Ancient Blood

by Robert Earl - (ebook by Undead)

  The two of them exchanged a worried look. “What do you think people will say if they find out what we’ve been up to?” Bran asked.

  “Why do you even want to think of it?” Boris asked him. “They won’t need your help to mock us.”

  “He’s right,” Mihai agreed. “We’ll just tell everybody that the petru sent us on a secret mission.”

  The three thought about this. None of them looked particularly happy.

  “I reckon Engel sent us as a punishment for following him to see the Old Father,” Boris said.

  “You did not see the Old Father,” Bran said, correcting him, “neither of us did.”

  “Believe me,” Mihai said, with a shudder, “you’re lucky. Now, are we going to get on with this or not?”

  “What choice do we have?” the twins chorused.

  “None,” he told them, and he wriggled back up to watch the approaching horsemen. The barest hint of a breeze ruffled the feathers that adorned the poles they wore on their backs. Behind him, Mihai heard his own horses stir, struggling against their harnesses and whinnying into their muzzles.

  “Better go and calm them down,” one of the twins hissed, so Mihai slithered back down into the hollow. He closed his eyes, and softly began to chant. It worked. The horses grew still. Their patience, however, was a fragile thing. Mihai could feel it, even as he sang to them. They were driven by forces that were more powerful than any Strigany charm, however well sung. It was always the same when this season was upon them.

  It was a relief when the cavalry passed them and it was time to go.

  “How do you know there’s only one squadron here?” Boris asked.

  “Or that another isn’t waiting for us up the road?” Bran added.

  “I don’t,” Mihai admitted. “We’ll just have to take the petru’s word for it.”

  Without giving them a chance to argue, he unbound the legs of his second mare, vaulted onto the back of the first, and prepared to lead them into action.

  Captain Vassily Chuikov stood in his stirrups and turned to look back down the twin columns of his lancers. The sight of them filled his heart with pride. Their cuirasses were polished to silver perfection. The pale ash hafts of their lances were held at perfect, matching angles. Most splendid of all were the feathers of their backpoles, fluttering in the breeze as constant reminders of their victories.

  Most of all, Chuikov was proud of his horses. Most cavalry companies rode mares or geldings, stolid beasts that were little better than draft animals. Not him and his comrades, though, not anymore. After the war in the north, they had invested some of their riches in a herd of white stallions. They were magnificent beasts, which they had trained in the arts of war, so that the steel crescents of their hooves were almost as deadly as the Kislevites’ lances.

  Chuikov’s chest swelled with pride as he examined his company. Then, seeing that they were in position, he prepared to order a halt.

  That’s when it happened. Before he could give the order, for the first time since he had left the training ring, his mount stopped without permission. Worse, it started to pull to one side.

  Chuikov looked down at his horse in surprise. Then, he adjusted his seat and tugged gently on one rein. The horse turned back to face forward, although, to Chuikov’s acute embarrassment, not in time to stop the disruption to their formation that his sudden halt had caused.

  He glanced up at the hill where Blyseden was camped. Despite the reassuring thought that the damned peasant wouldn’t know good horsemanship if it bit him on the buttock, Chuikov felt his cheeks redden.

  “Walk on,” he told his horse, and it did, for a while. Then it stopped, veered to one side, and started to turn back the way it had come. Its ears went straight up, and it made a strange snuffling sound.

  “Walk on,” Chuikov snapped, and this time he used his spurs as well as his reins. His horse jumped and meandered forward a little more.

  Lost in his consternation, it was only now that Chuikov realised the wider mutiny that was taking place among the company’s horses. Some were twisting their necks and chewing at their bits, whinnying unhappily. One was doing a sort of awkward side step, torn between whatever had seized its heart and the sting of its rider’s spurs.

  Then, even as Chuikov felt his horse turn again, one of his companion’s steeds reared up onto its hind legs and jinked its shoulders. Only the fact that its rider was a Kislevite, born in the saddle and raised on mare’s milk, saved him from falling.

