Dark Ages Clan Novel Tremere: Book 11 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga

by Sarah Roark

  “But not stupid. Who are you trying to fool?” he returned.

  “All you have to do is take it, Miklos.” She stepped closer, holding up the stone. It was now only a foot or so away from him. He stepped up to the edge of the ward. She bent down on one knee and carefully placed it on the ground before him. “Will you not take it?”

  “No.”

  “If you don’t, you’ll remain in Deverra’s power,” she said sadly. “You’ll never be able to leave this hilltop.”

  He stared at the pebble. The girl couldn’t trespass the ward, of course, nor could any spell she might cast, but physical objects could move over it easily.

  Well, that’s damned unfortunate, isn’t it? Since you have matching stones, we may be able to reach the one they have and destroy it. That’ll be risky…I don’t know. We’ll have to see…

  He drew out his sword. “Hold still,” he said. She did. He laid the tip of the blade against the top of her throat. She swallowed but didn’t move.

  Slowly, he knelt down. With his free hand he took out his dagger and flicked the pebble the two inches necessary to move it inside the bounds of the ward. Nothing happened.

  He picked up the pebble and rolled it around in his palm, looking it over with both mundane and mystical sight, just in case it might have been tainted or booby-trapped somehow. But no, it seemed as it should. Inexpressible relief washed through him. He lowered his sword and looked up at the girl, who smiled shyly.

  Then the pebble melted into a pool of cold blood in his hand.

  “I did not say it was your blood-stone,” she murmured. “You have kindly brought part of me over the threshold, fair one, of your own free will…”

  She stepped across. The force of the ward blew her shawl back like a strong wind but offered no more resistance than that. He swung his blade at her with every ounce of strength he could muster. She caught it in her bare hands. He felt the shock of the impact all the way up his arm, but it didn’t even seem to nick her. Brambles and leaves sprouted forth from her fingers and with unholy speed entwined both his sword and him, wrapping his legs together and throwing him off-balance so that he hung like a fruit suspended from her vine.

  “And now I have seen to the rest,” she finished.

  “Miklos!” came a cry from across the camp. She glanced up and saw the round Tremere charging at her full tilt, arms raised.

  With another smile—not quite so shy—she turned and fled on swift feet into the mist, dragging her hapless prize with her.

  Jervais shouted. “Hermann! Wigand! They’ve got Miklos! Come on!”

  One good thing about these Black Cross knights was that, once recovered from the initial shock of witnessing a strange sorcery, they fell right back into their usual mode of quick response without a lot of idiot questions. Hermann picked up a spear and nodded.

  “Jervais…wait.” Antal waved at them, then dashed into his tent. Jervais waited impatiently, using the free moment to get a willow branch out of his purse and break it in half. A white-yellow light bled out of the broken ends and collected into a ball that Jervais brought into his palm to hover.

  Antal emerged carrying a sword. He pulled it partway out of its sheath to show Jervais. The blade had an odd green glint to it.

  “Take this.” He handed it over. Jervais wanted to say Who do you think I am, Lancelot?, but he simply nodded his thanks and set off.

  Deverra shed her iron skin as she walked back down the hill. It was a useful thing, no question, but moving and witching were both far more difficult under its effects. Almost immediately after, she felt the slight thrill of a brush against her heart. Somewhere something of hers was being touched, focused upon. This didn’t worry her too greatly. Before the battle she and several of her senior priests and priestesses had exchanged little talismans and keepsakes.

  Deverra? Deverra…

  It was Oluksna, to whom she’d given a few straws from her ritual broom. Oluksna was one of the few Telyavs who didn’t call Deverra Grandmother or mistress. Though not quite so old as Bernalt, she was close to it.

  Yes, my friend?

  I have the boy. Shall I kill him now?

  No, put a stake in his heart and take him away. We shan’t try the ward again tonight.

  Very well, but the fat one, that Jervais, is chasing me. It will be hard to lose him dragging this deadweight.

  So calm, Deverra marveled. We must distract him, then. Where are you?

  The north side, I think.

