Ulrek Bathory gave a hateful grunt as he shoved the limp weight of the lifeless warhorse off of his thigh. With his legs free, the Baron staggered to his feet and gave a momentary glance at his slain steed. A crossbow bolt meant for the Baron was buried deep in the stallion's neck, bright red blood oozing from the wound matted the horse's silvery pale coat. Unhorsed early in the charge against the walls, Ulrek missed the ogres breaching the walls and the ensuing melee in the courtyard. The sounds of clashing swords resounded from inside the citadel walls, but the telltale shouting and screaming of combat could be heard all around him. In the thoroughfare behind him, Ulrek could see his men-at-arms and levies engaging the teeming throngs of armed commoners, held back from the attack on Castle Bathory by the citizenry's insatiable bloodthirst. Before him, Ulrek beheld the inner walls of the citadel, battered by cannons and ogres with a dozen ladders resting up against it. Beyond those walls rose the battle-worn spires of Castle Bathory itself: Edwards's last refuge and Ulrek's destination.

The inner wall of the citadel had been breached, though Ulrek could see a savage fight between his men and the remainder of the guard for control of the breach. The Baron had no intention of wading through the fray, intense and crowded as it was, and his eyes fell upon the siege ladders resting upon the walls. His eyes followed the ramparts over to where the spires of the castle met the interior wall, and noted doorways into the castle itself. Deciding this to be the path of least resistance into the castle, Ulrek made his way to the foot of the wall.

The fighting had moved into the castle's courtyard, and the archers up on the ramparts were now focused on firing down on the Baron's forces in the courtyard or fighting against the mercenaries who had scaled the walls. Ulrek took advantage of the shifted attention of the defenders and approached one of the siege ladders. The rungs were slick with grease that had been poured down onto the attackers, still quite warm to the touch. A pile of crumpled bodies lay around of the ladder, victims of some combination of boiled grease, arrowfire, or heavy stones meted out by defenders up on the ramparts. One of Halfbeard's mercenaries lay splayed out at foot of the siege ladder, droplets of boiled lard still steaming upon his breastplate. Gruesome blisters covered the mercenary's face and a heavy rock taken straight to the face had reduced his nose to a bloody mass, though bloodied eyes following Ulrek as he grasped the rungs of the ladder gave proof that the poor soul was still alive.

"Do a me a favor will ya?" Croaked the soldier. "Just go ahead and kill me." Ulrek ignored the dying man and began climbing the ladder up to the ramparts.

Though the fighting on the walls had died down, it had by no means ended. A few dozen feet down the wall from the Baron, an engagement between a castle guard and one of Ulrek's men-at-arms ended with the guard getting thrown off the wall to his death. The man-at-arms had little time to bask in his victory before one of Edward's crossbowmen planted a bolt squarely in the forehead. As Ulrek neared the lip of the rampart he reached for Pthaalma's hilt, knowing full well his entry into the castle would not go unchallenged.

The Baron surged through one of the crenels and up onto the ramparts, planting his feet upon the stone walkway slicked with coagulating blood. Drawing his blade from the scabbard, Ulrek proceeded along the ramparts toward the doorway into the castle on the far side of the wall. On the courtyard side below him, the Vampire prince caught the occasional glimpse of the battle for control of the castle. The castle guards were putting up a redoubtable defense against the onslaught of the ogres and Halfbeard's mercenaries, but it was clear that the guard was losing ground and would eventually be subdued. Despite the favorable course of battle, the Baron paid little attention to the fighting. It did not matter to the Baron if his forces won or lost at this point; his army had succeeded in getting him through to the walls of Castle Bathory. That was all Ulrek ever needed them for.

Up ahead was a knot of men stuck in combat - a pair of guards holding off a claymore-armed mercenary. Ulrek would have preferred to step around the fight and continue on to the castle, but the narrowness of the ramparts here precluded that option. The vampire would have no choice but to fight his way through to the other side.

