by Garon Whited
I paused in the middle of a wheat field and crouched down to think.
Plans change. I never get attached to a specific plan; I get attached to objectives. My overall objective was to find the leader of the Fist and visit upon him a level of misery unknown in the history of mankind. And, incidentally, get the rest of those yahoos to quit pestering me. Killing them seemed a good solution at the time. Invade their stronghold, kill them all before they killed me. Now…
I wasn’t dealing with some shadow organization. I wasn’t dealing with a secret cabal of vampire hunters. Apparently, I was dealing with a major religious organization on another planet—or whole alternate universe.
Daybloods do not need to breathe at night. Usually. I took a few deep breaths anyway, just to keep in practice.
Okay, now is not the time to kick myself. I suppose I could have guessed this—seven impossible things happen to me before breakfast, and that’s whether I believe them or not—but this hadn’t even crossed my mind as a nightmare. Maybe I should have seen it, though; wizards, magical doorways, vampire hunters, unknown religions… they must have some sort of foothold in my own world to get the clothes and weapons and intelligence… and all probably under the control of a fanatical religious organization. Assume it’s that bad, or worse. Possibly much worse. Better to be overcautious than to be overconfident. Again.
I wonder if they sell guns to the local rulers. If they aren’t the local rulers…
Right now, though, the thing on which to concentrate was finding someplace to hide out for a while. It didn’t look like it was near daybreak, so more distance was in order… but thinking ahead is what puts a man above the animals.
So I started bounding along until I crossed a road. I followed it, heading away from the city. I was a little worried about being followed. The hard earth of a road took tracks much less readily and my landings tended to leave deep footprints. With enough people, I could still be followed. And I knew of at least one wizard who had actually seen me—
I stopped right there as I realized I could be under observation through a spell at that moment. I extended magical senses, hunting for the business end of a scrying spell, but I didn’t find one.
I considered how to prevent such a spell from finding me. It could be important, since the opposition obviously exercised the magical arts. Several ideas leaped to mind. I could build a “whirlpool” of magical energy that would intercept any incoming spells, but that would require a lot of energy on my part and would have to be maintained. I could build a shell of power around me so that magical energy simply didn’t reach me, but I would be unable to use magic, either. Or, and this one I liked, I could build a spell that would act like a lightning rod, attracting and grounding out any active spells that reached for me; as long as it didn’t get overloaded it should work, and require only a little maintenance now and then to keep it active.
So I built it; it wasn’t all that complicated, but I did go for overkill. I’d no experience with the levels of power that might be employed, so I took a long time—close to an hour—which was potentially wasted time. Maybe I didn’t even need a magical defense; but I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
When I was done, I listened carefully. No more alarms from the city. No hunting horns, either. I wondered at that, then realized only a fool hunts a vampire at night.
This sobered me a lot. They would hunt me during the day.
Time to get moving again. I had let my low-gravity spell lapse, so I started jogging. A few months ago, I would have managed nothing better than a fast walk for any real distance. Now… now I moved right along at a comfortable trot.
I made a note to get a horse, if possible. An exceptionally strong one; I’m not a lightweight anymore. I missed Arabesque.
It was coming up on dawn when I finally looked for a spot to hide. I had a couple of body bags rolled up together in my pack, so it didn’t matter if the hiding place was light-tight. But I did want someplace to hide for the next ten minutes or so. Since I was in forest now, this was not hard to find; a fallen tree with a hollow underneath provided that. I checked it to make sure it wasn’t inhabited by something more mundane than me, found nothing. I got out the body bags, nested one inside the other, slid down into the hollow, zipped myself into them, and rolled over onto the zippers.
Sunrise did what it usually does; it made me shiver and sweat and tremble. It brought me back to life, not quite kicking and screaming. I got out of the bags quickly and let them air a bit before rolling them up and putting them away. I smelled like I’d been hiking all night. Which, come to think of it, wasn’t too far wrong.
Now I avoided the road; I stayed within sight of it, followed it, but did not travel on it. Too many things could come down the road unexpectedly, and I doubted my outfit would blend in well with the locals. Besides, how many people around here would be wearing camouflage face paint?
It was a good thing, too. Not two hours later, a horseman rode by as though the devil himself were after him; a half-hour later, a party of armed cavalry went by. They did not seem to be pursuing anybody, but they were making good time.
My first thought? The first was a courier or messenger; the others were the hunting party. The group seemed to be rather alert and they were loaded for bear; every man had a crossbow out and cocked. I presumed they were hunting me.
It’s a chilling sensation. It’s one thing to realize people will be after you, quite another to see half a dozen men with weaponry actively looking for you. It inspires a fight-or-flight reaction that is not entirely a pleasant thing.
I kept low in the undergrowth and waited until they were long gone.
It occurred to me I was making very poor time, trudging through the woods like this; the road would be much faster. Then again, where was I going? What was I after, really? Everything I had intended to do was thrown out of whack by this new difficulty: a whole world of possibilities! I didn’t even know if that was a capitol of some sort, or if it was just another city out of dozens or hundreds.
