Assassins

by R A Browell

  ‘Vebbia,’ he called to her silently. ‘We must leave now. Come…’

  She tried to focus on anything other than the smell of fresh-spilled human blood with its intoxicating intensity and turned to look at the silent, terror-struck crowd, her friends and neighbours, and then back towards the Grand Master and the remnants of scattered knights. All of them crossed themselves, their mouths moving at double speed in prayer and then she looked back at Morwick and his waiting hand. She knew that her destiny lay with this man, her husband. Her daughter was well provided for and she promised that she would return when the child had grown and become a woman. She would return to Bleedstone but only when she could see whether the child had the same heavy burden as her parents or the easier destiny of being fully human.

  Without further hesitation, Vebbia picked up her skirts and walked towards the bloodied stone archway, turning her back on the crowd and her past as she looked beyond the portcullis with its mangled corpses, to her husband and the chance of a new start and guilt-free future.

  *

  Morwick was running ahead, leaping over the springy heather and prickly bilberry bushes, across the moors and through the peat bogs, with their earthy smell of rotting vegetation and decay as she followed, lagging behind. Every so often he looked back and slowed, but he showed little of the consideration that Vebbia remembered. He seemed different and distant. Aloof even. She checked herself. Who knew what he’d seen in the battles? What terrible suffering he’d witnessed? And maybe he’d been in hiding too, to protect himself, in order to survive?

  Her mind drifted back to how she’d concealed her true nature from the servants and neighbours. How she’d fought back her desire to feed from them, trying not to listen to their hearts pumping blood around their frail bodies when they entered a room or held her in polite neighbourly conversation, asking when her husband might return from the battlefields and then she thought back to her life at Carfax Castle. Morwick had been a quiet boy, sent to live with them under some distant kinship agreement and married to her, when they were both little more than children. He’d left soon after her sixteenth birthday, saying that he needed to find others like them but she suspected that he had thought her without spirit; assuming that she had no desire to play her part in their struggle for survival.

  She looked at him running ahead and smiled. True survival was nurturing a child; in secret at first, within the shelter of a warm body and later with the indestructible spirit of a mother’s love. He had no idea how strong the survival instinct of maternal feeling could be. How a mother would do anything to protect and shield her child. Of the self-sacrifice that was involved in nurturing your own blood and how it could even mean the ultimate sacrifice. Their daughter, Eleanor, was safe - the Carfax blood would survive.

  ‘Morwick, wait!’ she cried out against the wind. She could run as fast as any animal, but she was tired and weak. He was a man and strong and judging by the colour of his skin and eyes, he had recently fed. ‘Morwick, please,’ she called out again. ‘Wait. Where are we going?’ Her voice was barely audible above the howling moorland wind.

  He turned and slowed, allowing her to catch up.

  ‘You need to feed,’ he said looking into her dark hollow eyes and at her parchment pale skin - the tell-tale signs of a sanguin’s hunger. ‘When did you last eat?’

  Vebbia shook her head.

  ‘I can’t remember. Weeks ago,’ she whispered.

  ‘From what?’ He watched her closely, analysing her every word and every hesitation; reading her like a map, looking for clues as he listened to her response.

  ‘A kid goat… I am well,’ she replied, but as the words left her mouth she was overcome; gripped by an intense pain. She took a sharp intake of breath, bending over double as she raised her hand quickly to support her stomach. The pain passed.

  ‘Vebbia?’ Morwick looked down at her, with an unholy mix of concern and desire. ‘You need to feed and soon. It will only get worse the longer you leave it. That’s where we’re going. We must hunt, I too must feed.’

  She gazed back into his eyes, but in her heart she hardly recognised this man, who had been her playmate long before they’d ever fallen in love. She looked away, her face unnaturally hot. ‘But where are we going? Why travel so far?’ she asked and then she paused. ‘You always managed to find food close to home.’ Instinctively, she was excited at the prospect of being allowed to hunt, there was something exhilarating about being here with him, together and after such a long time, but she was tired.