  “By the Tsarina, what’s going on?” Chuikov asked. His second-in-command answered, from the back of a horse that was bucking up and down in an attempt to throw him.

  “It’s almost as if—” he began, and then cursed as he bit his tongue. “We haven’t passed another horse for miles, but it’s almost as if they can smell—”

  “Oh Ulric,” Chuikov swore, cutting him off, “they can!”

  He had let his horse turn to face the direction it wanted, and, sighted between its ears like a target over a cannon’s barrel, he could see what had filled their steeds with such mutinous confusion.

  There were six of the blasted things. Drab, brown, muddy carthorses that probably weren’t worth much more than the price of their meat.

  Then the wind changed, and even Chuikov could smell six mares in heat.

  To the stallions, the smell was maddening, an aphrodisiac that burst through their training like a flooding river through a dam. As one beast, they turned, and, oblivious to the sting of their riders’ spurs and the tug of their bridles, they galloped after the objects of their desire.

  The mares, like well-raised females everywhere, made a show of galloping away from them.

  As the stampede turned off the road, and led off into the leg-snapping chaos of the heath, Chuikov gave up trying to control his steed, and concentrated on hanging on. He knew that they should have stuck to geldings.

  “What are those fools doing?” Blyseden asked. He had turned to see that, about a mile behind his vantage point, the cavalryman Chuikov’s formation was disintegrating on the road they were supposed to be guarding.

  Blyseden swore, glancing around to see Tubs. The scribe had wisely made himself scarce, so Blyseden contented himself with punching one fist into the palm of his hand.

  After an entire day of watching his army claw its way towards the heart of the Striganies’ encampment, his nerves were drawn as tight as bowstrings. It wasn’t that he was concerned about victory. Despite the sorcery, and the deceit of the Strigany, the fact remained that his followers were soldiers, and they were fighting civilians. Their victory was assured.

  No, what worried him was that, as night drew ever closer, a lot of the Strigany might escape. Now that his cavalry had left the road out of Flintmar wide open, such an escape seemed ever more likely.

  “Looks like the Kislevites are running away,” Vespero said with a casual insouciance that Blyseden felt was almost offensive.

  “They are,” he said, and cursed. “They are running away.”

  Chewing his lips, he watched as one of the horses collapsed. The confusion of white hair, coloured feathers and polished steel disappeared into a patch of bog, and, by the time they had struggled back out of it, horse and rider were indistinguishable brown blobs.

  “Strigany sorcery, I’ll be bound,” Blyseden said, and chewed his lip. He was already wondering if this was going to be quite as easy as he had assumed.

  “Perhaps,” Vespero allowed. “Although these Kislevites… Well, between you and me, commander, they are a flighty people. It’s the snow that does it. Bad for the liver.”

  Blyseden spared a moment to glare at the Tilean. Then he called for his telescope, and looked once more at the closing net that the rest of his army had formed around the Strigany encampment. It wasn’t as tight as it might have been. The militia companies in particular were a mess. They huddled together in great masses, the gaps between their ranks wide enough to provide perfect escape routes, if night came before the battle w
as finished.

  It was time to finish it.

  “We’ll have to use another unit to block the road,” he muttered.

  “Allow me and my men to volunteer,” Vespero said.

  Blyseden was tempted, but prudence prevailed. He didn’t want to be left alone with only a dozen bodyguards between him and the enemy.

  “No, I will need you here, captain,” he said. “It looks as though I will have to use my reserves after all. Signaller!”

  By the time they had turned back onto the road, Mihai and his comrades were muddied, battered and bruised. They had been constantly forced to leap off their horses, to help them out of patches of bog, or through tangled chokes of brambles. What made it even worse was that, as soon as the mares had smelled the stallions, their will to flee from their pursuers had drained away.

  “I don’t know, Gertie,” Mihai told one of his horses, as he pulled her reluctantly up the bank that led back onto the road, “sometimes I wonder if you’re quite the lady I thought you were.”

