Beethoven - Scourge of Vampires [ONC 2022]

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It felt good to have a horse beneath him once more. The powerful animal, muscles flexing and releasing as they rode, had stopped running, along with its partner, a little down the road. With the remaining carriage tack removed, Bernhard and the Maestro rode, bareback, upon the horses as they raced to catch up with the Vampire Lord. Bernhard almost felt as though he rode to war once again.

After the ambush, the Maestro had let Bernhard finish off the remaining creature and it had fallen to dust, as had the others, when he had cleaved the head from its shoulders. He had not expected to see such a thing as these beasts. Only remotely human-like, they had looked like some tortured experiment. Foul and evil.

"They were vampires, after a fashion." As they rode, Beethoven tried to explain. "Some victims, upon transforming, become lost deep within the vampirism. They become more beast than man. No doubt the Vampire Lord uses them as foot-soldiers."

"He knew! He knew we were following." Far in the distance, Bernhard spied the carriage that carried the Vampire Lord. They had not lost their opportunity. "And we have hours before daylight. We should make haste to catch him."

"No!" That word caused Bernhard to turn his head towards Beethoven. So adamant. "We follow him to his castle. His lair. If he believes we'll attack, he'll kill the girl. Or worse."

"Worse? What could possibly be worse?" He knew, as soon as he asked the question, what the Maestro already knew. "He'd turn her. Right there and then."

The Maestro nodded. Bernhard could only imagine the Vampire Lord needed his excellency's daughter alive, for the moment. Untainted by the vile disease that the creature passed on to others. Like Hilde. Money, perhaps? The girl's father had riches, for certain. For some ceremonial reason? Though he wondered why Hilde had not received the extra time that this girl had been given.

Once they came within a certain distance of the speeding carriage, the Maestro had them both slow down, matching the carriage's pace. Neither encroaching on the distance, nor falling back. They passed a village, to the side, darkened and cold in the middle of the night, and the carriage rolled onwards, heading towards the Alps and the forgotten castle, Düsterburg, that lay within those foothills.

It wasn't a sedate pace, but neither was it at any great speed. The carriage continued to rumble and rattle along the rutted, dusty road. He wondered whether the Vampire Lord sat within that carriage thinking himself safe. Those creatures, those twisted, defiled beasts would have killed anyone else. Only Bernhard's military prowess and the Maestro's knowledge had saved them, and even then he had almost died.

As they continued to follow, Bernhard allowed his mind to wander, thinking back to the concert that Beethoven had played only hours before. He glanced across to the Maestro's hands. Such delicate, profoundly important hands that could leave the world bereft of new compositions, more concerts, should the great man become injured. Yet, Beethoven threw himself into fighting these creatures with little concern for himself.

"Maestro, at the concert, you played only those pieces that are popular. Do you have favourites? A list that you cling to through love of the compositions?" It seemed incongruous to talk of such things on the midst of a chase, but he asked anyway. "You have so many varied works, yet, I remember, you played the same pieces at another of your concerts I attended."

"I play what gets the biggest applause." The Maestro grinned as his eyes searched their surroundings. The landscape around them and the skies. "If I'm honest, I prefer the second movement of my seventh symphony to the fifth, but it doesn't get the same reaction. I play what they like and they pay me."

"That must feel a little wearying. Playing the same music, time-after-time." Bernhard, too, watched their surroundings, but, it seemed, the Vampire Lord either thought them dead, or awaited their attack. "Like fighting the same battle over and over again."