by Tim Waggoner
But he would keep watching, and if he found incontrovertible proof that Alexander intended to betray Jürgen, then he would do what he had to. And if that meant harm must come to the former prince, then God’s will be done.
Smiling, Rudiger wiped the vitae from his beard, then licked his fingers as he continued on to his tent.
Dawn tinted the eastern sky as Rikard—tired, hungry, irritable and afraid that he was going to have to spend another day burrowed in the earth like a mole—rode into view of Alexander’s camp.
Finally! He should have just enough time to reach the camp before sunrise. He’d beg shelter in one of the tents, sleep, and when darkness fell, he’d seek an audience with Alexander of Paris. And then…
He grinned. And then.
He cracked the reins and kicked his horse into a gallop.
Qarakh swung his saber in a vicious arc, and the edge sliced across the knight’s face before the mortal could even think about raising his own sword to deflect the blow. The Mongol’s strike had nearly severed the man’s jaw. As blood gushed from the wound, the knight staggered back in agony and shock, but he still managed to keep hold of his sword. Qarakh was impressed; most mortals would have fallen by now. It seemed the Sword-Brothers’ reputation for being mighty warriors was well earned. Out of respect, Qarakh decided to grant the man a swift death. He plunged the point of his saber into the knight’s right eye, and the mortal stiffened as steel pierced his brain. Qarakh gave the blade a quick twist before yanking it free, and the man fell to the ground, dead but still gripping his sword.
Wilhelmina and Arnulf fought back to back, their blades moving so swiftly that they were blurs even to Qarakh’s eyes. Steel rang on steel, metal bit into flesh, screams of pain echoed through the night, and fountains of blood—mortal, ghoul and Cainite—sprayed the air.
Though his Beast urge him to keep fighting, Qarakh paused a moment to consider strategy. If all the knights of the Livonian order were of similar mettle, it was fortunate that there weren’t many Cainites among their ranks this night. He doubted that Arnulf or Wilhelmina shared that view. The two lived for battle—Wilhelmina so she could slay as many Christians as possible, and Arnulf… well, the Goth warrior just loved to kill, whoever the foe and whatever the reason. Mortals and ghouls provided little sport for either of them; they’d much prefer to go up against other Cainites.
Alessandro, though no less deadly a fighter, was more calculating. Instead of hacking at anything that came within range of his sword, he moved across the battlefield, selecting his targets with care. A handful of Cainite knights fought alongside the mortal Sword-Brothers, and while there were far fewer of them, they posed a much greater threat. Alessandro sought out the unliving knights and dispatched them with surgical precision, striking swiftly and without a single wasted motion. The Iberian’s face was composed and expressionless, but his eyes blazed with the controlled bloodlust of his Beast.
Grandfather stood well away from the battle, along with Deverra and several other Telyavs, at the edge of a grove of oak trees. The tribe had chosen this moment for battle in order to defend one of the Telyavs’ groves, one that had grown around a sacred fire tended by Deverra’s acolytes. For nearly a week the knights had marauded through the forest, killing as many of the locals as they could. Now Qarakh and his tribe were here, and the battle had been well and truly joined.
Not that the Telyavs were helpless to defend their grove. Grandfather and Deverra had been conferring for much of the battle, and now the high priestess spoke to several other Telyavs. They then bared their wrists, bit open the veins and formed a ring around one of the largest oaks, clasping hands to form a tight, unbroken circle. As vitae dripped from their wrists onto tree bark, the Telyavs began to chant in a language unfamiliar to Qarakh.
Despite its importance to the Telyavs, the clearing was a small one, not large enough to accommodate fighting on horseback, and almost all of the combatants on both sides had dismounted. The Telyavs’ chanting increased in volume and intensity until finally, throughout the clearing, tree roots burst forth from the ground and coiled like serpents around the knights’ legs. Not all the knights, though—only those who were Cainites. The coils tightened, and their captives were thrown off balance. Some fell, others struggled to remain standing, and still others began to hack at the roots with their swords. Qarakh knew his people had only moments until the vampiric knights cut themselves free, but that was all the time they needed.