  The horse whinnied indignantly and the twins, who had also dismounted to help their mares up the slope, laughed.

  “I’m sure that the petrus will have something to say about the morals of the modern foal,” Boris said, a mare’s bridle in each fist.

  “For, have not our people always survived by the strength of their character?” Bran intoned in a passable imitation of Petru Engel.

  Mihai grinned, white teeth shining through the patchwork of spattered mud and scratches that patterned his face. He had reached the top of the bank, and the dirt road beyond was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He swung back up onto his mare’s back, and looked out over the bog.

  The Kislevites were still following them. Not that they had much choice in the matter. The mercenaries had long since given up trying to control their mounts, although most of them had managed to hold their seats. That, Mihai thought, was quite some achievement, considering the lust-fuelled desperation of the stallions’ pursuit.

  “They’re a sorry sight,” Bran said as he joined Mihai.

  “Like cockerels caught in a storm,” Boris agreed. “Look at the state of those feathers.”

  “Maybe,” Bran mused, “we should stay here and pluck them? If they are struggling up the slope, and we are waiting for them…”

  Mihai shook his head.

  “No, there are too many, and don’t underestimate them. How many people do you know that could have stayed on their horses through all of that, let alone maintained some sort of formation?”

  “Not many,” Bran agreed. He was looking at the Kislevites’ captain. The man’s uniform was as torn and filthy as any beggar’s, but his authority remained untouched. Even as his mount leapt over a clump of tangled bushes, and staggered to one side, the captain’s back remained straight. As soon as he recovered the breath that had been knocked out of him, he barked a fresh set of commands that had the scattered riders dragging their reluctant horses back into formation.

  Mihai watched the riders as they tried to give some sort of form to their stampeding stallions. Then, something in the tangled expanse that separated him from his pursuers caught his eye. It wasn’t much, just a flash of colour against the drab browns of the heath, but it was enough to quicken Mihai’s pulse.

  He looked again at the approaching Kislevites. Suddenly, their advance didn’t seem so slow, or the distance between him and them so great. On the other hand, if fortune had offered him this gift, then it would be wrong to turn it down, insulting, even.

  “Here, hold my horses,” he told Bran, tossing him the reins.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. Mihai, who had already vaulted out of his saddle, spared him a quick glance.

  “Just wait here for a minute,” he said, and, with a sudden white grin, he turned and rushed towards the Kislevites.

  “Where are you going?” the twins bellowed in unison.

  Mihai ignored them. It was hard work running through the heath. Mud sucked at his feet, and brambles ripped angrily at his clothes and the skin beneath. Despite the chill of the day, sweat trickled down his spine, and his breath grew shorter and more ragged.

  From time to time, he looked up to keep his bearings, and to see how close the Kislevites had come. Down here, mired in the undergrowth, they seemed a lot closer than they had from the road.

  No, he thought. They don’t seem closer, they are closer.

  He forced himself to run, ignoring the barbs of the undergrowth. For a moment, he was seized with the terrible thought that he had gone off track, and missed his objective. It would be easy enough to do. It was such a small thing in the vastness of this wilderness.

  Then he saw it, and, when he did, he knew that the risk he had taken was well worthwhile.

  He didn’t know what the flower was called. He had never seen one like it before. It was a magnificent bloom, though. The petals made a sunburst of colour, from the pale yellow of the tips to the fiery oranges of their bases. It was as wide as two open palms, and perfect, not a single insect bite or patch of blight on any of the petals.

  Mihai drew his knife and sliced through the stem. As he bent over the bloom, he caught the scent, a heady musk that smelled better than any perfume he had ever smelled. For a moment, he thought about stowing the flower in his shirt to hide it from the twins.

  He paused, hesitated. Then he caught sight of a Kislevite’s back pole, the feathers fluttering not more than a couple of dozen yards away, and he came to a decision.

  Holding the stem of the flower between his teeth, he turned and ran.