The Baron came up behind the mercenary and shoved him out of the way, inadvertently casting him off the wall down into the courtyard below. The castle guards now standing before him beheld the sliver-clad being before them with wide, frantic eyes.

"That's the Baron!" Exclaimed one of the guards. "Take him down!"

A halberd-wielding guard lunged at Ulrek, swinging down in an attempt to cleave the vampire prince in twain. Ulrek didn't need to mind-probe the guard to see the attack coming long ago, and stepped off to the side and allowed the halberd's blade to clatter against the rampart's cobblestones. Ulrek planted his boot down on the flat face of the halberd and stepped down hard, pressing the polearm down against the ground. With his weapon immobilized, the halberd-wielder could only watch as Ulrek drove Pthaalma through his chest. Ulrek retracted the blade and allowed the guard to slouch over dead before proceeding to the remaining guard. This one was armed with a broadsword, and immediately slashed against Ulrek's silver and mithril blade. Ulrek probed his opponent's mind, saw in advance where the guard intended to thrust or slash, and easily parried every blow. The guard's fighting style was excessive and showy, foreseeable with predictable slashes meant to attract attention and steer the opponent's blade away from the body before spinning on his heels and delivering a slash to the body. Ulrek's swordplay was more methodical and calculated; anticipating and blocking strikes, moving his blade no more than necessary, allowing his opponent to wear himself down against his meticulous parries and waiting for the guard to make a mistake. The guard swordsman thrust at the Baron once more, but his heel slid on the blood-slicked cobblestones underfoot and overextended his reach. It was a brief error, but it was all Ulrek needed. The vampire's left hand left Pthaalma's hilt and clutched the guard's right wrist. In a brief, fluid motion, Ulrek yanked the guard in close before driving his sword down through the guard's clavicle. The defender spat a wad of blood as Ulrek withdrew his sword and unceremoniously cast his opponent down over the wall.

As the Baron watched his slain enemy tumble down over the wall, a flash of light appeared in his peripheral view. Out in the main thoroughfare, a rosette of glittering sparks manifested into being, followed fractions of a second thereafter by a burning shockwave that radiated out from the epicenter, washing over the embattled masses in the thoroughfare and market square in an infernal wave as a fireball rose skyward. A second tremendous explosion, and almost instantly later, a third. The resulting shockwave did not just fell buildings, but the ground itself. Utterly enrapt, the Baron watched the ground underneath the main thoroughfare collapsed in a billowing tempest of dust and smoke. Houses and shops collapsed and tumbled down into a fiery pit that opened up in the middle of the Capital as yet another flash of sparkling fire burst forth from the newly-formed chasm. This explosion must have destroyed the supports and beams holding up the ceilings of untold leagues of subterranean catacombs, sewers, and other spaces underneath the city, for a network of chasms and ravines radiated outward from this deep central pit, swallowing entire neighborhoods of the capital in billowing clouds of dust and fire. Another chest-rattling explosion was felt, but not seen, as the hill upon which the Old City was built heaved up and then imploded, and the Earth swallowed up the walled compounds of the vampire quarter as tongues of fire spewed out from underground. It was as if the Capital was collapsing into to the very depths of Hell.

The tremendous shaking had not left the citadel unscathed. Behind the baron, the gatehouse into the citadel's courtyard leaned in on itself - weakened perhaps by some collapsed tunnel or sewer below - and fell over into the courtyard. Two ogres thrashing against the spears and halberds of the castle guard were buried under a rain of stones. The outer spires of the castle listed too, crashing against the core structure of Castle Bathory before shattering and raining down on the lower levels of the castle and the courtyard in a rain of heavy stones and dust. A roiling cloud of dust descended over the courtyard and walls of the castle, engulfing the Baron. His mask, difficult to breathe in as it was, made it impossible for the Baron to breathe when the dust cloud descended upon him. Ulrek tore his silver mask off his head and cast it aside, exposing his gaunt, ratlike visage.