  Morwick looked at her, his eyes narrowing as he watched her growing excitement. He felt her trust bearing down on him and his own desire rising. She was so young and so very beautiful. He remembered the first time his eyes had caught sight of her and how he’d known that eventually she’d be his. But that was a long time ago, before either of them knew how the fates would change them forever and make it impossible for them to live the lives of normal human beings.

  ‘Vebbia, you must eat something more than farm animals. Trust me, you need something more substantial than you’ve had before.’ He shook his head. ‘A kid goat! What use was that? You need proper food. Look at you, you’re weak, nothing more than skin and bone and you say you’ve birthed and suckled a child, when you’ve not been feeding properly?’

  Vebbia nodded.

  ‘This cannot continue. You must be strong and well prepared for the journey ahead. We cannot stay here; not after what has just happened. We must leave this country and go to where we’re unknown. Where we can start again. There are places in Europe where we can settle, where we can live in freedom and not be hunted and persecuted for being different. But first you must be strong. We must feed and to do so we must head south.’

  ‘South, but why?’ Vebbia asked, looking at him now with the same easy trust that she’d always felt. She remembered how he’d first brought her food and how she’d allowed him to watch her feed; greedily… intimately.

  ‘I have it on good advice that there will be safe, easy food for us over the next couple of days if we travel south. You must trust me. It won’t be too long before we get to where we need to be.’ He smiled, his usual disarming smile, then looked away from her, over the moorland and deep into the distance.

  ‘I missed you,’ she whispered, looking up at him, trying to read his face, her eyes tracing the contours of his face, the shadow of his youthful stubble, the beautiful symmetry of his lips, then she looked away, embarrassed by her feelings.

  ‘Why did you stay away so long?’ she asked quietly. ‘I thought that maybe I‘d disappointed you, that I wasn’t as strong as you were. That you thought I was too weak and was holding you back.’

  He stared at her for a moment and then looked away again surveying the horizon, looking out into the far distance to where the silver snake of a meandering river worked its way across the wide valley floor. In its shadow it had left a path of crescent moons; ox-bow lakes where it had once run its course; a reminder of earth’s transience.

  ‘I didn’t know myself back then,’ he explained. ‘It’s almost as though I am a different person to the Morwick you used to know but I promise I will never leave you again. You have my word. Until death parts us, we will be together - I swear it on the grave of my mother.’ He pointed. ‘There!’.

  The triumphant tone of his voice caught her off guard and echoed in her head. She scanned the wide flood plain, focusing on a point where earth met sky and saw the outline of four almost indistinguishable figures.

  ‘Come quickly now – they know the way,’ he said and caught hold of Vebbia’s hand, pulling her down the mountainside as he started to run at vampire speed.

  ‘Morwick, I can’t!’ Vebbia cried, her legs collapsing beneath her as he released his grip. She fell to the ground, clutching her stomach again, bending over double with the pain.

  ‘Vebbia, we must catch up with the others. They won’t wait for us. Here, put your arms around me.’ He bent down and allowed her to reach up with both
arms and wrap them around his neck, pressing her weightlessness against his body. He smiled to himself and started down the steep hillside. In his arms he possessed that for which he had come, the girl he had desired for years, and then, building up speed, he ran as fast as the wind down the steep gradient of the fellside and across the wide valley floor.

  *

  Vebbia nestled against his strong, muscular chest. He was faster and stronger than she remembered, but his hard muscles felt the same and his smell was familiar and comforting, a sweet mix of honey and rosewater, which reminded her of the times they’d spent together as children and later... She closed her eyes and concentrated on his speed, the wind rushing past her cheeks and his heartbeat; faint and slow in spite of his exertions.

  Four hooded figures stood waiting for them.

  ‘De Reymes!’ called a high pitched silvery voice as Morwick slowed and the sound of flowing water replaced that of the rushing wind. Vebbia opened her eyes to see a tall woman.

  ‘We heard the news about your father. We offer our condolences,’ she drawled. ‘The King is dead, long live the King!’ She laughed and was joined by the three others.