  As he drew nearer to the embankment and the road, he could hear the twins cheering him on. His legs felt as though they were on fire, and every step was agony. Even so, he raced up the broken ground of the embankment, as though he were sprinting along the road, and crawled inelegantly back into his saddle.

  “What the hell is that between your teeth?” Boris asked.

  “Let’s go,” Mihai said out of the corner of his mouth, and, turning his horse with his knees, he galloped off down the road. As he did so, he tried to think of an explanation for the flower which he still held between his teeth.

  The horses’ hoof beats drummed a steady rhythm into the packed earth, and, after the sweating confusion of the bog, all three felt their spirits lift. After half a mile, they turned, and, seeing that the Kislevites were still struggling up onto the road, they let their horses slow.

  “Before you ask,” Mihai told them, taking the flower from his mouth, and stowing it carefully in his satchel, “this is for Petru Engel. It’s sleepwort. He’s always after it.”

  The twins started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Mihai scowled.

  “Oh, nothing,” Bran answered wiping his eyes. He turned to his brother, and the two exchanged a wink. “Anyway, I wonder how things are going back at Flint-mar?”

  Their humour died, and the three of them fell silent. As they had drawn further away from the settlement, the sounds of the battle from Flintmar had grown ever fainter. The relative silence did little to encourage them, though. Their thoughts turned back to their families and friends, to everybody who had ever meant anything to them, and to the doom that was upon them.

  It was Boris who broke their miserable silence.

  “You saw the Kazarkhan selected by Ushoran,” he said, “what else do you need to know? If our leader is chosen by a god, how can he fail? When we have needed it, victory has always been ours.”

  “You sound like a petru, and who’s to say when we’ve needed it?” Bran asked. “You heard about the caravans that were wiped out on the way down here. Didn’t they need victory too?”

  “They were only individuals,” Boris said, uncertainly, “not the whole of our people.”

  Bran snorted.

  “Well, neither are we the whole of our people. There are Strigany in Bretonnia, Tilea, Araby, all over. If we’re all slaughtered, then some of our people will still survive, somewhere.”


  The three men rode in thoughtful silence.

  “Did you hear about that perfume maker from one of the northern caravans?” Mihai asked. “They say he blends the most subtle scents of any of our people, which is to say, of anybody: rose water that really smells of roses, incense that will cover any stink and perfumes to set a man’s blood on fire. What’s really amazing, though, is that all he’s got is a wooden plate where his nose should be. He lost it in an ambush.”

  “A wooden plate? Then how does he smell?” Bran asked sceptically.

  “Awful.”

  The twins didn’t even groan at the old joke.

  Mihai shrugged.

  “Look, why waste time worrying? The petru said that we were to lure the cavalry off the road, so that’s what we’ll do. That’s all we can do.”

  “It isn’t enough,” Boris explained. “We are strong. We can fight. We should… We should… What’s that in the trees?”

  Mihai looked up, just as his mount suddenly stopped, digging her hooves into the road. He took a quick glance back over his shoulder, and saw that the first of the Kislevites was so close that he could see the whites of his eyes. Although the man’s uniform was ragged and muddy, he still held his lance high. The steel tip glittered wickedly.

  Mihai licked his lips nervously, and then followed Boris’ pointing finger back to the forest. The tops of the trees were crashing and swaying as if caught in some invisible storm. For one innocent moment, Mihai actually assumed that it was just the wind in the branches.

  With a sudden jolt of terror, he realised that there was no wind. Beneath the slate-grey cloud, the day seemed to be holding its breath. That meant that the approaching commotion could only be one thing, or, rather, two things.

  Mihai’s mare whinnied in sudden terror, and started to jink back towards the approaching lancers.

  “What can they smell?” Bran asked, fighting his mount as she tried to turn. The horse that he had been leading had already pulled her reins from his hand and fled, galloping back towards the approaching Kislevites.

  “Oh gods,” Mihai said. “It must be those damned giants.”