He raised his saber and bellowed a command in Livonian. “Kill the bound ones!”
While some of the newer recruits looked around in puzzlement, the rest of his warriors understood and obeyed. Wilhelmina bellowed a war cry, dashed for the nearest struggling knight and decapitated him with a single blow. Arnulf dropped his sword as he shifted into wolf form and leaped for another trapped knight, fangs bared and jaws flecked with foam. Alessandro stepped calmly toward the bound knight nearest him and laid open the Cainite’s throat with a swift, efficient sweep of his blade.
Qarakh felt a moment’s pride in his warriors before surrendering to the urgings of his Beast and rejoining the battle.
It was over all too soon.
Most of the knights—mortal and undead—had been slain, while only a few tribe members and Telyavs had been lost. Several of the Christian knights had fled the clearing, but Wilhelmina and Arnulf were in pursuit. Qarakh was confident their hunt would prove successful.
“But it wasn’t, was it? One knight survived to tell Jürgen what occurred.”
Qarakh did his best to ignore the voice. All around him, Cainites were bent over the corpses of mortal, ghoul and vampire alike, feeding to dispatch the wounded and restore their own strength. Qarakh approved; he despised waste. Deverra and the other Telyav enchanters were among the most ravenous of the feeders, for they had sacrificed a great deal of their own blood to enchant the tree roots.
“They may have helped win a single battle, but the war goes on.”
Qarakh told himself to ignore the voice, but he couldn’t. As if controlled by an outside force, his body turned of its own accord to face the owner of the voice. At his feet lay the corpse of a mortal knight he had killed by skewering through the eye. Qarakh could’ve sworn he’d slain the man in a different part of the clearing. Still, in the thick of battle, it was easy to become confused about details, and really, what did it matter precisely where he’d killed the mortal? The man was dead, wasn’t he?
“You’re a fine one to talk about being dead. You died years ago, but you’re walking around. Why do you find it so difficult to believe that I can still talk?” The voice emanated from the corpse’s mouth, but neither its tongue nor lips moved. And there was something familiar about the voice, something that Qarakh couldn’t quite…
“You came to the aid of the Telyavs, but in so doing you drew attention to yourself and your tribe. And now, a year later, Alexander of Paris has come to Livonia, and he has brought an army with him.”
Qarakh frowned. A year later? Alexander? He lowered his saber and inserted the tip into the corpse’s mouth. “Whatever foul sorcery has granted you speech, I wonder if it shall continue to work after I cut out your tongue.”
“Go ahead.” The voice sounded unconcerned, as if the corpse might have accompanied the words with a shrug if it were still capable of moving its shoulders. “I will simply find another vessel through which to speak.”
Qarakh looked around and saw that no one else in the clearing was moving. Deverra, Alessandro, all the rest… they stood, kneeled or crouched as motionless as the bodies of the dead that littered the field. The clearing was silent, the air itself still and lifeless. Qarakh looked up at the sky and saw that the stars were gone. He sensed they weren’t hidden by sudden cloud cover, but were truly no longer there, had perhaps never been there. All that remained was vast, unbroken, infinite darkness.
He looked back down at the corpse, but it was no longer that of the mortal knight. It was Aajav. He shared the knight’s wounds
—the slashed throat and ruined eye—and he was clearly dead, not merely in torpor, but nevertheless it was Aajav, his blood brother and sire, lying on the ground before him.
“You were a fool to pledge oath to the Ventrue. He will turn on you faster than a striking snake.” Though the face was Aajav’s, the voice was not.
Qarakh knew now that it was the same voice it always was: the voice of hunger, rage and endless need. The voice of the Beast.
