster peeling away from timber walls, roofing tiles lying strewn in the streets. Iron lamp posts, an affectation absent even in Altdorf, bore the marks of rust and neglect. The road was pitted with holes, much of the masonry cracked and broken. Heaps of rubbish lay strewn in the gutters, and hordes of rats brazenly prowled the alleyways.

The city that had only a few years before been the great light of the Empire was now a wallow of decay. The handful of people walking the streets were ragged, scrawny apparitions that hid their faces as the Imperial procession rode past, the last dregs of self-respect scourged from them by the Emperor’s henchmen and his purges.

Emperor Boris reached to his jewelled belt and removed a few coppers from a leather pouch. Squinting at the coins for a moment, he turned back to the window and threw them into the street. He laughed as he watched the ragged scarecrows rush to retrieve their bounty, hobbling along on withered legs, groping in the gutter with skeletal hands. Still laughing, he took another clutch of coins and threw them in the direction of an old char woman leaning against a lamp post. Caught by surprise, the woman staggered back as the coins struck her. A mob of more observant beggars came running down the street, trampling the old woman underfoot in their hurry to gather up the money.

Boris clapped his hands together, his face glowing in a cherubic smile. He noted the revulsion on the face of the woman across from him. Reaching into his belt, he removed a few more coins. ‘Great sport,’ he told Erna. ‘Would you care to try?’ The woman shook her head, but Boris persisted. Reaching out, he took her hand and forced the coins into her palm. ‘Just once,’ he told her.

‘Perhaps I might try,’ Moschner offered.

Emperor Boris directed a withering look at his physician. ‘Pay for your own amusements,’ he said, then turned his attention back to Erna. ‘Go ahead,’ he prodded her. ‘They’re just peasants. They won’t bite. They wouldn’t dare!’ The levity drained from the monarch’s features; his voice became a low snarl, his hand tightened around Erna’s. ‘Do as you are told.’

Her cheeks flushing with shame, turning her head from the window, Erna cast the coins into the street. Emperor Boris leaned his head from the window, laughing at the bedlam as the beggars scrambled for the discarded coins.

‘A poor cast,’ he chuckled, then grinned as a thin shriek rose from somewhere behind them. ‘We’re afraid your coins landed in the street. One of the wretches has gotten himself crushed by the Count of Stirland’s coach.’ He leaned back inside and patted Erna’s hand.

‘We thank you for an amusing diversion,’ the Emperor told her, smiling as he felt the shudder that passed through Erna’s body.

Soon the urban mire of decayed Carroburg was behind them. They passed through the western gate, following the long causeway that reached out across the Reik, rising in a spiral of brick and mortar to the crest of a tall hill. Here, upon the natural spire, a succession of fortresses had been built by the old Thuringian kings, culminating in the great stone walls of the Schloss Hohenbach.