That’s when I had my attack of the Oh-My-Gods. I lay down in the underbrush and took deep, slow breaths. I was shaking. Here I was in broad daylight, on the run from cavalry with crossbows and an unknown number of wizards because I’m the vampire that stepped through their magical doorway. No, this isn’t a dream, I’m not in a wet pack, I’m not due for my Thorazine, and please get that needle away from my arm.
Deep breaths and a lot of attention to relaxing.
I don’t know how long I lay there thinking about my situation. It was a while. I kept trying to come up with a plausible explanation for all this that didn’t involve being off my own planet. I kept coming up empty on that. I couldn’t think of anything else that would explain… everything.
I noticed I was thinking in circles—a no-good way to get anywhere. I looked up at the tree branches and the patches of blue sky between the leaves.
“You’re going to have to get a grip,” I said. I know I’m in a bad way when I talk to myself. “You don’t know much. Take what you know and see what you can do with it. But stop lying here and dithering.”
Now was the time to figure out what I needed, wanted… and what my ultimate goals were to be.
First, I have a whole world of unknowns. Learning to deal with that takes priority over everything else. Knowledge of my surroundings will be vital. For all I knew, there was a snark lurking in the bushes; hopefully, the boojum would eat it first and give me time to get away. I didn’t just need to check on the local wildlife; I needed to find out about all of it. How the money worked, who was in power, what the political setup(s) were, what other power groups there might be, and the position of the Fist in all of that.
Until I did that, I couldn’t make any practical plans. Ignorance hinders effective planning.
So what was first?
Observation. I needed a smaller town, but something more than a village. Some place a stranger would not be immediately noticed nor a
ll that exceptional, and a place where I could watch the locals and learn their customs. Maybe even ask questions about them, since I was from “far away.”
Arrgh. Where is “far away?” Are there distant countries they are passing familiar, but not intimately so?
Then I had a really cold chill.
I recalled the grunt I’d captured back home and the rudely-woken wizard on this side of the door both spoke a language I did not understand. It was possible I would have to learn a whole new language just to blend in—provided English didn’t automatically mark me as someone to string up by the tonsils.
I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes and tried to relax. So what if it took me a decade or two to blend in flawlessly? I was short on time? Ha.
Lots more deep breathing and deliberate relaxation later, I was feeling less frightened. Still worried, but not scared. It was going to be tough. Tougher than I probably realized, but what choice did I have? None, really. That does wonders for me. There’s no need to be nervous or scared when the inevitable comes knocking. Accept it and move on.
It’s the accepting part that’s tough.
So I struck off perpendicular to the road, going deeper into the forest. Travel during the day was a bad idea; if I had to deal with the local constabulary or military or whatever they were, I’d do it at night. Right now, I was going to find a quiet place, well-hidden, and have a nap. A little creative work with a knife and a few vines and I had myself a nice blind up in a tree. It wasn’t something that would last, and certainly not a shelter, but I was hidden from anyone on the ground. I wedged myself into a fork in the trunk and tried to get comfortable. That turned out to be impossible, but I slept.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 30TH
I’m a little off on my days, here; I usually switch over at midnight, but missed it last time. I was busy with a ritual and running for my life, okay? Technically, the gateway opened today, Tuesday, really early this morning. My whole leapfrogging adventure also happened today. But I’m caught up now, and we’re back on track.
I had my nap, scratched at bug bites, wondered if there were any poisonous nasties, and sighed. It bothers me that there may be vampire mosquitoes roaming around. After all, they drank my blood, didn’t they? Or does this thing I have need something with more of a nervous system—or a soul? Then again, if there’s a vampire mosquito, how do you tell? Do you swat it and it comes back anyway? Do they burst like fireworks when the Sun starts to rise?
Skip it. I’ll think about it later. Maybe.
The day looked well-advanced; my watch said it was two in the afternoon. Somehow, that didn’t look right to me, but for all I knew interdimensional or interplanetary gateways screw up digital watches. Then again, who says this place has a twenty-four-hour day?
Ick. Who says the world is round? Maybe it is flat, and the sun orbits the world!
I got down and headed back to the road. I spent most of the rest of the day by the side of the road, belly-down in the bushes, watching traffic go by.
There wasn’t much, but it was informative traffic. The local technology seemed to be about on par with the medieval period, with evidence of some Renaissance influences. Wagons were horse- or ox-drawn; the better ones had iron-rimmed wheels and the coaches had leaf-springs. Slaves were obvious in about half the groups I watched, but apparently were accepted and generally well-treated; I saw decorative metal collars locked or riveted on, but no actual chains; slaves appeared to be the province of the wealthy. Armor and weapons had advanced to the plate and crossbow stage, but there was no sign of guns.
I wondered at that last. What about the nutballs with the automatic weapons and rocket launchers? Where were they? Did the commerce between worlds run to ordnance? It was a hell of a lot of work to open a gateway, I know that; maybe it wasn’t practical to trade. Or, perhaps, the people running the gate didn’t like the idea of screwing around with their own world like that.
I dealt with these questions by the simple expedient of shelving them. I couldn’t answer them—at least, not yet.