  Daine and Ako should be nearby. Their grove is just to the north of here. And Ako had certain blood-gifts bequeathed by an ex-lover among Qarakh’s riders. Yes, they would do well. I will send them.

  And you?

  I am left to do those few things I can do with the ward intact. We shall withdraw soon.

  A silent reverberation of understanding, and Oluksna’s mind slipped away.

  Jurate and Bernalt were still where she’d instructed them to stand, just to one side of the great oak that stood directly upon the main ley line axis. Jurate held the bag tightly.

  “Open it up,” Deverra directed her. She did as directed. Deverra lifted out one of the dark adders inside. Bernalt quickly followed suit. They spoke to the snakes in their own crude and ancient language. The beasts were rather more surly than Deverra ordinarily liked, and sluggish in the winter cold. But alas, for the present purpose they couldn’t be soothed with any sweet draughts of vampire blood, and the Telyavs’ wills soon overpowered their feeble minds in any case. They drew serpent after serpent out of the sack, something like twenty in all, and set them slithering through the snowy grass back uphill.

  “Stay close,” Jervais whispered to Hermann and Wigand as they entered the mists. Unfortunately, there was no question of running through this haze. Never mind Telyavs, one could knock oneself out crashing headlong into a tree or trip over a rock and go tumbling head over heels downhill. At least he was doubtless more used to wandering about half-blind than these two. Hints and echoes of movement surrounded them, and the knights kept themselves somewhat back-to-back, swords at the ready, occasionally slashing out at one of the shades that swooped down upon them and then immediately took off again, shrieking something between a laugh and a scream.

  “O tu zalty prakeiktas…”

  A mutter, just on the edge of Jervais’s pricked-up senses. He frowned. It seemed to be coming off a little way to the left. He could hear nothing of Miklos, but it was quite possible the lad was unable to call out. He felt his way slowly toward it, holding the globe high. Its radiance burned off some of the mist, but only enough to illuminate nine yards or so in any direction. He steered well clear of hanging branches. Never again would trees be innocent in his sight.

  Even knowing that any given vision might be a vampire rather than a spirit, Jervais still froze when the wild-haired woman with a face painted to look like a skull suddenly appeared. She growled, then half-cartwheeled onto her hands and kicked out at him like a disgruntled mare. Her shoes were iron, and they slammed into his jaw, sending flashes of light popping across his field of vision. He felt his knees crumple, but by some supreme exertion he managed to step one foot backward and set his legs akimbo, holding himself somewhat upright. He called upon the strength of blood to make the world stop spinning, then brought the blade Antal had given him up into the base of her ribcage. It slid into her like a hot knife into wax. She cried out. Then she said something in her own tongue. The ghosts emerged again and this time, though their touch remained insubstantial as ever, somehow it caught and plucked at him. They actually managed to raise him into the air a few inches before he fought out of their spectral grasp.

  “Hermann!” he shouted as best he could through his cracked jaw, but there was no reply. He snapped his head around. The Ventrue were nowhere to be found. He thought he heard scuffling behind him, but he wasn’t sure.

  The woman darted away. He cursed and started to follow her, but a glimpse of two pinpoint flashes out of the corner of his vision startled
him. They came swiftly toward him, and the next moment he was borne down to the ground with the great weight of an enormous bear on top of him. Its flesh was Cainite-cold. Its snout, flaring spit, closed on his wrist and tore. He couldn’t raise his sword to use it. His globe, however, required only a thought to move, and so he sent it up into the creature’s coal-red eyes. It shook its head wildly and let go. He laid hold of its fur and sent a levin bolt through its body. The creature screamed—a remarkably human sound—and fell over. Then it limped away, still in bear-form.

  He sat up, feeling at his ribs, unable to believe none of them were broken. Hermann and Wigand gone, Miklos and that girl who’d grabbed him gone, his own two attackers fled… Then he smelled something and edged over toward it to be sure. Here were the woman’s footprints in the damp ground, and a splatter of blood from her wound had dropped down into one of them.