Qarakh frowned in confusion. He had taken an oath with someone named Alexander? He could almost remember, but how was that possible? It hadn’t happened yet—or had it? If only the damnable Beast would be silent and let him think… The tip of his saber remained inside the corpse’s—inside Aajav’s—mouth, and Qarakh nearly rammed the blade all the way in then, but he resisted. He knew there was little point, for the voice came not from Aajav, but from inside himself, and the only way to silence it would be to greet the dawn and find Final Death. But this he would not do, for he would never give the Beast the satisfaction of claiming the only victim it truly wanted in the end: him.
Besides, even though he knew this was some manner of enchantment or hallucination, the face was still that of his brother, and he couldn’t bring himself to ravage it. He gently removed the sword and lowered it to his side.
A shard of memory came back to him then. “I have merely pledged to consider an alliance with the Ventrue,” Qarakh said, sounding more defensive than he liked. “Nothing more.”
“Alexander is a hundred times older than you are,” the Beast said. “You cannot hope to best him, neither in a battle of wits, nor in a battle of arms. And have no doubt: It shall come down to the latter, and sooner rather than later.”
“No matter the opponent, there is always a way to win. A warrior need only find it.”
“There is only one way to defeat this foe, Qarakh, and I am that way. Give yourself over to me, and I shall grant you victory over Alexander of Paris.”
Qarakh felt fear, then—not of the Beast, but rather of himself and his own need to protect his tribe and their Telyav allies If the Beast could truly do what it claimed, perhaps… perhaps it would be worth the price he would have to pay.
Tempting though it might be, giving himself over to the Beast that dwelled inside him would not be living in yostoi. He would be surrendering to his basest impulses and desires, allowing himself to be subsumed until there was nothing left of Qarakh the man and all that remained was the hunger and fury and lust of the Beast.
Qarakh’s reply was simple. “No.”
The corpse that looked like Aajav (because it couldn’t be Aajav, it couldn’t!) moved for the first time since it had begun speaking. It turned its head so that it was clearly looking at Qarakh with the one eye it still possessed. Its mouth stretched into a hideous parody of a grin, and this time when it spoke, its mouth moved.
“What makes you think you have a choice?”
The mouth opened wide then, impossibly, cavernously wide. Inside was a darkness beyond anything Qarakh had ever imagined. It wasn’t merely the absence of light and color. It wasn’t simply nothing, for the concept of nothingness always implied something. It was the lack even of lack itself. It… wasn’t. Air rushed in to fill the great yawning void, screaming past Qarakh, tearing at him, thrusting him forward, toward and into, and then he was falling, but not falling, for falling was something, and since this wasn’t nothing, there couldn’t be something, so he couldn’t be falling, but he was, he was, he—
Chapter Twelve
Qarakh awakened. Swaddled in the cool, comforting embrace of earth, he was tempted to stay there, to close his eyes and return to sleep and hope that there would be no more memories, no more dreams that changed all too easily into nightmares. A sluggish weariness settled into his body. His limbs felt heavy, leaden, as if they were no longer flesh and not quite stone, but rather some transitional state between. An overwhelming sensation of peace welled up inside him, and he felt himself slipping away… But before awareness completely deserted him, Qarakh realized what was happening: He was surrendering to the same torpor that had claimed Aajav.
With a supreme effort of will, he surged free of the earth and stood once more in the open night air. He felt dizzy and weak at first, but with each passing second, vertigo ebbed and strength returned to him.
“Is something wrong?”
Qarakh nearly sprang upon the Nosferatu standing in the forest glade and holding the reins of three horses, but then he remembered—this was Malachite, their new traveling companion.
“No.” He couldn’t believe how easily he had almost given in to the temptation of torpor. It had felt so natural, so right, so effortless to allow himself to sink into the oblivion it offered. Is that what it had been like for Aajav? If so, Qarakh could understand now why his brother had so far refused to wake from his sleep within the sacred mound of the Telyavs.
Malachite evidently had been in the process of readying the horses when Qarakh appeared, for the three mounts were already saddled. The Nosferatu must have noticed Qarakh’s scrutiny of the horses, for he said, “I fed them, too.”
Qarakh glanced upward at the patches of sky he could see between the overhanging tree branches.