There were also occasional bits of more exotic traffic, as well. A traveling wizard went by. I could tell he was a wizard; I could feel magic glinting off him. He wore robes, nothing fancy, but good for traveling and belted at the waist. He carried a staff and a pack, and seemed to be lost in thought.
Another item of interest was a sedan chair; the lady in the sedan chair was only momentarily visible as curtains swayed, but she, too, seemed to be a sorceress of some sort. The chair was borne on the shoulders of four wooden men, apparently statues animated for the purpose. It looked pretty comfortable, if unusual.
I also noted two items of air traffic. One flying carpet—a very fat fellow on it—and one giant bird apparently made of smoke, a rider astride its neck. I avoided both of these as best I could; I didn’t want to be spotted. Neither of them seemed to be looking for me. The fat man seemed worried. The bird’s rider was too far away to see an expression, even with the aid of my mini-binoculars. His body language suggested he was urging his unearthly mount to greater efforts at speed.
It was coming up on sunset when I started to get up and slither back into the woods. I froze at the sound of rapid hoofbeats. A dozen men in half-plate and chainmail came at a brisk pace down the road, looking determined and somewhat hostile. Each bore the device of the Fist on their tabards.
I thought about it for several seconds, then decided to wait until after sunset to follow them. At night, I should have no trouble—and I did not want to be caught in the light so near to sunset.
So I returned to my hideaway and slipped into the body bags. Sunset did its worst, prickling and tickling and sending the armies of ants crawling all over me.
I got up, stowed my port-a-coffin, and ran after the horsemen.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31ST
I’m going to start shifting days at sunset. This midnight stuff is too confusing, and my watch tells me this place has days twenty-two hours, eighteen minutes long or thereabouts. Which means my calendar is also going to get out of whack if I’m here long enough… wherever “here” is…
Anyway, I ran down the horsemen. Sounds silly to have a man on foot chasing men on horseback, but I’m not exactly a human being any more, so that’s okay. Besides, they came to a stop.
I would guess there had been a group of wagons, about fourteen or so, pulled into a large, cleared area off the roadside. I’m sure there were a couple of fires for cooking and for light. For all I know there could have been a dozen men and women dancing around them, children playing or eating their supper, and a fiddler or two.
Now the fires were much larger as the wagons burned. Men and women and, yes, children were moaning wounded, unconscious, or dead. The horsemen were firing the last wagon as I came into view. The smell of burning wood, burning flesh, and burning hair were strong in the night air, and I could see the pillars of dark smoke rising into the still sky.
The leader shouted commands at his men and lobbed a torch into the last wagon, then mounted up. It looked as though they had lost none of their number, although one was favoring a leg. They all wore swords, but each was carrying a crossbow—all leveled now at the wagon just starting to burn.
I didn’t see any weapons among the fallen, unless you count a couple of large sticks.
They waited until the flames were going well inside the last wagon. The ones on foot remounted their horses, then wheeled away and rode back toward town. I could feel them as they passed; there was something similar to them, much like the assassins sent after me. It was a fiery glow around them, something that would burn me, I felt sure. But it was softer, less intense. More of a campfire than a blowtorch.
A campfire can still burn you. I didn’t like it a bit.
Still, they passed by in, if anything, more of a hurry going back than coming out. The horses were all tired, and the men equally so—but they laid in with a will, as though pursued by the Devil.
Considering that night had already fallen, in other ci
rcumstances they might have been right.
Still… there were other things on my mind besides killing miscellaneous troops. Well, okay, that was on my mind, but how to go about it was what dominated. And here were the wounded and the dead…
I came into the light to look them over. Tendrils of power uncoiled and reached, touching the bodies and reaching through them while the wagons burned. I reached into the wagons as well, through the fires, just in case. Altogether, I found four wounded. The rest were dead.
Waste not, want not, as the saying goes. I drank from the wounds carefully, getting blood without brilliance from the dead, then turned to the living ones. Two were going to die shortly; that much was apparent. One, a young girl no more than fourteen, was already sinking into the final blackness. So I took her, drained her of that living spark, and watched the lights go out in the rooms of ruin and the house of dust.
The other, an average-sized fellow with a large stick of firewood near his hand, had blood in places it wasn’t supposed to go. I could feel him leaking into his guts from the sword-wound through them; he was already pale, almost ashen, and cold to the touch. I drank him too, drawing out that vital essence and watching it dim to nothing.
With each of them came a piece of them, becoming a part of me. I felt the music of the fiddler, the song of the singer, the dancer’s movement, and the poet’s words hung like letters of gold on silver smoke.
The remaining two were in doubt. Left alone, they were probably dead; the man was badly cut across the face at an angle, a wicked slash that parted an eyebrow, the bridge of his nose, and the opposite cheek. It provided a lot of blood, and the slash across his chest—nasty, deep, to the bone—had not been enough to seriously threaten his life. But he looked like he was a dead man with all that gore.
I used dead men’s clothes to bandage his chest and face, then applied a small healing spell—one of the few I could recall; I had not been too interested in them at the time, and my previous incarnation had not been too devoted to their creation.