  He felt about for the subsequent footprints. There were more drips there. Vampire wounds didn’t usually flow the way blood driven by human hearts did. If she were hunched over with pain, though, the blood’s own weight would conduct it down to the ground. Groaning, he fished out one of his vials and scraped some of the bloody earth into it. Then he sharpened his sense of smell to as fine a sensitivity as it could command and crawled downhill on his hands and knees, gathering the globe under his chest so that it both illuminated the grass and snow he searched and, hopefully, became somewhat obscured by his own bulk.

  “No, no more,” Antal bellowed. “You just waste arrows…”

  He flapped his hands wildly at the soldiers. They looked to one of their number, a young ice-blond Cainite who seemed to be the authority of resort when Hermann and Wigand were absent. The knight chopped his arm downward, and the bowmen brought their weapons down.

  “They’re not attacking anyway. Not attacking, but not leaving…” Antal added to Baghatur in Magyar, frowning. “The ghosts still haunt us, at least.”

  One appeared at the border of the ward then, its head growing to an enormous size, and roared deafeningly at them as though to prove his point.

  “Shall we keep holding the ward, master?” the Khazar inquired stonily.

  “No, save your strength. But be ready to go again at a moment’s notice.” Antal walked up to the blond knight. “Forgive me, what is your name?”

  “Landric.”

  “Brother Landric, I mistrust this seeming calm.”

  “As do I.”

  “They’re plotting something. I think perhaps I should leave the ward after all…truly get rid of this mist…” He scratched at his beard.

  “Well, I hope you’re not asking me,” the knight said.

  One of the men-at-arms gave a lusty scream. Antal and Landric rushed over at once. A great dark snake dangled from the mortal’s leg, hanging on in what Antal suspected to be an entirely willful fashion despite the man’s frantic shaking.

  “Stop, stop,” he said. “Don’t excite yourself. Let me take it off…”

  “No, let me take it off, master,” Olena interrupted, hurrying up.

  He nodded. With a wavelike motion of her hand, she caused the snake to fly off his leg, then bent its legless body in midair until the spine snapped.

  The man’s face had drained to white, and he breathed shallowly. “No fear,” Antal assured him. “We don’t wish you to die of fright. You’ll be well, I promise. Will he not?” he added with a glance at Landric.

  “Yes, of course,” the knight nodded. “Come.” He got the man to lean on his shoulder. Then he clapped his hands and addressed the other soldiers. “Men! Those of you with reason to fear a serpent’s bite, I want you to get up on the horses and not come down ‘til I give word—”

  Just then another soldier cried out.

  “There must be more,” Antal told the other Tremere, who’d quickly gathered. “The ward can’t keep common beasts out. You must find them. Search the grass. Crawl.”

  Meanwhile, Landric had sat the first victim down by the cold fire pit, and motioned for the other to be brought to him as well. He tore his arm open with his fangs and began to drip blood into the first man’s waiting mouth.

  The wizards dispersed through the campsite parting grasses and lifting branches, and most of the undead knights joined in as well. Antal and Torgeir each found a snake—the latter by suddenly having one attached to his hand—and the knights between them hacked the heads off several.

  Baghatur stood up, made some little noise of dismay and then ran into a tent. Antal glanced over. Ah yes, the tents, they had to be checked as well.

  “Master, come quickly!” came the yell from within.

  They all did, and Antal had to shove them aside to get through. It was the tent where the slaves were kept—

  “The slaves,” Torgeir groaned. “We forgot about the slaves…dear God.”

  Easy to forget about the slaves, except of course at feeding time. But Antal cursed his slowness nonetheless as he knelt to examine the men and women who lay on the ground in their rope bindings. One was clearly dead already, or so close as to make no difference—most of his head had turned a puffy, bruisy purple and Antal could clearly see three sets of punctures on his neck. Two of the other men showed similar bruising on their hands, spread all the way down from bite marks that had actually pierced the shoulders and upper arms through their sleeves. Their fingers were swollen, and to Antal’s ears, their heartbeats were dangerously off-rhythm and weak. The woman in the group actually had her hands over the serpent that still nestled on her chest where it had poisoned her, and her eyes were closed as though in blissful sleep. The Kur rolled to turn toward Antal as he approached. He too had an ugly bite on his face, but he struggled to speak through his greatly swollen lips and tongue.