The sun had gone down, but not so long ago that the stars were visible. “I’m surprised you had the time—that is, unless you have discovered a way to walk in sunlight.”
Malachite gave Qarakh a thin smile. “Not quite, but the tree cover in this part of the forest is especially thick, and members of my clan are skilled at keeping to the shadows. When the forest gloom became dark enough, I rose and—since both you and Deverra remained sleeping—I decided to put my time to good use and prepare the horses for travel.” When Qarakh didn’ t respond right away, Malachite frowned. “I hope I haven’t done something wrong. I know little about your customs, and if there is some proscription against someone else touching your horse…”
Qarakh waved away the Nosferatu’s concerns. “I am glad you did. The sooner we start riding, the sooner we shall reach the current campsite.”
Malachite opened his own mouth then, presumably to ask a question, but before he could speak, Deverra emerged from a nearby oak tree, separating herself from the wood as easily as another being might move through air. She gave Qarakh a smile. “Sleep well?”
He found himself wishing that Deverra had used her magic to connect their spirits during the day. Not because he desired her again—at least, not only—but because her presence would have been a comfort to him as he slept and might well have prevented his nightmare, or at least made it easier to bear. Still, they had agreed she should conserve her strength and perform enchantments only when necessary—a wise, if not particularly satisfying, decision.
If the Nosferatu hadn’t been present, Qarakh might have told her the truth about his dream, but as it was, he simply responded with a curt nod.
She frowned and gave him a look that said, We’ll talk about it later, before turning to Malachite. “And how was your slumber?”
Malachite brushed a bit of dirt and mold off the left sleeve of his robe. “I’ve spent the day in worse places than beneath a fallen tree, but I must say that I envy your ability to inter yourself within living ones. I don’t suppose I can convince you to tell me how it’s done?”
“It’s quite simple, really,” Deverra said with a grin. “All one has to do is renounce Christ and embrace the worship of Telyavel.”
Qarakh expected the Nosferatu to take offense at this, but instead he smiled back.
“Is Tremere blood sorcery truly so simple?”
Deverra’s grin fell away. “I am not Tremere,” she said, her voice taut with anger. “I am Telyav.”
Malachite made a half-bow and then straightened. “My most sincere apologies. I have heard whispers that there were members of that sorcerous clan in these far lands. I made an unfounded assumption.”
Deverra said nothing for several moments, and though her face remained composed, her eyes reflected
the fury that raged inside her as she struggled to come to terms with her Beast. Finally, her gaze cleared and when she spoke, her tone was relaxed, if melancholy. “I was Tremere once, but that was some time ago. It is, as they say, a long story.”
“I gather we have something of a ride ahead of us,” Malachite said. “A story will help make the time pass more swiftly, not to mention more pleasantly.” Deverra considered for a bit, but finally she said,
“Why not?”
Qarakh was surprised. Not so much that she would choose to share such a story with Malachite when they’d only met last evening, but because he was actually jealous of the Nosferatu.
“Let’s mount up and be off, then,” Qarakh said, the words coming out more gruffly than he intended. Deverra looked at him and, though he wasn’t certain, it appeared she was trying to suppress a smile. Qarakh wondered if some fraction of the link they had shared that heady day remained, still strong enough to allow her to sense his feelings. Then again, perhaps his feelings were so obvious that she needed no witchery to divine them.
“Very well.” Deverra climbed into her saddle, and Qarakh and Malachite did likewise, and the three of them rode off at a trot, headed northeast, in the direction of the tribal lands. And as they rode, Deverra began her tale:
“I was born to my mortal life in Livonia. My father was a village blacksmith, and I grew up to the whoosh of bellows, the crackle of fire and the ringing of hammer on steel. To my father, his work was a sacred task. Telyavel is not only the Protector of the Dead. He is also the smith god, the Maker of Things. My father believed that a smith worked with the basic elements of creation itself—air, fire, water and earth—and molded them as he saw fit. To him, being a blacksmith was not only a way to honor the gods, it was a way to know, in a limited fashion, what it was like to be them.