The vampire peered through the thick haze of dust, only able to make out the glow of innumerable fires raging through what had been the Capital. In the space of mere minutes, the city had been completely destroyed. Rebuilding after such thorough devastation would take centuries. A regrettable setback to be sure, but vampires lived forever; Ulrek had plenty of time to see through a two or three hundred-year rebuild of the capital. The populace, the Baron assumed, was completely lost. [i]Good[/i], he thought to himself. A suitable punishment for their treachery. Men were fecund and would easily reproduce to replace the lost populace of the city. Better to cull the traitorous populace outright and start anew.

Ulrek squinted through the settling dust and looked upon Castle Bathory, or what remained of it. The towers had all collapsed, but most of the core structure of the citadel remained intact, which meant that the throne chamber had survived. Expecting to find his brother there, Ulrek continued across the rampart to that door leading into the castle's interior.

[hr]

"What a fuckin mess," snarled Halfbeard. "I've seen my share of sieges. I've seen some real messes. But [i]this[/i], boys... This is unprecedented."

Kharald Halfbeard stumbled over the thick rubble through a thick haze of suspended dust, accompanied by two of his personal guard. The scarred dwarf surveyed the devastation of the courtyard. The collapse of the spires had snuffed out all but a handful of the combatants fighting in the courtyard. Kharald had been fighting one of the guard captains when the Earth underfoot began shaking. The guard was struck by a falling stone and collapsed atop Kharald-shielding the mercenary captain from the shower of rubble. Halfbeard emerged from his fallen opponent to find most of the combatants on both sides dead or dying. Most of those that survived happened to be his mercenaries, those that weren't were finished off with a sword to the belly.

"You think the Baron survived?" Asked one of Halfbeard's attendants.

"Probly not," Halfbeard concluded in between deep coughs from the dust in the air.

"We're not getting paid for this, are we?"

"From the Baron, no," Halfbeard said matter-of-factly. "But look where we are, boys. When's the last time you 'ad an unguarded castle all to yourself? Think about all the treasures those bloodsuckers have been hoarding in there over their long lives, and with only a few dying guards to defend it. Fuck the Baron and his payment, each one of us is going to leave this place with a king's ransom."

Kharald and his companions made their way past the broken, barely-standing holly tree in the center of the courtyard on their way to the gates into the castle's interior. Laying before Kharald and his companions, half-buried in rubble, lay one of his ogres face down with a rivulet of dust-caked blood oozing out of a wound in his head. Kharald gave the ogre a tap with the toe of his boot.

"What a shame," Kharald sighed. "These ogres are going to be pain in the arse to replace. There's not a lot of 'em left anymore."

"They didn't even inflict that many casualties," complained one of Halfbeard's companions. "I seen em rout entire armies before. Here? Those five ogres mighta killed 50 men between them."

"Their guards fought like devils," noted Halfbeard's other guard.

"So they did," said Halfbeard dismissively. "And they died all the same. Just take this one 'ere for example. Fought bravely I'm sure, but for what? To die in the hand of this 'ere ogre? Not exactly-"

The telltale [i]thwock[/i] of a crossbow discharging interrupted the dwarf mercenary mid-sentence. Halfbeard's eye widened as a crossbow bolt planted itself at the base of the dwarf's neck, just above the clavicle. Through gritted teeth, Kharald tore the arrow out of his neck, eliciting a grimacing wince as the bolt slid out of his flesh. Blood spurted quickly through the arrow's entrance wound, coursing down Halfbeard's armor and staining his lion's pelt cape. Halfbeard inspected the bloodied bolt for a brief moment, noting that the iron bodkin had been cut off, leaving only a whittled tip at the end of the wooden shaft.

Halfbeard's face twisted into a furious scowl. He drew his sword and marched over to the dying guard leader, but the profuse blood loss had already served to dizzy the dwarf. Halfbeard stumbled over the rubble and fell over, bleeding out just a few paces short of Yorrek.

"Not Ulrek," Yorrek rasped from within the clutches of the dead ogre, his crossbow tumbling out from from weak and trembling arms as his eyes shut for the last time. "But you'll do."