  “Master,” he said.

  “What happened?” Antal exclaimed. “Why did no one scream?”

  “I woke…when snake bit me,” the man managed. Antal hurriedly began to untie his bonds. “They just sit there…they say that mürkmadu has come to free them. I try to call out…”

  Antal began to roll up his sleeve to administer the blood, but then hesitated. For these people it might be too late to do anything but make vampires of them. The Kur seemed best off of the lot, of course—he was far less often bled than the others, owing to his function as translator. Still, even his was a doubtful case. Anyway, if there was the slightest chance that undeath might result it had better be a knight giving the vitae. For Antal to sire a childe, even to exterminate it a moment later, was technically a violation of the Code that any of these young ones might report should the malicious whim take them.

  “Baghatur.” Antal glanced backward. “Your alchemy.”

  The apprentice shook his head. “They’re dying, master. Multiple bites…and I can smell the venom from here. I can try.”

  “Well, try, try!” Antal snapped. The Khazar went off to get his things. “I want one of the brother-knights.”

  Landric shook his head. “We gladly shed Cainite blood to heal our fighting men, Master Antal. But not for these. Especially when it might not even save their bodies, to say nothing of their heathen souls.”

  Ah yes, bless Antal’s Transylvanian blade. It had struck quite true. The snow, though half-melted from a turn in the weather, helped Jervais to find the indentations of her metal shoes and the occasional splats of dark blood. His clothes were soaked nearly through. The ground leveled out for a while—he was definitely off the hill—and then rose again. Unfortunately, he had very little idea which direction he was going in. Vaguely north, he thought. He could see neither moon nor stars. He was more or less following a ley line, but he didn’t know which one. He also had very little idea of time’s passage. He was absorbed in the trail of blood and footfall, and more peripherally in the growth structures of grasses and weeds, the traces of insectile life that remained even in the winter’s bitterest cold.

  The earth began to feel distinctly warmer under his hands, yet the slush and snow remained. At last the sensation reached the poin
t where it penetrated his benumbed mind, and he stood, suddenly alarmed.

  Wherever he was, he wasn’t wanted. The trail continued determinedly on ahead of him, but he no longer trusted it to lead him anywhere he wished to go. He hadn’t been attacked again yet. That wasn’t right. Surely it was just a matter of time. Even if they were having as much trouble finding him as the reverse, one of them almost had to stumble across him at some point.

  With a curse under his breath, he took his leather gloves out of his belt and threw them down on the ground. Then he took off his cloak and boots as well.

  There are some advantages to being dead already, Lord Councilor.

  He knelt and called the snow to him. It came in clumps rather than fluffy drifts, but obeyed him nonetheless, hastily forming into a pillar whose lower half he directed to split in two. Two tapering cylinders for the arms, and a roly-poly little head. There was very little need for accuracy here, as long as the overall shape and size were right. The movement was more the trick—if he were Etrius, he would simply have called up an elemental spirit to inhabit it—well, never mind what Etrius would have done. Resigning himself now to coming back to camp thoroughly drenched, he dressed the manikin in his robe, boots and gloves and set it into something like a walk with the globe hovering over it. Then he sheathed his blade so that its own uncanny radiance wouldn’t give away his real position and followed along behind as quietly as he could. Keeping the globe aloft was near-instinctual—he knew the charm that well—but it did hamper his concentration on his snow-self. The going was rather slow, but that was all right. Every so often he wiggled the haft of the sword to make sure it hadn’t stuck in the sheath.

  Once again, he saw the red eyes just before their owner leaped. The “bear” seemed a bit startled to find that its headlong attack crumpled its opponent so quickly and completely, and it tumbled to the ground tangled up in Jervais’s cloak. Jervais rushed in and brought the blade down onto its neck. His blow released a great deal of blood but stuck in the spine without severing it. Panicked, he put his bare foot against the struggling beast’s shoulder to help pull it out. It reeled up to standing on its hind legs, head now lolling.