  ‘Not quite King, but news certainly travels fast. Thank you for your kind words,’ replied Morwick graciously, his mouth turned in a satisfied smile as he spoke. He strode out across the shallow ford towards the four upright figures, still holding Vebbia in his arms. ‘You’ve heard me talk of Mistress Carfax,’ he said, gesturing towards the young beauty as he placed her carefully on the pebbled riverbank. ‘The Tribunal had reached Bleedstone. She’d been discovered feeding…. Judgement by Fire!’ he explained.

  ‘And in you stepped, like a knight in shining armour!’ the woman replied, her voice like the first frosts of winter.

  Vebbia shivered.

  ‘Hardly. She was saved from the flames by Thor’s hammer. Storm clouds, pouring rain and a lightning strike so perfectly aimed that even you, Morrigan, would find hard to believe. But she’s weak and needs food. How far to the fields?’

  ‘De Reymes, have you no manners? Proper introductions first,’ said the woman stepping forward and staring hard at the frail girl from under her hood.

  ‘Apologies,’ he said and bowed his head. ‘My friends, may I introduce you to Vebbia Carfax, late of Bleedstone. And this,’ he smiled, ‘is the delightful Morrigan and with her as always, Gondul, her loyal and loving husband.’ Morwick introduced the tall commanding woman and the dark stocky man standing beside her to Vebbia. Gondul watched Morwick carefully. ‘And this,’ continued Morwick, ‘is Lord Skogar and Lady Valkira, two individuals who have much experience in our way of living.’

  The four aristocratic, hooded figures nodded graciously as each was introduced. Vebbia looked closely at Morrigan. She was dressed in a fine red woollen dress with a black fur-lined cloak and from under the hood, she caught a glimpse of what looked like a shock of white hair. Vebbia expected a crone, with a worn and wrinkled face, but when Morrigan stepped forward and uncovered herself, Vebbia was startled by this woman’s unnatural beauty. The flawlessness of her skin seemed to hold an even greater magnificence, and its deathly pallor was more beautiful, than even her own. Her white hair was thick and glossy but what was even more unsettling was the colour of Morrigan’s eyes. They were an exact reflection of her dress; pools of fire; intense and bright and extremely beautiful.

  ‘Welcome Vebbia. It is clear to all, just how tired you are,’ said Morrigan smoothly. ‘Fortunately we are not so far from being able to feed freely, one, maybe two days travel at the most, perhaps you should feed from your husband before you exhaust yourself completely.’ She turned back to Morwick, narrowing her eyes. ‘She’s very young, I wonder that you didn’t offer this yourself?’ she chided, then looked at him and smiled. ‘You have a lot to learn my young prince,’ she drawled. ‘A lot to learn.’

  Vebbia watched them awkwardly. They seemed very familiar with each other and yet she’d never met this woman before. She accepted that he had been away for over two years without her, meeting new people and living a life very different to the one they had shared together at Carfax Castle but she felt something gnawing at her gut and then there was what the woman had just suggested; that she feed from Morwick? Something didn’t feel right about feeding from another and yet she knew she was growing weaker by the hour and if she was going to hold them all back then perhaps she should consider her position. Perhaps if the blood were offered freely and from someone who loved her, then that wouldn’t be a sin?

  She looked up. Something had changed. The wind still blew across the moors and the shallow waters still bubbled over the hard outcrop of rock at the ford, but the whole atmosphere around them had transformed, and all in a matter of seconds. Imperceptible to most creatures, but all the sanguins sensed it. The air was different, it carried the intoxicating smell of the human, but more than that, it carried the undisputed scent of fresh blood. It might be diluted by distance and the earthy aroma of peat and bracken, but it was human blood all the same, and from many different men.

  All five sanguins turned as one and looked down at the river, watching as it flowed towards them. The peat-stained waters had lost their purity; its sweet pollutant unmistakeable to the acute senses of all six sanguins with their thirst for blood. Valkira stepped forward into the shallows and stooped down, cupping her hands to collect the discoloured water, smelling and tasting the unnatural cordial. She turned back to the others.

  ‘Fresh. Six, maybe seven hours and hundreds, maybe even thousands,’ she purred.

  As she spoke, a lone bird appeared from the far distance and headed towards them. It circled around and around, zoning in until it was just above their heads, its red and black plumage mirroring that of his keeper. The red-black raven landed on Morrigan’s shoulder and started cawing, as the red eyed sanguin automatically reached up with her pale hand and stroked the ominous harbinger of the battlefield. ‘Hugin confirms,’ she said with a suitably satisfied smile.

  ‘Then we must move quickly,’ suggested Morwick. ‘It seems that your sources have been accurate on content, but slow on timing.’

  ‘My sources are impeccable,’ Morrigan replied defensively. ‘Hugin has never failed.’ She reached into her pocket and rewarded her pet with a handful of dried insects. ‘He cannot be expected to account for human nature and its unpredictability. He has done well.’

  She smiled at the small group as she stoked Hugin’s velvety feathers flat. Gondul watched his wife closely then moved his gaze to Morwick.

  ‘You need to feed your wife and quickly,’ he said gruffly.

  Vebbia glanced nervously at Morwick and then nodded her acquiescence.

  ‘Come,’ he said, ‘but just enough to give you strength to get to the battlefields and there you must feed properly.’ He took her by the arm and led her away from the others. Vebbia hesitated.

  ‘I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t feed on our kind?’ she stammered. ‘They’re too close to us. It feels wrong to use them so. They’re of our kin.’ She knew that she needed to feed but something deeper held her back.

  Morwick held her hand and stared at her. ‘Our kin?’ he replied. ‘They kill us wherever they find us. They are organised against us. Look at you today. They would have burned you alive and thought nothing of it!’ He shook his head, before he continued. ‘Your sympathies are misplaced Vebbia, but I acknowledge what was agreed in the past and I promise that we only ever feed on the spoils of the battlefield, on those who are already dead,’ he said in earnest. ‘We comfort the dying until they pass away naturally and then we feed, but only when their hearts have beaten out their last. We do nothing that you and I have not already agreed was true and right before God and man.’ He hesitated, aware that the other four were listening. ‘But now, Vebbia Carfax,’ he said, stroking her cheek gently with the back of his hand, his voice low and caressing, ‘you are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin; my companion and helper and now you must feed and become strong.’ />
  He stared with deep longing into her dark brown eyes and then, opening his cloak and pulling his shift to one side, he took out the small dagger that had been so useful earlier against the portcullis rope. He pressed the cold sharp blade against his own body, stroking his flesh as he carefully opened up an artery in his breast. The thick red blood began to spurt, warm and fresh against his pale firm skin, as he offered himself to her, pulling her down, directing her lips towards the open, bleeding wound. She started to suckle, hesitantly at first and then with greater intensity, like a new-born, hungry for his body and the sustenance of his rich, warm blood. She could hear his heart beating slowly, feel his blood in her mouth, sense her taste buds exploding and the pain drifting away as her hunger started to abate.

  He lay back, watching her feed, feeling the ecstasy of every drop leaving his body but he could also sense the danger. It wouldn’t be long before he would need to push her off and cover the wound. He smiled as she fed, the cold dark menacing smile of earth’s greatest predator; now Vebbia Carfax was truly his.

  *

  They reached the wide floodplain in late afternoon as the sun was falling in the sky, the skeletal outline of the leafless trees rising above the trampled grass like silhouetted sentinels. These giants had seen it all before; the tension, the pent-up aggression, the released energy followed by fields strewn with the detritus of yet another battle. They had witnessed the fallen standards, the snapped lance-shafts, the myriad spent arrows, dropped swords and the bodies; thousands upon thousands of bodies.

  The day had started early, just after the sun had spread her pale misty light over the makeshift camp where two armies had spent the previous evening preparing for battle. Each man had whiled away the early hours, telling and listening to old battle stories as they cleaned the cold damp from the heavy steel of their weapons, oiling and sharpening the only defence that any of them would have between this world and the next. For many, this day would be their last on earth, where in the heat of battle, ten thousand men would roar as they ran from two opposing sides of the battlefield to fight.